Monetize Your Knowledge To Start Your First Business – Shane Sams with Flipped Lifestyle
Do you have deep expertise in something, or able to provide knowledge or a system that someone else needs? If so, Shane Sams is all about encouraging you to get 100 people to pay you $50 a month and earn a total of $60,000 a year. Flipped Lifestyle is all about teaching you the concepts to make a living by teaching others what you know. Shane shares the story of him and his wife in how they started monetizing their knowledge and how you can too.
Many people want are looking to earn a living for their families. Many new business owners are struggling. Maybe it’s time to leverage the power of community.
Watch our interview
Listen to our discussion on the Smart Hustle Podcast
Transcribed with Rev.com
Ramon Ray:
All right Shane, here we go. Shane, can you start off with giving us a little bit about who you serve, what you do, what problem you solve? Let’s start there.
Shane Sams:
Yeah, man. At FlipLifestyle.com we help real working families start, build and grow online businesses. We believe that everybody has God given talents and experiences that they can use, knowledge that they can pour out of their head from their lips and their fingertips into some kind of product that they can go out there and serve the world. And by doing that, we think that everybody can go out and find 100 people to pay them $50 a month, make $60,000 a year on a membership site. We really want to help families find freedom through online business.
Ramon Ray:
I love that. Shane, give us your full name and once again, the name of your company.
Shane Sams:
Shane Sams, I’m the host of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast and the Shane Sams Show, which is a tongue twister and I did it on purpose just to make my team mad. And I’m the founder of FlippedLifestyle.com.
Ramon Ray:
I love it. Shane, let’s dive into this. I’ve gotten to know you a bit and have dived into your website quite a bit, it’s very interesting. A few questions I have before we dive into the principles of what Flipped Lifestyle means, and I think if I said it enough times, I would say that thing you said, getting 100 people to pay you $50 a month to make $60,000 a year.
Shane Sams:
100 people, $50 a month, $60,000 a year. 200 is $120,000. So, if you want to get to six-figures fast, you only need 200 out of the seven billion humans running around this joint to make it happen.
Ramon Ray:
And I have a feeling if you’re marginally half-decent at math, you could run some numbers and make it 120 times two.
Shane Sams:
Yeah, right, exactly. 83 times 1,000 is a million. So, I’m just saying, that’s all you need.
Ramon Ray:
There you go. Shane, one point of clarity I have is that is your vision for this, or what Flipped Lifestyle is, I’m working, I have a full time job, I’m a lawyer, I’m a stay at home mom do it. And/or is it for people like me-ish, nobody’s like me, but like me and you, who do this as a full time job. Meaning I’m looking to be an entrepreneur, I got fired and I want to have a full time business like some of our friends, the Pats and whoever it may be of the world are. Clarify that for me.
Shane Sams:
It can be both. We have a lot of people in our community who, they want 20 people and pay them $50 a month, extra $1,000 a month to pay part of the mortgage, pay a car payment, whatever. And we have a lot of people who want to go full time online. It’s for anyone. This is a very different kind of niche online business. Because the system that we’ve created called the Flipped Lifestyle Blueprint can overlay any hobby, interest, knowledge of wisdom. So, we have people that are lawyers that are helping people do things in the legal space. We have medical professionals, pharmacists who have started memberships for medical professionals and pharmacists. And we’ve even got people like Kenny [Triano 00:02:41], a guy out in San Diego, California, that teaches people how to raise backyard chickens and he’s full time online. He’s got a podcast about chickens, he’s got a membership about chickens, newsletter about chickens and he’s got a membership about chickens. That’s who it’s for. It can be used in any way you want. It’s kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of an online business income.
Ramon Ray:
Got it. And what do you think is stopping people, Shane, from doing more of this? What makes your system special? And I say this because what you’re sharing, I guess I’m sharing, I mean how Shane does it is special. So, this is a backhanded compliment. It’s all on Google. I’m in the information space. People can say that about myself. Personal branding, it’s all there. But I do have a system. Meaning, my point is, why can’t that stay at home mom, that lawyer, the guy who’s selling chicken, we’re doing this. We got mics, podcast systems, you go online put some eCommerce up, Kajabi or any other tools you want, and do it. What’s stopping people from just Googling it and getting this done? Because, as I’m sure you agree, the tools, it’s all there for anybody to grab. What’s stopping people?
Shane Sams:
A buddy of mine named Mark Mason, you ever heard of Mark? You know Mark, he runs Moonlighting on the Internet or something like that, I can’t remember.
Ramon Ray:
Okay.
Shane Sams:
Mark said something very interesting to me. We were at dinner once and he said, “Everybody’s running from something or towards something.”
What we have found is that a lot of times the people not taking action, not doing it are stable, are stagnant, are sitting still.
And they’re not running away from something, they’re not running towards something. They haven’t identified a good why to do it yet. Or they may know the why, but they just don’t know about this. They don’t know about membership sites in particular. Because when you go online, you hear a lot of, you got the Gary Vee camp telling you to work 70, 80 hours a week. And that’s not exactly appealing to somebody who’s working full time and raising kids.
Ramon Ray:
Is it down to 70 now? Did they lower it a bit?
Shane Sams:
It’s down to 70. He was up to 90 there for about 2017. Gary changed it a little bit. You know what I mean? But then also, you also on the other end of the spectrum you have the get rich quick people who are like, “Oh man, just sell $1,000 course, everybody’s going to buy it.” And it’s so hard.
Ramon Ray:
And all those people, Shane, have a Lamborghini in the back, and people with hardly any clothes. The Gary Vee model, work 90 hours, the other one’s-
Shane Sams:
Everywhere in between, man. I think my background, I’m a blue collar guy. I was a school teacher, my wife was a school teacher when we started. We had a really big why, why we did this, which we can talk about later. But once we identified our why, once we got into it, we needed something that could work for real. For real people, and not be feast or famine course sales. Where maybe you had a great launch and you could brag about it for the rest of your life. But the rest of your life you were broke and struggling to make your next $1,000 sale. And then we didn’t have 70 hours. Man, I would go to school at 5:30 AM, come home after football practice or the weight room at 7:00, and I had like an hour and a half after I saw my kids, to actually sit down and build a business. We were kind of forced by necessity to come up with a different kind of model that could work for anybody and work for real people.
Ramon Ray:
Absolutely, I love it. Feel free, take us where you want to take this, Shane. I love to hear a bit about your background, but I’m itching to get into what is this Flipped Lifestyle System? That, are you saying pretty much anybody, I’m sure there has to be some qualifications, but maybe anybody who has some knowledge it seems, can begin to share. Why don’t we start, let’s leave people waiting a bit. Let’s hear a little bit more about the background, what brought you to this point of being a successful business owner with your wife and family? And I love, I have to comment again, the hole you have in the wall behind you. I know it’s not a hole.
Shane Sams:
Everybody thinks it’s a hole. We talked about this. Everybody thinks that’s a hole. This must be the best optical illusion in podcast history.
Ramon Ray:
It is.
Shane Sams:
This Kentucky thing. I got a big glowing Kentucky hanging behind me, y’all. And everybody’s like, “Man, how’d you carve that hole in that wall so precisely?” I need to just start going with it. Just being like, “Man, X-Acto knife, I had it. Man, I’m an artist too.” No, I’m not.
Who is Shane Sams – The Journey
Ramon Ray:
Tell us, Shane, a bit about your background and how you got to this point, then we’ll get into the Flipped Lifestyle System, I do want to hear about that. Because I do think there’s some key principles that if people follow them, hopefully you’ll check out what Shane’s system are. But I hope you’ll even learn, listening to us today. And maybe you’ll just go forth and do it. Shane, tell us about your background, what brought you? What was your why, to bring you to wanting to do this?
Shane Sams:
Yeah. I mean, man, in 2012, about 10 years ago or so, my wife and I were school teachers in Southeast Kentucky. I was a social studies teacher, taught history to hoodlum juniors. And my wife was an elementary librarian at an elementary school. We were on that good enough railroad track lifestyle. We were just on our way to retirement. I always tell people we weren’t broke, but we didn’t have a lot of money. We got paid on Friday. Every Friday we got paid, but it ran out every Thursday, that was the problem.
Ramon Ray:
Yes.
Shane Sams:
But we had a good life, man. I don’t want anyone to ever think I wasn’t grateful for what God had given me back then. We had our kids, Isaac and Anna Jo, we went to work every day. I remember in the great recession, in 2007, I saw so many people lose their livelihood, and I had tenure. I was on a tenured track in my school. So, I had a job. I was very grateful for that. Honestly, if nothing had knocked us off the railroad track, I’d probably still be doing that today. But we actually had a really bad situation happen at my son’s daycare. Like a lot of working parents, my wife and I had to use daycare. My daughter was under two at the time, so she went to a baby facility, and my son was over at a toddler daycare center.
Shane Sams:
One morning my son would not go into the daycare. He was screaming and freaking out and he told me that one of the workers inside scared him. When I asked him why, I found out that there was a person who worked at this daycare who was punishing my son for potty training accidents by locking him in a bathroom for hours at a time in the dark. And we found out in the papers later on, when all of this came to be, that they were doing crazy things. One lady couldn’t control kids, so she would sit on a beanbag chair on top of them and hold them down all day because they wouldn’t calm down. It was a really bad situation, man. This daycare was a wonderful place, but the lady who owned it retired and sold it. And they just hired a lot of unqualified people who didn’t know how to handle kids.
Ramon Ray:
And by the way, side issue, Shane, that is a nightmare for all parents. I know I have family members of mine who take their kids, especially when they’re tiny. When they get older and can speak, 10 years old, 13 years old, you still got to be careful. But I think … I don’t want to go too far off the reservation, but I think two things I’m hearing, Shane, and feel free to give me feedback. I have two adult children, but I think one, parents, you got to listen to your kids. I think the biggest fear is, say somebody says something about me, is the kid lying? Which can be true. They do lie. But you better hear if it’s truthful because kids don’t always know how to express that. So, kudos to you, Shane, for being able to listen.
Shane Sams:
You know, it was weird. Looking back, I can see the signs now. But I was such a new parent at the time. Isaac was really terrified of the dark, wanted to sleep with us. He got worse and worse about leaving us. But that was like don’t kids have separation anxiety?
Ramon Ray:
Exactly.
Shane Sams:
And potty training’s hard. Your kids get scared of the bathroom. He would only go to the bathroom out in the hall, we remember this. Now looking back I’m like were those signs? But it’s also like, or did I just not know how to potty train? It’s hard to tell. And even in that moment, Ramon, man, I don’t … I was processing this in the parking lot. Part of me wanted to go burn down the building. I mean, that’s what part of me wanted to do. But the other part of me was like, “I need to be a rational human here and figure out is this true?” What does that mean, “She puts me in the bathroom for a long time,” what does that mean?
Shane Sams:
So, as I’m standing in the parking lot processing this, I knew that I had two things to do. I had to figure out what I was going to do with Isaac because I couldn’t leave him here, clearly. And then I had to get to school. Because a teacher is legally obligated to be in their classroom at the start of the day. I mean, you are responsible for someone else’s children. And high school juniors will burn down the building or make babies if there’s not a teacher in the room. So, we got to get to school. And I was a good employee, I was very loyal. I look back and almost feel brainwashed by the system. Like I had to be at work.
Shane Sams:
So, I did the only thing I could do. I tried to call Jocelyn, I tried to call my principal, I couldn’t get ahold of anybody. So, I took Isaac to Anna Jo’s facility, my little girl. There was a lady there that had kept Isaac as a baby. I knew her, I trusted her. And I said, “Please, can you keep him?” And she said, “I can, but we’re only allowed to keep kids up to two. You got to come back before the end of the day, you can’t just leave him here at all day. We can’t do that.” And I was like, “Okay, I’m going to run to work and I’ll come right back.” I had about a 30 minute commute, 40 minute commute to get to my job. Flew there in about 20 minutes. Went and got a teacher to watch my class for a minute so I could go find the principal and see if I could get the day off.
Shane Sams:
I went down, my main principal wasn’t there. There was another lady that was there that day, she was our supervisor in charge. I told her exactly what I just told you. And then man, she said something I will never forget. She leaned back in her chair and took her glasses off and laid them on the desk, almost like you’re about to scold a child. She was an older lady. I think she was trying to just pass … She thought she was helping me at the time. I don’t think this was malicious. But the next words out of her mouth were shocking. She said, “Mister Sams, is your son in immediate danger right this second?” And I said, “No, not right now.” She said, “Well, if he’s not in immediate danger now and he’s in a safe place, you’re going to have to handle your personal problems after work. Because all the subs are out, the day has already started, can’t get you a sub. And I got too much on my agenda to be able to go watch your class all day. I know your son needs you, but your job needs you too.”
Shane Sams:
Man, I was so mad in that moment. I was like, “That’s unacceptable, I’m going back to my son.” And she’s like, “Well, you can’t just leave your classroom.” I’m like, “I’m going to have to deal with the consequences.” So, I just left and I just walked out of her classroom. Man, on the way back, I caught my own reflection in my rear view mirror hanging in the middle of my windshield. I looked at myself and I was mad, man. I was so mad. I was not mad necessarily at the daycare or the workers, I wasn’t mad at my boss, I was mad at myself. That I had made this dark trade of my time and life and what was important for a steady paycheck, health insurance, and maybe retirement someday.
Shane Sams:
And dude, I promised myself in that moment that I would find a way to become and stay self employed. I would find a way where nobody could tell me that I couldn’t be there for my son or my daughter or my wife, ever again. That’s what sent me down the rabbit hole of looking for some kind of-
Ramon Ray:
No, I love that Shane. And I think that some people have a full time job, but I think many people, in my case too Shane, by the way, my situation, I was fired from the U.N. So, we all have …
Shane Sams:
That’s your catalyst. That’s you’re catalyst, man.
Ramon Ray:
Some people either they’re, “Oh, I’m looking at Shark Tank. You know what? Let me resign from my million dollar job and perfect life.” Rarely is it that. Oftentimes it’s something happens.
Shane Sams:
That’s right. That’s right. Those dark things actually are God … God is moving. I could never have seen then, what God was going to do in me and my wife Jocelyn’s wife over the next 10 years in that moment. And I would never say I’m grateful or thankful for that catalyst. But I do know that God used our situation in a mighty way. And it’s helped thousands of people since then, to maybe never even have to put their kids in a daycare center.
Ramon Ray:
You’re thankful for the results maybe. I’m sure that, you probably can agree.
Shane Sams:
Exactly.
Ramon Ray:
Absolutely.
Shane Sams:
What happened was, man, I had no training as an entrepreneur. I mean, I looked at some different things to do. I told Jocelyn one day, I said, “Could I be a handyman? Maybe I could just get my home inspector’s license, do home inspections and fix things and whatever.”
Ramon Ray:
That’s a good option.
Shane Sams:
Yeah. But my wife quickly reminded me, I was not very handy. She’s like, “I don’t want you burning other people’s houses down.” [inaudible 00:14:25]. And she was just like, “Shane, you’ve got a master’s degree, you spent seven years in college to do this, you’ve been teaching for 10 years. What are we doing here?” And I’m like, “I know, but there’s got to be something else.” So, one day I was mowing my grass and I was listening to a podcast. This was still 2012, I mean, podcasts were a new thing back then. And I stumbled across the Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn. Super early in Pat’s journey, he was not the podcaster he is today.
Ramon Ray:
Now you could email him directly. Today I think there’s 40 people-
Shane Sams:
I emailed him directly, man. Dude, that’s how I know him. I know Pat because every minute of my story, I was emailing him and he was emailing me back, back then, man.
Ramon Ray:
Nice.
Shane Sams:
I was listening to him and I just happened to listen to one of his early episodes, which he only had like 30 or 40 at the time. But this particular episode was about how he took all of his blog about passing the architecture licensing exam and he put his … He had documented his process, how he studied and passed it. And he realized people were coming to his website and they were reading his blog posts. And he thought hey … Someone told him, “Hey, put a PayPal button on that, charge them like $50 and see if someone will buy the PDF, make a study guide for them.” And just about two weeks before I heard this podcast, me and my wife were going to Muhlenberg County Kentucky to see her parents. And I was sitting in the car and I was looking out the window. And I just, out of nowhere had this thought bubble up, “What if I could get 100 people to give us $50 a month?”
Shane Sams:
We made $5,000 a month together, in both of our teaching jobs. I was like, “That would replace our income.” So, I perked up and I said, “Jocelyn, I think I know how to do this. All I got to do is figure out something I can sell, that I can get 100 people to give us $50 a month. And if we could do that, we could replace our income.” So, of course my ever-practical wife looked at me and said, “How are you going to do that?” And I looked back at her and said, “I don’t know, but I said it, so it has to be real.” There’s something to this. There’s seven billion humans, I can get 100 of them. This thought was already in my head, and I listened to Pat’s launch story. It’s $47, $49, whatever he picked. He sends this out and he makes $9,000 on the internet, monetizing his wisdom and experience and knowledge. He just let that come out of his brain and into the world and passed it to the next person who needed it.
Shane Sams:
I was like, “That’s it. That’s how I can get 100 people to give me $50. I make content every day, I’m a school teacher. I’m a football coach.” So, I jumped off my lawn mower, went inside, told Jocelyn.
Ramon Ray:
Did you turn the lawn mower off?
Shane Sams:
No. No, it may still be running, I don’t know where it is.
Ramon Ray:
It’s out there somewhere.
Shane Sams:
It’s gone. It’s out there somewhere. It don’t matter, I’ll buy a new one. I pay people to mow my yard now, so it’s okay, I don’t need it anymore. When I ran inside, I told Jocelyn this. And she was skeptical. She was like, “Well, that kind of makes sense.” She basically said, “Okay, you figure it out. If it works, come back and tell me.” I go, you know how it is when you start as an entrepreneur, nothing works for the first few months. I mean, you’re just sitting there bashing your head against a brick wall.
Ramon Ray:
And I want to underline that, just again for, I always like to have these teaching moments. I think, remember that. Those of you who are just starting your business. Have cashflow, get ready for it not to work for a while, because I think that’s the case with many things. Not all, but whether you’re getting a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise or starting your own business, hopefully you looked at Flipped Lifestyle, it’s going to take some time to get traction. Continue, but I just want to underline.
Shane Sams:
Speaking. You got to speak for free before anybody will pay you. Anything like that. I was about to give up, I was really frustrated. I was really sad. Because I thought man, this looked like such a promising thing. And I was really frustrated. One night, I was laying in bed super depressed, Jocelyn was reading a book, kids were asleep. I was looking at my … You know how you check your stats all the time, your podcast downloads, your analytics. Did anybody buy anything today? Or whatever. Well, all I had at the time, I was learning how to build websites. And I had just put Google ads all over it. And I was hoping my spammy website, someone would find it and accidentally click something just to make some money. Because all these people said that worked and I was like, “All right.”
Shane Sams:
So, I was making all this stuff and nothing, goose egg, nil, zero, zilch. There was no money. And I was like, “This is stupid.” I shut my computer, went to get ready for bed. And I didn’t even turn the light on in the bathroom, Ramon. I was just standing there brushing my teeth in the dark. I just about starting crying. I just prayed and I said, “God, is this real? Is Pat Flynn serious or is he full of it? If it’s real and you can make money on the internet, tell me. And whatever it takes, I’ll move heaven and earth to make it happen. But if it’s not real, tell me that too. Because I am blessed and thankful that you gave me this career and this profession and that my family’s needs are met. But just, I can’t do this anymore, just give me a sign.” Jocelyn was getting frustrated, I was spending so much money on training and courses and hosting and whatever.
Ramon Ray:
Shane, tell me now, at this time, what were you selling? I don’t know if you mentioned that, what were you selling?
Shane Sams:
Nothing. I was selling content. I was trying to-
Ramon Ray:
What was the theme?
Shane Sams:
Okay, so we had a website called US History Worksheets.
Ramon Ray:
Okay, got it, okay.
Shane Sams:
And my goal was, well maybe I could put a free worksheet up and I’ll hide it in the middle of all my spammy ads and someone will think they’re downloading that and they’ll click something else. Because I was just looking for any kind of proof of concept.
Ramon Ray:
Maybe something for parents who wanted to get their kids studying history or something.
Shane Sams:
It was for teachers. I thought, “Well, I look for worksheets all the time and I’m a history teacher.”
Ramon Ray:
For teachers, got it.
Shane Sams:
There’s 100,000 history teachers, maybe there’s another one looking for something.
Ramon Ray:
Perfect. Got it.
Shane Sams:
That’s what I did. I’d done a couple other blogs too, but they were just disasters. But it was to learn WordPress basically at that point.
Ramon Ray:
Got it.
The Start of Success – Selling Content
Shane Sams:
So, I went back in and I was picking up my computer to lay down and go to sleep. And I don’t know what made me do it man, but I just wanted to open my computer and check my stats one more time. So, I opened my computer, I was on the Google ad sense screen and I hit refresh. And where a zero had been there before, there was 11 cents in my ad sense account, a dime and a penny.
Ramon Ray:
And that was ad sense, not purchase, just so people know. This was ad sense. An ad.
Shane Sams:
This was a click. I had not put two and two together about digital products yet. But it was money. I had created something and money came back. And that was my only goal at this time, was to prove it was real. To prove to Jocelyn that we could make money on the internet. And I just started celebrating and jumping up and down. And Jocelyn’s like, “What are you doing?” And I showed her. I was like, “Look, this is real. I made money online.” I don’t care how much it is. If it’s 11 cents, it can be $11, it could be 11 people, it could be 1,100. We just got to figure out how to make more of this happen.
Shane Sams:
Jocelyn looked at the screen and her eyes kind of squinted and she tilted her head and was like, “Wow, what else can we do?” And when Jocelyn came in, we got to … The Bible says that two are better than one, baby. You get more work back from your efforts.
Ramon Ray:
Hey, where two or more are gathered.
Shane Sams:
That’s right, man. And when Jocelyn got on board, we were able to sit down. And she was like, “Show me everything you did.” So, I gave her the cliff notes version of everything I had learned. And then she goes, “And tell me about Pat again.” And we looked at Pat again. And we both, in that conversation we realized that Pat had, one missing ingredient was creating products that people actually pay for to get a result. He taught them how to get a specific result. So, we started looking at specific results that we could get for people based on our knowledge, wisdom and experience. Well, I was a football coach, I had a really good defense that was perfect for teams that didn’t have good players. It was designed to cover and mask your weaknesses.
Shane Sams:
Nick Sabin in Alabama has six foot five guys that run four five 40s. Well, at little country schools in Kentucky, you’ve got five six guys that run five four 40s. That doesn’t work as good on Friday night as Nick Sabin’s defense. So, I had come up with this defense that was really good at that. And I was like, “Well, I’ll make playbooks.” And Jocelyn was an elementary librarian. Elementary librarians have the hardest job in the school. They’re all by their self usually. There’s usually only one. They have to teach every class, every day. First grade, kindergarten, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth. So, you’re constantly moving back and forth between preps.
Shane Sams:
Well, each prep for one day, if you’re a teacher, and all the teachers out there listening, you know this. It’s two hours to teach one hour. So, you’re talking 10 hours to teach one day. That’s crazy. So, Jocelyn was like, “What if I create lesson plans for elementary librarians?” And we’re like, “That’s great.” A lesson plan for every day, bell to bell instruction, never plan a lesson again. That was our motto. She starts a blog called ElementaryLibrarian.com, I start a football blog and a forum for football coaches. And Jocelyn and me both started podcasting. I actually started a podcast because Pat Flynn had a podcast. Maybe that was one of the differences.
Ramon Ray:
Of course.
Shane Sams:
I started a coaching football podcast, Jocelyn started the Elementary Librarian Podcast. I know that sounds riveting and everybody wants to tune in to the librarians talking about shop. But she started this podcast and we built a little following. She got a couple hundred downloads. She got a couple hundred emails. She got some people reading her blog. Not a big audience at all. And in July of 2012, Jocelyn sent an email out that said, “Hey, if I make these lesson plans for you, will you buy them?” And a bunch of people said yes. But we learned real early on, people will always say yes, but they vote with their wallet. So, we got a PayPal button and we said, “If you buy it, we will make it.” Sent that out, and the first email to a small list of about 250 people for August lesson plans. We made $2,500.
Ramon Ray:
Wow.
Shane Sams:
That was one of our paychecks, the first email was sent, man.
Ramon Ray:
Shane, can I just … Two things to underline. One, you’re talking about you had the community and fan base. We can go too much into this, but I know I talk a lot about this in my book, Celebrity CEO. Build a fan base, ask for a smile before a sale. That’s one. Nobody bought, but just build the community, build the community. Two, minimal viable product. The fancy people, what Reese? I forgot the guy’s startup, the guy who founded LinkedIn.
Shane Sams:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ramon Ray:
That’s two, it’s real, minimal viable product. Three, sell before you have it. We’re not talking about some slimy stuff like whatever. But it’s, especially in the digital product world-
Shane Sams:
It’s a promise.
Ramon Ray:
Ask people, “Hey, if I do this, will you buy it?” It’s kind of like crowd funding in a way. So, I just wanted to underline those three things to get people getting. Shane, go on, please.
Shane Sams:
And it doesn’t take long or a huge audience. And it’s not a big ask. You’re making a promise. We use PayPal because we said to people, “Hey, you can always dispute the charge, you can get your money back. PayPal will give you your money back if we don’t deliver.”
Ramon Ray:
Nothing to lose.
Shane Sams:
So, Jocelyn freaks out now because she’s got to make this product because so many people bought. She makes August, she sends another email. “I’ll make September, if you want September.” $3,000. “I’ll make October.” This goes on and on. And we realized why sell it every month, eventually we could just charge monthly for this, they can get access to everything. So, that’s how the membership model emerges from our initial plans.
Ramon Ray:
Let me guess what you’re going to say.
Shane Sams:
Go ahead.
Ramon Ray:
Get 100 people to pay $50 [crosstalk 00:25:22]. I’m getting it, I’m smart, I’m getting it.
Shane Sams:
That’s all we were looking for, baby. That’s all we needed. So, we go on about May of 2013, we’re up to $5,000 every month, people are buying stuff from us. We look down and we’re like, “I think we could quit our job.” But we were kind of scared. All right, it happened once, will it happen next year? Who knows. We actually sold our house in May and downsized. We had this nice house, 2,400 square foot house, above ground pool, baby, in a nice neighborhood. We sold that, moved into a smaller house that had been built in the ’30s and remodeled in the ’70s. This sweet little old lady had took so good care of it. So, it was a great place to live. And we moved in that, it cut our mortgage in half. So, now we had more money to invest back into the business.
Ramon Ray:
That’s right.
Shane Sams:
We had downsized everything. We work all the way through the summer. June was our first drop because we realized there’s no teachers in school in June. So, there was a huge drop off in revenue. But we emerged in July ready for back to school. In July we do our back to school sale, big launch, we make $15,000 in July of 2013. August of 2013 we make $36,000. At this point, we’re just looking at each other going, “If this is what we can do part time, what could we do full time?” We had also launched USHistoryTeachers.com at that time, which is my history site for history lesson plans. Same model. And I also had launched CoachXO, which was my football coaching site. I did a live clinic that summer in Atlanta and I had real coaches come in live into my community meetups, it was amazing. And that was taking off. On September 27th, 2013, we quit our jobs and we never looked back. But Flipped Lifestyle at this time was not even a blip on the radar, it’s not even a thought.
Ramon Ray:
Sure, of course. But now that’s taking the lessons that you learned all this time, your story now, into Flipped Lifestyle. Let’s migrate to, tell us a bit about Flipped Lifestyle. Not the product so much yet, what people can join and all that. But I’m curious, you’re teaching people what your story is, how to do what you just said. Is that the essence, or am I getting it wrong?
Shane Sams:
Yeah. We kind of accidentally realized that what we did was really different than what a lot of other online business income teachers teach. When we quit our jobs man, everybody thought we were crazy. We were giving up tenure, we were giving up our … Everybody thought we were nuts.
Ramon Ray:
You were.
Shane Sams:
We were. A little bit, we were crazy. I’ll tell you some stories about how … I about got disowned by my mama. She was mad at me, man. But what happened was, people at first were like, “What are you doing?” Then all of a sudden the question started to change to, “Wait, what are you doing?” They started leaning in, instead of pulling back. Jocelyn had a friend named Lindsay, and she came up to her after church one day and said, “I would love to stay home and homeschool my daughter and my son. Do you think that I could do what you guys are doing? Could you show me how to do this?” And they were just like us, they were a working family, had a little boy, little girl. Same scenario. And we said, “Yeah, why not?” So, Jocelyn showed her how to make digital products, we showed her how to get them clean and nice and how to take payments and how to get them out there to the world. We had a lot of scaffolding with her, we really helped her do it alongside us more. But it was the basic process.
Ramon Ray:
And she was a friend close, so that was before Flipped Lifestyle, it was just helping friends and family.
Shane Sams:
Yeah, man. She goes out, puts her digital products out, and within a few months made enough money to quit her job. And she stayed home to homeschool her kids and she still homeschool today, years later. And then one day a few months later after church, her husband came up to me.
Ramon Ray:
He was like, “Wait a minute, I’m hearing my wife say this.”
Shane Sams:
He’s seeing it. Yeah, he’s seeing it.
Ramon Ray:
He’s like, “Don’t tell her I’m talking to you, but …”
Shane Sams:
We were both taking the shortcut in the back of the church to beat the nursery line. So, we ran into each other. We had our own scheme going to get in front of everybody. And he said, “Man, I don’t think that I’ve ever truly thanked you for what you did for our family. It’s amazing that my wife gets to homeschool our kids and we’ve gotten to do a lot of amazing things because of this online income. But I wanted to tell you, I’m chasing a dream now. I have always had a dream to be a professor. But I never borrowed the money because I felt guilty about putting my family in debt to get a PhD. We’re using this money now, I’m going to go back to school and pay for it as I go.” And he eventually became a college professor. He teaches in college now.
Shane Sams:
And man, when he told me that I was just stunned. Now I’m crying, he’s crying by the end of this conversation. The last thing he said to me is, “This really changed our life.” And when I got in the car on the way home from church that day, I told Jocelyn, “This changed our life and this changed their life. Maybe we should go change other people’s lives.” And that’s when we decided to start the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, to start the Flipped Lifestyle community. I had been talking to Pat at this time, we had actually flown out to California to see him. And he invited us to come on his podcast. So, we decided hey, we’re rolling this podcast out, let’s just do it there. And the overwhelming response was like a message from God. We had 120 people join the membership the first webinar. And we were like, “Wow, this is probably where we’re supposed to-”
Ramon Ray:
Tell us Shane, then what are you teaching? Give us a peak inside Flipped Lifestyle, what is the … As you said, there are so many different ways to do it. Help us understand what is this?
Shane Sams:
Yeah. The first thing we do in the process, we have seven phases in the Flipped Lifestyle Blueprint. The first thing that we do is we help you identify your Gov given talents, experiences and wisdom that you can turn into digital products. The digital products are the anchor of whatever you do inside of your membership community. So, it has to go first. We are a product first company, we are not a build it and they will come. This is not Field of Dreams, people. Kevin Costner’s not real in real life. That’s not true. We always want to get that minimum viable product ready to go. And if you just encapsulate your wisdom and your experience, you don’t have to do all this market research and stuff like that. If you had a problem and you solved your problem, somebody else has that problem. You’re not a unique snowflake, just put it out there.
Ramon Ray:
And to be clear, if somebody comes to you and says, “Oh, let me go learn this for two years and come back,” that’s not for you. You’re saying, “No, what already can I slap you in the head at 3:00 AM and you can speak for an hour?” That’s the people you want.
Shane Sams:
Here’s how we say it. Okay? What do you know, that nobody else knows, you know? Think about that.
Ramon Ray:
Got it.
Shane Sams:
What do you know right now, that you just aren’t telling people that you know it? I don’t care if it’s changing tires. Whatever it is, you know something that people behind you don’t know in the journey. That’s what we turn into a product.
Ramon Ray:
Got it.
Shane Sams:
All right, so once we get the idea and the product, boom, we’re good. Now we have to build an audience after that. So, now we go back and we figure out how to create content. Let me simplify this for you all. There’s only three kinds of content: audio, video and text, y’all. This ain’t complicated. Do you want to type, do you want to talk or do you want to be on camera? Just pick one. Whatever you want to do, you do it. Somebody’s going to read it, listen, or watch it. I promise. Okay? So, you start creating content consistently, you start trying to go out and put yourself out there. You want to put yourself out there so you can be in the right place at the right time. And that starts building up the audience, the following, the whatever.
Shane Sams:
After you’ve got your content and your product moving, we show you how to build a business around what we call the Membership Mindset. How to build that content, build that product, how to be consistent, how to market your membership. We’re really big on email marketing. Email marketing is the best way to make money on the internet, don’t let anybody tell you different. If you’ve been on Clubhouse for 65 years, it’s great. But I’m telling you right now, you’re on Clubhouse to get emails and email them. That’s why you’re there. Just another social platform. Whatever it is: Facebook, Twitter, get the email addresses. So, we focus a lot on email marketing.
Shane Sams:
And then we focus on being consistent. Being prolific. Doing stuff every day, and relentlessly following up with service. That’s how we teach people how to build that. We go on deeper in the program teaching you how to manage a community. One person can easily manage 500 to 1,000 people. I mean, it’s not hard in the system that we’ve got created based on forums, based on videos, based on Q and A’s. So, we teach people how to manage their community, how to do those things. And then the goal is just to build the life that you want to build. That’s what Flipped Lifestyle means. The old lifestyle that we’re all taught growing up is go to school, go work for somebody else. When they tell you, you can’t be there for your child, you listen. Because you’re an employee. We flipped that upside down. No, no, no, no. Jocelyn goes on my calendar first. Isaac and Anna go on my calendar first. Then my business, then my other stuff, then everything else.
Shane Sams:
That’s what Flipped Lifestyle really is, it’s for family focused entrepreneurs who want to make a great living on the internet, who want to have time freedom. We don’t call it passive income, but you can make income 24/7. You make sales at night while you’re asleep, you wake up and there’s more there. And to build a stable, predictable income that can give you a really great life. And if you want to push it, you can push it. I just had a guy a couple months ago, he sold his membership for $2 million. Have you ever heard of Brooke Castillo, the Life Coach School?
Ramon Ray:
I have not, a lot of people I haven’t heard of.
Shane Sams:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah-
Ramon Ray:
I’ve got to check them out.
Shane Sams:
Yeah, Brooke Castillo is a top 20 business podcast. She’s a huge podcaster. She started in our community. Her membership made $35 million last year.
Ramon Ray:
That’s too much. That’s too much.
Shane Sams:
Yeah man, I’m telling you man.
Ramon Ray:
Did she have to call her bank and say, “Can you open the vault a bit more?”
Shane Sams:
I don’t know. She was on my podcast, go back and listen. I was talking to her, I said, “Brooke, what in the world?” I remember the day that she decided to do a membership. She’s like, “All right, I’ll do it.” And I talked to her two years later and I’m like, “What are you doing? I’m learning from you, teach me.” But it could be what you want. I mean, some people don’t want that kind of business. They don’t want to grow to $100 million. They want to make great money, pay for their kids’ college, invest, have good retirement. I mean, that’s what … You can build a lifestyle you want, man.
Ramon Ray:
Question. Yeah, I’m curious Shane, who is this not for? Please, you have to tell me. I want to understand who is this not for? Who is this kind of journey, the world we’re in, to a degree, who is this not for? Are there people who you would say, “You know what, you have a great job at whatever big company or small company, you’re happy there, stay there.” Because I know everybody can do it, everybody has knowledge. But who would you say even to go so far, “Hey Ramon, these percent of people have come through Flipped Lifestyle, it didn’t work for them because.” Or whatever version you want to answer me. Who’s it not for?
Shane Sams:
I think there’s a third category, and we kind of touched on it earlier. There’s the entrepreneur, there’s the person who wants total life freedom. That’s like us, you want to work for yourself, you want to be the leader, you want to do that. That’s fine. That’s the people that are going full time making online. Then there’s people like my brother, my brother, he started creating a little website. He started creating a little side income. But he also values, his sliding scale is back on that security.
Ramon Ray:
Absolutely.
Shane Sams:
He likes having the job with a little bit of extra income. If something goes wrong here, he’s got that. That’s where he lives.
Ramon Ray:
And he loves his job, clearly.
Shane Sams:
He loves his job, that’s exactly right. So, he’s fine. The people that I find it’s not for are the people … How can I say this delicately? There’s only two ways to make money, guys. You roll up your sleeves and you open your wallet. You invest time and effort and money. And I do find that some people who are very comfortable who maybe just have a dream that they want to do something, it’s probably not for you. Because it’s going to take time, it’s going to take energy, it’s going to take some work. You also kind of need … You want to have a mission with the membership model. That guy who’s raising backyard chickens man, he’s sustainable farming, treating chickens right. He’s really into that. And it’s a mission for him. And nothing, no business model will give you more impact in the world than the membership model. When you have 200 people and they’re spread over 30, 40 states in the United States and you’re impacting those people, you’re impacting the world. That works really good.
Shane Sams:
I would say people who are … This is not a hobby. If you’re super comfortable and you’re just trying to do something for fun or to prove you can, it’s probably not for you. Now, if you’ve got a mission you’re on fire for and you want to do something, yes. If you want a better life for your family, yes. If you have a catalyst and you’re running from something, it’s great for you too. But any business is not going to work if you’re just not really all in and ready to burn the boats and make it happen.
Ramon Ray:
I love it. It seems to me, Shane-
Shane Sams:
But it can morph, it’s a transformer.
Ramon Ray:
Yeah.
Shane Sams:
You want 1,000? You can get 1,000. You want a million? There’s a path. You just got to figure out how to do it.
Ramon Ray:
And it seems to me that … And you haven’t said this, so if I’m wrong, push back. But not only for those families or individuals who want some extra income, which is one that seems like it’s a thrust of at least the beginning gate for Shane and your lovely wife and family. But it seems like a second part could be a lot of my communities Shane, are consultants and speakers and authors who are stuck. Who don’t know how to do this other side of income that you and I have done well. It seems like they should consider this Flipped Lifestyle [inaudible 00:38:31] it is, but they should consider understanding this. Is that about right?
Shane Sams:
All coaches should have a membership. This is something that I’ve really learned over probably the last year, as we’ve seen a bunch of successful coaching people in our community, in all kinds of spaces, not just business coaches. We’ve got people that are coaching women through grief. We’ve got people coaching people through pregnancies. Whatever it is. If you’re coaching someone through something, you can have … You may love coaching. I keep two coaching groups on Monday, group coaching, 10 people each group. A beginning group and a more advanced group. I do that because I really look forward to that and enjoy hanging out with those members of my community. And it keeps the pulse of those two groups in my brain, so I don’t go too far away from it. You know what I’m saying?
Shane Sams:
But what’s cool is, when you have a membership site, most coaches are building some kind of audience through referrals, speaking, podcasting, whatever. If you can put a percentage of that audience into a nice stable membership, one, you now have a floor of income. So, when five of those clients leave you, you’re not back to zero. Your floor, if you’ve got 100 people paying you $50 a month, instead of zero, your floor is $5,000. So, your floor becomes higher than most people’s ceilings. That’s pretty cool. And it gives you a stable pool of people who are already paying you when you need to fill coaching spots. So, you constantly have this audience, referral, into membership, into coaching. It’s like a circle. And then your coaching clients don’t leave you totally, they just go back down to the membership level most of the time.
Shane Sams:
But it’s great for authors who want to piggy back. Imagine if you’re an author and you write a book. And each chapter of your book, you record a module. And inside the module, you have a community of other people who read your book. Wouldn’t people who read your book want to be inside your membership? Speakers are the same way. You’re going to be on stage, you’re going to be off the stage shaking hands, kissing babies and meeting everybody afterwards. Every time you hand out a business card, and y’all, I still have business cards, y’all should still have business cards. Be old school and have business cards baby. Ramon’s getting his business card out right now, I can tell. There it is. I’m looking at it, that’s right. When you do that, imagine you can say to people, “Hey, if you liked what I did on stage, you should see what I do every month in my community. Because I go live with my community every month.”
Shane Sams:
It fits in perfect. Anybody that’s out there promoting their wisdom, knowledge and experience, 80% of what you say to everybody’s going to be the same. That can go into your product. And then you can cover the 20% through coaching and community. And it’s a membership site. And people will pay you. We are deep in the membership economy: Netflix, Disney Plus, Peacock. There’s a reason all these massive companies have completely shifted in the last few years to this recurring revenue model. Because it creates stability and predictability. And anyone can do it on a micro level. You don’t need that many people to make great money online.
Ramon Ray:
You’re right, Shane. I think it’s amazing when you think about the old software back in the days that we would buy on CD. On one hand it was nice just paying $200 for the software. I don’t have to pay anything else. On one hand. But I must say, paying $30 a month for $50, $100 a month for the software, you’re paying more in the long run. But it’s refreshed, man. Every month, every week, every year, it’s new. New things.
Shane Sams:
And it’s not just the content. I want to stress that too, man. Don’t get me wrong, the content is the seed. People come for the product, but they stay a member because of the people.
Ramon Ray:
Yes. Yeah, that’s right.
Shane Sams:
My people, we do co-working sessions where we literally just get together and my employees, whenever they’re working on something, they’ll go live for our members. And they’ll be like, “What are you working on?” Some people will be building a blog, some people … And they just sit there and work together. We have Q and A’s twice a month, I do two Q and A’s a month with my community and I answer questions. We have forums where our community can support each other. Someone will ask a question, five other members will answer it or point it in the right direction. That community and that feel of being a part of that community, people will come to you and your personality because they relate to you and your personality. And you will build a tribe of people who have that personality.
Shane Sams:
We say family focused entrepreneurs right on our podcast start. It’s overt. Don’t come here as a 80 hour a week worker living on Thailand on $6 a day. You are not going to fit in, I’m sorry. But families and people. If you have those kind of values, we’re going to draw you in.
Ramon Ray:
Yes. And I think it’s important what you’re doing because Shane could’ve said, “Hey listen, if you want to have tequila every week and go and bar surf,” or whatever you want to do in your life, which is fine for you, it’s a choice. But I think what Shane is saying, as Seth Godin says, he’s raising his flag, we serve these kinds of people who want this kind of life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Shane Sams:
And everybody’s welcome, but this is the language we’re speaking.
Ramon Ray:
Yes, yes. I love it.
Shane Sams:
You know what I mean? And the more overt you are in your content, the more of your people you’ll draw in. I usually kick off our podcast, I try to talk about what happened with my family that week. We call them can’t miss moments. So, we’ll bring those in, like what was something that happened that never … I just went to Disney and Universal for 12 days. I never could’ve afforded that as a school teacher. So, I talk about it. And then I read a Bible verse at the end of my all of my podcasts because I’m just being overt. I read my Bible. And if you read your Bible, you’re going to get along good here. If you don’t, that’s fine. I will still help you. I don’t care. I’ve had everybody from every race, religion, everything you can image in the Flipped Lifestyle community, all over the world, countries all over the world.
Ramon Ray:
That means they’re there, because they are attracted to what you said.
Shane Sams:
That’s right.
Ramon Ray:
It’s a self-
Shane Sams:
Just know that that is going to be part of the process. And it’s fine. You can accept and reject any part of the process, that’s cool. I just want you to know that we’re all in this together. That’s what we want out of a membership. It’s not you’re better because you bought Shane and Jocelyn’s product. You’re better together because Shane and Jocelyn are with you and so are hundreds of other people from around the world. Elementary Librarians, we get you. No one else understands you in your school, but there are hundreds of elementary librarians in this room right now that you’re connected to. And that’s the power of what you can build in the membership model.
Ramon Ray:
I love that. Listen, Shane Sams, one more time give us the link. Give us the information, where should people go? And we’re going to be pushing this out quite a bit because I think all the Smart Hustle Nation people should be investing their time and energy in this. Shane, where do you want people to go to learn more about Flipped Lifestyle?
Shane Sams:
Hold on one second.
Ramon Ray:
All right, all right.
Shane Sams:
Because I had a special link and it is now not loading.
Ramon Ray:
Oh, I know what the link is. I have it here too. I think it’s slash Smart Hustle.
Shane Sams:
There we go. That’s what I’m talking about, man. All right, well the first thing I would say is thank you, man. I appreciate anybody that lets me come and talk to their people. I just really appreciate you letting us come on today.
Ramon Ray:
Absolutely.
Shane Sams:
You can check us out every Tuesday and Saturday on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, that’s the best place to get into what we do. Every week I bring in real people from our community and I give them a one hour coaching call on air, so that everybody can learn what to do. The Shane Sams Show comes out on Thursdays, that’s where I talk to amazing people like Ramon, he’s been on there before, you know what I’m saying? I talk to amazing influencers, authors, experts. It’s just a laid back conversation with me trying to learn from somebody. That’s what it is. Also, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/SmartHustle, F-L-I-P-P-E-Dlifestyle.com/SmartHustle. And we have a free idea training, I pulled it right out of the community. It’ll help you find your God given talents and experiences that you can turn into a membership. It’ll also help you research that idea to make sure it can make money online before you go too far down the rabbit hole. I highly recommend everybody who wants to start this membership journey go take that course. That’s FlippedLifestyle.com/SmartHustle. Appreciate you, man.
Ramon Ray:
Hey Shane, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time with us today. And I encourage everybody to check that out, really going to be an amazing resource for you. Be blessed and have a great day.