Flipping Your Lifestyle For More Travel Opportunities (Ep. 31)

Transcript

Drew (00:13):
Hello everybody and welcome to Travel Fuel's Life, the show we share stories, tips and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hamish, and after recent episodes where we've been optimizing our money with cheap flights and avoiding baggage fees and utilizing those miles and points, it's time to start flipping our income. And this is a concept that Jocelyn and Shane Sams know very well. They've taken control of their lives and their income by moving from teaching jobs into earning enough money on their own to be able to travel on their own terms. So to live a travel lifestyle, yes we can work for others and make that work, but wouldn't it be great to be able to set your own schedule and not only survive, but thrive on the road? So for my home here in Greenville, South Carolina, it's time to jump on the worldwide web and find out how Jocelyn and Shane have flipped their lifestyle. Hi guys. Welcome.

Sam (01:16):
Hey Drew. Man, thanks for having us on the show.

Drew (01:18):
It it's fun hearing somebody with pipes like mine.

Jocelyn (01:23):
Yeah. That makes one of us. I'm kind of the quieter half of this couple.

Sam (01:29):
Yeah, I, I've, I've always had a really loud voice and I've always had a face for radio. So

Drew (01:34):
This is really good

Sam (01:35):
Thing that we're talking on a podcast. Actually, it's funny, when I look back when I was a kid and I had this cousin who was really mean to me and he would always call me mouth because I was so loud, right. So I'm like, brother, this mouth is making a lot of money now. So

Drew (01:51):
You know

Sam (01:51):
What I mean? So I took my greatest weakness and turned it into my strength.

Drew (01:55):
Nice. So do you get people when they say, what do you do? And you say, I do a podcast. They go, Ooh, yeah, you have the voice for that.

Jocelyn (02:02):
Most people around here don't know what a podcast is.

Sam (02:04):
Yeah. We usually tell people and we kind of do a radio show and then I have to know that the person understands what a podcast is before I talk

Drew (02:12):
To them. That's so funny. That sounds like me trying to translate it to my mother. I was in radio many, many years ago, and so she understood that, but she's like, what's that thing you're doing now?

Sam (02:22):
Exactly. On demand radio mom? It's on demand radio.

Drew (02:25):
Yep, absolutely. So you guys have built a thriving online business and you got money in the bank. And I know my listeners are going, man, that'd be awesome because then I can do all the traveling that I want to do. But six years ago you weren't quite in that same position. So I want to give people a chance to hear where you were at that time period and some of the steps that you took to pull out of that.

Sam (02:54):
So yeah, back in about 2011, 2012, Jocelyn and I were actually school teachers. Jocelyn was an elementary school librarian, and I was a social studies teacher and a football coach. I mean, we were the stereotypical school teachers. We would just go in and in and taking care of the kids, coming home, taking care of our kids and just living that. We like to look, looking back, we call it the good enough lifestyle now, the house, the two cars, the 2.2 kids, all that good stuff. And we were kind of just going along. Everything was fairly normal. We were living just a middle class lifestyle. We were not traveling much. We had went to one trip ever. We went on a cruise before our kids were born. Oh wow. And after that, there was no traveling at all cause we couldn't afford it. Cause we were school teachers in Kentucky.

Jocelyn (03:45):
And at that point we were pretty much just in survival mode because we had these two little bitty kids. So back in 2012, when we got started, our children were three and 18 months.

Sam (03:56):
So I mean no money in the budget. We were living paycheck to paycheck. And it was one of those paychecks that ran out on Thursday and you got paid on Friday. Right, right. But that was what everybody else did. It was just normal. And we actually might still be in that place if it wasn't for a really bad experience we had in our life. We found out that one of our kids was actually being mistreated at a daycare center. They were just a lot of middle class people, normal people. We were dropping our kids off at daycare so we could go to work. And we found out that one of the workers there was actually locking our son in a bathroom in a dark bathroom for hours and hours at a time. And the day that we found out, I went to my principal and said, Hey look, I've got to take off work. I need a day off to deal with this. And it was right in the middle of the school day. And I said, I c, can you please go watch my class? Can you get me a substitute? I need to leave. And my boss at the time looked at me and said, you need to handle your personal problems after work. I know your son needs you, but I need you to.

(05:02):
And it really sparked at me in that moment that I had kind of sold out my family and sold out my life for a steady paycheck and some health insurance. And I left work that day. And on my way to get my son away from this situation, I said to myself, I'm going to do something, anything to get away from having to rely on someone else for my employment to rely on somebody else for my income. And that's kind of what sent us down the road of looking into starting our own business, maybe being entrepreneurs and doing the online thing.

Drew (05:37):
So when something like that happens, how and how did you get to the point where you've been working for somebody else and now you're going to start working for yourself? Was that just something that you just started churning the wheels on and throwing things against the wall to see would happen? Or did you have some guidance along the way? How did you work that out?

Jocelyn (06:02):
Well, I'll tell you, it wasn't easy and people don't like to hear that. They want to hear that you just waved your magic wand and everything worked out nicely. But that wasn't exactly how it happened. So Shane is a very obsessive person. He gets really into stuff. So he starts coming up with all these crazy ideas. Most of them are completely ludicrous and probably would never work.

Sam (06:22):
We looked at all sorts of things. We looked at everybody else does. You're network marketing, let's look at that. We're like, no, that's scammy and sleazy and it gets on my nerves. Let's like that. And he's

Jocelyn (06:31):
Like, let's mow yards. And I'm like, bro, you don't even mow our yard.

Sam (06:37):
And Jo Jocelyn even at one point, bought a sewing machine and we were trying to make curtains and sell them on Etsy and eBay and stuff, and Wow.

Jocelyn (06:45):
Yeah, except I wasn't good at making curtains.

Sam (06:47):
Then we realized Jocelyn couldn't had no talent for sewing whatsoever. But we tried a lot of things. The internet really wasn't back then. It was a little different than it is now. There wasn't all this online economy just exploding everywhere. I mean, even Amazon wasn't profitable back then, so it was like we dearly didn't know anything about it. And one day when I was mowing my grass, I had kind of taken to listen to business podcasts, trying to come up with something, real estate, all these things that people try to talk about online. And I stumbled across this guy who had gotten fired. He had gotten laid off at work, and I was just listening to his story on this random podcast I found one day. And he actually went out and created some kind of study guide for a test, and he sold it to all these people who were reading his blog for 49 bucks.

(07:41):
And when he launched it, he made nine grand. And I was riding my lawnmower, my foot hits a break, almost fell off the thing. And I was like, this dude just made nine grand for emailing stuff to people. I'm like, I can email things to people. I could make a pdf. Right? Yeah. So I just, I jumped off my lawnmower and I ran inside and I told Jocelyn about this story I just heard. And I'm like, we're pretty smart people. Like surely we could create something that we could sell to people and it would basically be they send us money on PayPal and we email them the files. So we started coming up with ideas. Jocelyn made some lesson plans for elementary librarians. We started selling those online. I made playbooks for football coaches. I always said, I marketed it to coaches with really slow unathletic players, yet still had to win on Friday night. And we started making these playbooks. We just made all these digital products and we went out there, we worked our butt off, we built audiences around these products, and we were able to build two really good companies around digital products. And that eventually led us to quit our jobs.

Drew (08:44):
Well, this is interesting because I hear this a lot. You hear this a lot in the social media realm where people will have all sorts of advice for you to get started out and do this and do that. And here's 20 steps to get yourself rolling in the right direction. And a lot of times I find that some of those ideas are either dried out, kind of run their course, or maybe that the person who is trying to implement these things doesn't have the focus or direction to get them done. It's like they're missing some of that, they, they're missing a secret ingredient. And so what do you think the secret ingredient was for you in hearing this person's advice and then you getting out there because you came out of school, you didn't come out of a social media world where I've been dealing in the last six, seven years, and yet you made it work right off the bat. So what kind of functions did you go through? What little tools did you learn along the way or who'd you rely on to get that direction that you needed?

Sam (09:55):
I think it was actually good that we weren't in the entrepreneur space when we came out because we had a chance to really think of it real people. So we decided to create actual solutions to actual problems in real people's lives. And I think the big key is that we didn't focus on let's build a social media following. Let's go get a hundred thousand followers and ask them what they want. We said, no, who is a real person with a real problem that needs a solution? Teachers need lesson plans. If a teacher, they don't buy our lesson plans, then a teacher has to get home at four o'clock and spend two to three hours planning their lesson for the next day. That's time away from their kids. That's time away from their spouse. That's time away from their cell, that's time they can't be on the road traveling and they don't get to do those things.

(10:46):
So we really honed in on a need a solution to an actual problem. And we created that same thing for a football coach. What is the football coaches on Saturdays are either the happiest people on the planet or the saddest people on the planet because you either won or lost on Friday night. So we said, Hey, why do most coaches lose? It's cause their defense is terrible or they can't design it correctly because their players suck. So I basically created products that solved real problems and were kind of spread out over time. It wasn't this one hit wonder launch model thing. It was like, teacher's going to need lesson plans in September, they're also going to need them in October, November, December. So we created products that had a lot of staying power and we created real products that solved real problems. They weren't just theory or they were practical in use. So people were able to keep using them over and over again.

Jocelyn (11:40):
And I think also we weren't really in it to get rich quick. Basically what we were trying to do is just get extra money to have options. We didn't go into it thinking, oh well this is going to help us quit our job. I think Shane was more there. I was more like, okay, well let's just make some extra money and see where it goes. Yeah, we'll just see what happens. So yeah, I think it's one of those things you don't know what you don't know. We didn't really know anything about this world. So we just went into it and we were like, okay, well let's just build this thing and see what happens. We

Sam (12:12):
Basically said to each other, what would we buy? What would we actually buy from someone online? And when you start there, it doesn't turn into, well, I'm bu I've never started a business, but I'm going to be a business expert. None of that crap. It's like, what is a real person actually need? Let's make that and then see if they'll give us money for it. And that's kind of the path that we took. And even today when we help other people do this, we always tell people product first, you got to be able to solve a real problem that you have actually solved. In the past, I had actually turned around football programs. Jocelyn had actually taught in the classroom. So it was really easy for us to have ownership and expertise and claim expertise because we'd done it. And I think that's where a lot of people get off the deep end with it.

Drew (13:01):
So you didn't get all wrapped up in a lot of the details of let's just create the perfect education plan. You were creating plans that you saw the exact need because you came from that background and you knew the holes that needed to be filled. Then basically,

Sam (13:19):
Well Jocelyn tried to find these and couldn't find them.

Jocelyn (13:22):
So I spent time searching for these specific types of lesson plans that I wanted to use and I couldn't find it. So I'm like, you know what? If I'm looking for this, probably other people are too. So I'm just going to create it a little bit at a time and put it out there and see if people buy it. So I just made 30 days worth of lessons and I would sell them. And then when people bought those, I was like, okay, I'll make 30 more days worth of lessons.

Sam (13:44):
And it wasn't a lot of people when we first started out, it took us probably I'd say four to six months to settle in on ideas and actually go all in on them. And then once we've launched our product, it still took us another 12 months before we were comfortable enough to go walk in and turn in our letter of resignations.

Jocelyn (14:04):
And some of us were more comfortable than others. I was, yeah,

Sam (14:05):
Jocelyn was not ready. She wanted to wait. She wanted to wait one more year and I was ready to go. We had already sold our house to make our bills go down. So I was like, we've already done this, let's just go all in with it. But when we launched, we only had 200 emails on an email list and very small little Twitter followings that we had went out and hustled to build. So it wasn't a huge amount of people that were following us, but we created really good products that people needed. So if you have 200 people and then 50 of them buy and it's $50, you just made 2,500 bucks. So that's kind of what we did. Just each month, make that 2,500, grow it to 3000, grow it to 4,000, grow it to 5,000. And as we did that over the next year, we looked down at one point and we're like, man, this could actually be a steady income. That's as much as one of us makes teaching. Why couldn't this grow into something that could sustain our life?

Drew (14:59):
And mowing for millions was not going to get you there. I take it,

Jocelyn (15:04):
That would be

Sam (15:04):
A great digital product, mowing

Drew (15:07):
For

Sam (15:07):
Millions. I need to make that. Yeah, that was not going to get us there. This was scalable and that was like, it was scalable. It was location independent. I mean, we could sell these things to anyone anywhere and we could be anywhere we wanted while we were selling them. So once we figured out how this digital product thing worked, it was really easy to see where it could go.

Drew (15:27):
How did your money consciousness change after that? Mean, what's funny is I will sometimes be talking to people about bills that I have to pay. We're just an episode about miles and points and trying to eek as many miles and points as you can so that you can save dollars here and save dollars there. And I hear people saying, man, I don't know how I'm going to pay off that $300 credit card. And I owning my own business for all these years. I have a $3,000 credit card and I don't worry about it where somebody else is worrying about a $300 credit card. How was that metamorphosis for, you mean, did you feel once you started making all of that money really quickly, oh now we got to spend to match that? Or did you still start churning out other goals and things you wanted to do to give yourself that stability?

Jocelyn (16:24):
I think we kind of have a healthy combination of both, to be honest. So at first it was sort of like, okay, this is a miracle and this is a one time thing. But then it kept happening. We kept being able to replicate those results again and again. And so then you're kind of like, oh, okay, well maybe this is going to be sustainable. Maybe

Sam (16:44):
I can spend some of this on a trip to Disney or you know what I mean? Maybe we can do something like that. I mean, it was kind of weird because as a teacher in Kentucky mean my salary was let probably $3,000 a month. That's what I was bringing home. It wasn't a lot of money. So the first month that we actually made money, we made 2,500 bucks somewhere in the two thousands. And then we grew it up into the three thousands. But then in July of 2013, we made $15,000 in one month. Then August hit, we made $36,000. Now this is a year's salary in one month, and that was actually the month that we had the talk with each other. If we're doing this part-time, what could we do? Right? And that was when it started getting out of control, weird kind of money.

(17:33):
What do you do with all this money? And then, so we quit our job in September of 2013. A year later in August we made $144,000. And that was, you couldn't eat, no one could even tell you about that much money. No one could even prepare you for that. When we launched our, Jocelyn launched a second edition of her lesson plans, and it was, the first week was like 75 grand. So it was unbelievable kind of money. And it really did make you think. But then you started thinking to yourself, what happens to lottery winners? They always spend all their money. We can't screw this up. So we started researching all these books and things like that and we found a really good book called Profit First by Mike Mcz. And that kind of helped us set some guardrails around our money. We have a certain amount that's set aside for taxes.

(18:26):
We have a certain amount that's set aside as profit. We can set it on fire if we want to. It doesn't matter. We have our payment. And we just learned over the next few years how to manage that amount of money basically. And then when we sold our company, you're sitting there looking at your bank account going there. I didn't even know there were that many zeros in the bank account. Yeah. So I was like, it's just a learning experience as you grow. And you really do have to be careful because you can become a lot less frugal very fast if you're not careful once you become successful. I

Drew (18:55):
What would you put your success in building that fast?

Sam (19:01):
Well, we have a saying over flip five style only two ways to build an audience. You can roll up your sleeves or open your wallet. That's the only two ways to do it. So again, we do both. We are very prolific and consistent content creators. We put a lot of research into our content. We do look what people are looking for. We don't try to really game the search engines to show up. We have a, it's like my old football philosophy was if you practice blocking and tackling every day, then at the game you're going to block and tackle well. So we know that if we release podcasts regularly, if we get on social media and do Facebook Live, if we do our YouTube channel, if we go on other people's podcasts like you're doing now, if we do all of the things we're supposed to do consistently and prolifically, then the word will get out.

(19:49):
And now on the backside of all that hard work with our sleeves rolled up, take your best things that are getting any kind of traction and go buy some ads. Doesn't have to be a lot of money, 10, 15 bucks a day, whatever. And go and force yourself into people's news feeds. Force yourself into the search results so that you can give yourself a better chance to grow. So we are definitely a marathon, not a sprint company. We are a get out and do the work. We like to knock on the doors, shake the hands and say hi to people. So that's the best way we found to grow everything. Cause you can go crazy trying to game Facebook's face ad algorithm, right? Just make stuff man that and make sure all this stuff you make points to that product you created. And eventually people, plenty of people will buy it.

(20:37):
You only need, we we're big on membership sites now. Our entire business model is built on recurring revenue. We want to create forever customers. We don't want to launch and sell you something once. And we figured out a long time ago, if you get a hundred people to pay you $50 a month, that's $60,000 a year. So if you want to make a good living, all you got to do is find a hundred people to join your membership and you're going to make a good living online that's going to create enough time to go travel and do all the things that you want.

Drew (21:03):
So when we're talking about all of this, one of the things that was the reason that you wanted to get away from working for somebody else was that there's a lack of freedom. And now you've got a business that is blowing up. How did you get yourself to not become chained to the business and fall into the same trap of being a slave to yourself rather than to somebody else?

Jocelyn (21:29):
So that's kind of hard, especially when you start out and you're growing because it's really exciting. You want to grow the business, you want to continue to put yourself into the business. But the thing about it for us is that we also have two kids that are growing along with our business. So that's a whole thing that is a mantra for us is that's why we call it the flipped lifestyle because we put our life ahead of our business. So our kids are involved in a lot of different things. So that kind of requires us to not give our lives to the business, which is good. And we also have some people that we work with inside of our business that are key. And we know that if we walk away from it for a little while, that everything is still going to be okay.

Sam (22:15):
Yeah. So we've, and even in the very beginning when we were building our business, the one thing, the reason our inspiration for starting this was our kids being there for them. So when we first started out, we would draw out the week like 168 hours on a grid, and we always put time with our kids and time with each other on the calendar first. And that kind of as we moved forward in our business every week, we just kept putting our kids and each other on the calendar first. So it's kind of always been sort of a priority. But also too, we don't want to work 50 hours a week. I'd rather make less money. So we just plan to not work more than 20 or 25 hours a week. And we fill the rest of the time up with so much life stuff that we don't have time to work on the business anymore than what we block out for it.

Drew (23:07):
So you've had business decisions probably that you have made that decision based more on the family than where the business needed to go

Sam (23:16):
Without

Jocelyn (23:17):
Coaching? Yeah,

Sam (23:17):
Absolutely. Yeah, we've had a lot of opportunities that we've passed up just because life's pretty good. I mean, it can keep getting better, but you know what I'm saying? It's like I can go work for 70 hours on that affiliate launch, or I can spend 70 hours in Mexico at a all inclusive resort. I mean, we just kind of balance that out. How much do you really need? Right?

Drew (23:39):
Yeah. So do you doing your podcast, do your podcast from the road at all or are you mostly just record them all while you're back at home? And because I've heard you mention that you've lived kind of a location independent lifestyle, how often are you on the road and do you take your podcast with you when you go?

Sam (24:02):
We usually schedule the podcast at home.

Jocelyn (24:05):
So we just scheduled that for times where our, we're going to be at home anyway, just because it's a lot of stuff to take with you.

Sam (24:11):
We don't want to drag the mics, the mixer or anything.

Jocelyn (24:13):
We, we've taken it before and TSA really doesn't like all those wires.

Sam (24:19):
Whenever we bring our stuff, they're like, what is in here? You know what I'm saying? It's like we're carrying a bomb or something.

Jocelyn (24:24):
So we get checked every time that we bring our stuff. So we're kind of like, so we will bring the laptops and I

Sam (24:31):
Do have this little microphone too. It's made by Sure. That I can put on the bottom of my iPhone. And we have recorded episodes on that before, just going back and forth. Yeah,

Jocelyn (24:39):
I can remember when we went to Asia. We went to the Philippines back in 2015 and we were trying to get our bodies adjusted to the time difference because it was a 12 hour time difference. So a couple of nights before we left, we started staying up at night and sleeping during the day. Well, anyway, I can remember on the way to the Philippines, we were recording podcast on the airplane because we didn't want to go to sleep. We were so tired. But we were recording because we were like, we can't sleep right now. We have to stay

Sam (25:06):
Away. Oh no. Right. Exactly. But most of the stuff that we do on the road though, I would say is more like I'll write emails and stuff while we travel. One of the great things about being location independent is when you get a takeback, a lot of time that's kind of wasted. Usually when we go somewhere, Jocelyn will drive and I'll type emails or I'll drive and she'll work on something that she needs to work on in the forums or our community. Right. So you get a lot of that time back. But usually when we get to the trip, we also do a lot of travel videos. We do travel reviews. We've got a Disney cruise video that's got almost 200,000 views. We went on the Disney Dream two years ago. So usually if we're on the road, we're recording our kids and making YouTube videos and more

Jocelyn (25:48):
Lifestyle stuff like that. Right. Than business. Yeah.

Drew (25:51):
So where have you traveled to then? You said you went to Philippines, is that right?

Sam (25:57):
Oh yeah. We've been to Korea, we've been to the Philippines. We've been to Mexico more times than I can count. Nice. We took the kids to Jamaica last year. Gosh. We've

Jocelyn (26:07):
Been to The Bahamas,

Sam (26:09):
Been to The Bahamas and the Nassau. And it's funny because until our kids have been to more countries in their first 10 years of life than Jocelyn and I combined went to in our first 30 years of life, and I didn't even fly on an airplane until my twenties.

Jocelyn (26:28):
Yeah. I was 21.

Sam (26:29):
And my kids, our kids have been on, they, it's nothing. They can walk into an airport right now and find their way to the plane. Just from the last few years of being able to do this, so mean we travel quite a bit. Our little girl's in a, she's on an all-star cheer team. We don't do school sports because we don't like to be so confined to school right now. So we have nine trips to nine different cities next year on all of her little things. So that's fun. Isaac does travel basketball and I mean, we've just been all over. I remember the first trip that we took after we quit our job was to San Diego, California. And we had never been there and never even thought about going there before. And I just remember getting on the airplane and flying to California blew my ever-loving mind that we were even doing that because we had created this lifestyle that let us do it. So

Drew (27:22):
Did you go to Disneyland?

Sam (27:25):
We did not,

Jocelyn (27:26):
No. We went to a business, it was a

Sam (27:28):
Business trip. Oh, okay. It, we went to a business thing one day and then we spent four days in San Diego. So

Jocelyn (27:34):
Yeah, I can remember not too long after we started this and we had quit our jobs, it had snowed a bunch up here and we were kind of like, we're over this. So we looked at the map of the country and we found the one spot in the country. It was really cold this winter. So we found the one spot in the country that was still really warm, which was Miami, Fort Lauderdale. And we just got on a plane and flew down

Sam (27:57):
There. There was an ice storm coming. Oh no. And we just left. We just left.

Jocelyn (28:00):
And I can remember my neighbor was like, I knew I had to look and see what you all did because I couldn't believe that you just up and went to Florida and left

Sam (28:07):
Us all back in the ice storm. We just abandoned the whole town basically. Nice. That's what we did. Tell you what's funny about Disneyland, we, we've almost planned that trip two or three times, but we're just so close to Disney World being on this side in Florida. But Disney World cracks me up because we go to Disney World probably every year now. And I remember when I was a teacher thinking about taking my kids to Disney World, and I literally knew I would have to plan that trip for 10 years to do it once and save enough money. Yeah. Cause Disney's crazy expenses. Oh, it's out of control. Yeah. And now we literally go to Disney every year. I mean, we just go at least every other year at least. Yeah. We've been four times since in the last five years.

Drew (28:48):
It's funny because my dad used to complain about the prices at Disney World when he took us when we were kids because my aunt lived down not maybe 10 miles from Disney World. So we would go down and I remember him saying $17, who wants to pay $17 to come to this park

Sam (29:10):
In 75? Now I think it's

Jocelyn (29:12):
Over a hundred.

Sam (29:13):
It might be a hundred. I don't even know what.

Drew (29:15):
Yeah, it has definitely changed. That's crazy.

Sam (29:17):
Yeah. Well, the Disney cruise also blew our mind too, because we had been on a carnival cruise about 15 years ago to be able to afford and then go and do the Disney cruise. That was also an eye-opener of kind of how far we had came. You know what I mean? Not saying that because that's important in life, but it really is kind of a measuring stick of the difference your life over so many years. You can literally do things you had never dreamed of before. And the internet makes crazy stuff possible now, even if it's just, we tell people all the time, look, we have some people that come into the community. They don't want to quit their jobs. They just want to make a thousand dollars a month on a side hustle so they can take the $12,000 trip a year, they can go to Hawaii or whatever. And just that that's even possible in the time we live in. And that was not possible 20 years ago. You couldn't just couldn't mow for millions. So it's insane not to take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there because there are a lot of opportunities out there if you just go out there and look for something that you can do.

Drew (30:22):
Right. Well, tell me about flipped lifestyle then, and because we hear a lot of people say business coaching and that sort of thing to get you started. But if somebody was coming to Flipped Lifestyle, what is the process for them to get involved in the community?

Sam (30:42):
Well, I tell lemme you why we started Flip Livestock first of all, because we did not kind of the reluctant, I don't even the word use the word coach, but we're the reluctant kind of coaches in this regard. When we started and we had created the Golden Goose, the literal passive income business based on digital products. And we were kind of just content to roll forward with that and grow those companies that we had created. But a friend of Jocelyn's came up to her after church one day. Her name was Lindsay. And she said, Hey, I would love to learn more about what you guys are doing. It's clearly working. I mean, you've quit your jobs, you're going on trips, you're doing these things, but I want to stay home and homeschool my daughter, but that would require me quitting my job. So maybe if I could make some extra money online, then I could do that.

(31:35):
So that was the first time anyone had really, it wasn't like, yo, how can I go to Fort Lauderdale? It was more like, Hey, can you help me? So Jocelyn showed her how to create the product that was based on the need and then how to go out and hustle and get in into a place where people would buy it. And lo and behold, a few months later, she quit her job and she stayed home to homeschool her daughter. And then her husband walked up to me one day after church later on, a few months later, and he kind of had a tear in his eye and he was like, I just want to make sure you guys know how thankful we are and how much we appreciate you for showing us this. Because not only is she able to live her dream and stay home and homeschool our daughter, but I'm actually going to take that money and we're going to take a trip that we've been planning for years but never could afford.

(32:24):
And after I get back, I'm going to start my PhD program in the fall because we've got enough money now I can go back to school. Nice. And this kind of just was so overwhelming and so mind blowing to us. And I told Jo this story on the way home from church, and I remember distinctly looking over at her and saying, if what we have figured out changed our lives and it also changed Lindsay and her husband's life, then this could probably change a lot of people's lives and we really need to tell people about this. So we went back and we deconstructed the 13 months leading up to the first dollar we made till the day we turned in our letter of resignation and we kind of created this plan and we called it the Flip Your Life Blueprint. And it was month by month exactly what we did in the exact order to start from nothing and quit our jobs. And that's what the core of Flip Your Life Community. We have a community of hundreds of family focused entrepreneurs from all over the world who are coming in there. Some people have, people are already making some money or they've started their website and they jump into the blueprint where they are and they follow it through to completion.

Jocelyn (33:33):
And the whole point of it is just having people there for accountability, having people there to ask questions to celebrate wins with. We actually choose our podcast guest from our community. So people who are active in posting, that's how they're able to get a free call on our podcast. And

Sam (33:52):
Our actual podcast is not an interview style. How did you become successful? Hey, you are stuck and we're here to help you because we've done it before and we've seen hundreds and hundreds of people through our community. So essentially you stuck. What do we do to get you stuck?

Jocelyn (34:07):
Essentially they interview us.

Sam (34:09):
Okay. They ask us questions and we help them solve their, it's like a coaching call live on it. Yeah, yeah.

Drew (34:13):
Basically. That's interesting. Yeah.

Sam (34:14):
Yeah. But that's what we created it for. It wasn't like we never wanted to position ourselves as get

Jocelyn (34:21):
Rich quick, get

Sam (34:21):
Rich quick, some of these experts or anything like that. It's more of we were alone and we stumbled through this together and somehow by the grace of God, all the pieces we figured out in order and it worked right. And we want other people to not have to do that to go on that journey alone. We want to, you're not only do you have me and Jocelyn to answer questions and help you avoid pitfalls, but you have hundreds of other people that you can interact with and talk to people with the same goals and the same dreams and also people with some of the answers you need to put those pieces in place. So that's how we built the community was what are all the things we wish we had had, and maybe we could have succeeded faster or better or not went through the pains that we went through. And it's all right there in the Flip Your Life community.

Drew (35:06):
Yeah. Well, and I think it's very powerful for you to go out and tell your story like this too, because coaches are a dime a dozen and you don't really know what you're going to get out of that coaching, whether that person's just coaching because they want to make money or if they actually have something that's going to help you through the system. And I'm sure you probably have to come overcome a little bit of that sometimes with people where they're like, oh, is this just another get rich scheme?

Sam (35:34):
For sure. I think people hear us though and they hear our country accents and they're like, well, these people could do it. Surely I don't think these people are smart enough to make it up. It must

Jocelyn (35:41):
Be real. I know. And really truly, there are some days where we're like, how do we even make money? Oh yeah. We don't know. I

Sam (35:48):
Think why people do love our community is, and on our site we have hundreds of success stories, just people come in and they do it and it's like, I can't believe some of the things that people do online in our community. We had one guy come in one time and he was in what Bonai Trees, you cut 'em and stuff. Well, he was like a bonai tree guy, but for Venus Fly Traps. So he was a master at keeping Venus Fly Traps alive. And that dude launched this product and made 20 grand or something crazy and we're like, it's just amazing once people get in there and find their niche and find their idea that they go forward and do it. But we do have to overcome some of that. But we're kind of out of the business of convincing you it's real. If you don't think it's real.

(36:33):
I mean can't make you think that, but if you want to do it and you want to go through a process that actually works, go for it. And also, we don't sell the Lamborghini. We're not riding around. We're our Instagram. We're riding around in silver minivans stuff. Yeah. It's like we're not trying to convince you that you're going to buy a Bugatti. I just want to be able to help you make enough money for your next vacation, pay your mortgage, or maybe quit your job if you want to. So we're kind of out of the convincing game, I guess. Well,

Drew (37:00):
I don't know if you ever watched the show The Prophet with Marcus Lemons.

Sam (37:04):
Oh yeah. We love that show.

Drew (37:05):
Yeah. What's interesting is if you watch his first three or four episodes, he comes in this stylish Jaguar and he's showing off that he's this rich, successful guy. And then his show just evolved into, now he does shows where he is sitting there with his producer just chatting back and forth about things, not really worried about what he looks like and all of that. So there's definitely a lot to be said for success and not having to put on a show and just be who you are and be real. And I'm sure that feels great for you guys to be in that position.

Jocelyn (37:42):
Absolutely. And there are people out there who are looking for something different. There are people who aren't our people and they don't like our laid back Southern vibe and that's totally cool. We are just looking for the people who do like that.

Sam (37:55):
And that's why the very we, we say things, look, roll up your sleeves and open your wall. It's not going to be easy. This is a very, very hard journey. And you are going to have parts of it where you're like, man, this, I don't even know if I can do this. Right. And that's when you need a community, that's when you need people to go and rally around you and hold you accountable and pick you up. And that's why we created the Flip Your Life Community in the way that we did. It wasn't this magic guru who lives on a mountain and has all the answers like Jocelyn and I do not have all the answers, but we can help you find the answers. And maybe someone in our community has the answers and it's a bunch of family focused people like that's right on the front of our website, family focused entrepreneurs. Because we want to make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons. You're not just doing it because you want the billions and the millions and you want to be in the 0.01% or anything like that. No, I want more freedom. I want see the world. I want to show my kids the world. I want to spend time with my kids. That's why I'm building this thing that's going to create the income that makes that possible. And we want to make sure we're always open and honest with that in our brand.

Drew (39:05):
Well, that's fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you guys spending the time with me today. And when people want to find out more information, are you guys on social media and what's your web address so that people can get in touch with you, see what you're doing, and maybe even get involved in the community?

Sam (39:24):
Every Tuesday we launched the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. You can find that it's usually trending somewhere in the Watts Hot section on Tuesdays. Then it kind of dies out a little bit. Change the algorithm on us. You know what I mean? But check out the Flip Lifestyle Podcast, make sure you like and subscribe. And we actually like we're very open. We have a free trial for our community. It's 30 days flipped lifestyle.com/free fli P P E D lifestyle.com/free. Look at it, it's free. It's open. You can full access everything. We've got two live member calls, every single training, all of our forums. You can check it out, 30 days for free@flippopstyle.com slash free. We'd love to see you there.

Drew (39:59):
Perfect. Fantastic. Well thank you for spending time today. I really appreciate that. And hopefully we've given some people who are going, man, I just want to travel more. I want the mint on the pillow. I like to travel rather than having to maybe rough it or at least be able to take more trips and do that sort of thing. It's always nice to have that money behind you and know that you're not having to worry so much day to day. So I appreciate you guys giving some great advice today and hopefully some people will be checking you guys out and learning a bit along the way as well.

Sam (40:34):
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us. Appreciate you, man.

Drew (40:38):
So what do you think got you energized, got you getting some ideas up there in your head, some things that you have knowledge of that you think you might be able to share with the world and maybe make some money off of? I can tell you right now I am working on a book myself and that book is going to be about bourbon travel. And so I think you will find that there is something up in your head that is unique that somebody else doesn't really have as much information on as you think they do. And wouldn't it be great to be able to share that and make some residual income that can help you travel more? So that's why I wanted to have Shane and Jocelyn on the show today, and I hope you got a lot out of that. Make sure to head to the show notesPage@travelfuelslife.com slash podcasts and look for episode number 31.

(41:27):
And there you're going to find the links to Shane Jocelyn's websites as well as a link to the book Prophet First, which they mentioned during this episode. And also I've got a few Twitter shoutouts I want to do this week. Thanks to Lori who is at Southern says Sarah, who's at Obligatory Traveler, and Cheryl who's at View virtually all of them. Tweeted some great stuff this week about the show and I really appreciate that. So go out to the show notes page. I've got links to their Twitter accounts, you should go follow them and you can also follow what I'm doing as well at twitter.com/travel fuels life. I'd love to see you out there and feel free to reach out to me, love to have conversations out there on Twitter. And until next time, have a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Live.