PRIORITIZE BY ASKING “HOW IS THIS GOING TO MAKE ME MONEY?”
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4 Keys to the episode…
- Invest in people and in technology that are going to save you time
- Prioritize by asking “How is this going to make me money?”
- Do what you have to do to keep growing
- Start where you are and use what you’ve got!
Doug Morneau: Okay, I’m super excited today to be back in the studio. And with me, I’ve got a friend of mine joining us, Shane Sams. Now, I met Shane and Jocelyn several years ago, in the Philippines, at a very intimate business conference. Today’s show, we’re going to learn how two teachers went from making $76,000 a year, to earning millions of dollars online.
When Shane and his wife Jocelyn co-founded Flipped Lifestyle, they did that with the belief that society had it all wrong, when it comes to a work/life balance. And they felt that life should come before work. Since the start of their business in 2012, they found a way to spend more time enjoying their family and doing what really matters most.
In just a few short months, they were able to make thousands of extra dollars through an online business. And just a year after they began, surpass a five-figure income. They started Flipped Lifestyle Blog to help other families change their lives, using an online business. They’ve been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, and they’ve been featured on all the Who’s Who of business podcasts, including Smart Passive Income, with Pat Flynn; Entrepreneur On Fire, with John Lee Dumas; and the new business podcast with Chris Ducker. So, welcome to the show.
Shane Sams: Hey, Doug. Thanks for having me here. And it’s always good to talk to you and catch up.
Doug Morneau: Now, did I miss anything in the introduction?
Shane Sams: Oh, man, there’s so much. That was a good intro, though. I hope I can live up to that intro. I will add one thing to our bio. We recently just sold a business, for a seven-figure sum. So that’s kind of a feather in our cap we’ve added recently, to go through that process of exiting a website. That’s one of the most recent things we’ve accomplished in our business.
Doug Morneau: That’s really cool. And one of the things I’ve been following with you online, that’s not in your business, is that great new deck you’ve got looking over the lake on your new property.
Shane Sams: Right. Yeah, man. We got rained out today, but it became a monsoon. So the crew had to go home. But we’re about 50%. We’re building a 1,000-square-foot deck on the back of our house. And it’s going to drop down. We have a 10-acre private lake behind our property. And so, we’re going to put a 10 by 20 floating dock out to it, as well, so … We’ve got a lot of lumber packed up behind my back door right now.
Doug Morneau: That’s super cool. So, today, I was hoping you could share with us a major breakthrough or success that you guys have had, using a specific marketing tactic.
Shane Sams: You know, I think the biggest thing that we realized, Doug when we first really got into … We quit our jobs pretty quickly. It was about 13 months until we were able to quit our jobs, from the time we started our business. And we were kind of like, doing guerrilla warfare. We were out there digging through Twitter handles, trying to find people that we could identify as our customers. We were finding forums, finding Wikis, we were basically just like, going out there with a shovel, and digging it around. Right?
Doug Morneau: Yeah.
Shane Sams: And the biggest breakthrough that we probably figured out is that you can use your money, instead of your time, to buy tools to find your customers for you. That can be done through ads. That can be with tools that collect emails, and automatically deliver digital products or something, that you’re using to get email addresses. But using technology to collect that information was probably the biggest breakthrough in our business, because it pulled us out of the weeds, and allowed us to concentrate on strategy, big picture stuff, while the machines kind of work in the background to do all that for us.
Doug Morneau: Well, that’s really cool. I mean, there are so many technologies that are out there today. Was there any specific technology that you started, and then, as your business progressed, did you outgrow some of those, and move to newer platforms?
Shane Sams: Oh, sure. When we started out, we were actually smart enough to realize that we needed help organizing things like that, like collecting emails, and all that. So we started with Aweber. And we started collecting emails really early, which I think is, something that a lot of beginners make the mistake. They’ll go out and create content for a year, and have no opt-in on their website.
Doug Morneau: Sure.
Shane Sams: We were lucky enough to hear the right people say the right things when we started. So we started doing that. But Aweber was, very at the time … they’ve really updated the software, and it’s a lot better now … but it was super linear. You couldn’t really segment your audience and things like that. So we progressed, after we reached a certain point from Aweber, into more advanced systems, like ONTRAPORT, and eventually, we settled into Infusionsoft. And that’s kind of what we’ve used for the last couple years to manage all of our customer service, automation memberships, and email collection.
Doug Morneau: That’s really cool. I mean, it’s interesting to hearsay that you invested in technology, and diffuse slot, to help and brought other people on your team. I’m sure you often hear the same feedback that I do, that people are trying to do everything themselves.
Shane Sams: Right.
Doug Morneau: They don’t realize that they’re really spending their time doing a laborious job that somebody else could do when they should be focusing on the sales and marketing of their business.
Shane Sams: Well, we actually, our business almost collapsed on us, at one point, from doing that. When we quit our jobs, we good, stable teaching jobs, and we had insurance and all that good stuff. When we quit our jobs and went out to try and make it on our own, about April the next year … we quit our jobs in September … and by April, revenue was down a lot. We were overwhelmed. We were stressed. And we kind of looked at each other, and said, “We can’t do this anymore.” But I think we had a real scarcity mindset. And I think that’s where that comes from, the bootstrapping mentality is, “I’ve gotta do everything myself. I’ve gotta save as much money as possible, so I don’t have to spend as much money.”
When you don’t realize that you’re not spending money, you’re actually investing it in technology. And that investment is going to make you more money. So many people wanna hire a VA to get work off their plate. So many people wanna buy a tool, so they don’t have to do it. But the right mindset is if you’re going to spend money on the tool, how is it going to double your revenue? Triple your revenue? And that’s the only way that we buy tools or hire people is, if it’s going to make us more money. It’s not to make your life easier. It does make your life easier. But it should be to make you more money.
So we realized, we looked at ourselves, and said, “Why is our money going down? Why is our revenue going down?” And it was because we were not investing that money back into people and things that could double our money a few months later. And so, that’s why we started hiring a VA. We started getting tools to manage our social media, like Meet Edgar, so we could control what was being shared, but we didn’t have to physically do it in real time.
And when we started doing those things, and it did free up our time, and those people were working for us, making us money over here, we could go to the other side and make money with new content, new products, and new ideas. So, yeah, technology and hiring people was a huge growth factor in our business. It wasn’t just, “Oh, my life is easier, so …”
Doug Morneau: Well, how did you guys make that shift? So what advice would you give our listeners who can’t pull the trigger, and take that next step?
Shane Sams: I think you have to look at it and say to yourself, “How is this going to make us money?” We have a priority system, that we assign tasks, assign to tasks. And so, we’ll look at tasks. Tasks do different things in our business. Tasks can keep your current customers happy. They can make you money. They can save you money. Tasks can be promotional in nature, like, you’re just doing promotion, brand awareness, stuff like that. Tasks can be content creation.
So, we will assign little icons to these things in our business. And if one of them has money beside it, it automatically becomes a priority in our budget, in our time. So, let’s take something like Meet Edgar, okay?
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Shane Sams: When you’re first starting out, you’re doing all your social media yourself. It’s taking up a ton of your time. But it’s important because that’s a promotional task that can make you money, right? But if you take something like Meet Edgar, which allows you to schedule posts, and it will reuse them. And it keeps coming up, over and over again. We have links within that, that can push people to sales pages, or push people to free offers. And we see people in our sales funnel all the time that got to us because they clicked on a link that was shared by our automation tool. That is not $50 a month. That is $50 a month to get the tool that can make you $500 a month.
So that’s, I think, the mindset shift you’ve gotta have is, stop thinking about spending money. Listen, we don’t wanna spend money. Good businesses cut costs, right? But good businesses also invest money. And if you buy a tool that’s going to make you money … if I walked up to you on the street and said, “Here’s, you give me $50, and I’ll give you $500,” who’s going to say no to that? So …
Doug Morneau: Yeah, fair enough.
Shane Sams: Start thinking about tools that way. If I give this company $50, are they going to give me $500 back in new customers, or whatever? And you’ll start, it’s a little bit easier, then, to invest in all this technology and people.
Doug Morneau: There, I guess what you’re saying is, really, it comes to leverage. I mean, you’ve gotta invest your time wisely in your business.
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: And as the founder of your business, are you doing a task that could be outsourced for $50 a month?
Shane Sams: Yes.
Doug Morneau: Or outsourced to a VA, at a lower cost, so you can focus on what drives your business, and what you’re passionate, and are gifted in?
Shane Sams: A great analogy I always use for this is, when we started our business, right? Or this is how we discovered online business in the first place. I was actually listening to a podcast while I was mowing my grass, right? So I’m listening to this podcast, and the guy’s talking about making money online. And it just hits me all of a sudden that I could do the same thing he did. Right?
So I have this soft spot in my heart for mowing my own grass, right? Because that’s kind of what started this whole thing. But then, I realized, about three years later, I was outside mowing my grass. And I was looking around. And we had already got to the point where we were, pretty much, our time was worth about $200 to $300 an hour at this point. Right?
And I was mowing my grass. And I was, “If could give somebody $50, I could go inside and make $250.” Right? I was like, “Why am I not doin’ that?” So that’s kind of like the analogy I use is, the guys out, that you hire to mow your grass for 50 bucks … and you’re lookin’ out the window, and you’re racing him, trying to create sales funnel that’s going to make thousands. Right?
Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Shane Sams: That’s the way you’ve gotta look at buying tools, and investing in your business, is … are you doing something that you should be doing? Or are you missing something that could make you a ton more money, if you just pay somebody to do this? So that’s kind of how I look at it.
Doug Morneau: Well, even back to, with your idea that society has their priorities set in the wrong order.
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: I mean, even if you’re paying somebody to mow your grass … and that means, instead of you mowing your grass, you’re standing on the sidelines, watching your kids play football, baseball, whatever …
Shane Sams: Yeah! Exactly.
Doug Morneau: You’re investing time with your family. That’s worth a lot more than the $50 of …
Shane Sams: Way more.
Doug Morneau: That it’s cost you to cut your grass.
Shane Sams: For sure, yeah. And anytime … time is infinitely more valuable than money, and you really only have two resources that you can grow your business with. And that’s time and money. So you’ve gotta protect the most limited resource as much as possible. Time, and you can make more money if you can … You just gotta keep making more money, and keep investing it back in your business, to make more money, to keep saving you time. All of us have 168 hours in a week. There’s going to be a limit of what you can do. But you can buy parts of someone else’s 168 hours. You can use machines to do work for you that requires none of your hours. And that’s how you have to think about your business, or you’ll never grow.
Doug Morneau: That’s true. And listening to you talking about using the tool like Meet Edgar, for example … one of the things that I’ve struggled with is that I want everything to be perfect before we launch it. And I’ve had to learn that we have to take imperfect actions, and just get stuff done.
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: So what would you say to our listeners, with regards to using … ’cause you’ve started, like you said, with Aweber, and then, it went to ONTRAPORT, and it went to Infusionsoft. So, there’s a number of changes. Each of those is likely uncomfortable.
Shane Sams: Sure.
Doug Morneau: They cost, they take a different investment, and they take some time. So, for those people who are still evaluating the 500 different CRMs out there, what would you recommend?
Shane Sams: I think that you have to start if you’re just starting out, especially, you should start with something that you can figure out easily. And we always tell ourselves this: whatever’s happening today is probably not going to be what we’re doing for years. Right? That’s just, that’s something we’ve learned over time. So, you just have to do what you can get right now. And realize, it’s not forever. I think that people get into this trap, where they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, if I pick this thing, I’m here forever, and I have to marry it. And we’re going to be together for the next 30 years.”
And that’s not what happens because that tool’s going to evolve, other tools are going to come out, and you’re probably going to switch, anyway. So you might as well just go get something you can afford, even if it doesn’t do everything you want it to do now, maximize that to its fullest potential. And when you reach that next ceiling, bust through it, go get the next thing and invest in it. But just start where you are, start with whatever you got. I just had a guy come over, a buddy of mine locally, he’s starting a digital product business about … It’s a sports-related thing.
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Shane Sams: And he was going to go film this stuff. And I was just, “Hey, man, come over. I got a full studio up in my, upstairs. I got lighting. I got green screens. I got cameras and everything.” Right? So he comes up, and he’s, “Man, I can’t wait to see all your equipment, and it’s going to be …” He was thinkin’, I was going to have, like, $10,000 deal. ‘Cause he’s seen our videos, and they’re really high quality.
Doug Morneau: Yeah.
Shane Sams: And he gets up there, and I got two iPod touches and some lights. And he’s, “I feel a lapel mike on my phone,” and stuck it in his back pocket. And we’re pretty advanced marketers. I mean, we do some cool stuff. But it’s, “You don’t need all these things you think you need.” Just go get what does the job, and invest in it, and it’s going to come out okay in the end when you’re first starting out.
Doug Morneau: Well, I was at an event with Kevin Harrington, that we’re working in New York, and it was kind of funny because he shared this story of how he founded and started, As Seen On TV. And he basically said to the audience of entrepreneurs, he said, “With your new iPhone, you have more computing technology and better video capability within your phone, than I had, when I started As Seen On TV. So there’s really no excuse for you not to shoot and produce a video, and use videos in your business.”
Shane Sams: That’s right. I mean, and people can hear. I mean, my mike sounds really good right now. This is the same $50 mike that I bought four years ago, to start podcasting, and it’s been plugged into this mike stand. And it’s never gone out on me. So, I mean, but just do what you got with what you got. I’m not saying, don’t upgrade. I mean, I got out of Windows and into Macs, as soon as I could afford it, right? Some things, you’re going to upgrade. But start with what you’ve got. Start with what you can afford.
But also, too, don’t say, “I can’t afford it.” Find a way to afford it. I’ll tell you how I paid for hosting, the first time I ever got it. I had this book that was signed by my favorite author. Right? And this guy passed away. And I went and got, I stood in line to get this autograph, for two hours. So, I mean, this was, I worked for this thing. But I sold it because I needed 100 bucks to pay a year of hosting. And then, the next thing, when we needed to upgrade to Aweber when we needed to get something that we were going to pay monthly, right?
Doug Morneau: Yes.
Shane Sams: We went through our budget, and we found enough money to stop going out to eat, stop doing this, to afford that thing. So do whatever you can to get the tools, but don’t think, just because the guru’s got a $600 Heil microphone, you gotta buy that. Don’t think, because the gurus or the more advanced people are paying 1,000 bucks a month for Infusionsoft, that you can’t succeed with anything else. Use the tools. Go get the best tool you can get. Make your life easier, and use it to make money.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, that’s great advice. I mean, start where you are.
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: And use what you’ve got. And then, like you said, your point, I think, was really valid, that this isn’t where you’re going to stay.
Shane Sams: No, no.
Doug Morneau: And that’s one of the things I’ve learned, too, is … that applies to staff members often. That applies to your legal, or accounting, and all the people that you use in your business, that, as your business grows, at some point, you’re likely to outgrow those people.
Shane Sams: Yes.
Doug Morneau: And you’re going to need to move on.
Shane Sams: Yup. You will. I mean, you will outgrow ’em. It’s the same thing. There’s another thing that, a lot of people are like, “Oh, how I get my Mastermind? How do I get people to hang out with me, and we talk business, and whatever?” I’ve been in part of multiple Masterminds, over the last few years. And they usually last about six months before all of you are kind of like, “Okay, we’ve all helped each other get to a certain point.”
You’ll have some that last longer, but you just grow out of your business. Or maybe you’re in a Mastermind with five people. And two of you really blow up. And you have to go out and grow. You gotta go surround yourself with the next level of people, even if you gotta leave that part behind. It’s the same thing with technology. It’s the same thing with staff. A lot of our staff that we’ve hired in the past has gotten really good at what they did, and they went on to bigger and better things. That’s cool, man. That’s cool. We’ll hire somebody else. It’s no big deal.
You can’t get caught up in forever. You can’t get caught up in permanence. You gotta get caught up in growth and change. And once you get kind of addicted to that growth and change, you’ll be able to make better decisions on the fly, and faster, instead of stressing over, “Do I use MailChimp or Aweber?” It doesn’t matter. Pick one, right? Just move forward.
Doug Morneau: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I see, I chime into so many of those conversations, where people are just paralyzed, trying to pick, pick the right one. It’s not like you’re picking your spouse. That’s a forever thing. This is software. And if it changes in six months, big deal. Change it, move along, and grow your business.
Shane Sams: We always tell everybody that there’s more than one right answer, you know what I’m sayin’? It doesn’t matter which one you pick because they both go forward. You’ll figure out if it worked, and you can go back to the other one if it didn’t work. And I tell people all the time, too, I said, “There’s only one thing. And that’s Jesus.” Everything else, you got choices, you know what I mean? You can get to Heaven through Jesus. But everything else, you can pick whatever you want. It doesn’t matter.
Doug Morneau: That’s great.
Shane Sams: And there’s more than one path to success. There’s a great quote by Theodore Roosevelt. I absolutely love this quote. And we kind of embrace it in our business. When we get stuck, Jocelyn and I kind of default back to this. Theodore Roosevelt said, when someone asked him, “How do you make these decisions as President? How do you make these world-changing decisions?” And he basically said,
“In every situation, the correct answer is the right thing to do. The next best thing is the wrong thing. And the worst you can do is to do nothing. So I just pick the one I think’s right. And if it’s wrong, it’s still better than doing nothing.”
Right?
Doug Morneau: That’s funny.
Shane Sams: So, yeah, you just gotta move forward.
Doug Morneau: Yeah, I mean, when I’m looking at stuff, I basically ask myself, “What’s the worst-case scenario? How likely is that to happen?”
Shane Sams: Right.
Doug Morneau: And then, “Would I be willing to live with it, realizing that it’s not likely to happen, and then, just move forward?”
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: And it’s not always right. But at least, we’re doing something.
Shane Sams: Whenever I do that exercise, like we always say, “What’s the worst thing that happens if we do this?” I always try to end it with a tornado sweeping through, picking up my house, throwing it upside down into the lake, just to add as much ridiculousness to it as possible, so I can always just go back and be like, “That’s not going to happen. I’ll make that decision anyway.”
Doug Morneau: Oh, that’s funny. So, moving forward, what are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months?
Shane Sams: I’ll tell you what we’re really excited about is Flipped Lifestyle, because when we started our company, we went a couple years, just with our education company. We were making plenty of money. We didn’t really need to do any coaching or anything like that. And, at that time, as we quit our teaching jobs, as we started living a little bit different lifestyle, people took notice. And, of course, whenever you achieve any kind of success, people start asking you, “Hey, what you do? How are you doing this? Can I do it, too?”
So, Jocelyn, had a friend of hers come up and say, “Hey, what are you doing? I wanna, I’m a teacher, I wanna quit and stay home with my little girl, and homeschool. Do you think I could make money the same way you did?” So Jocelyn showed her how to make digital products. She was able to put some of that online, and she was able to make, like, $1,000 in a month. Which basically allowed her to stay home and quit her job.
Doug Morneau: That’s really cool.
Shane Sams: Yeah, it was awesome. And one day at church, Doug, her husband, who’s a good friend of mine, came up to me. And he had tears in his eyes. And he was, “Man, I just wanted to stop you. And I don’t know if we’ve ever really, truly thanked you. I get to come home every day, and my wife’s home with our daughter. She’s homeschooling. She’s doing what she wants. And that money pays our mortgage payment. And without that, we couldn’t do this. And it’s just allowed our family to have the life that we wanted to have.”
And when we got in the car, and we were headin’ home from church, I was kind of quiet for a minute. And I looked over at Jocelyn, and I said, “You know, what we have figured out could help a lot of families.” ‘Cause a lot of the information out there, man, you know, is geared toward young people who wanna be ballers, and they fought for the videos driving Lamborghinis. They wanna move to Thailand and live off five bucks a month, you know what I’m sayin’?
Doug Morneau: Yes.
Shane Sams: That’s what the Internet marketing community, basically, a lot of it is.
Doug Morneau: Yeah. Yeah.
Shane Sams: And it’s just dream chasing. And we were, “No, let’s help real families make a real living online, or help real families make some extra money to create margin in their budgets, in their life.” So we started Flipped Lifestyle, kind of as a side project. It really blew up. And now that we’ve sold this other business, we have all this mental space that we can attack Flipped Lifestyle, and try to help as many people do what we do as possible.
So we’ve got a book that we’re working right now, it should be finished in November, that’s going to be comin’ out. We’ve just created this program, called the Flip Your Life Blueprint, which is a just step by step, the process we went through, to go from teaching to online entrepreneurs. We got a new app comin’ out. I mean, we’re just all in right now, with Flipped Lifestyle. And it feels really good because I really feel this is a calling that God’s put in our life, to go out and help families do this stuff. So that’s what’s got me pumped up, dude.
Doug Morneau: That is so cool. I mean, you are so right. We look at the gurus online. We follow the GaryVees, who talk about “grind, grind, grind.”
Shane Sams: Yup.
Doug Morneau: And I’m not going to comment on the balance in his life because I don’t know. But when we look at the economic crash in the real estate market in the U.S. years ago, I had heard a financial speaker once saying that the average homeowner who lost their home basically needed about $600 a month more of income to keep their home.
Shane Sams: Yup.
Doug Morneau: So we’re not talking about driving Lamborghinis like you’re saying.
Shane Sams: No!
Doug Morneau: You’re talking about $1,000 a month that would have kept most of these people in their homes.
Shane Sams: Yup. Margin. It’s all about margin. It’s all about keeping a buffer between you and disaster. That’s what most Americans don’t have. But almost everybody has something that they could do online. They could teach, they could sell, they could do something, even if it’s just the side hustle, to create that extra 600 to 1,000 bucks a month. So when disasters do happen, when the car breaks down, when whatever happens, it’s not stressful. It’s not freaking you out. You actually have something to deal with that.
And going back to GaryVee, I’ll have … I got no problem talking about his work/life balance. I read an article once. This is another reason that we really wanted to get into this space. We always, when we do our calendar … you know that 168 hours I talked about earlier?
Doug Morneau: Yes. Yup.
Shane Sams: We always put on non-negotiables first. You gotta sleep. You gotta eat. There are things you gotta do. If you got a nine to five still, you gotta go to work, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup.
Shane Sams: “Cause you gotta pay your bills. But then, the first thing we put on is time with our kids, and time with each other. We always start with family, and move our way toward, “All right, now, when are we going to work? When are we going to work on our business? When are we going to do those things?” Okay?
I read an article one time, where GaryVee had a quote. And he was talking about marrying his wife, and how he explained to her that he was a workaholic beforehand. And he told his wife, “You know, there’s sometimes that our little girl is going to have a dance recital. And I’m going to have to get on an airplane and go to Japan for a business meeting.”
And I remember reading that. And like I said, I don’t know GaryVee. It’s all right. Whatever he’s doing is fine. We all make choices. But I knew that there needed to be some kind of opposite perspective in the entrepreneurship community. That just didn’t sit well with me. But that was, going into it, you make that choice. Especially when you have control of that choice. Because by God, I’m going to be sittin’ in the front row of my daughter’s dance recital. That’s more important than any business meeting.
And I think that’s what we try to bring to people is, even when you’re hustling, even when you’re working your nine to five, even when you’re trying to make it, you can still put your kids first. You can still put your spouse first. You can still put yourself first, and still get the success you need to create that margin in your life.
Doug Morneau: No, I totally agree. And see, you’re right. To go into a relationship with that as a, “This is how it’s going to be,” I mean, there’s been times when I’ve been called away on business, and not been able to be on the …
Shane Sams: Sure.
Doug Morneau: On the field for the football game, or at the front row of the dance recital. But that was never the intention. I mean, I’m a little bit embarrassed to tell people my current lifestyle, because, for years, I didn’t put myself first. So, your health runs down, you get sick, and then, you go, “Hey, what’s it all about?”
Shane Sams: Yup.
Doug Morneau: And so, in my calendar is my gym routine.
Shane Sams: Yup.
Doug Morneau: As well as my family, so …
Shane Sams: And I bet you plan around that gym routine now, you know what I’m saying?
Doug Morneau: I do. Yeah.
Shane Sams: That’s going first. And also, too, I think society brings us up to think like GaryVee, whether it’s entrepreneurship, or working for somebody else. You’re a company man. You’re a company woman. You put your business first. You put this first. You do that. And it’s, I think “first” is the wrong word. You have to work on your business. I had a football coach who taught business. And he always said, “If your family is really your most important thing, then you’ll value your job as one of your most important priorities, ’cause that’s how you take care of your family.”
So it’s a very chicken and the egg thing, right? But it’s the fact that you are choosing to make that a priority. And I think, if you went back now, would you not try to be on the field more, than at the business meeting? We all look back and say, “Man, I wish I’d done that.” I know, my son’s first couple years of life, I was football coaching from, 7:00 … I was teaching in the day and football coaching all night. I wouldn’t get home till eight o’clock.
I walked in one night, and he took his first step. If I’d got home 30 minutes later, I’d have missed it, right?
Doug Morneau: Yup. Yeah.
Shane Sams: I regret putting so much effort into that stuff than those first couple years of my son’s life, and … No, regret’s the wrong word. You do what you do. But I wish I could have balanced that out more, and been more intentional about the son I was spending with my son. And I think that’s kind of the mentality we take now. And it’s on those important things, not necessarily, the unimportant things.
Doug Morneau: And that comes back to you, like you said, using technology and people to leverage your business, so you can invest time and spend it where it’s important. I remember coming home once when my son was very, very young. And he ran to the top of the stairs as I came in the front door, and he said, “Hey, Mommy, Daddy came home to visit!”
Shane Sams: Oh, my gosh. Gut-wrenching. Gut-wrenching.
Doug Morneau: And I went, “Oh, man. I’m doing exactly what I said I would never do.”
Shane Sams: Yeah.
Doug Morneau: And that was kind of the end of that.
Shane Sams: Yeah. When you get moments like that, it pushes you the other way. And moments like that are good for us. We all get out of balance. I mean, that’s just life, you know? But when something like that happens, it pushes you to go seek something else, do something else. And have you ever heard of it, I forget what it’s called, but you know that principle that says, whatever time you give yourself for a task, you’ll fill that time?
Doug Morneau: Sure. Absolutely.
Shane Sams: Yeah, so, if I’ve got three weeks to create a course, I’m going to not get the course done for three weeks. But last week, we were actually on a trip. And I remembered that I’d been on a podcast two months later, and it was about to come out. And I was like, “Oh, man, I was supposed to do a little training that I was going to give.” I had an idea for a training on the interview that I hadn’t created yet. So I promised to Dave’s audience that I would create it, and give it to him for free.
And I was, “Oh, man, that’s comin’ out in three days, and I didn’t do that,” right? So I had to get up. So this is, normally, to do a course, I’ll give myself a week or two. And it’s a 30-minute recording, and it’s, “Whatever.,” But I had to create this thing from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. one morning, before the kids woke up, on a … I was in a camper, out in the woods, tryin’ to make this thing happen.
Doug Morneau: That’s funny. That’s funny.
Shane Sams: You know what I’m saying? But it’s like, that same principle can be harnessed.
Doug Morneau: Sure it can.
Shane Sams: We tell ourselves, as entrepreneurs, “You are only allowed to work five hours a day.” Okay? If you tell yourself that, you will get all your stuff done in that five hours a day. Promise ya. All this stuff that people … a lot of people who say they’re grindin’ 70 or 80 hours, about 30 or 40 of those hours are surfin’ Facebook. And groups. So, you really could … They’re just stayin’ up late, is all they’re doin’. So, if you can harness that energy, you can, even when you’re nine to five’, you can go out and say, “I’m going to hustle for two hours a night, and I’m still going to have another hour for my spouse, and an hour for my kids.”
Doug Morneau: Sure.
Shane Sams: You can make that happen and still get everything done.
Doug Morneau: Well, the way I heard it described it done once is, “How much do you get done on the day before you leave on vacation?”
Shane Sams: Oh, that’s it, right there.
Doug Morneau: And so, that’s kind of my mindset is, I go, “Okay. If I’m going on vacation tomorrow, could I get all this stuff done in one day, that’s a week’s worth of work”? And you’re right. If you focus, you can just get ‘er done.
Shane Sams: Jocelyn always says that, ’cause she always laughs at me … Jocelyn’s really structured and organized. I wish I was as structured and organized as she is. She’s so task-oriented, that she just … everything happens on her schedule, and it’s amazing. But she says that I am a master, how did she say it, of getting a week’s worth of work done in an hour, and an hour’s worth of work done in a week. She’s got, it can go either way. Wherever the deadline is, that’s what’s going to happen, so …
Doug Morneau: That’s great. So, one of the piece of the pieces of advice I heard years ago that, I think of pretty much every day, as I talk to people in business … and that is, never ask somebody for advice who hasn’t done what you’re going to do, or willing to pay the price that you’re willing to pay. And that’s why I was so excited to have you on the show today because you’ve done what people want to do. You’ve gone from working a nine to five, and making a good living, to setting up financial freedom and to be able to spend time with your family. So, why don’t you share with our listeners, where can they find you online?
Shane Sams: All right. The best place to find us is over at flippedlifestyle.com. Make sure you check out our podcast, the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, on iTunes. And if you wanna reach out to us on social media, you can do that at Flipped Lifestyle, and we are online pretty much about anywhere that you can get us, Instagram, or Twitter, stuff like that.
Doug Morneau: That’s super cool. So I really thank you for taking time out of your day and joining us today. So, listeners, make sure to check the show notes. I will have all the information, where you can find Shane, and Flipped Lifestyle, including links to their website, and their social media sites.
We have been members of their online community for a while since we met in the Philippines, and quite enjoy their wisdom that they share there, and think that it’d be a great place for you to get started if you’re looking at starting a business, or building your business.
So I just wanna say, thanks so much, Shane, say hi to Jocelyn. And we look forward to sipping a glass of wine on your deck one day soon.
Shane Sams: Hey, man, there’s a spot waiting on you, Doug. Y’all just come on down. All right. Thanks for havin’ me.
Doug Morneau: Thanks so much. Yeah, take care.
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