RYB 894: How 11 Cents Led To A Million Dollar Business with Shane Sams

00:01 The way I built that was I would lay. So I I'm starting to build an audience while she's doing this. And we're trying to put these things together. I was like, how can I find football coaches? I would go to Twitter and type in football and coach. And I would sit and scroll through the pictures. And I would, until I would find someone that had on a headset or were standing by a guy in a helmet or, and I've visually would then connect them, send them a message and ask them to come follow me back.

00:29 Wait, Hey, Hey, what's up, everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott Voelker a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you. This show is designed to teach you, to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand. What's up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the rockier brand podcast. This is episode eight 94. And today I promise you you're going to be hearing a lot of y'alls because my good friend, Shane Sams is on the show and he says that quite a bit. He says it really good. It sounds a lot better coming from him, but the reason why I wanted to have him come on the show is, well, number one, I wanted to jam with him a little bit and really talk about his story, how he got started, how he took 11 cents that he made on the internet and how that ended up turning into a million dollar business.

01:39 And now how he's out there helping others do the same. But the one cool thing that you're going to learn about Shane is just, he is full of energy and he is just a no BS kind of guy. That's why I like him. He's also a hard working guy and he also tells a story about how some cows in the field taught him a lesson and actually gave him a little bit of a wake up call. Uh, I'll let you guys listen in on the actual story to hear what that's all about, but pretty incredible. And, uh, just a lot of great, let's just a lot of great insight that he shared with us because he's been down the road of trying to start a business. Struggled. Didn't really work was waiting for, you know, the, uh, the first sale to come through his wife, thinking, I don't know if this is really what you should be doing because it's not working. Like all of those things happened to Shane. And, you know, he had a moment in his life and he's going to share this where something happened to his child in a daycare when he was a teacher at a school and he couldn't, he couldn't leave his job to take care of his kid. Or at least he was told he couldn't, that was one of his big wake

03:00 Up calls. And it's just a great story. A lot of lessons learned here and he's going to break them down for us here in this episode. But it's just a really great conversation with myself. My good friend, Shane Sams from membership masters. So guys stick around cause it's going to be a good one. All right. I hope you guys are ready. Cause we got, we got some fire coming in at you here today with, uh, with Shane, from, uh, where, where are you from? Anyway, Shane? Where are you coming from today?

03:30 What's up Scott, Shane Sams from the flipped lifestyle podcast,

03:35 Baby. Bring it to me. Where are you living, man? Where are you living, coming to you live from Southeast the mountains of Southeast Kentucky brother. I love it. You're going to get a lot of you. You're going to get the, you might get your first y'alls and G hauls on today's podcast, man, before I didn't get a bunch of them, you're going to get a bunch of them for sure. But Hey, now I just, I, I did want to say thanks, man, for taking some time out, hanging out with me, I was just on your podcast. Uh, what about, uh, we, we recorded it a week ago. I don't know when the hell it'll air, but you know, whenever, but we may or may not be out at this time, but we'll figure it out on the yeah, but you know, we had a, we had a great conversation there.

04:10 You and I we've got some mutual friends, um, in the, in the online world and I just, I said, you know what? We got to get you on and talk about your story. Cause I always do like a feature guest on Wednesday. And uh, I think you got a story to share here today. So why don't we, why don't we go back in time a little bit in that time machine and take people back and kinda talk about what you were doing before you got into this whole online space? Sure. Ma'am you know, I, uh, I started out man, uh, my career as an educator, I actually went, I went to the university of Kentucky, met my wife Jocelyn there. Um, you know, we got married and went and did a few things like you do, trying to figure out your life when you're in your twenties. And um, we settled into education. I was a social studies teacher and a football coach, um, at a little bitty town in Southeast Kentucky. And Jocelyn was an elementary school librarian. Um, after being at, she used to sell corporate, she used to be in corporate selling dishwashers, keep it down. She's the library, you know, always tell people that,

05:09 Oh yeah, but I break something. All right, keep it down. We're in the library deck around me.

05:19 It's just a lot by Jocelyn. So that, that library gig was a training job to keep me under control. Um, but you know what, man, we were, we were living that, um, what do we call it? You call it your, your good enough lifestyle, right? Like, yeah. You know, we listened to what everybody told us. We went to school, we got married. We had the house in a cookie cutter neighborhood. The 2.2 cars, the 2.2 kids. We had a suite above ground pool, man. I'm telling you it was nice. I mean, it was, I used to, I used to come home from football practice and I'd fall in with all my clothes on. Right. And, um, but you know, I loved football. I really did. I liked the teaching. It was okay. It paid the bills. We got the paycheck. It was one of those paychecks that you got paid on Friday.

06:02 And it ran out on Thursday though. And uh, you know, so that was, that was cool. But we had insurance, we had the, we were working that railroad track, uh, all the way to retirement. Right. We were going to, we were going to be okay. Right. We were going to be okay. And I had thought about doing some other things at different times, but it was one of those. You can't give up the stability of the job in Southeast Kentucky, man. You know, other than the old coal mining jobs, education is probably one of the best gigs you can get outside of a doctor or a lawyer. Um, so we had a good steady paycheck, good steady life. And then Scott, something happened to me. Um, that was pretty terrible. You know, like most people work in the nine to five grind. We had to use daycare.

06:42 Um, so my son was in one daycare facility. He was about three and a half at the time. And my daughter was about 18 months old. She was in a, uh, another facility that only took kids up to two years old. So they were in different places. So Jocelyn would leave and drop one off and then she'd go on her 45 minute commute to one end of the County and then I'd go drop Isaac off and I'd go to the other end of the County. And over about a month period, Isaac started acting really strange at home. He, um, he was really scared of the dark, really scared to go into the bathroom. Um, we were having all kinds of trouble, potty training. Um, he was really freaking out when we were dropping him off, like leaving in places, either my parents or the daycare center or whatever.

07:25 And um, and you know, it seemed normal at first. I mean, we were, we were new parents. We didn't know how to potty train and we didn't know how to get kids to sleep. We did, kids are scared of the dark. Right, right. Um, and then one day as I was dropping Isaac off one morning and he said something to me that I'll never forget. Um, you know, he's freaking out, he's screaming. He won't come out of the car seat. I'm like, what is wrong with you? And he said, she scares me. And I stopped. And I said like, who scares you? And he told me about the person, this person inside and Isaac was becoming more verbal. So we were trying to, I was talking to him and basically what happened. And I discovered that morning is he was being treated by one of the daycare workers.

08:05 Um, we found out later the whole story. He, she was actually locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time in the dark, um, to punish him for potty training accidents. Um, and we, we heard all kinds of stories later too. We found out that one kid, uh, when she was, uh, one of the workers at this daycare would hold him down and sit on him in a beanbag chair. Oh gosh. And, uh, all sorts of horrific things, nothing sexual, nothing like that. It was just ruthless, fascist disciplinarians stuff. Right. And, um, just totally off, off the, off the key man. And it was weird because the person who started this daycare, it was a pillar in the community, a grandmotherly figure who had raised all your kids and your grandkids kind of person. And she sold out a few months before. So it went downhill so fast.

08:52 Nobody knew what was going on. Right. So I find this out, Jocelyn, can't get ahold of anybody, try to call my mom and dad. Can't get ahold of nobody try to call my principal and be like, I think I'm going to be late for work. Right. And I'm a, I'm a teacher. Like if I don't show up those junior high school, students burned down the building. Right. So I have a legal obligation to be in that classroom. It's not like being late for work. Um, so I did the only thing I could do at the time I ran down to Anna Jo's daycare. And I knew a lady that had kept Isaac when he was a baby. And I said, can I leave Isaac here? And she's like, no, he's over too. We don't have, we can't permit for this. I'm not supposed to let anybody do this.

09:29 I'm like, I'll come right back. And that promise is what made her keep Isaac? So I got in the car, man. I drove up to my high school where I worked. I went and asked the teacher to watch my room for a minute. My neighbor. And I went down looking for my principal. My principal was gone that day, but there was an interim principal there. She was like this stoic Caesar Augustus weird figure, right? Like they'd come in to like help the school through a tough time or whatever, you know, there's they were hiring people. And so I told her that same story. I told you, man, I said, Hey, can you get a sub for me? Can you go watch my class? I've got to go get my son. I cannot leave him there. I got to have the day off. And bro, I'll never forget what she said next.

10:10 She took her glasses off and she'd laid them down on the table. And she leaned back in her chair and she looked at me and she said, Shane is your son in immediate danger right now. And I was kind of taken aback. And I was like, well, no, not right this second, but I have to go. I got to go call the police. One, two. I got to go hang out with this, get this my son, like I got nowhere else to go. And she said, well, if he's not in immediate danger, um, I know your son needs you, but your job needs you to, and I don't have any more subs and I don't have time to watch your class. So you're going to have to handle your personal problems after work. Oh wow. And bro, man, I had a, kind of a split second decision there.

10:49 I mean I knew I was going to get reprimanded. I knew I was going to get written up. I knew I was gonna get in trouble and I just bounced. And I just said, I'm going, going back to my son. I'll have to deal with you later. Right. And this is bad because now my head coach has to deal with this. My principal's going to come back and have to deal with this. Like there was just so many variables, but my son needed me man. And I had to be absolutely. Yeah. So I left and I went back. I was driving back to get Isaac that day. I looked at myself in the mirror in my rear view mirror, eyeball to eyeball. And I was so mad, man. I was not even mad at the principal or even mad at the daycare worker. I was mad at me.

11:25 I was mad at myself as a man, as a husband, as a father that I had traded my freedom to someone, some, someone who thought they had so much control over my life, that they could override me being there for my son in his time of need. And I had put my family in this situation and I've done it for a little paycheck or some insurance. Um, and that's, I've made a promise to myself in the car that day, man, that I would, I would, I would find a way to work for myself so that I would never have to ask permission to be there for my son again. That's what sent me down the rabbit hole, man. I'm looking for something to do,

12:01 So, okay. So take me through, okay, so now you go, you get your son and stuff like, so what happens there? How do you go back to school? Like just leave me through that because there's a void there that I need filled. I gotta hear that part of the story. So I go,

12:18 It was crazy. I go, I finally get ahold of Jocelyn. I finally get Isaac back with me and we basically that afternoon, we're like, okay, he can't go back here. We're going to take hand out too. Cause now I'm like, trust issues. Can't take anybody anywhere. Right. Even though it was a different facility and man, we called that sweet little old lady that used to own that, uh, that daycare. And we told her what had happened. And she said, I've heard about some things. I'm so sorry. And she, there was one time when Isaac was a baby baby where he had a seizure and she had to take him to the, uh, it was like a federal Cedar, like a heat seizure from a fever. She took him to the ER, she and I met her there. Um, and she wouldn't give me Isaac. She says, this is my boy.

12:59 I'm holding it. Right. So she had this soft spot for Isaac anyway. And she actually basically became our kid's third grandparent and they stayed with her. They were just over there yesterday, hanging out, going and seeing me. Right. Wow. So she really, uh, she saved us, man. She really did. She, she came in and saved us. The problems with school I dealt with. I was like, whatever, like, you know, I'm not going to be here forever anyway. So yell at me all you want. But it was really, it was a miracle man. I mean, she just stepped up really big and you know, it's Mimi and Papa now. That's all it is. And that's my last man.

13:32 Yeah. So I mean, that's crazy. I mean, and wow. There's a lot of things that would be going through my head at that point. It's like, Oh my gosh, I want to go back to the daycare. And I want to raise Holy heck know,

13:42 I mean, I wanted to burn it to the ground, but yeah, we did. We did, we went through the right channels. We made statements to social services and we just let that house of cards slowly tumble the lady that owned it ended up in jail at one point. Um, for other things, even like, it was kinda like one of those things, like we've got the conviction here. We don't even have to tell our story. Right. So they paid their price. The daycare's gone now. Um, you know, it's sad that that place turned into that place. But um, you know, it's just my wife, God bless her soul. Jocelyn Sams is a very patient, uh, neutralizing acid to my madness. So I, so she said put the lighter down Shane. There's no reason let's just let this run its course she talked me off the ledge, dude, put it down. But the lighter down librarian she's gray,

14:33 Calm down. Quiet. Yep. Don't raise your voice, put the lighter down. Um, okay, cool. So now at this point, how long, I guess how long does it take for you to get the idea or the first thing that eventually

14:52 Allow you to kind of exit from your world? You know, Jocelyn and I, that happened probably in the winter months, it was cold outside. It wasn't a big puffy coat, you know? And it was freezing outside and parking lot when I was talking to him that day. Um, so over the next probably, I don't know, four or five, six months maybe Jocelyn, I had conversations. We were just talking about different things. We had, we came up with everything from Jocelyn was going to sell curtains and sell them on eBay and so curtains for doors. And we realized that she couldn't. So, so that was probably a problem. Right. And then we talked about opening a consignment. I mean, you name the, it was ridiculous. I was going to mow yards and Johnson's like, you can't mow yards in the winter and I'm like, good point, good point.

15:34 But you know, and uh, so we, we, these ideas, but the conversation definitely like was allowing my brain to transition over, to figuring this out. Right. And one day in the car, I said, uh, we were on our way to Muellenberg County, Kentucky to see her grandparents. And uh, I said, I was looking out the window and I had this thought in my head, I looked over at Jocelyn. I said, what if I could get a hundred people to give us $50? And Jocelyn kind of looked at me funny out of the corner of her eye and was like, what do you mean? Like I said, think about it. If, if, if we got 100 people to give us $50 a month, that'd be 5,000 a month, that'd be 60,000 a year. Like that would, that would replace our income. We could quit our jobs if we could just do that.

16:14 And there's 7 billion humans, surely I can convince a hundred of them to send me $50 in a month and Dawson just goes, yeah, but how are you going to do that? And I was like, yeah, I don't know, but it has to be possible. Right. I had that conversation. And then about a month later, I was on the lawnmower cutting my grass. And you know, it was just a normal summer day. I'm out riding around, listening to my iPod. I don't know, square iPods back then. And uh, and I downloaded, I was looking for a podcast about business. I was like, I need to start a business. I don't know what kind of business, but I know that's what you're supposed to do if you want to work for yourself. Right. And I found this pod cast called the smart, passive income podcast with Pat Flynn.

16:57 And the only reason I downloaded it, man, I was actually clicking through the links on the podcast and looking at the pictures of the hosts. Yeah. And on Pat was the only person I found that it was holding his child and he was holding his son. And I was like, wait a minute. That dude looks about my age. And that kid looks about Isaac's age. Maybe who's this guy. Yeah. I app, I downloaded the episode where Pat was telling his story of how he created a study guide for the architecture licensing exam. And he had this little PDF and he was selling it for 49 bucks or something. And he does a launch and he does 9,000 bucks. And when I heard him say that, I almost drove my lawnmower off of a cliff. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. I hit the break and remember fish tailing, the lawnmower and I, and, and my, my aunt and our head just exploded.

17:51 And I jumped off the lawnmower, sweaty mess ran inside the back door. Jocelyn's over. She was on the left cooking like lunch for the kids or something. The kids are high chair and somebody is running around in their underwear, probably, you know, it's chaos. And I said, and I said, I figured it out. This is, I know exactly. I know what I need to do. I know how to get a hundred people to pay me $50 a month. Jocelyn was like, how? And I said, you email them stuff and they send you money back. You just make a PDF, you email them and they send you 50. I couldn't articulate it. Right. Like explain it. And she just looks at me like, I'm like, what are you talking about? And she goes, go mow the grass. We'll talk about this later. And not at all I thought about all day was like, well, what do I know?

18:31 Like Pat did something. He knew, I know stuff. I just got to put content out there. And somehow somebody will send me money back just like they did him. So that's what got me down the route of, well, I need to make a blog and I need to put something on the online. I don't know how it makes money, but I got to go figure it out. So that was the moment that I was, uh, went down the, uh, content creation online business. Uh, so what was the first, what was your first attempt? Like do you mean attempt or miserable failure? I want to use they're the same. Yeah. You know what I mean? I, I wanna, I want to go there. I definitely want to go there. All right. So I didn't really know my brain wouldn't wrap around the product. Yeah. Like how to sell products online, digital or physical.

19:16 Right. But I did know that, um, what I noticed when I was looking at people's websites, as I was studying, all these gurus was a lot of people had, um, ads, Google. So I found out that you could get a click on a Google ad sense ad and get money. Right. You can get an affiliate link, all these things we all do in the beginning, you know? Right. So I was like, what can I talk about right now that could get some attention. And then I stopped, uh, there's an awesome blog. I think it's called how to be a dad. You ever seen that blog before? I can. It's it's a real, it's a kind of a famous blog. And I knew a friend of mine who was doing like a mommy blog at the time. And I was like, well, I can just talk about stupid stuff that happens around my house.

19:54 So I started a blog called toddler apocalypse and, and it was, let me, let me, let me tell you why I started this blog though. Okay. So, so you know how your kids do stuff and you just look back like what happened in that situation? We were at a pizza place and we were eating pizza and you know, the little stands that have like four long legs, it's above the thing. Okay. So I'm sitting there eating a breadstick. I'll never forget this. I dipped the bread, stick in the sauce and I eat it and I hear Isaac's over to my left. And he goes, look, daddy, I'm the King. And he had turned the thing over, like a crown. Right. And I was like, Oh, that's cute. Jocelyn, take a picture of our son here. He's so adorable. And then, so she, we have a picture of this moment.

20:40 She took a picture of him and right in the picture, he has this light, his eyes are squinting and he kind of looks like worried. And then like right after she took that picture, he looks at me and goes, Oh no, daddy, I'm stuck. He had pulled the cast iron pizza holder over his head. It clipped over his temple. And it was stuck on his head. And he, and the weight of the thing, he falls into my lap and I'm like, and he's going, like, he just screams in the middle of this restaurant at the top of his lungs. And I'm like, Oh my God, Jocelyn, he's stuck. So we don't know what to do. There's people freaking out the waitress is like, can I help you? And I'm like, just give me a minute. I'm pouring olive oil on his head trying to get this thing off of his skull. It's not working. And I'm like, it's freaking stuck to us. So this lady comes up and goes, don't worry. I called nine one one. And we're like, Oh my gosh, Jocelyn looked at me and goes, we're not paying for an ambulance. Take him to the car. So I carry Isaac out, get in the car. We drive him to the ER I walk into.

21:41 Thanks. Still stuck on his head.

21:42 Yes. Yes. It's unbelievable. And I, I go into the ER, I've got Isaac in my head and for all they know this thing's in paled into his brain and she, this, the lady looks up at the, at the receptionist desk. Her eyes get as big as saucers. She just gets up and goes and opens the door. Doesn't ask me my name. Doesn't ask anything. And the next 45 minutes was chaos. I mean, there were nurses crying, Isaac screaming, doctors can't figure it out. And finally they brought in bolt cutters, like the jaws of life, the EMT guys. And we cut this thing off of Isaac's head. My son's been through a lot. He gets into some crazy stuff, but like, so all this happens he's okay. Nope. Few scratches, bruises, whatever. And I was just like, that was total chaos. But, but a couple of days later, I was like, that would make a great blog post.

22:29 So I start, sorry. That was, I started toddler apocalypse to tell those stories and to share the stories that I heard, man. Um, but you know, it was fun and it got a little, it got some comments and it got some traction, but I'm ever got an ad click. I never got any money. I never got anything. It just still the idea there was for you to create something, get some traffic and turn on ad sense. That's right. Yeah. Cause I was just trying to like, Jocelyn was totally in disbelief that this was real. She thought I'd MLM, scam, whatever that Pat Flynn, cat, that pet Flynn he's full of full of it. He's not making money Shane to go to work. Let's do this. So my mission was just to prove to her that it was possible and then get her involved. Cause when my wife gets involved, good things happen. So, you know, so that was kind of, the mission was just proves something was real. But I did not do a very good job cause there was improvement in that one. No, no.

23:23 So the next thing was that year, was that you getting into selling the school stuff or was it your X and O's

23:35 No X is now X and O's comes later. Football stuff comes later. So I actually went back to the drawing board after three months of having a lot of fun and learning how to use WordPress and doing those things, but not making any money. And I said, well, what did, and I went back to that episode of Pat's podcast and said, well, what did he really do? And I was like, Oh, he created something from his knowledge bank. It wasn't just interesting. It was something he was providing a value, I guess, for someone. And it was also, I re I, what clicked was, it was related to a job. That's what really clicked. It saved someone time or money or resources. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. So I was like, what do I have that I can put online now and spam it up and try to get an adequate.

24:14 Um, so I started creating, I started a website called U S history worksheets, which would later become U S history teachers.com my education, one of my education sites. Um, so I would post a worksheet and dude, it was I, if you've ever pictured like this, you know, it's like, it was like a popup spam site. It wasn't even a spam site. It was like, it was the people who spam the spam side. That's how bad it was. It was like a worksheet link hidden in the middle of the page. And I would put ads on it and try to get them to say click to download and stuff. Just praying that someone would accidentally click an ad. Right? Like I went through all the Google ad sense, Allie. It was, so it was 2000. It was a wild West man in 2012 when it hadn't hit yet.

24:52 And it was awful, but I just sat there every day, man, for like two and a half months, every day, I like put another worksheet up, build the page, but I did this consistently prolifically, um, you know, for two, three months, man, and still absolutely nothing was happening. And I would see traffic, but nobody was, I didn't know how to get anybody to click anything. You know? So dude, I was laying in my bed one night and I was about to give up. Um, I was laying there, you know, you don't have those sad nights where you're like depressed and you're like, you're, you're laying flat, but your hands propped up on your pillow and you got your, you know, you got your computer on your chest and you're like holding it with your chin. And you're like reaching over, like to barely tap a link or whatever.

25:32 I was bummed out dude. And I was, I was looking at my ad since stuff. And of course it says zero. There was absolutely nothing in there. It wasn't a penny, not even opinion. So I shut the, I shut the thing. I put it down and I could go to the bathroom to get ready for bed. I mean, it was late. It was like midnight kids were asleep and I didn't even turn the lights on. When I walked into the room, I just left the lights out. The Moonlight was shining in and I was brushing my teeth half moon lit, half lit from the freaking bedroom over my left. And I did, I, I seriously looked right in the mirror and I said, God, what is going on? Looked up. And then I looked up at the sky. I said, is this real? Is that Pat Flynn guy full of crap?

26:09 Like I have been desperately trying for months now. And I've, I've put in my hours, man. I've been every free minute, every free dollar. I was selling stuff to buy hosting. Jocelyn was freaking out. Like I was having yard sales all the time. And she's like, what are you doing? You want to sell that? And I'm like, yeah, I want to sell it. Cause I got to figure this out. And you know, I put so much money and effort into this and nothing had happened. And I just said, Hey, give me a sign, man. If this is not real, I'll go back to work. I'll put in my time, I'll go to retirement. I'll suffer through it. If Israel helped me make some money, like show me that this was a penny,

26:44 A penny, a dime, I'll take a dime and get a click.

26:47 I need to collect. So I was going to bed. I reached out, I was getting ready to take my computer. I'm ticking off of my bed. And I thought, you know what? I'm gonna check one more time. I'm just gonna open my stats. I'm gonna see what happens. So I opened my computer. I hit refresh. And whereas zero had been there before, when the screen came back, there was 11 cents, 11 cents, dude like a diamond, a penny, like you find it at the grocery store in the park parking lot, but 11 cents. But that might as well been $11 million to me at that moment. Cause I just went crazy. I started celebrating,

27:21 What are you doing? The kids are asleep. Quit. I'll kill you.

27:23 You wake them up. And I'm like, look. And I showed her the screen. And I said, I said, I made something. And somebody somewhere somehow sent money back. Like this is real. Like I don't care if it's a dimer, a penny, it made me 11 cents today. But what if that was $11 or $1,100 or what Pat did. Like, there's gotta be something to this. And you know, I could see a lot of wives in that situation. Look at their husband and go, are you serious right now? Are you serious right now? Or this is what we're doing right now. But Jocelyn man. Yeah, I know. Right. And I remember her head tilting and her looking at the screen and then her looking back up to me and her and uh, I'll never forget her saying this. She said, what else could we do? And that started a conversation until two in the morning of what do we know?

28:06 We know school. What do we know in school? We know lesson plans. Johnson was an elementary librarian. She knew how to make lesson plans and centers for libraries. She knew how to teach. First through sixth graders in the library setting. I was a history teacher. I knew history, lesson plans. I was a football coach. I knew playbooks. Like that was the magic sauce. It wasn't chase your passions and your dreams. It was what do you know? And how can you help others? That's what people bought. So over the next two months, Jocelyn, I bought elementary librarian.com the next day. And I said, there's your website? And she goes, you did what? And I said, yep. I bought it. You got to do it. Now. She starts blogging. She starts a Facebook page. She builds a little email list of about 200, 250 people. And um, and then we said, Hey, let's presale lesson plans.

28:50 You sell lesson plans for August. And if anybody buys them, we'll make them. And uh, she sends an email out and makes $2,600 in one day. Wow. Which was a salary. That's one of our salaries that we would bring home. That's our take home pay. That was easy. Yeah, man, and firm. And then she was like, Oh crap. Now I have to make these. So she rushes and makes those the end of August. She makes September and November. She just keeps going October, November. And it just started from there and it snowballed out of control.

29:18 So let me ask you this, uh, 250 people on an email list. People would say that's tiny. And I would argue because if it's 250 of the right people,

29:26 It can do things doesn't matter.

29:28 Yeah. I mean, I had a thousand

29:30 Just under a thousand when I launched my first digital course and it did over 12 grand, you know?

29:36 I mean, so it was like one of those things. So how did you build, how did she build the list of two 50? Was it just your standard way or was it a lead magnet or was it like, Hey, sign up for free lessons. Like,

29:47 Wait, the benefit of burning and firing out miserably for eight months was we had learned a lot. I learned a whole lot. Like I knew we needed an email list from day one. I knew we needed lead magnet. So she created a lead magnet from like before she wrote her first blog post. And then she went gorilla man, like I was posting as Jocelyn and she was going to different blogs and Facebook groups and old school forums and just leave him breadcrumbs. And it was really organic Facebook. She was posting every day, like deep thoughtful questions, documenting her journey and asking other librarians. She would do contests, like to get other librarians to tag their colleagues and their school district and like stuff like that. So she, it was real organic man. It was, it was shaking hands and kissing babies. I mean, it was out there trying to find anywhere where our perfect avatar was hanging out and then getting in that group somehow.

30:38 Right. She joined online associations. I mean everything, but it was, it was a real grind man. And um, you know, piece by piece, we just put an audience together. I'll tell you how I grew. My and the coaching story is very similar. Uh, coach xo.com, which was my football playbook site. Right. The way I built that was I would lay. So I I'm starting to build an audience while she's doing this and we're trying to put these things together. I was like, how can I find football coaches? I would go to Twitter and type in football and coach. And I would sit and scroll through the pictures. And I would, until I would find someone that had on a headset or were standing by a guy in a helmet or, and I've visually would then connect them, send them a message and ask them to come follow me back. So like all this stuff, dude was just like grassroots. Like, let's go find them, let's get connect with them. And then let's ask them to come into our email list. So it was really, it was a real grind. It was like two emails a day for 60 days or whatever, you know?

31:34 And so, okay. So then from here you go ahead and you build, um, a BR librarian site and then you do the playbook site. Um, when does the time come that you're ready to say, okay, I'm getting out. Was it you that got out first? Both of you at the same time?

31:50 Oh yeah, it was, it was both of us at same time, but it was not by Jocelyn's choice. So Jocelyn's got that. Jocelyn's got what Dave Ramsey likes to call the security gland. You know what I'm saying? I've got, I've got the, uh, like Labatt, atomized security gland. I think that jumps out of the airplane without the parachute. Um, but so John, so the first month we make like $2,600, something like that, like the next month it was three and then four and then five. And that steadily grew. Then we add other products. We get at our coaching profit playbook. We add us history, teachers.com. We started making more money. So the first year was just, we had no clue what was going on. We're just riding the wave. Right. We're making money every month. We're not telling anybody what we're doing. Cause we're scared.

32:28 People are gonna think we're crazy. And then in July of 2013, we had, we made $15,000. So this was like that, that was crazy. But then in August, 2013, we had planned on quitting in may of 2014, if things kept going. Got it. Yeah. But in August of 2013, um, in the first week of the month we made $36,000. That was a whole salary of one of our salaries. Sure. So I looked at Jocelyn, I just said, Hey, listen, if we could do this part time, what could we do full time? We, we, we need to go all in the worst case scenario is we go teach again if it fails, right? So there's not like the fallbacks, not that bad when we've been living this life, our whole life. Right? So we, uh, on September 27th, 2013, we quit our jobs and both of us quit on the same day.

33:15 And uh, I'll never forget it. We woke up, we took the kids to Mimi's house. We came back to work a little bit, but we sat there in pajamas and robes and drank coffee and tea and pinched ourselves, you know? Yeah. That's a great feeling, man. Yeah, totally great feeling. Uh, I remember leaving my father's construction company and then the first day I worked for myself, which was in a brick and we went from brick and mortar to brick and mortar. I went from, you know, his construction company to our photography studio, but it was still freedom. I got to take my kids to school every day. Pick them up there. You had control. That's exactly, exactly. If I needed time off, I just book it into the calendar, but then that turned into a job and then I had to reinvent myself like we all do. Right. So, yup.

33:59 Um, so now

34:01 To the point now where you're doing this, you leave you're, you're still doing well, but now all of a sudden another pivot is going to happen. Yeah, sure. Right? Yup. Yeah. To that point. So we had created a pretty passive business man. It was, it was actually amazing. I mean, it was like, you know, you make history, lesson plans, Abraham, Lincoln's always going to be the 16th president. So it's not like I got to make that again every year. Right. Okay. Right. The Alphabet's not changing teaching kids to read. Right. Be the same next year, you know, for elementary librarian. Um, so what happened when we first told people we were quitting our jobs, you know, people didn't understand. Um, I remember Jocelyn's grandfather walked up, we went and visited him and he shook my hand and put a 20 in it. And he said, son, I know you're not working now.

34:44 So there's some gas money to get home. He thought we got fired or something. I don't know what he thought, man. You know? Um, and then my mom like cornered me and was like, you've got babies, you had good health insurance. I can't believe you would jeopardize all of that. Right. Um, and then we told our small group at church and dude, I was like, Hey, we're going to pray, but can y'all pray for us. We're going to quit our jobs next week, jaws hit it. It was like, Jesus had walked into our small group or something. Right. Like everybody just shocked. And uh, but one person in that small group came up to Jocelyn and you know, everybody else was like, what did you do? And then this person, her name is Lindsay. She walked up to Jocelyn and said, what are you doing?

35:25 There's a difference. She, yeah. She wanted to know what we had done. And she shared with Jocelyn, Hey, I've got a dream. I'd love to stay home and homeschool my daughter. Do you think I could do what you were doing more we'll share. It's really not that hard. So we shelter was showed her all the lessons. We had learned how to create digital products, how to find your audience, how to get them into market. She launches a product, makes a thousand bucks and it grows. She makes more money and she quit her job. She did not go back to teach the next year. Oh wow. And one day after church, her husband, his name is JT. He walked up to me and said, and he is crying. We're in the back hall, go into the nursery and he just revert back there. He's just crying out, dude. You okay? And he goes, yeah man, I just, I just wanted to tell you. Thanks.

36:07 Thank you. Um, you know,

36:09 What you showed Lindsey changed our life. I mean, now she's staying home and homeschooling. Um, we took the kids down to Florida, man. I could never have afforded something like that on my salary with my wife at home, with the kids. And um, you know, that was, I just wanted to let you know that I'm pursuing a dream now that I've had my whole life was to be a college professor. I never wanted to go in debt, but now I'm using that money to pay for my neck, my degree. So it's not only changing Lindsey's life, but it's changing my life too. And man, I just, we haven't thanked you guys and I wanted to thank you. So at that point we're hugging it out and we're crying and I'm crying, he's crying and Dustin, the air and all that good stuff. Um, I get the kids I get in the car and I looked over at Jocelyn, told her same story.

36:48 I just told you. And I just thought for a minute about all the things I saw when I was looking for online business and how all the, all the Lamborghinis and Airbnb mansions and jets and living on a beach in Thailand stuff. Right, man, you know, I just thought, you know, Jocelyn, what we figured out and what we learn worked for us, a family with kids, um, and what we taught Lindsay and J T it worked for them. They, they, they made a dream come true. Like maybe we should, maybe we should tell other people about this. Um, maybe we should teach this at least document what we're doing. Um, so we came up with a website name, flipped lifestyle.com. And that whole story is in a nutshell is, um, living the opposite way of the world, not buying into nine to five 60, 30 years retire, and maybe enjoy if it's turned that upside down, like flip it upside down, like, like make your own choices, right? Like have freedom. It's not about making millions. It's about, uh, you know, creating control over your life. Um, w we decided we were gonna do a couples podcast. We're so nervous. People were gonna judge us because of our accidents, man. Like, it was ridiculous. We were like, people gonna listen to us. Like, they're gonna think we're hillbillies. And they're listening to all these people from California and stuff, man. Like, we're not looking at whatever, whatever we're going to be able to come.

38:10 You know? Um,

38:11 And it was funny. We actually had Flynn was selling a six, $700 ticket or something in California to a one day BB event. It was a 20 person mastermind with Pat. Um, and I told Jocelyn, I said, wait, you got to go. I've been emailing Pat back and forth document my journey to let him know how much he was impacting us through his podcast. I buy a ticket for me and Jocelyn, you are going to get a minute hot seat. If you bought a ticket. And I said, Jocelyn, you have to go. I'm going to buy two tickets. So we'll get 30 minutes. And I didn't even ask a question. All I did was tell him our story of how he changed our life. And Pat freaks out, right. Asked us to be on his podcast. I tell him that what we're about to do, and maybe we're going to launch this flip lifestyle thing.

38:55 And he's awesome. He's like, you got to do that, man. That sounds like a cool idea. Like just you two talking about your business, a husband and wife, and, and last, next thing I know I'm on Pat's podcast. I'm telling our story. Uh, it blows up our, our podcast launches and it blows up and I look down and we've got 120 members in the flip your life community. Right. That's crazy. Um, so that's really what took us down this rabbit hole and flipped lifestyle grew so fast. And we were really making a difference in so many people's lives that we actually looked at each other and said, you know, we're three years removed from teaching. Um, I don't really feel it anymore. Jaw. Someone's kind of like, I don't really, I don't feel often as the elementary librarian anymore. And we sold it for over a million dollars and, uh, and we decided to go full time and just flipping lives and change your family's futures, man. That's all we do now is, uh, is help people, you know, start building, grow online businesses and go find their a hundred people to pay them $50 a month.

39:57 Yeah. Yeah. I just love how the stories, like the one thing builds and feeds the next and educates you, you know, and builds the skillset to get sure, for sure. You know what I mean? And everything led to that point. Right? Exactly. Even unfair

40:13 Advantages. Like Jocelyn knew how to code HTML because she learned it in college. I, I edited video, like an audio, like crazy in football for highlight videos and stuff. So I knew how the podcasting and videos and all the things she gotta do, it kind of built those skills up. And we just relied on any unfair advantage we could find to kind of build our next step. Even if it looked different from somebody else's.

40:35 Yeah, no, I mean, that's, it's great. And I think just for people listening to understand and you know, like where you are today and what you're going to do next isn't necessarily what you're going to be doing five years, 10 years from now, it's actually probably building that skill set to get there. Right. It's leading you to that next, that next place. And I know you and I've talked and it's like, you know, there's things that we're doing right now. And we have bigger dreams and bigger things that we want to do. Um, or just things that we might say, you know, we tried that, but we're really not sure that we want to go that direction or, you know, like, and I think I talked to you about this. I mean, you know, we did an inner circle a couple, couple of years ago now, you know, high level. And I really enjoyed it, but I just found that it, wasn't probably something that I wanted to dedicate 12 months of my life to. So again, you don't know until you try, but you have to get those opportunities in order to get the opportunities you got to do stuff, right?

41:29 Yeah. Good, big, uh, big scars make good memories. And like those memories are what kind of guide you into the future. That's where wisdom comes from. You know, and every time we screw up, every time something fails, every time something goes bad, you just take your next day. And I tell you what I've learned. I've made a lot of money, man. Like, you know, it's been, I still can't believe it. Sometimes that it's even I'll, I'll we'll do a launch or something for something. And I'm just like, how is this even illegal, illegal? Like, how is it possible? You can just go on the internet to find people to buy your stuff. Right. Um, you know, and, but, but it's really become, it becomes more about that next step. It's always, it's not a lack of contentment. It's like, no, the, the, the game is what's amazing and the journey.

42:10 And when you figure out that you're kind of like calling the plays from the sideline of your own life, and you realize you have that control. It's not about I'm going to build a million dollar business or I'm going to make a fortune or I'm going to do all these things. It's no, I've taken total control of my life. I've given myself choices. Like I get to pick what I do every minute of every day today I picked 12 o'clock with Scott, you pick 12 o'clock with Shane and we'll pick one o'clock with somebody else. We'll do our thing. And I'll tell you what really drove this home.

42:39 I mean, you know, that, that it is about the next day. If you get stable, right? Like

42:45 Road elementary librarian for years. Right. But if you get staple, you get stagnant and like selling. That was amazing because it removed the, uh, the security blanket right now. You got to go build something else. And we realized the building of the thing was cool. It wasn't about the big sale. It wasn't about the big payday. So in a, so last, I think it was last March, maybe 2019. It was before the pandemic. So it had to be 2019. And, uh, Isaac's babysitter, Mimi, again calls me and she, so she calls me, he goes, you gotta go to the hospital. I said, Oh God. Now what? Isaac, Isaac, Isaac, again, here comes Isaac roaring back into the picture. Isaac was on the trampoline, just having a good time. And he flipped, but he didn't make it all the way around. And he landed on the crown of his head and just like jammed his neck, you know, like a stinger kind of thing.

43:32 But he was really complaining about neck problems. So I go get, I go get him. We take him to the x-ray. Um, and they think he broke a vertebrae in his neck. They immediately walk in, put him in traction, tie him down to a board he's already claustrophobic. And I strapped to a rescue board. Right. And he's like, what is he 10 years old at the time he's freaking out. I'm freaking out. We're in the emergency room. Jocelyn gets there. She comes in. I was in my office. I had podcast to record that day, man. But I just got them left, set my, send an email, said, Hey, cancel all my appointments. I'm going to the ER. And you know, just let's go. So I go get him, go to the ER, Isaac's laying there. Jocelyn walks in. She goes, everything's going to be, Oh.

44:13 And then she hits the ground, passes out when she sees Isaac. So I'm standing in the ER, Isaac's on my left, strapped down to a board. He sees mom go down and goes, mom screams. And I looked at it, Jocelyn she's in the floor. Nurses are picking her up, putting her on her gurney, handing her a dr. Pepper. My gosh, I just turned around and held my hands. And I just started giggling. I was like, this isn't happening. It'll be happening. So I turned back around, I deal with this three hours, four hours later, they let Isaac off this board. They figured out it was a false positive. He did not break his neck. Okay. So Jocelyn I'll hug her. She goes and finds wherever Anna Jo is. I don't even know where she is at this moment. Uh, and then Isaac, I take him, we get in the navigator, put him in seat, buckle a man, you know, give him a hug, kiss him on the forehead, get back in my car, in the driver's seat.

45:00 And I looked up in the rear view mirror and I caught Isaac's eyes. And I just looked at him and I said, you okay, let me say, yeah. And then he goes, I'll never forget him saying this. He said, I'm glad you were there. Oh, that's awesome. And I, and I remembered in that moment, dude, the, uh, when I looked at myself in that rear view mirror many years before angry, mad at myself and promise them myself that I would never be in the situation someday where someone could tell me I couldn't be there for my kids. And man, I just started ball. And dude, I started crying. I was like, God, this is it, man. This is, that was the moment I really wanted. Um, it wasn't the million dollars. It wasn't the a hundred thousand dollars a month. It wasn't the recognition. It was like, that was it, man. And when you, when you, when you take it into your business or you take it into your future, you take that next step. You take that moment that you really actually want into consideration. Man. It becomes fun. You'll do anything for it. And that's really what we're all working for. It's it's the, it's your why? Right? It's like, why, why are we here? And we lose sight of that at times.

46:08 That's right. We get busy in the grind and, and the build, uh, I mean, let's be honest. Like

46:14 We love building things, period. Right? I mean, I came from the construction world. Like I used to love, literally built buildings, right.

46:23 Building houses and like building like stuff. Right. And now

46:27 I'm doing the same thing. We're building businesses, we're building brands.

46:30 And that's that like people say all the times,

46:34 Yeah. What are you gonna do when you retire? I'm like, I'm doing what I'm doing. That's right.

46:37 I'm doing what I'm doing now. So you can call me retired if you want, but this is what I'm doing. I'm not going to sit there. And just, you know, if I want to go sit in the Adirondack chair out by the pool, I'll go do that. As soon as we got off.

46:48 Cause I don't have another interview for another hour, but I can do that. Right. Like, so I'm not looking forward to the day where I don't have to report anymore. Cause I'm already doing, I don't, I don't even think about it. The only, I mean, I think about like I'm responsible. I think I'm on my financial future. Sure. But you know, I remember being a teacher, dude. I used to be like, Oh man, only people come in man 19. Oh that actually my principal, when I resigned, he goes, how many years you've been teaching? And I said, nine man, cause you got nine years into retirement. You're going to give all that up. And I was like, Mike there's like 19 years left. Like I bet everybody was always counting down that retirement and how much he had. And how many more days you had left? Terrible. I'm like, man, I tell you in the last couple of years, I don't think about that at all. I don't. I mean, I'll probably, if I'm in a nursing home, I'll be dictating my next book. If I'm in mobile assistant, right? Like I'm not going to just quit living. So I don't know, man. You just don't think about it. It's it's just work means something different now, you know,

47:44 It's the, it's the climb, right? It's a, you know, Tony Robbins always says, you know, if you're not growing, you're dying and it's, it's the same idea. It's like, what are you striving for, for us? It's building businesses right now. It's also building businesses that can impact people. And who knows, that could turn into something. That's just totally like maybe a nonprofit that you get behind in the next 10 years, 20 years, whatever it is. But as long as you understand the building blocks of a market, how to get attention and how to turn that into revenue, like, you know what I mean? Like, and to me, that's the game we're in that game. And it's funny that you're from the football world. Cause I always tell people like you can be on the sidelines, but until you get in the game, you can't run a play. And until you run a play, you can't decide what to do. That didn't work that you just ran that play, right? It's like,

48:26 Yeah, you can't say why didn't that work? Cause they all work on paper. Every play I ever drew up on a chalkboard, always worked. It was incredible. Exactly. You know, then you get out there and somebody goes one way and another kid goes another and you're like, that did not work, but now we know why we can watch the tape. We'll run it back and do it again next week. And maybe we'll figure it. We'll figure it out. Exactly. Exactly.

48:47 All right man. No, this was awesome. So let people know, how can they hear more from Shane and uh, everything else that you guys are up to over there?

48:54 Sure, man. Well, if you're, you're probably listening to this on a podcast player. So the best thing to do is to just type in flipped lifestyle, the flipped lifestyle podcast. We have episodes every Tuesday and Saturday. Um, every Tuesday I actually interviewed a real member from the flip your life community. And I coach them live on air on how to take their online business to the next level. We have mindset episodes on a Saturday. Uh, we also have the membership masters podcast. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, uh, with the best membership owners and entrepreneurs on the planet today, uh, that's the membership masters podcast. So listen to the podcast. And also if you want to see what we do, if you need a little help getting to the next level in your online business dream, uh, you can try out our flip your life community over@flippedlifestyle.com slash free. We give everybody a 30 days. Their first month is free. You can come in. Every course is available. All the member calls are open and it's a wide open all access membership for 30 days. And um, we can help you, uh, take your next steps toward a better future for your family too. That's flipped lifestyle.com/free man. And also Scott. I love you, man. Thank you for letting me come on show day, dude, man. We've had some great conversations lately and I mean, I absolutely love what you're doing to over there, man.

50:04 Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate you coming out. I'm glad that we finally got to connect and hopefully we'll be able to connect at the Lake house. One of these times I'm talking about possibly putting together a little, a little mini mastermind with just some colleagues and

50:15 I'm there you say when this is going to be heading North. So yeah, it's all good.

50:21 All right, man. Well, Hey, thank you so much. And yeah, we'll link everything up in the show notes. I appreciate you man and keep at it. And uh, whenever I need a little energy in my life, I'm just going to send you a little direct message. You can get a little fire back into my life, but I appreciate you, man. All right, we'll see you, man. Alright, well there you have it. I wasn't kidding. Right? A lot of y'alls and a lot of great stories and I mean, I don't know if you guys got the vibe or not, but when you are in the room with someone like Shane, you can't help but have that kind of energy. And a lot of people tell me that I have a lot of energy. Shane's got a lot of energy, uh, him and I, uh, if we got a room together, we're going to start a fire and we are definitely going to start a fire.

51:01 But, uh, it was just great to really listen to the ins and outs of his story and also to highlight that everything was not perfect. And for the longest time it wasn't working, but that's the big lesson here that I want you to take away. You gotta keep at it. You gotta keep moving forward. You got to commit to yourself. If you truly want what he calls a flip lifestyle where you can actually have a lifestyle that you want, not one that you're adapting to because of your job. Well, you need to make the switch. You can be the change. All right. So guys, the show notes, all of the goodies can be found over@brandcreators.com forward slash eight 94. If you want to check out, Shane definitely go listen to his podcast, membership masters, even if you're not going to start a membership, just listen to those interviews because not all of them are just about memberships because he's talking to people that have started online businesses or people that have grown online businesses.

52:04 And that's really what he's after is really digging in kind of like what I'm doing here. Um, so definitely go check it out. I was recently a featured guest on his podcast where I talked about, uh, just a lot of things that I was going through as I was coming up. And uh, just a lot of the, uh, you know, the ups and the downs of this journey. So you might want to check out that episode too. I'll link it up in the show notes. So guys, that's gonna wrap up this episode, another great interview on this Wednesday edition of the rock, your brand podcast. And again, I want to thank Shane for taking time out of his day. He was awesome. He rocked the mic and uh, guys, just go on over, check them out. I'll link everything up in the show notes, brand creators.com forward slash 894. All right guys. So that's it. That's going to wrap it up as always remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to come out, do it for me. Say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now let's rock your brand.