Hello, everyone. My name is Calvin Carelli from Saint Clair. I am here with a wonderful Rachel Cook.
Who is the yogi Pronor
and a simpler customer.
Rachel tell us about yourself and and why you're the yogi Pronor.
- Thanks for having me first.
I'm really excited to chat with you and share a little bit about why I love Simclaro with everybody.
But I started the yoga printer in 2008
because I left a very crystal
Hello?
- I guess, he hasn't heard something. This might puppy out there.
- Sorry. Go ahead. - It's all good. So I I did a lot of small business consulting
in a more corporate setting for a very long time and realized that they weren't my people.
They weren't my people in that the businesses that these people were running were very focused on the bottom line really without regard to the impact to their communities,
the world, and
that didn't sit very well with me. So
I kind of stumbled into the yoga business world
because my
my yoga teacher
realized the work that I was doing with other small businesses and said, well, can you come help me turn my studio around?
It's really kind of struggling and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.
And so it only took me a little bit of time to figure out, okay, here are the few little tweaks that make a big impact in your business, and we turned our studio around.
And that was in 2008.
She handed me the name Yogi Printer. I started working with yoga studio host, and
that's kind of how things got started. But fast forward,
now we're in 20 14.
At this point, I work with very few yoga studios because it's a business model that
is limited in their impact.
In the world. And honestly, it's it's not the most
- lifestyle friendly business model for most people. - Yeah.
- And as a mom, I realize more people
want to have
the ability to create a business they love, doing work they love that makes a difference and that changes people's lives,
but they want to have their own life too, and that was really important. Yeah.
So that's what I'm to these days. You know, I don't just serve yogis. Basically,
if you are a yogi hardened entrepreneur, if you're a a life coach, a health coach,
natural pathic doctor,
you know, a physical therapist. I mean, just anybody who's kind of in the healing, helping,
or conscious
space
I hope those people really fall in love with creating a business
that loves them back, that allows them to have the whole lifestyle
to help them, you know, keep their tank full and keep doing the great work they're doing in the world.
- That sounds wonderful.
And what are some of the things that you teach people when you when you teach this?
- You know, it's interesting because this is a specific
demographic that traditionally has kind of pushed away
business slash marketing stuff
because traditionally,
these things are taught very much from a, you know, bottom line perspective Like, the things that you should do are the things that are gonna make the most money,
and my people don't jive with that very well.
So what I teach is how how to use more education based marketing or community centered kind of like grass roots types of marketing.
To build a community
around
what you're doing.
And that's kind of the foundation of everything. And once they have that, then they can create
really more leveraged programs or products or offerings
that allow them to serve more people in a more sustainable
way.
- Yeah.
So
tell us a little bit, where are you where are you at?
You started 6 years ago, you said, where are you at in your business now?
Like, how long have you been able to make a living? I mean, primarily from this and where you Yeah.
- I've I've pretty much always made a living from this. My husband's a public school teacher.
So when I first started.
It was like a year or 2 of pretty much living on his income, which isn't very much.
And then reinvesting everything I was making back into my business to try to, you know, pay for all the things you need when you're first getting started, the website, and you know, some extra training and, you know, soft wither, etcetera.
- And when I first started, I was traveling and actually going to people up and down the - east coast.
So when to the yoga studios?
- Yeah.
To yoga studios and wellness centers, like all up and down between Washington DC and Atlanta, I would just hop in the car and drive and like, teacher workshop and work with them.
And if they ran a teacher training, I would teach a workshop for them.
So,
you know, I call that not really my period of, like, making it of money.
It was more like really getting to know my people. Like, really
being in their business with them and and hearing from them and seeing what was going on,
1 thing that I I know from working with small businesses for, like, over 12 years at this point
is that people will tell you 1 thing But when you really, like, get under the hood of their business, you start to see, like,
a whole another, like, series and levels of things that are really going on.
So I was really, you know, digging in and trying to figure out, okay, why are they really struggling?
And,
you know, it came down too. They didn't understand
revenue models. They didn't understand,
you know, how to correctly price or package or put together
their offerings.
Or they were so focused on cutting prices because they were worried about, like, the group on
stuff happening.
They didn't know what else to do, how to position themselves differently.
So I started seeing, like, they're all saying, well, we don't have enough clients and I go in and I'm saying, well, really, you have the traffic.
You just don't have it priced or packaged correctly, and you're not taking care of the people who are walking in the door.
And they're walking out the back. Mhmm. So it was it wasn't about, like, overhauling everything.
It was more like, okay. Here are some things that if we take care of it. Now.
- It'll nip it in the bud. And I see that - It's a center.
It sounds like you I mean, that whole driving around meeting with with yoga studios and and and and wellness centers was huge and, you know, a great, great investment on your part.
And, like, really understanding your likelihood is so key
And also, you sound you sound like a little bit of a Gordon Ramsey in in for a
- Yeah. Like, instead of those shows where they go in and, like, fix the bar or fix the restaurant.
- I'm like, fix the yoga studio. - Yeah. Maybe with a little less cursing and swearing. - Yeah.
And a whole lot more like, it'll be okay.
But, you know, it really gave me so much information
because
what I see a lot of people doing when they wanna go, especially in the online space, they don't really know their clients that well.
Mhmm. They think they do. Like, they might have even had a few surface level conversations,
but they haven't, like, sat in their business and watched
from a lot of angles to see what's happening. They haven't seen how the customer experience works.
They haven't seen what happens with the money.
They haven't seen, you know, how their actual promotions and all these pieces are put together.
And when you have that much knowledge about a business, suddenly you see things that they're just so entrenched,
they can't see it.
And I think that was probably the most helpful thing for me because then when I shifted instead of going and being physically with them,
I realized, of course, then I became a mom and didn't wanna drive around anymore.
So I was like, I'm gonna take everything I've learned over the past, like, 2 years of of going into these businesses
and start taking it online and and creating a program to help kind of distill this information so they have the best practices and they know how to apply these things
right out the gate. Mhmm.
And that was kind of my shift of focus, like my pivot in the tech world from, you know, being kind of an on the ground -- Mhmm.
- -- - very, like, hands on consultant to more of a teacher. Right. And that's kind of where I am now.
You know, I've I was I happy to transition to make?
Not for me because I am comfortable with technology.
And I think
That helped me a lot.
And I've also
taught in the past.
So I've taught when I was in my NBA program, I taught several college level courses.
I'm used to putting together a curriculum. I'm used to
working with lots of different learning styles.
So I kind of just I was 1 of those people who I I had so much information at my disposal now.
I just was like, I'm gonna create this online program to kind of teach everything I know about designing a business to be profitable and sustainable.
And I literally sat down and
you know, in 12 weeks had written this huge program.
And then I turned around and, you know, spent another 12 weeks filling it up.
And it was the start of me going completely online.
- Sweet. Cool. Yeah. - So and that's where I've been ever since is is more online. - Yeah.
And then and then transitioning to other types of businesses. Mhmm.
Yeah.
Was that a difficult transition to make, that 1?
- Transitioning to other types of businesses?
- Like No. You know, it's just gradually, naturally, organically,
or
- So it's funny because even though I called my business the Yogi Printer, and I started very specifically talking to Yogis,
by the second round of my program, which is called conscious business design,
I started seeing other people coming in. I started seeing life coaches and health coaches.
And yogis who had not just yoga, but they were like yoga and massage or yoga and this.
And that's pretty common in this, like, whole healing and helping world.
Like, they've got lots of modalities they can pull out of their bag of tricks.
And they were just kind of coming to me, and they were like, I did what you're doing.
So is it okay if I take your program? And I was like, yeah, I think you'll totally
get a lot out of it.
And so at this point, only about 40 percent of the people who work with me are, like, strictly yoga businesses.
Most of the rest of them are,
you know,
life, health, wellness,
types of coaches. I've gotten some creative people who are attracted to what I do. Mhmm.
And then, basically, as long as they're service
types of people, then
- they'll pretty much jive with what I'm doing. - Yeah. And they have the yogi mindset, perhaps.
So -- Yeah.
-- this is a very interesting point actually with with mean, a lot of people are really afraid of niching down because they're afraid of of limiting their their reach.
And kinda what you're seeing is is similar to what I've seen too is, like, once your when your niches, if you're really specific, you can actually end up attracting others who are outside of that niche.
But but because of your
specificity
in your marketing. They understand what it's about.
- Right? And I relate it to, like
well, I've got 2 examples.
Like, when Facebook first rolled out, Facebook was only available to college students at very select group of colleges.
And then they gradually started adding more people in and adding more people in but their core message and their core, like, this is what we do, didn't change.
They just kind of gradually, like, opened, like, kinda like a flower, just allowing more people to come in.
But if they wouldn't have started with just a few colleges, they never would have gained traction because everybody would have been like, what is this?
Like, we don't know
why this is important.
- And the same thing with even, like, big huge blogs, like, Huffington Post - -- Mhmm.
- -- - that started as a political blog. - Right. Yeah. - And
- it was that just that for a long time - -- Mhmm. -- - before they started adding in, like, lifestyle
and you know, fashion, and now they've got, like, all sorts of teen and finance, like, every topic imaginable.
- But if they would impress - it with books,
- Yeah. Yeah.
And it's like all of them everybody sees the end result, and they think that's what they should start with.
- Mhmm. - And when I see people try to start. They're a business like that.
They're like, I'm gonna do all of these things.
Usually, they end up just like sputtering out because they can't gain any traction and nobody really gets what they're trying to do.
So you need kind of like something
to help you really lock in and and make sense to your people.
And once you have kind of a critical mass of people who are following you and dig what you're up to, they're gonna start telling their friends and that's when you'll start to branch out.
But I feel like, yeah, niching down and being specific.
And it could just be for a year or 2.
It could be I mean, in my point, I've not strayed from calling my business the yogi entrepreneur because it continues to attract the right people.
Yeah.
- It works. So it's so cool. It's been helpful for sure. - So tell me a little bit about
Simclaro because I'm really curious about that whole story. I know that you were using
office auto pilot or on to port as it's called now
before that. How long have you been using that?
- I've used office auto pilot for about 2 years.
And, actually, I have, like, 3 different stops to get to even some office autopilot and then Simclaro.
- Oh. - At first, when I created my program,
and I was gonna create an online program. I used Kajabi, which is
more of like a marketing funnel
type of thing. They help you do all the landing pages.
And I was doing, like, the classic Internet marketing launch, the 3 free training videos, and then the sales page, and then
you know, here's the program.
And that was my first experience.
I was like, I don't have a lot of money to hire a designer or coder or whatever, and I just did it all myself,
filmed my videos like this talking to my computer,
and that's how I hosted everything.
But I started to run into problems with that because
it's really geared towards having 1 single program in the interface.
And I wanted to create other programs. I had like spin off programs I was creating,
and I didn't
like having to give my people like 3 or 4 logins.
That they had to go to multiple sites in order to get access.
- I was like, can I just have everything in 1 place? - Mhmm. - So
that they can go from there.
So I started hunting around for something else and started playing around with, like, the different membership plugins
that you can get for, like, a couple hundred dollars.
But then I ended up having press plugins.
Yeah. WordPress plugins. I don't even remember the 1 I had. It might have it wasn't wish list.
It might have been, like,
another similar 1
But it was in a relatively inexpensive plugin, and then I had to set it up with my PayPal.
And
then I had to set it up with, like, 4 other things. And so there were, like, 6 softwares I needed
- to launch and run a program. - Mhmm.
- And none of them had support
So each time
1 thing got updated, like, if WordPress came out with a new version and then suddenly a plug in didn't work and suddenly nothing worked and I had no idea what's going on I had to find a developer.
I didn't have a developer. So I was, like, at the mercy of this person, I didn't know.
And it just became, like, this series of unfortunate events, like, there was always something wrong, and we were always putting out fires.
So at that point, I was like, I need something that's like an all in 1 solution that's integrated because I wanted something integrated.
So I wasn't, you know, trying to make all these pieces work.
And that's when I learned about office auto pilot.
And III
actually spent, like, a few months looking between Office AutoPilot and Infusionsoft.
And everybody I heard that did Infusionsoft hated it because it was too complicated and you needed, like, a whole team to manage it.
I did not have a team. I had like me and my virtual assistant. And I was like, okay. Well,
this seems like the better 1. So I went with office auto pilot. And I guess at the time,
maybe they weren't as well known when I first got on, they definitely did some helping me
get set up,
which was helpful.
But
the challenge I ended up having with them
long term was it was still a WordPress plugin
for a WordPress membership site
- that was kind of clunky and not very easy to use without the help of a developer. - Alright.
So they have their own plugin for WordPress. Right? They Yeah. They have a membership site.
So your membership sites are still on work, Chris, but all the payment and and
- email stuff happens in office auto pilot. Is that right? - Yeah. Yeah.
So they have their own membership
plugin
and then they have their whole,
you know, huge,
very complex,
you know, email marketing system.
Which I definitely see the value in, but I honestly never figured it out.
Like, it was just when I I've tried to figure some of the out and we didn't get much beyond, like, auto responders and, you know, multiple targeted lists.
Mhmm.
And
you know, after 2 years of it and it's not cheap, it's like 300 dollars a month, I
wasn't actively looking for anything because I didn't know if there's anything better.
And I had spent so much money getting it set up and then fixing it when the plug in wouldn't work or having somebody go in and we had to custom code a lot of the membership site stuff to work the way I wanted because it didn't
really work with their plugin as well as we had hoped.
But it just became like I always needed an on I needed to pay for my own support on top of what I was paying office auto pilot, and that was getting very frustrating.
I think they also started just growing very quickly.
And
this is a challenge I I guess for any tech company. When you start growing really quickly,
if you don't have, like, the manpower to offer the same level of support,
then somebody's gonna get left out and it's usually your customers. Mhmm.
And I think that's kinda what happened was we started having some serious problems with their support team.
Like, we just couldn't get emails answered.
Like, they would we'd put an email in and wouldn't hear back for days.
And then they would be like, oh, we finally got to your email.
Now we're gonna put it into our support desk.
So it it became very frustrating for me and my team, but we didn't know there was anything better.
And then I heard about Simparo
in a couple of different ways. 1 through my friend Lauren Fitch, you know,
who was like, hey, you should check this out.
And then I started seeing it in some other Facebook groups I'm a part of.
And so I checked it out. I started looking at it and I was like, Is this too good to be true?
Because it looks pretty simple
and straightforward,
which I appreciated, but I was a little nervous because at this point, it's kind of like when you dunk a lot of money into something, you're nervous to move away from it because what if the new solution doesn't work and then you can't get back on the old thing as easily?
But then you offered, like, hey, just go in there, set it up, take, like, a month or whatever, set it up, and you don't have to pay anything for the free month.
And I did that. And it took me no time to get my membership site set up.
It took me, like, no time to upload all this all my videos and I've got insane amount of content
in my membership site. It was so easy to put together. And
I was just sold. I was like, this is so great and easy.
And I remember I was emailing, like, a few questions in as I was, you know, tinkering around with that.
And I was getting responses back, like, first of all, that day, but often, like, within a few hours.
And that was awesome. I was just, like, holy crap.
This guy just gets customer service and knows that we wanna, you know, turn things around because we're just, you know, micro businesses where every minute counts for us.
- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's I mean, that's 1 of the things that that I really
strive to do is to like, I know if you're if you're taking the time to actually write us, you know, in in the support is because there's something that's blocking you and you wanna move forward.
Right? So we don't wanna keep you waiting
longer than the necessary.
So we try to get back to you, like, right away if if possible, but in the online practice, it's not always possible for us, but But, yeah, we like I love that, like, when I can get get back to people with a response, like, that same minute.
Yeah. That's the best.
- Well, and that's been I mean, I know that as you continue to grow, it'll be now a matter of, like, getting the right people who can continue that.
But it's definitely been huge for me and I tell everybody about that.
But the other thing that I, like, honestly, completely blew me away was
you know, as I'm moving things over, so anybody who's been in the back end of, like, office auto pilot or Infusionsoft,
they have all these complex, like, tagging
systems in place.
So you can set things up so that if somebody buys this, then this happens, and this happens, and they do this and that.
And I remembered I wanted to have it set up so there's somebody opts into, like, a specific list for
something like my free fired up and focus challenge.
That they would also automatically be added to my main, like, home newsletter list. Sure.
But it wouldn't trigger that welcome mess so that they wouldn't end up on, like, 2 lists plus 2 auto responder sequences going out at the same time.
- Oh, right. - And at the time,
it wasn't clear that the was available.
And so I remember I emailed in, and I was like, hey, I wanna do this.
But can I turn off the auto responder for the main list?
And, like,
in no time, you'd email back and you're like, hey, done. Here it is.
And you had already, like, upgraded it. And that's happened several times.
Like, I've I've emailed in saying, hey, I'd like to have this.
And if it hadn't happened, like, there have been several times where I don't know how you do it, but you just, like, the next day or, like, here it is.
But often, it'll it'll it's like on a list, and I know that you're working on it, whereas there were things with the office auto pilot that I had asked them for.
And
it was just like crickets.
Like, I had I I don't know if they ever released the ability to offer a coupon code for anything because
they told me for 2 years, they were trying to do that, and we never saw it come. Mhmm.
So,
yeah, that was a huge, like,
amazing amazing thing that I could email in and ask, like, hey, is this available? Can we do this?
- And you if you didn't have it ready, you'd say, hello, I'm gonna add this to the list or, you know, we'll put that on the longer term list, but you let me know - -- Mhmm.
- -- - and cut me in the loop. And if it was simple, you were just like, oh, that's easy. Yes. Here.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
That gives me something that we love is is like co creating the product with with with people like yourself.
It's that's what makes it fun for us when we can't.
- So that's been amazing.
And I just tell everybody I know who's wanting to go the route of creating online programs or
information product type of things that this has been the easiest platform I've ever used.
And definitely,
it's definitely more of a partnership than just a software solution, which I really, really appreciate because I know you care about my business.
And every time I've reached out for
any sort of help or questions
you and your team have been there and that's something that I just don't see in the software space very much.
- Right. I think, actually, part of it too is that is that we care about like, we attract
customers like yourself
who are out in the world to make a difference.
You know, you reach and turn other people who are, you know, hard based entrepreneurs.
So so, I mean, that's why we're in this. We're in this to raise consciousness. On the planet.
We're in this to better, you know -- Yeah. -- spread love, you know,
through multiple links, if you will. So so
that's why it really matters to us to serve and support you and your work because we know that your work is important.
- Right? If it's - Well, it is very appreciated.
It's very appreciated.
Especially as someone who I mean,
I I run a small business. I have a very tiny team.
I mean, I have a team now, but when I first started all this stuff, it was me figuring it out on my own.
And I'm pretty tech savvy,
but I had a lot of people who are clients of mine who were struggling
trying to make all the pieces work. Like,
they just couldn't do it without shelling out a ton of money for somebody to do it for them.
So knowing that there's something that's so
really intuitive to use
is great. And this is the only, like, solution I send people anymore.
I'm just, like, skip all the plugins,
and all the need for designers and developers like just go here.
- Sweet.
And so you were you were able to do everything that you that you needed for your business with some player?
- Yes. We've so we had the entire
membership site set up with all of our programs inside of it.
I've got all my email
marketing set up, all of the auto responses for certain things, especially I have a lot of And probably a lot of people in my situation,
you create these, like, free programs or free, like, webinars or free trainings or whatever.
And that was so easy to set up because it's like very linear how you put it together.
It's literally like create this and then create this and you just kinda check off the list and then add all your auto responders.
But, yeah, it's done everything and managed my affiliates.
Which I don't have very many. They are, you know, small but might be.
But it manages everything that we really need really seamlessly.
- Great. Yeah. Great. And the
the the transition
of, like, moving your your content, your customers, your contact all that set on the launch report.
Was that difficult? Or was that easier? How did that go?
- Maybe it's because I'm kind of
an organizer by default. I it took me probably less than half an hour to move all my lists over from
entrepreneur
to Simparo. I just literally just downloaded the file and then uploaded them to this specific list
And I let go of a lot of the tagging stuff because I'm just I didn't have a lot of complicated tagging stuff.
So that wasn't a big deal.
But that took literally hardly any time, including adding all the auto responders and things like that.
It took a little more time to set up my membership site just because I have
I mean, it's
I have a 6 module program with, like, 4 to 6 videos per module.
I mean, it's a lot of content, but it zipped up so fast. Like, it it uploaded really fast.
It can, like,
whatever converted really quickly. And
I think we got the whole thing set up.
Our entire all of our programs is actually set up in in less than a day or 2.
Which was great. With no developer,
no designer,
a couple questions to you guys saying, like, hey, what's the best way to do this and this?
And you guys, you know, responded to us really quickly.
So we were I actually and I had a couple people tell me I was kind of crazy to do this, but I I heard about you in December, and I started playing around with it in December.
And I was getting ready to launch my program conscious business design in January.
And so by the, like, the end of the first week kind of playing around with it, I was like, this is what I wanna do.
And everybody was like, don't move systems right before I launch. Just don't do it.
But I did, and the launch was great. The launch went off, like, without a hitch.
We over doubled our enrollment over last year.
And everything was seamless.
Like, I think maybe 2 hiccups because we had to kinda go through the process ourselves.
Before we opened, like, the cart for everything.
But even things as far as, like, being able to set up a time when the cart closed
so that it automatically said, sorry, we're sold out.
Whereas before, I had to wait and stay up until midnight to manually take off a button.
Yeah.
Those things were very much depreciated
as a mom with 3 little kids under the age of 4. So
I was like, yes, it closes at midnight, and I don't have to be there.
And things like, if I wanted to offer
you know, extended payment plan options and have that go away after a period, but it automatically replaced the normal 1.
Like, I didn't have to manually
- pull around with a lot of stuff -- Mhmm. - -- - which was really great.
So there's just a lot of pieces in it that make it easier to
you know, put these things in place without having to be, like, on top of it the whole time you're doing a launch.
- Right. Right. - Which is great. - I think I think that's actually a good point.
I I'm not sure I've thought about it in exactly this way before, but, like, because I haven't used anything but some Clara for many years myself.
Obviously, but
but, like, it it's
Simclara is designed for this type of business, this type of of launch of marketing specifically.
So And it, like, it it pretty much handles everything for you unless you -- Yeah.
-- wanna do it your own particular way for something.
So So, yeah, it's it's it's actually it's kind of a safer thing to
switch to
mid launcher right before launch than than most things would be.
- And defaults are there in place and they work - for you. Exactly. - Yeah. - Exactly. And that was
really great. And
it was great to be able to have my team be able to spend their time focused on answering questions
and literally
having the time to pick up the phone and talk to somebody who's interested in our program
- as opposed to doing, like, tech support. - Alright. Yes.
- Which is what had happened every other launch. It was always like, something's down.
Something's not working. This integration's messed up. Like, button disappeared. What happened?
And and this, you know, this whole now I've been on it since so December,
and it's June the end of June now. And we've never had a problem with, like, checkouts
or, you know, even the automated billing
the integration with Stripe has been amazing. It's so simple.
If someone payment doesn't go through, like, we don't have to manually do anything and automatically tries it and reminds them and -- Mhmm.
- -- - you know, that's such a huge help for us because it just takes it all off our plate.
- So maybe we need to implement a feature that says automatically make the server crash at 10PM, so I can write that email out that says, oh my god, the server refreshed.
Do
- you know what I'm saying? - No. No. No. No.
And that has happened to me, like, at least in 3 launches in the past,
something went wrong. And I was literally, like, last summer when I had a launch for my program,
I don't know if it was mercury, retrograde, or what, but like everything was down.
Office autopilot was down. Our main server was down. Like, everything was down.
The week that our cart was set to close.
And I had people emailing us and they were just like, what the heck is going?
Can I sign up for this still? Did it close already? And I was like, it's open. Oh my god.
But we and that's kind of part of technology, I guess, like stuff happens.
But it's never like, we've never had any problems with that. And even things like just downtime,
we started seeing a lot of that with office autopilot, like, their servers would go offline.
And what's funny is that somehow they don't know that I haven't left because I still get text messages when they're servers down.
And at least a couple times a month, I'm getting text messages.
I think Sinclair has been down for, like, all of 5 minutes at some point for me. Mhmm.
And it's never cause an inconvenience. And you've always updated us.
You've always sent out something saying like, hey, we're doing this upgrade.
Things might be going on.
We didn't I didn't have that before. So it's a very big just
I guess, difference in mindset for how you're approaching, you know, working with us as
as partners as opposed to like the whole
Well, we're not gonna tell them unless we really have to
- type a bang. - Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We're
we started publishing our our up times as, like, status that's in their dot com recently.
And, like, every time it dips below
99.9
something. I'd like, oh,
I hate it. I wanna keep it up all the time.
But, yeah, it does happen. It does happen every once in a while that things go go bad. But yeah.
I like it. Keep me posted.
- Yeah. And I'm and being as long as I know what's going on, that makes me feel better.
Because then, like, if if something was going on with simplero,
because you send us out, like, a message and you're also active on the Facebook group that you have,
like, I know what's going on.
And it's not like I'm paying to send like Facebook ads to a thing that people can't check out on, you know.
And that's been frustrating in the past.
It's like not knowing until somebody emails me saying, hey, I can't buy this thing.
And I'm like, what?
- Yes.
Alright. So
Great.
I know that you were spending
you mentioned something about saving money on on, like, assistance or outsourcing
- by switching to some platform. Is that can you tell me about that? - Yeah. You know, it's so funny.
I think a lot of people
think that when you get into a a software solution that's like an all in 1 solution, that means you're not gonna need a team.
Well, I found when I was with Office AutoPilot, I had to have, like, a developer on standby every time a plugin got updated or WordPress got updated or our theme got updated.
We had to have someone go in there and make sure everything worked correctly.
So I basically was paying my web guy
on top of office auto pilot. So told and my VA who is managing any other tech stuff.
So probably shelling out, like, a thousand bucks or more a month just to make sure all of that stuff worked.
And that was
yeah. That's a big chunk of change for a small business.
And moving to Sombrero,
I don't have a tech guy. It's you. Thanks, Calvin.
You're my tech guy now.
And I did move I did move all my hosting for my WordPress sites over to WP Engine,
which is a more expensive
word press. But it's word press only, and they have their own team of experts.
- Yeah. Yeah. - Isn't it? They're great. - And they're amazing.
And so I what I basically learned is, you know,
it's really easy to to like, mess around with the software stuff and, like, try to figure out how can I get the least expensive thing here?
And you think it's gonna save you money until the shit hits the fan and you you know, need it working right now, and then you're spending, like, out the Wazoo for developers.
And especially, I guess, as things have gotten more There's a lot of security stuff going on in the WordPress world.
And so having a WordPress based membership site at this point became a challenge because I needed security on it.
Yeah.
- We ended up having some crazy stuff where, like, some malware got injected into a site. - Oh, yeah.
- Right. - And then it affected to Every other site
on my
plan. And so I was just like,
oh god. What do I do?
So moving it all over to WPEngine, it's like a hundred bucks a month, but so worth it.
And then having my membership site separate,
it just, in my mind, gives me, like, a little bit extra security.
Like, I don't have to worry about the word press viruses or whatever, ever getting, like, into my clients' computers.
And as far as tech support now. I don't have to have a developer unless
I'm like doing a new design thing and I want something to be pretty, you know.
- So is that correct?
Are you were you are you saying that you that Simparo actually saves you about a thousand bucks a month in excess costs?
- Yeah. - Yeah. Wow. Yeah. For sure.
And even though well, I actually ended up paying an advance for, like, the whole year, which was another little discount for going ahead and paying in advance.
And I had some people ask because I believe
there's like a a small percentage that comes out too based on sales that we do.
But I was like, you know, I when I ran the numbers, I was like, if I do exactly the same business I did last year, I would still
come out ahead using Cimclaro.
Well,
I've already done, you know, almost 2 times the business I did last year so far in June using Cimclaro.
And when I look at the growth in the numbers, plus the decrease in, you know, how much it's cost me just to keep things up and running, just the support.
It's been amazing.
Actually, we just bought a house because for the first time, I'm not, like, selling out random
money everywhere.
Yeah, we're saving a a good amount of money on the tech and maintenance and and security side of things these days.
Wow.
- Great.
Congratulations on the house and that makes you really happy and proud.
So and then, like, it lets you focus more of your time on your business rather than project management and hiring, like, all that stuff.
- Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
- So cool.
Yeah. So
what would be
your
that it really goes without saying, but, like,
what would you who would you recommend Sinclair for?
Or what would be your recommendation to some friend who comes out to you and says, hey, should I
view Sinclair?
- Yeah.
I would say if you're at the stage in your business where you want to offer any sort of online program or
products information product type of thing.
Don't even fool around with anything else out there. Just go straight to supplier.
Like, if you wanna have a membership site, or you wanna have an online course,
this is the only platform I recommend to anybody who's who's ready to take that step.
For sure.
- Great.
Listen to that everybody. Rachel's smart.
And and what's the
if you had to, like, really distill it down, like, what's the number 1 thing that makes you most happy about being on Simparro?
- The
oh, god. There's so many.
I would just have to say having, you know, being able to know I can reach out to you guys. Right.
And and knowing that and experiencing that over and over and over again.
It's not like some random flu that the 1 time I emailed do happen to, like, respond immediately.
It happens over and over and over again. And
just that level of communication, like, you you even post on Monday mornings at like, hey, I'll be on Skype if anyone has questions.
Like, who does that? Nobody does that anymore.
So I think for people
who wanna feel like
technology
is is something they can kind of put in this place and know that it's gonna be taken care of with them.
That's a huge relief that they're not, like, gonna have to figure it out on their own.
- Awesome. Alright. So tell people how they can how can they hear more about you and your programs?
- Or can they sign up for your your do you have a newsletter? I assume you do. - Yes.
So the best way to hear from me is to head over to the yogi premier dot com.
And
right now, I have
actually a free 28 day challenge. It's called the fired up and focused challenge.
It's all about, you know, boosting your productivity
and starting to do the right things faster in your business.
So that you can start living the life you really wanna live.
And that's at the yogi pinner dot com slash challenge.
- Yeah.
- It's a that's a like, people sign up and then it runs for 28 days when they sign up and they - Yeah.
And you'll see the magic of Simparo.
It's all automated, so it's always going, and I don't have to stress about it breaking or not working.
- Sweet. That's so cool. - Yeah. - Alright. Well, thank you very much.
I'm gonna make sure to put these links under the video here.
Great. Thank you very much for for being here with me today and for being in my life.
- Thank you so much. Alright.
- Alright. Take care, Rachel. Thanks a lot. - Bye.