65: Shane Sams: Achieve Work-Life Balance Through Membership Communities

Hi there. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to ask you an important question. Are you wondering why your hard work isn't reflecting in your bank account? If so, I've got something that could change the game for you. With my digital Product Accelerator One on one coaching program, I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs like you be bank consistent revenue without sacrificing your time or sanity. Imagine shifting from 90% client facing work to enjoying consistent revenue from your digital products, all while reclaiming your time. You already know that you don't need another course and a one size fits all approach isn't going to cut it. What you need is a strategic long term plan that tailored just for you. So if you're ready to build the profitable freedom giving business you dreamed of, apply to work with me by going to destinycop.com apply I cannot wait to learn more about you and your business. Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase their revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast we tell the stories of ordinary business owners just like you. We talk about their story and how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. These are discussions with real people who understand what it's like to own an online course or membership business. Before we begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show notes. So let's jump right into our show.

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 schoolteachers 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 their teaching jobs and make millions online to build the life of their dreams. Shane, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so super excited to jump into your story and learn a little bit more about your entrepreneur journey.

Destiny, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I'M excited. Let's do this.

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.

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 all afternoon. That was my life pretty much 24, 7, 365. And my wife was an elementary school librarian, so she was the librarian for a school that was K through 5. 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. 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 planned to do for our entire life. I had 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 3 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. And he basically told me that he was scared of one of the workers inside. And when I talked him out and tried to figure out why, 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. This little old lady that ran it, she was more like a grandma than the daycare owner. You know, that kind of person who's like, 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, 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 couldn't leave my son at this daycare because I knew that something was going on inside, but I couldn't get a hold 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 hold of my boss. So I did what I thought at the time was the right thing to do. I took my son Isaac to my daughter's facility because 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? I know you're not allowed to keep kids over, too, but I'll run to work, find somebody, get somebody to cover my class before those junior history students burn 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 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 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 gonna be out of here at three o'clock today. So I know your son needs you, but your job needs you, too, and you're gonna 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. And I wasn't mad at the daycare worker. That was just ignorance and stupidity. 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 my entire living without relying on a boss, without relying on an employer. And that's really what sent us down this journey that led eventually to us discovering online courses, online products, and becoming entrepreneurs that we are today.

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 absolutely 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.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's because you have so much 1. People don't realize how much sports coaches in general and high schools work.

Right.

Like, I mean, and for how little pay it 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 here, you stay at school, you're at School from 7am to 7pm 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 9am to 12 and coming back from 6 to 9, right where it's cool outside. 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 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 absolutely never ending, you know?

And that's exactly how he described it. Like, he had to retire, if you would, from that job because he was having art issues.

Yeah, you've got to love it. It's got to be a passion. Like, I loved football. Like, I looked forward to it every day. But there 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 when we quit our jobs, it was hilarious because the first thing the principal asked me when I eventually resigned was, are you still going to coach football?

What did you tell them?

I actually did. You know, I loved the kids so much, I resigned in. It was September 27, 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 resign? Like, I didn't want that question. Or, why'd your husband resign? 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 gonna 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, 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 this 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 till the end of the year. That's like a mobile. You don't get to leave. Like, that's bad juju. 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 were. Had all these feelings going back to pick up your son. Where did you go from there?

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 just. 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, and I could inspect homes and fix stuff. And she's like, shane, you're not handy. You are not handy.

She probably knew firsthand.

Oh, yeah, she knew for sure. Like, the honey do list, it was not her. Wasn't her honey doing the list in this household, you know what I mean? And, like, I just couldn't do that stuff. And I was like, oh, well, what 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 to 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, it'd be. 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 as we think of it as today that it's a viable option for making money. And one day I was looking through itunes back when you had to put it on an ipod shuffle 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 gonna click on that. Cause I wanna 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 art. 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 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'd found him early on in his journey. And I downloaded a couple 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 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. We were in our car driving out to Muhlenberg County, Kentucky to visit her grandparents. And I was sitting there looking out the window, and Jocelyn was driving. It was her turn. She usually drives the first half and I drive the back half, which means she drives there, I drive home in the dark. That's usually how that works out. But I just was thinking, and I said, jocelyn, I wonder if I could get 100 people to give us $50. And she's like, what? What are you talking about? 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 100 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? And I said, I don't know, but I'll figure it out. 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 he 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 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 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. And I jumped off my lawnmower and ran inside and I told my wife Jocelyn about this. 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 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 figure out how to actually sell something on the Internet.

Foreign.

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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?

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.

Well, most women are, but I'm not going to hold that against you.

That's right. Yeah. I'm the gas and she's the brake, 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 side had to handle your email, one side had to do your website, one side had to do your product delivery, one side had to do your paint. It was so hard to figure it all out, but I knew the one thing that everybody did was created content. Everybody created content. They either did videos, they did podcasts, or they did a blog. So the first thing I set out to do was 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.

And I'm sure you had a lot of good content for that.

I had a lot of good content. I mean, we had. My kids were like four and almost two, so I mean, they were just breaking and destroying and sharpieing each other and everything.

Right.

So we did. I did that for a while, and some people read it, but there was no way to monetize it. 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, the. Everyone said the list was where the money was. Like, if you didn't have a list, you couldn't Follow up. So you got to 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 aweber 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. Jocelyn was like, what are you doing? I'm like, I need money for courses. I don't know what I'm doing. I gotta 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 would just Send you like 5 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? 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 had 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 a link and that would be a whole blog post.

Right.

But I. But I've 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 site 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 terrible.

You know what? That was a thing back then, though.

It was totally a thing.

It was, yeah.

But I didn't realize you had to write the article to get the traffic. So I just wrote the. Put 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 even 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 that anyone turned the light on. And I thought, man, you know, I just was, like, looking up at the sky. You had that moment where you're just like looking up, like, God, what's going on? I'm at a fork in the road here. And left looks not right. And right also 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 whereas Xero had been there before, 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 could have won the state championship in my football team at that moment. It felt so good. I was celebrating, like, yes, I did it. And Jocelyn 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 to figure this out. And Jocelyn, at that point, she could have said, it's 11 cents. Get in the bed, go to sleep. This is ridiculous. You need to stop this nonsense. But she didn't. She kind of 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 ElementaryLibrarian.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.

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?

Well, like, Jocelyn. So Jocelyn's very practical. Like, extremely practical. Like, we are yin and yang. You know, like, she's order and I'm chaos, basically. And she took the Cliff notes version of what I did, found the holes, and realized that she had to make these products, these digital products, whether a course, a video, an email, whatever it is, Right? But her thing was, hey, let's not make things that we're passionate about and all this sunshine and rainbow 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 her journey. Three. Four years into her journey as an elementary. 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.

Right?

And she's like, you are coaching football. All you think about every day 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. 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 Librarians. She went all in on it first. So we actually started a podcast called elementary Live of the elementary Librarian Podcast. Riveting, riveting information on this elementary Librarian podcast. The most hyper niche thing you could ever think of, right?

I actually want to go back and listen to it now. Is it still there?

I don't know. It might be in the Wayback 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, we would not own it anymore because we actually sold that site later. So. 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 kind of started and she would drop links in forums where people were talking in discussion boards. And you know, 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 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. Here's all the resources you need to give out and print to your kids, whatever. 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 gonna put in it. So it was kinda like a pre sale page. And the first email that we sent out made $2,500. I mean, we went from 11 cents to 2,500 bucks in like two months. So it's like we're just sitting there staring at the screen. One, we're freaked out because now we have to make this product because we promised these people that we'd 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 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 all the lessons, made them 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 us historyteachers.com, which is still out there. We still own that one. I put my playbooks and all my courses, anything for football coaches. And I was going to do like monthly Q&As 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 month where 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. My boss had told me I couldn't leave to handle my personal problems. I just slid my letter of resignation over on a. I got him really early because 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 6am in the morning? And he goes, are you okay? And I'm like, that's pretty important. And I. And he met many, met me there. And it was just the shock on his face because 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. 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.

Well, Shane, I love the story that you outlined there. And that is definitely a game changer for two teachers coming in on two teachers 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 guys offer today and a little bit more about your online course portfolio or membership portfolio, it sounds like.

So we were. Yeah, we started doing memberships only because we. I mean, we. We came from a place where we were, like, really wanted 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 it on Instagram, people, right? So we switched to the membership model so we could go get 1000 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. And as we quit our jobs in small town southeast Kentucky Destiny, 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? I'm like, no. God, no. Where are these rumors coming from? Like, 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 us, 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? And it was such a different inflection than the way everybody else was saying it, right? It was, like, curiosity. And she said, what are you guys doing? And we taught her well. 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 we're 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 Lindsay make digital products. We helped her turn. We showed her how to take payments for them. We put her. Helped her get in front of an audience, and we did all these things for her and helped her and 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 until this day. And when that happened, we were like, wow, that's crazy. Like, not only did we quit our jobs, but 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 site, 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. I thought somebody died or something. He had, like, a tear in his eye when he came up to me, and he's like, hey, man, can I talk to you? I'm like, yeah, man. What's up? What's going on, dude? And JT 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 Lindsay staying home and homeschooling our kids, which was our dream from the first day we got married, but I also have 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 to get my PhD. But now I'm using this money that we're making through Lindsay's 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, Destiny, 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, you really changed our life. And it was really, it was just a really emotional moment. And when I got in the car and I told Jocelyn that story on the way home after church, I just kind of thought, hey, if we changed our life doing this and we changed their life from us telling them what we did, we should probably tell more people about this. So that was the initial, like, I guess, genesis of the Flipped lifestyle podcast, the flipped lifestyle community, flippedlifestyle.com, where we said, hey, 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, want to make a good, good living online, maybe go out, get 100 people to pay you $50 a month. Go out and get 200 people to pay you $50aMonth. That's like 120 grand, right? Like not, not out here chasing. We're all about legacy, not Lamborghinis, right? I don't want to do that stuff, but 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. And about 2017, we launched Flip 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 Flip Lifestyle was making such a difference in people's lives that we actually sold ElementaryLibrarian.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.

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 Lindsay coming to you, asking you, total accident, no plans to be where we are. Such a powerful story. Can you tell me what do you see as next Steps in your business?

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 100, 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 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, we want to pick our 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, 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. Everything's upside down from how the normal world works. So I think what the future for our business is 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 want to have other hosts that are focusing on like marriage podcasts and parenting podcasts and health, mental, physical and spiritual health podcasts. 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. 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 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 this, 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 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, this little woman in the middle of nowhere is what he's basically saying. And he. 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 Flip Lifestyle and put our brand is in a place to every day pick up our stone and throw it out there and cause as 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 Lifestyle now, is just to cast our stone every day and change as many lives as we can and watch the ripple kind of pay forward.

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.

Listen, I take. I take this so seriously. You can't. You people can't see this, but I'm gonna 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 it reminds me every single day that that's our mission here and we have to do it and take it so seriously.

Yeah. For the listeners. He is. He. He just turned on his video. We were doing this without video. He turned it on for a second, held up the stone, 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 while. 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?

Yeah, if you're going to try to pick a course, right, and you're going to try to make a course, you're going to 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, 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 that, 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 playing a ukulele on the beach in Hawaii? You're not making any money. I make a great course. But you're probably not going to. That's not going to happen. You know what I mean? Like, focus on that, get your courses out there, get 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 begin at that point.

And I think that's some great advice. And certainly you guys went back to what you knew and what you were good with. I 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 that.

And maybe someday you could. I don't know.

You know, I don't think so.

That's probably not the best place to start. You know.

So there you go. So, Shane, can you let everybody know where they can find you?

Sure. I have two podcasts. The first one is called the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. You're listening to a podcast. All you gotta do is find me online. Flipped Lifestyle. 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 business 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 flippedlifestyle.com CCMBA just like your show, CCMBA, and we have a free masterclass that will 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 flippedlifestyle.com ccmba 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.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Dad. I appreciate you so much, and it was good to hear a little Southern accent with a conversation. Throw a few y' alls in for everybody, right?

Yeah.

Thanks, Shane.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day, and bye for now.