65: Shane Sams: Achieve Work-Life Balance Through Membership Communities
From Teacher to Online Course Creator, Leader of the Flipped Lifestyle Community & Host of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast
My guest today is Shane Sams. Shane is the Leader of the Flipped Lifestyle Community, Host of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Shane and his wife Jocelyn were school teachers, on a teacher's salary; just a normal working family with a mortgage, two cars, and two young children.
They were a regular American family - stressed, working too many hours, spending too little time together, and struggling with debt. In the summer of 2012 after some tough times at work, they decided to start an online business and take control of their own destiny. They would go on to replace their income, quit their teaching jobs, and make millions online to build the life of their dreams! Now they're helping others control their own destiny with faith and hard work. In this episode Shane describes in detail how he and his wife Jocelyn used their knowledge, wisdom and experience to create digital products and resources.
Episode Highlights
Why Shane and his wife left their teaching jobs in pursuit of creating online digital products, and how they connected with their community
Their journey from writing blog posts, designing lesson plans, making online courses, to creating playbooks on teaching defensive football (Shane was a high school football coach)
Genesis of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, their success and how they now coach others to reach their goals
Learn how they achieved the perfect work-life balance, built their membership community and helped others find success online.
Mentioned In This Episode
TRANSCRIPT:
And today my special guest is Shane Sams. He is the leader of the flipped lifestyle community and host of the flipped lifestyle podcast. Shane and his wife were school teachers on a teacher salary, just a normal working family with a mortgage, two cars and two young children. They were a regular American family, stressed, working too many hours, spending too little time together and struggling with debt in the summer of 2012. After some tough times at work, they decided to start an online business and take control of their destiny. They would go on to replace their income, quit the teaching jobs and make millions online to build the life of their dreams. Shane, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to jump into your story and learn a little bit more about your entrepreneur journey,
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Destiny. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I'm excited. Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
So why don't you take a few minutes and kind of walk the audience through, you know, how you got started and walking through to where you are today? Sure.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
So, you know back in 2012, my wife, Jocelyn and I were school teachers, I was a social studies teacher in Southeast Kentucky and taught history in the day and coached football afternoon, that was my life pretty much 24 seven three 65. And then my wife was an elementary school librarian. So she was the librarian for a school that was K through five. So she had total control over like 600 kids in the library. And that was what we were trained to do. You know, I went to school to be a teacher. I have a master's degree in teaching. My wife has a master's degree in library, media specialists, and we were just on a railroad track through life. And we were just like looking for retirement, getting paid paycheck to paycheck, but we got paid on Friday and it ran out on Thursday that kind of paycheck, but it was, we got paid and that's what we plan to do for our entire life.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I've been teaching at the time for around 10 years. So we were pretty far into our careers. And then something happened at work that really shook us to the core. Really changed everything that we thought about how the world works and all the decisions we had made up until that point, like many parents my wife Jocelyn and I use daycare for our kids. My son was about three years old at the time and he went to a daycare facility for toddlers and my daughter was a baby still. She was like 12, 18 months old. So she went to another facility that only catered to kids that were two and under. And we did that every day. We ran that, drop the kids off, go on your 30 minute commute, come get the kids from daycare after school. And we did that for a long time, but one morning my son became really, really agitated and terrified to go into his daycare.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And he basically told me that he was scared of one of the workers inside. And when I talked to him out and tried to figure out why, and he let us know that one of the workers was locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time in the dark to punish him for potty training accidents. And later it came out in the papers and we would find out that there was a lot of horrific things going on in this daycare center. There was one lady that was sitting on kids in a beanbag chair to hold them down all day. Like if they were having problems behaving or something like that we heard all kinds of crazy stories. One person got arrested and this was a really good daycare center for so many years. But the old lady that re this little old lady that ran it, she was more like a grandma than the daycare owner.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
You know, the kind of person who'd liked. The whole town loved her. She retired new people came in and it just went downhill faster than anyone could really tell what's going on. But, but that morning, I, when I found this out, I was stuck because I had to be at school. I'm a school teacher. I have legal obligations to be in the room. I knew I couldn't leave my son at this daycare cause I knew something was going on inside. And, but I couldn't get ahold of anybody. My wife didn't have any service. She was in a County school out in the middle of nowhere. Couldn't get ahold of my principal. Couldn't get all my boss. So I did what I thought at the time was the right thing to do. I would, I took my son Isaac to my daughter's facility. Cause there was a lady there that had kept him when he was a baby and asked her, Hey, can you watch him for a little while?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I know you're not allowed to keep kids over two, but I'll, I'll run to work. Find somebody, get somebody to cover my class before those junior history, students burned down the building or make out or whatever they do when a teacher's not looking right. And I'll get back here and we'll, we'll sort this out. So I dropped, I left Isaac there. I went to my school. I had about a 30 minute commute, but I got there in about 15 minutes because I was driving so fast. And I went downstairs to the principal's office and found my boss. She was an interim principal at the time, the, the main guy wasn't there. And I told her the story that I just told you, and she basically looked at me and said, you know, I don't think your son's in immediate danger right now. You're going to be out of here at three o'clock today.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So I know your son needs you, but your job needs you to, and you're going to have to handle your personal problems after work. And I'm standing there, destiny stunned. I don't know what to say. It was too late in the day to get subs. All I was asking was for her to watch my class for me for one day. So that I could go deal with this horrific thing that I just figured out. And she basically told me no. So I asked what would happen if I left. She said, you could be fired. You can't just leave your duty. You're a teacher, you've got a contract. You have to be in here watching these other kids. And I just said that was unacceptable. And I left. And on the way, home that day back to Isaac I got really, really angry destiny, like really, really, really mad.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And I wasn't mad at the daycare worker that was just ignorance and stupidity. I don't I don't even know if it was maliciousness. I wasn't mad at my boss. I think to this day she thought she was just trying to teach me a wise old lesson from a veteran. Right. but I was really mad at myself. I was mad that I had put my family in a position where someone else thought they had more control over my life and that their agenda was more important than my family's agenda. And I made a promise to myself in the car that day that I would figure out a way to become and stay self-employed to go out and make an entire, my entire living without relying on a boss, without relying on an employer. And that's really what sent us down this journey that, that led eventually to us discovering online courses, online products and becoming entrepreneurs that we are today.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
So I have to say Shane, when you were telling me that story and telling me what was happening to your son in that, you know, at the daycare facility and why he wouldn't go in there, I had absolute chills all over my body. It was just devastating that a child, your own child had to go through that and that you were stuck in a position to have to deal with this situation with no support from your employment. I also want to ask you a question on a more funnier note, if you would. So my husband, coaches, baseball, one of his assistant coaches used to be a football coach at a high school, and he's done it at colleges too, around here, but he was also one of the football coaches at one of our local high schools here. And he said it was one of the most stressful jobs he's ever had.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Oh yeah. Yeah. It's cause you have so much one people don't realize how much sports coaches in general in high schools work. Right. Like, I mean, and for how little paid is, I mean, you'll get a stipend of a couple thousand dollars a year to basically work 50 extra hours a week. I mean, you're in here, you stay at school, you're at school from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Even when school is out like spring break, we've got spring practice, summer break, we've got seven on seven weightlifting, like running, like we're getting up at, you know, we're practicing from 9:00 AM to 12 and coming back from six to nine, right. Where it's cool outside. And, and, and then you have the hopes and dreams of hundreds of people on you every single week. I mean, you've got these kids who are pursuing scholarships, you've got their parents who are supporting them and, and, and, and sacrificing to get them there. And you've got the community who wants to win and lose and beat the rival. Right. And it really is like, you just, you're just making this choice to be in a constant state of competitive stress all the time. Right. And it's, and it's absolutely never ending, you know,
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And that's exactly how he described it. Like he had to retire if you would, from that job because he was having heart issues.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah. You've got to love it. It's gotta be a passion. Like I loved football. Like I looked forward to it every day. But the really is, it really is a place without boundaries. You know what I'm saying? And it was funny because later when we finally got into online business and we, when we quit our jobs it was hilarious. Cause the first thing that the principal asked me when I, when I eventually resigned was are you still going to coach football?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
What, what did you tell them? I actually did. I, you know, I loved them,
Speaker 2 (09:02):
The kids so much. I, I I resigned in SA it was September 27th, 2013 when we left our jobs. Jocelyn and I are from, it's a small community. So we had to resign like in the same day. So everybody wouldn't freak out when they heard, like, why'd your wife resigned? Like, I didn't want that question. Or why'd your husband resigned? So we quit our jobs on the same day. And it was hilarious because when we went in and quit our jobs, I thought he would be like, are you doing it right now? Are you doing this? But he said that football question, I'm like, of course I'm going to stay coaching football. We're in the middle of the season. Right. Like I could leave history and they could go get another history teacher within a week, you know? But those kids couldn't get another defensive coordinator that could call plays on Friday nights.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Right. And we were really good, like really, really good that year too. Like we had some these kids I've been with since middle school at the school I was at. So yeah. I continued through the season. I could never, I could never have abandoned my football team until the season was over. I would, I would never do that because man, it's like, it's like getting sworn to a gang or something. I mean, once you're in the football team, you're in it, you're in it until the end of the year. That's like a mob.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I hear you. You can't do that. You know? And I love the dedication that you've had you had with the kids. So you left your, you know, you talked to your boss and basically she said, you know, you're going to get fired. You had all these feelings going back to pick up your son. Where did you go from there?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, I went down a rabbit hole of like probably the same rabbit hole. A lot of people go down when they're trying to figure out how to, I don't want to even say, but I don't even think I knew what an entrepreneur was at this time. You know what I mean? But like, when you're trying to do something on your own, I looked at like the MLMs and I'm like, Oh my God, that's I figured out really quickly. That was not the way to go. Right. I didn't want to harass all my friends to buy Tupperware. And then we started looking at other things, like I said, Jocelyn, what if I was a handyman? Like I could be a home inspector like it, and I could inspect homes and fix stuff. And she's like, Shane, you're not handy. We're not handy.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Like you probably knew firsthand. Oh yeah. She knew
Speaker 2 (11:03):
For sure, like the honeydew list. It was not her, it wasn't her honey doing the list in this household. You know what I mean? And I just couldn't do that stuff. And I was like, Oh, I'm bored. If I just landscape and mow yards, like I do ours, I can do that. And she's like, do you want to eat in winter? Because there's no grass mow in the winter. And I was like, yeah, good point. So we went down all these rabbit holes of real-world businesses like restaurants and consignment stores. And, but then there's so much overhead and it just takes hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I was really lost for a long time. And back in 2012, like online courses, wasn't really a thing, you know, like I mean, people were doing it and people were email marketing and people were starting to emerge as podcasters and YouTubers, but it really wasn't as established.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
As we think of it is today that it's a viable option for making money. And one day I was, I was looking through iTunes back when you had to put it on an iPod shuffle and stuff, because instead of an iPhone, right. And I was looking at music, I couldn't find anything I wanted to listen to. And I clicked on podcasts. And then I saw the categories and I was like, Oh, business, I'm going to click on that because I want to start a business of some kind. And a couple of the podcasters arts stood out to me, and one of them was this guy's eyeballs looking over the bottom of his heart. I was like, who is this dude? So I clicked on it, went to his website and in the upper right-hand corner of his website, it was the podcast host holding his son and his son.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
And my son are the same age. And the podcast I had found was the smart, passive income podcast by Pat Flynn who is a major podcaster now, but back then, this was when he was just starting out. And I had found him early on in his journey and I downloaded a couple of episodes and I went out and cut my grass. And I was on my lawnmower. And I was listening to this guy, talk about how he had started a blog and how he really realized, like people were paying attention to what he was creating on his website. Right. And he started an email list and people started signing up for it and following his newsletter. And then he was like, Hey, I wonder if I can make money off of this audience that I've created. And I had just had a conversation with Jocelyn about two weeks before I listened to this podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
We were in our car driving out to Muellenberg County, Kentucky to visit and her grandparents and you know, sitting there, looking out the window and Jocelyn was driving and it was her turn. She was, she usually drives the first half and I'd drive the back half. Which means she drives there, I'd drive home in the dark. That's usually how that works. But I, but I just was thinking, and I said, Jocelyn, I wonder if I could get a hundred people to give us $50? Like what, what are you talking about? And I'm like, think about it. If we make about $5,000 a month combined $60,000 a year, both of our salaries together, if we could get a hundred people to give us $50 a month, well, that'd be $60,000 a year. And there's 7 billion people on the planet. Surely somebody would send me $50 and she's like, why are they going to send you $50?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And I said, I don't know, but I, let me think about this a little bit longer. And as I'm listening to this podcast, Pat tells a story of how he took his blogs and took all of his stuff, made a video and put a study guide together on how to study for the architecture licensing exam. And he emails this course and resource out to his list, right? And puts a PayPal button on it. He says, if you give me 50 bucks or 49 bucks or whatever it was, I'll send you this PDF and this video on how to use it. And you can pass the licensure exam. And he made $9,000 off that one email. And I destiny, I about drove my lawnmower off the Hill into a ditch. I thought, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard. You can take knowledge and wisdom and experience from your head, turn it into a digital product, and people will pay you for it and pay you to access it on the internet.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
And I jumped off my lawnmower and inside, and I told my wife Jocelyn about this. And I was like, this is it. Like I found it like, this is the idea. I don't exactly understand how it works, but I do know that we have knowledge and God given talents and experience and wisdom that we could turn into digital products and that there have to be a hundred people out there on the internet that would want that stuff. So that's what sent me down this rabbit hole of learning how to do online business, learning how to make courses, learning, how to make digital products, learning how to start membership sites and and go out there and sell that into the world. But I mean, it took me after that lawnmower incident, it probably took me three, four, five more months of just banging my head against the wall to duct tape everything together and to figure out how to actually sell something on the internet.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
So what, what were the first steps that you did you take? Did you start your website? Did you start an email list? How did you figure out what you were going to actually package together to sell?
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well, let me give some context. I knew Jocelyn was not like she was not as sold on this idea as me. She's the practical one in our relationship destiny. So,
Speaker 1 (15:56):
But I'm not gonna hold that against you
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Gas and she's the break. And usually we're doing donuts. If that tells you anything about how the gas pedals are being pushed. Right. So she was not, you know, I knew I had to prove to her that this was possible for us, or she would never get on board with it. Right. So I just started trying to watch the magician's hands. And I was looking at what, like Pat Flynn and these other people were doing. But again, back in the day, I mean, you were programming websites. Like there were these weird sites, like one site had to handle your email. One site had to do your website. One site had to do your product delivery. One site had to do your pay. And it was so hard to figure it all out. But I knew the one thing that everybody did was created content. Everybody created content.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
They either did videos. They did podcast, or they did a blog. So the first thing I set out to do is learn how to start a website and learn how to start a blog. I didn't know what I was going to sell at the time. So I started this blog called toddler apocalypse, and I just started taking pictures of my kids, destroying things around my house. Like, you know how, like the kid gets in the flower box and destroys the kitchen. Right? Like I had a lot of good content for that. I had a lot of good content. I mean, we had a, my kids were like four and almost two. So, I mean, they were just, just breaking and destroying and sharpening each other and everything. Right. So he did, I did that for a while and some people read it, but there was no way to monetize it.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Like even with ads and stuff, it was just pointless, you know, but it was a great education in WordPress, how to build a website, you know, that helped me learn how to blog then. I knew the next thing that I saw people do is they had to have an email list. Like everyone said, the list was where the money was. Like, if you didn't have a list, you couldn't follow up. So you gotta have an email list. If you don't have an email list, you don't have a business heard that over and over again. So I signed up for like a Weber and I tried to learn how to get an email list, how to do an opt in how to get emails. And that didn't work. I didn't get any emails, but at least I learned how to like do that. Right. and I remember I had this yard sale one time and I was selling, trying to sell everything on eBay, trying to get rid of everything I could.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Jocelyn was like, what are you doing? I'm like, I need money for courses. I don't know what I'm doing. I got to buy courses. So I started buying like courses on, you know, email marketing, affiliate links and anything I could get my hands on, but I was a school teacher. I was broke. So I was just selling every, I had a yard sale every weekend, all that summer, just trying to learn how to do stuff. Right. Get new courses and plans. And the courses were terrible back then. And some of them, they would just send you like five emails that told you what to do. And there was not even a video. That was the course. So I was doing all this all summer, getting no traction, spending lots of money, lots of time and not really getting any results. So what happened was I went back to the drawing board and I said, well, what did Pat originally do?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
He took things he already knew and turned that into products people could consume. And this was my first step toward developing products. I started putting my worksheets that I used in my history class online. I, this website called us history worksheets. I didn't understand SEO at the time. So I didn't understand that you had to actually make content. You couldn't just post the link. And that would be a whole blog post. Right. But I built this website and I started posting these worksheets and I would surround it with Google AdSense ads. And my thought was, well, I'll just spam this side up so much that they won't be able to know which link is the worksheet. And they'll accidentally click something. That was my goal was just to get someone to, it was, it was terrible. It was, it was totally a thing.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
But I didn't realize you had to write the article to get the traffic. So I just wrote the, a link up there and whatever, you know. So anyway, that goes on for a couple months and nothing's happening, nothing at all. And I was about to give up, honestly, I just, one night I was laying there in the bed at midnight. Jocelyn was reading a book. I had my computer, like on my chest, like trying to move the mouse with my chin because I was so depressed and I didn't want to move my hands and I just shut my computer, slammed it over to the bed. And I went and got ready for bed in the bathroom. I was brushing my teeth in the dark. I was so depressed anymore, turned the light on. And I thought, man, you know, I just was like looking up at the sky.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
You're at that moment where you're just like looking at my God, what's going on, I'm at a fork in the road here and left looks not right. And right. Also it looks not right, but you know what, just tell me which one's not right. And I'll go down that path because these people that say they're making money online, I'm doing everything they're doing, I think, and it's not working. And this other thing is definitely not working too, but I was just kind of like, Jesus, take the wheel. I'm good. Let's go whatever direction you want me to go in. And I went back to bed and right before I went to sleep, I opened my computer back up and I was on my Google AdSense account. And I was looking at it and it like always no traffic, no money, nothing. And I hit refresh and where a zero had been there before.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
There was 11 cents in my account. When it, when the screen reloaded, someone had clicked something like I had made something and put it on the internet and somebody sent money back. And I just, I mean, I, I could have won the state championship and my football team at that moment. It felt so I was celebrating like, yes, I did it. And it also was like, what are you talking about? You're going to wake the kids up. And I turned the computer screen around and I said, look, this is real. Like, we can do this. Like if it's 11 cents, it could be $11. It could be 1100 people. It could be something else, but you can definitely do things and make money on the internet. We've got it. We've got to figure this out. And Jocelyn at that point you know, she could have like said it's 11 cents.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Get in the bed, go to sleep. This is ridiculous. You need to stop this nonsense. But she didn't, she, she kinda tilted her head over to the side and said, huh, tell me more about this. What else have you tried? What else could we do? And I gave her the nutshell version of all the stuff that we did. And she noticed the thing I missed was, Hey Shane, they created a big product. They created a course that had workbooks and resources and things like this is the missing ingredient and all of the content points to that course. And that's why they're winning and you're losing. And she so then she got on board and we started saying, what can we make? So Jocelyn figured out that she was an elementary librarian. So we bought elementary librarian.com and she started writing blog posts and making courses and content for lesson plans, like things people could use in their classroom. So they wouldn't have to plan lessons on their own. They could have their afternoons back and just show up and put their classroom on autopilot. And I was a football coach. So I started making courses and playbooks to teach people the defense that I ran at my high school. And those were our first two products that we, that we launched out into the world that actually made real money. It was pretty, pretty incredible after that, it got kind of crazy.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I love, you know, it just, your wife was very smart to identify the missing element there. And then I love how you both took what you were doing in the school system and monetized it. So keep going. I'm like on the edge of my seat here, where did you go from here?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Jocelyn? So Jocelyn is very practical, like extremely practical. Like we are yin and yang, you know, like she's order and I'm chaos basically. And what she took the cliff notes version of what I did found the holes and realized that she had to make these, these products, these digital products, whether a course, a video, an email, whatever it is. Right. And, but her thing was, Hey, let's not make things that we're passionate about. And all the sunshine and rainbows stuff, let's do things we know and that we could use if this doesn't pan out. Right. Well, she's an elementary librarian. She was about four years into our journey. Three, four years into our journey as an elementary school, as a elementary librarian. So she's like, well, at least I can use these lesson plans and I'll put my class on autopilot for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Right? And she's like, you are coaching football. All you think about everyday is football. You have a playbook, you have this, just do videos that will teach people how to use your playbook. Worst case scenario. You can use them with your staff and they can learn how to run your defense. And then when new coaches come in or players, the players could even watch them. So I'm like, cool. So we made these courses she made elementary librarian and she went all in on it first. So we actually started a podcast called elementary, live the elementary librarian, podcast, riveting, riveting information on this elementary librarian pocket, the most hyper niche thing you could ever.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Right. I actually want to go back and listen to it now, is it, I don't know. It might be in the way back machine she's got them. I'll send you a copy of a couple. I'll send you the Google drive links, right? Well we don't
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And own it any more, cause we actually sold that site later. So, but she, but she started that. And she started blogging. She started going into Facebook groups and meeting people started following people on Twitter. And then she got this, a little bit of traffic. She got an email list kinda started and she would drop links and forums where people were talking and discussion boards. And you know, and she started getting this email list. It was like, I think it took her a couple months, but she got up to like 200, 250 people on her email list. And in August or in July of 2012, Jocelyn sent an email to this list and said, Hey, we're thinking about making lesson plans for your classes. Right? So it would have a video where Jocelyn would show them how to use it. And then you just bell to bell instruction tells you what to do every minute of your time.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Here's all the resources you need to give out and print your kids, whatever. And would you be interested in this? Well, we had a few people write back and say, yes, I would love that. That would be amazing if you make that, I would definitely pay for it. So we thought, Hey, let's prove it. And before Jocelyn made the course, the resources and all the stuff that went in this thing, the product she sent an email out with a PayPal button and said, Hey, you gotta pay for it first. Right. And then I'll make it she put a list of all the things she was going to put in it. So it was kind of like a presale page. And the first email that we sent out made $2,500. I mean, we went from 11 cents to 2,500 bucks
Speaker 3 (25:27):
In like two months. So it was like,
Speaker 2 (25:30):
We're just sitting there staring at the screen one we're freaked out. Cause now we have to make this product because we promised these people that we do it and they gave us money. But we were just shocked. I mean, that was one of our salaries that we were our take home pay. And then September it was $3,000 and then October, it was $5,000 and it just kept growing through 2012 into 2013. And then in July of 2013 or in June, Jocelyn went back and redid it, all the lessons made him a nice smooth package. And we were like, Hey, we're going to turn this into a big community, a big membership for elementary librarians. We made another website called U S history teachers.com, which is still out there. We still own that one. I started, I put my playbooks and all my courses, anything for football coaches.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
And I was going to do like monthly Q and A's with them to help them with game planning. And we built all these products. We packaged them back up, release them back out to our email list that we had been building the whole year. And in July of 2013, we made $15,000 on these digital products. And then August was $36,000. That was our first like month. We were like, Oh my gosh, this is getting insane. I can't even comprehend what's happening. And that's when we had the discussion like, Hey, if we're doing this, part-time, what could we do full time? We just made as much money in a month as one of our teaching salaries in a year. This internet thing's got some legs. So we both went in and we just resigned. I actually resigned in the same office. The boss, my boss had told me I couldn't leave to handle my personal problems.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I just slid my letter of resignation over on I got him really early, cause I didn't want anybody to know. I actually asked my principal, I text him at nine o'clock the night before and was like, I need to talk to you. Can we meet at 6:00 AM in the morning? And he goes, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty important. And I, and he met me. He met me there and it was just the shock on his face cause nobody quits a teaching job in rural Kentucky in the middle of the year. But we did so, and that's what we've been doing ever since is we've been, you know, different businesses, different niches, but basic principles, creating courses, creating digital resources mostly memberships. We're real big on recurring revenue now. And it's been a pretty wild ride since that first first podcast I heard back in 2012.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Well, Shane, I love the story that you outlined there. And that is definitely a game changer for two teachers coming in on two teacher's income. Tell us a little bit about what your business looks like today. We're in 2021. At this point in time, we're recording this in may of 2021, just in case anybody is listening to it later. Tell us what you, what you guys offer today and a little bit more about your online course portfolio or membership portfolio. It sounds like.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So we weren't yet. We started doing memberships only because we, I mean, we, we, we, we, we came from a place where we were like really wanting to be really responsible. I mean, we take our marriage very seriously. We take our parenting very seriously and stability is much more important to us than you know, these massive, I want to make $10 million and lay on my Lamborghini and post on Instagram people. Right? That's so we, we switched to the membership model so we could go get a thousand people to pay us $50 a month. Wouldn't have to sell it every time. And we could make as much money as we wanted still, but it would be consistent. Like we knew our members would always be there the next month. Right? So we went all in on the membership model. That was one of the first like pieces of our journey.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
And as we quit our jobs in small town, Southeast Kentucky, that's everybody thought we were crazy. Everybody people were trying to figure, they were asking us like, are you and Jocelyn getting a divorce? Why'd you why'd you move why'd you quit your job. And I'm like, no, no, everything's fine. And they're like, well, how did you lose your job? Did you do something at school? Did you hit a kid or something? Now God knows what all these rumors got it. And everything like, nobody understood our family didn't understand. Even the people we told, like our friends really didn't get it. They were always like, what are you doing? And then the question kind of changed as people saw as like, Oh, you bought a new car. Oh, you're still together. Oh, everything looks fine. You know, what's what's happening over there. And one day after church, a friend of Jocelyn's named Lindsay came up to her and said, Hey, what are you guys doing?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
And it was such a different inflection then the way everybody else was saying it. Right. It was like curiosity. And she said, what are you guys doing? And we told her that while we made these things, we sell them online and now we make our entire living from home. It's pretty cool. And she's like, do you think I could do that? And we looked at each other and were basically like, well, yeah, why not? And why do you want it? Why would you want to do this though? You have a good job. And she said, I want to stay home and homeschool. My kids. It's a dream of mine. I just really want to do that. But I don't think we could do it on one income. And so at that point we said, okay. And we helped Lindsey make digital products. We helped her, showed her, how to take payments for them.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
We put her, helped her get in front of an audience. And we did all these things for her and helped her and sh destiny. She made enough money to quit her job. And she stayed home and homeschooled her kids. And she's homeschooled them ever since then all the way up to this day. And when that happened, we were like, wow, that's crazy. Like not only did we quit our jobs. So did she, and we kind of didn't think anything else of it. We just kind of kept going. We had passive income, we had a good life. We were just rolling at that point with elementary librarian and us history teachers and our coaching football coaching site. But then a couple months later after Lindsay quit her job, her husband came up to me after church one day and he was like, emotional, okay. Thought somebody died or something.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
He had like a tear in his eye when he came up to me and he's like, man, can I talk to you? And I'm like, yeah, man, what's up. What's going on, dude. And JT, he said, Hey man, I don't think we've ever thanked you for what you did for our family. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, not only is Lindsey staying home and homeschooling our kids, which was our dream from the first day we got married, but I also, you know, I've been able to afford some things I never could have afforded before. Like we just took our kids to Florida for Christmas break and I never could have done that, especially on one income. And also I always had a dream that I wanted to be a college professor, but I always felt guilty about going back to school and putting my family in debt
Speaker 2 (31:31):
to get my PhD, but now I'm using this money that we're making through Lindsey stuff online to pay for my PhD as I go. So I'm going to be a college professor and he's a college professor. Today in a school in Kentucky and at this point that's like, yeah, I'm crying, I'm misty. I don't know what's going on. And he's like, and when he gives me a big hug and he says, thank you. And he goes, man, changed our life. And yeah. And it was really, it was just in a really emotional moment. And when I got in the car and I told Jocelyn the store on the way home for church I just kinda thought, Hey, if we changed our life doing this and we changed their life and from us telling them what we did, we should probably tell more people about this.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
So that was the initial, like, I guess, Genesis of the flipped lifestyle podcast, the flipped lifestyle community flipped lifestyle.com where we said, Hey, let's, let's go at this at an angle from parents who working parents who really want to have a great life with a lot of work-life balance. Wanna make a good living online, maybe go out and get a hundred people to pay you $50 a month, got to get 200 people to pay $50 a month. That's like 120 grand, right? Like not, not out here chasing we're we're, we're, we're all about legacy not Lamborghinis, right? I don't want to do that stuff, but let's, let's go at this and see if we could help other couples do this. And family after family started coming and the thing just kind of built up enough momentum on its own, where it got to pass the other parts of our business and income and impact and all these things that we were doing.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And about 2017, we made that we launched flipped lifestyle. In 2014, I got to go on Pat Flynn's podcast because we had been in contact about our story and what was happening. That got us a lot of attention. We got featured in a couple publications that got us a lot of attention. And this community grew to the point in 2017, where we started looking at selling other parts of our business because we couldn't run everything on our own. Right. And flipped lifestyle was making such a difference in people's lives that we actually sold elementary librarian.com and went full time all in, in 2017 with flipped lifestyle. And that's what we've been doing. Ever since that's what we do every single day is we just try to help as many families as we can find and use their God, given talents, create courses, create memberships, and go out there and build enough income to just take total control of their life and not have to not have to answer to anybody but themselves.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Shane, I love the mission that you guys have laid out for your business and what you're doing to help others. And that it started with Lindsey coming to you, asking you. Yeah, I think that's such a powerful story. Can you tell me, what do you see as next steps in your business?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
That's a great question. You know, I mean the farther we go into flipped lifestyle now we have a full, we have a team, we have a pretty big team. They're all full-time employees. And we're doing different things within our community and the mission we've been hosting live events. Well before the pandemic we did where we would get like a hundred, 200 people in a room and really help them, you know, over a couple day period. But our focus has always been work-life balance family first business success, like in that order. Right. And like, we want people to, yeah, we want to be successful. Yeah. We want to be entrepreneurs. Yeah. We want to start an amazing membership communities. And that's what all of our people do. But we also want to take our kids to school in the morning.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I'm going to pick her kids up in the afternoon, want to make time for our spouse so that we have strong marriages, you know, after the kids leave someday, right. We still have that when the kids go away, your spouse is still there kind of thing. Right. And so we're really focused on helping people like achieve all of that. That's what we call the flipped lifestyle. You it's, everything's upside down from how the normal world works. So I think what the future for our businesses is expanding outside of online business. Like we want to start a full podcast network. We have two podcasts in our network right now. I wanna have other hosts that are focusing on like marriage podcasts and parenting podcasts and health mental, physical, and spiritual health podcasts. And, and then we want to funnel those people into our community where they can be connected with other like-minded people who want those same things.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So that's kind of how we see the business kind of evolving is really helping people find that balance, find success online, find success in their self care, find success in their relationships and and kind of, you know, just make the biggest impact we can in the world. When you start creating courses, destiny, and you might be able to, you might know, there's like the money part kind of becomes the easy part. I know that's so hard to say for people who are just starting out, but once you get in your groove, you can make pretty good money on the internet. And you realize that all the other stuff is way more important, especially the impact stuff. And the whole core of what I want for this company in the future comes from a quote that I heard once from mother Teresa, there was this reporter who was interviewing mother Teresa.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And he was like a cynical kind of a, you know, kind of a mean guy just he's like mocking her a little bit. I mean, she's this little woman in the middle of nowhere is what he's basically saying. And he looked and he looked at mother Teresa and he said, do you really think you can change the world all by yourself here in the middle of nowhere? And mother Teresa laughed at him like laughed in his face. And she reached down and picked up a rock by her foot. And she looked back up at the reporter and she said, no, no, I don't think I can change the world alone, but I can cast my stone out upon the waters and cause many ripples. And I think that's where God's put us and put flipped lifestyle and put our brand is in a place to every day, pick up our stone and throw it out there and causes many ripples as possible. And then our members and the people in our community will pick up their stone and they'll throw it. And they'll cause ripples in their communities and their memberships. And then the people in their memberships will do the exact same thing. And that's kind of become our mission at flip flops down now is just to cast our stone every day and change as many lives as we can and watch the ripple kind of pay it forward.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
And I love the picture that you just painted for us about mother Teresa, just throwing that out, you know, into the pond or the Lake or wherever she was. And just seeing the ripple, the ripples,
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I take this so seriously. You can't, you people can't see this, but I'm going to turn on my camera real quick and I'm gonna hold this up. I actually had a rock. I have a rock that was made. It's a skipping stone and it says, flip your life on it. And it sits right on my desk. And I have to, I have to see this every single day when I walk in to remember that my only job is to cast my stone. I've just got to do the work. Right. And that, that reminds me every single day that that's our mission here and we have to do it and take it seriously.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah. For their listeners. He is, he just turned on his video. We were doing this without video. He turned it on for a second, hold up the stone when, and I could see the inscription that was written there on the stone. So Shane, thank you so much for sharing that with us. And my last closing question for you is you've been doing this for a, you have such an inspiring story and I'm sure you've had ups and downs along the way. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah. If you're going to try to, to pick a course, right. And you're going to try to make a course, you can try to put it out there. Don't listen to the pie in the sky advice of following your passions. Like I think that's one of the things that can really get people in trouble. I'm not saying you shouldn't be passionate about what you do, but it's always better to dig into your experiences and your wisdom and the things you've picked up along the way. Like, what do you do for a living? What are you trained to do? What skills have you picked up? What experiences have you had that you could reach back and help somebody one chapter behind you? Start there, start with those God, given talents, experiences, and wisdom moments in your life. Take that and turn that into content. Turn that into a course, make that your mission and then figure out how to fulfill that mission with your passions.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Like destiny, you're a podcaster, you can tell I podcast and talk on all the time. Like I love to talk to people. And I have used that passion to funnel toward my missions in life, whether it was the playbooks or the elementary librarian or elementary librarian was not Jocelyn's passion. But, but, but, but success can flow. If you take all the things that you've done up to this point that have added together into who you are and use those first and your passions and all the other good things will flow from that. And that's the biggest advice I give to everybody. Like don't what if your passion is planning a ukulele on the beach in Hawaii? You're not making it.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
I make a great course, but you're probably not going to, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I mean like, like focus on that, get your courses out there. It gets some money to fuel the mission and that can turn into anything you want once you're successful online. So start there, that's where your ideas should start. And you can find an idea for something online really quickly when you, when you, when you, when you begin at that point.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And I think that's some great advice. And certainly you guys went back to what you knew and what you were good with. That was, as you were going through that story, I was thinking about, well, I'm very passionate about tennis, but I certainly shouldn't be teaching.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah. And maybe someday you could. I don't know. That's probably not the best place
Speaker 2 (40:52):
To start know.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
So there you go. So Shane, can you let everybody know where they can find you?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Sure. I have two podcasts. The first one is called the flipped lifestyle podcast or listening to the podcast. All you got to do is find that me online flipped lifestyle. And every week I help a real member of our community with a coaching call. And then we air those online so everybody can learn. So that's our flagship show. I also have a show called the Shane Sam show. I have a lot of influential people in my life and a lot of mentors and a lot of contacts we've made along the way. So we interview experts there and talk to them about what's working on the internet. And also we have a free gift for anybody in your audience that might want to learn more about online or about memberships and maybe where they could come up with an idea for one of their own. All they have to do is go to flipped lifestyle.com/cc MBA, just like your show, CC MBA, and a, we have a free masterclass. That'll help them find their idea and research it to make sure that it can make money online before they try it out. So that's flipped lifestyle.com/c C M B.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
And I will make sure Shane that those links are in the show notes. So people can just click on them and find you. Thanks so much for sharing your story today. It was so inspirational and I love that you were able to move out from that teaching job to build the really the empire that you're working to build today.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me to appreciate you so much. And it was good to hear a little Southern accent with a conversation. It's still a few y'all's in for everybody.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Thanks, Shane