SPI 815: The One Story Your Brand Needs with Shane Sams

SPI 815: The One Story Your Brand Needs with Shane Sams

Shane Sams: I was a teacher. I found out something was going on at my son’s daycare. I needed the day off work. My boss told me, no. So I decided to cash my own checks for the rest of my life. Started an online business, quit our jobs and changed our life.

Dude, that one story has created everything in my life. We started a seminar company that did over 30 million in its first two years. We have Flipped Lifestyles, that’s over 10 million. We’ve reached thousands of people, you know, from stages and podcasts and everything starts with the first domino. And that’s your story.

Pat Flynn: Our most downloaded podcast ever was not Gary Vaynerchuk or Tim Ferriss or either of those combined. It was not Amy Porterfield. It was not any big name that you might have heard on other podcasts. Our number one podcast episode was episode 122 with Shane and Jocelyn Sams, who were listening to this podcast at one point, just like you today.

They started some businesses. Shane started a football coaching business. Jocelyn started a resource for librarians. They’ve both since moved on from those companies, sold them, and have now helped tens of thousands of people around the world, have made millions of dollars, and they credit SPI all the time, but they’re just amazing.

And today we have Shane back on, because he’s just written a book to tell his story. He’s also gone through quite a journey. In fact, he hired me to coach him over the last year to help him through some stuff because things got kind of out of control. So we’re getting the full catch up and rundown on exactly what Shane Sams and his family have been up to and how their business is going, what the book is about.

All this incredible stuff, and just, I, honestly, so many people have complimented that episode, episode 122. He’s told the lawnmower story on stage multiple dozens of times and talks about this podcast and supports it so much that I couldn’t help but want to bring him on the show to not just talk about his book and share where you can get that which we do share at the end but we get into some deep storytelling as well as just life stuff and that’s what really this is all about you know it’s keeping those ripples moving forward. At FlynnCon, Shane and Jocelyn were both guests. This was in 2019 and they gifted me a stone and on the stone was an inscription and we do talk about that in this episode today as well and as far as what that means and what it represents and, man, he’s cast his stone and the ripples have kept going.

And I hope that this inspires you. I hope that this, if you’ve listened to the podcast for quite a while, it makes you smile because it’s always great to hear from Shane and what he and his family have been up to. And I’m just so proud of them. And I’m just so grateful for all the support that they’ve offered back to SPI.

I love these success stories and I’m excited to have you hear this too. And Shane’s just also just an amazing storyteller and just so fun to listen to. I’m not going to make you wait any longer. Here we go.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, the number one anxiety inducing message he sees on his computer is “Manage Storage.” Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Shane, welcome back to the podcast for the I don’t know, the 50th time? Not really, but. Maybe. But I enjoy every time you’re on here because we got stories to tell, you have so many things going on, and you have this book coming out now.

I want to talk about the book writing process because I’ve had an insider view through Azul on what that’s been like for you, and it wasn’t always easy. I mean, In a nutshell, what was the book process like for you?

Shane Sams: I’ll just go ahead and say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, it was like, of all the things, all the businesses, all the speaking, all the life, kids, whatever.

For some reason, that book, man, was like that thing hiding in the closet at Harry Potter, you know what I’m saying? Like, like, like I thought they called the Boggart or something, man. Yeah, it was just so hard, man. Like I sat down and I was with Azul, which has helped you write books too. And he’s the amazing book coach. Without him I never could have done this book. I sat down and started off like, yeah, Azul, I’m going to sit down for a week and I’m going to write 50,000 words and we’re going to have a book done in a week. And it’s going to be the, I’m going to do it on airplanes when I’m traveling to speaking gigs. That’s what I’m going to do.

I’m just going to write it then. And then I sat down. And I did not write 50,000 words in a week. I’m not sure I wrote five words in a week. Cause that thing was just staring there, blinking back at me, the little cursor trying to take me out. Then I wrote the wrong book. I wrote like 20,000 words in, and I realized this is not even what this book should be.

And we had to start the whole thing over. So that led to about an 18 to 20 month process to really get this book down. There’s so much pressure on a book that I don’t feel in anything else. Cause it’s a book like that paper is going to outlive you.

Pat Flynn: But where’s the pressure coming from?

Shane Sams: You know, I think it was just like, I really felt this, this particular book, it’s called Earn More, Live More.

And I really wanted to convey not only our story of how we went from teachers to entrepreneurs and why that changed our life, but there’s other people’s stories in there too, like a people we helped. And I just felt the weight of the legacy of that story. And I was actually sitting in my room one day writing and I realized I’m going to die, and probably people will forget me, but somewhere down the line, my grandkid or my great grandchild will pick this book up. Or someone else’s great grandchild picks it up, and they get to read about them in this book. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks, dude. Weighed me down.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, when I write or create anything, a course, I’m always future casting.

I’m always thinking about who it is that I’m serving. This is a part of you in the lexicon of Flipped Lifestyle, the Ripples. that you create. I remember vividly at FlynnCon, you came up on stage as guests, you and Jocelyn, and you gifted me a rock. And I don’t know if people know the full story about the rock and what that means, but what does that symbolize to you and your brand?

Shane Sams: When we started our online business? We definitely realized it could change our family’s future and it did. And, but that was more of like the personal money stuff. But when we had the first couple people, we helped quit their job and we realized the impact of that and how far that could go. We started looking at how, like every time there’s a story about Mother Teresa, where a reporter asked her, do you really think you can change the world?

And she said, no, but I can pick my stone up and cast it out upon the waters and cause many ripples. And I saw us kind of throwing our stone with every customer. And when they would quit their job, I saw the ripple that hit their life. And then the really thing that drove it home before I started making that rock that literally says, cast your stone engraved on top of it was, I was doing my first big stage speaking event in Tampa, Florida, around 2021. There was going to be 3000 people there. And I’m pretty sure I’d never spoken to a crowd bigger than Flynncon at that point, right? When you brought me up on stage and I was flipping through my slides and there’s this slide of this guy named Kevin Depew.

He teaches people how to play guitar on his YouTube channel. And I was just flipping through it, kind of practicing it. And the roadie or whoever was in charge of the sound check tapped me on the shoulder and he said, Hey, I love that guy. And I thought he said, I love that slide. And I’m like, that’s a middle aged dude with a beard.

Why do you like that slide? That’s just a picture of a guy. Right. And he goes, no, I love that guy. His name is Kevin Depew. I’m in his membership and he taught me how to play guitar. And this is a random stranger standing beside me. And I thought a guy from San Diego. throws his stone, Pat Flynn, hits a guy in Kentucky, that guy picks up his stone, cast it out upon the waters, it goes to Cincinnati, hits a guy named Kevin Depew. That guy picks up his stone, that ripple goes all the way around the world, hits a guy in Tampa, Florida, And that guy was standing right next to me when I was nervous and needed a sign from the universe I was in the right place. That ripple threw all the way back to me and I was like, man That’s what we do in our businesses.

That’s what we do in our brands. That’s what we do with every word every story out of our mouth as we cast a stone and you just don’t know who it’s going to hit. And it may even come right back to you. So that’s what that means.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean I could go back in the past even further and share stories about the stones that were cast that hit ripples that I caught the waves on.

Yeah, it’s never ending, bro. It’s just, it’s never ending. It’s never ending. And for anybody out there listening, it’s like, do you want to be the person who continues that ripple and continues that impact on others? Or are you going to be that wall that just stands still? Like makes those ripples stop.

Shane Sams: And that’s really what the book was going to be.

Look how smart Shane is. Look how much money Shane knows how to make. Look at all the fancy tactics and strategies that I learned along the way. And then I realized that the book was really about just giving people the courage to pick up their stone. Like we all have God given gifts and ideas that we can use to change our family’s future, help people around us.

And the book really coalesced in that. And it is based on money because I kind of view money as like the only manifestation we have of energy. Like when I work and create, I create money. And when I hand it to Pat Flynn, I pass some of my energy to him. And then he goes and passes it on to somebody else.

And we’re constantly moving this energy around through this thing. We have this tool called money. If you have money and you have income, you have freedom, like income equals freedom in our world. So it’s not an earn more like a selfish thing. It’s like when you earn more, you’re generating more energy and you can pass that on to other people so that everybody gets to live a better life.

So that’s kind of the crux of it.

Pat Flynn: On your first go writing the book, what were the signs that you weren’t writing the book that was meant to be written?

Shane Sams: I’ll tell you what it was. I was on an airplane. I was going to speak, I think, in California. And I was reading through like some drafts, some chapters. We were kind of writing it out of order because I couldn’t really do anything linearly.

That’s really hard. And I was reading a chapter and I started counting the I’s. Like I, the letter I. And I realized. I was saying things like, well, I did this and I know that, and I’ve learned this and I learned that, and some of those are important, but there were no other people’s names. There were no we’s.

There were no anything that was about other people. I hadn’t even written any testimonials or any stories or case studies into the book yet. And I just realized like this book is not about me. I’m telling my story only to inspire people that normal dudes from Kentucky can go out and do something cool.

And what was funny was I had these, all these chapters written that were all about me and Jocelyn. And the book actually became more of here’s a little snippet of us. And then I turned attention to somebody else. And then I turned attention to what they did and we did together. Right. And once I took the eye out of it, once I took the focus off of me, it became about something much bigger than myself.

I also went to this mastermind and I learned this amazing analogy. You know, like we are really a lighthouse, right? That’s what we are. So if you have an idea, if you’re trying to express something out in the world, you’re like a lighthouse and people are coming in through choppy waters, man, through the stormy weather and they see that lighthouse, right?

And sometimes the storm is a little bigger and you got to turn your light up a little brighter. So they know where to come. They know how to get to shore safely. But the problem was I was turning that lighthouse up so bright, I couldn’t even see the other ships. I couldn’t even see anything else. I was about to burn the lighthouse down because I was turning my light way too bright.

So once I dimmed that, and I became the spotlight, like, Hey, you ship, come to this place. You ship, come to this place. This is the way other people have went before to avoid the rocks. It just became such an easier process to write. And it also became a little more fun for me because it just wasn’t about me anymore, it was about the other people involved.

Pat Flynn: Were you writing every day at that point? Like, after you knew where the book was supposed to go and you kind of started from scratch again, you had your, sort of, fingers already warmed up from the first go, and now you’re ready to dive into what is to be the final manuscript or at least the first draft of what the book will become.

What were your writing habits? Was it daily? Was it morning, evening? How did you get into that flow state?

Shane Sams: Now, Pat, you’ve coached me for years and you know that I am like herding a cat. I’m like a herd of cats all by myself. So for me to sit down and discipline myself to write by myself, does that sound like something Shane Sams would ever be able to do?

Pat Flynn: This is why I’m asking this question because I know this is a difficult thing for you.

Shane Sams: No, man. No, what happened was Azul basically was like, listen, I’m here to hold you accountable, but it ain’t working because my accountability has been checking in on you and you’re busy. You’re doing a lot of stuff.

There’s a lot of reasons we’re not making excuses, but there are, there were good reasons why things like that were happening. So Azul and I, we got a writing schedule together where he actually met me on a zoom and I had someone there with me. We weren’t talking. He was writing a book at the time too.

He’s got a fiction book that he just released. So he was like, why don’t we just become writing partners and that’s when everything changed. So we started writing together like one or two days a week. I would go on the road and that gave me momentum. I would usually leave that session with enough momentum where when I would fly out on Friday to go speak, I could get some more done on the plane or at least go back over what me and Azul had done.

And that was the game changer. That’s when we actually got the first manuscript finished. We got it turned over to the editing team and the book actually started becoming real. So the people who write books, speakers, authors, coaches, entrepreneurs, we are wild people, man. And we’ve got a lot of plates spinning at all times.

And if I didn’t have that accountability, we wouldn’t be talking on this podcast right now because there wouldn’t be a book out of my head.

Pat Flynn: Why did that work so well for you? That structure?

Shane Sams: You know, it gave me an appointment. I think that’s the first thing. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not real. I mean, anything, anything that doesn’t make the calendar is not going to happen.

I don’t do to do list. I do calendars because I have to have a time. And also to like, I think the biggest thing was Azul wasn’t telling me what to do or telling me what to write. He was writing too. And you know, it’s just like when I found your podcast, man, when I was riding on that lawnmower and I was listening to you, it wasn’t that you had done it like you were still doing it.

I mean, this is a long time ago. And I’m like that dude. Is sitting at a table figuring out what his next podcast is going to be figuring out what his next product is going to be and he’s doing it and like knowing someone else is doing the same thing you’re doing just gives you a lot more like energy and momentum and inspiration and we could stop we would stop and check in about every 15 minutes and say, how many words did you write?

So it kind of became a little competitive, right? I’m a competitive guy. And then at the end of it, we would kind of, you know, just debrief, almost share a win from the writing session. Like, man, I really got to tell Kareem’s story well today. Like that’s pretty cool. So all those little wins, all the little competition and just knowing someone else was in it with me, practicing what they preach and drinking their own Kool Aid gave me what I needed to finish it up.

Yeah. Everybody needs that too. Like I. Left our own devices. We’ll just all burn our houses down.

Pat Flynn: Azul is great. And when you mentioned that he just didn’t tell you what to do, that was what I hated about working with him at first, because I just wanted him to tell me what to do. Exactly. That’s not what a good coach does.

And you know, you and I have worked together. You’ve coached people, a good coach guides. And I think that’s just really telling to the kind of person Azul is and what they have over at Authors Who Lead as far as like, Hey, okay, let’s write together and kind of playing into your competitive nature a little bit is, is really cool.

Shane Sams: I think one more thing on that too, like, you know, I’ve got a mastermind, you’ve got masterminds. We’ve got people who are doing similar things, or at least we’re interested in what they do that we mastermind with. Like, I don’t just mastermind with random people. I want to, You know, are our business is adjacent? Are you doing interesting things that I think they’re cool? And I get looking forward to your updates and it just so happened because the universe is a crazy place that Azul was writing a book about Appalachia. It’s Appalachia too. Anybody out there saying Appalachia, I’m from here. It’s Appalachia, right?

He was writing a book about his partner, Steve’s dad from West Virginia. And that was so cool that there was just that little nugget of like, I was interested in what he was working on. It just elevated the whole process to another level for me because I didn’t just look forward to writing more of my story.

I looked more forward to hearing some of his story too. So that was pretty cool that the stars aligned for something like, so look for adjacent people. Look for adjacent coaches. Look for, look for things that interest you when you’re hiring coaches and when you’re masterminding with people and it’s going to make the process a whole lot more fun.

Pat Flynn: Now, ever since you and I met and have had our first conversations together, I’ve always noticed that you’ve always been a very prolific storyteller and the lawnmower story in episode 122, which has then been retold several times on stages that you’ve been on in front of tens of thousands of people to stories that I know you’ve told about others in your book and also on YouTube You seem to really care about not just the subject matter but how that unfolds and how it progresses and then how you can make an impact in the punchline process of that storytelling How do you structure a story and why is it so important to you?

Shane Sams: So I learned two things, and then I’ll get to the structure. The first thing I learned from you, really, I think I was very fortunate to catch you when I could still email you. You know what I’m saying? So we got to know each other before SPI went absolutely bonkers, right? Yeah. And even coming out to see you in San Diego, meeting Ducker, just different people that I got to interact with early on.

And one of the things I learned was how important email marketing and podcasting was. I mean, just being able to get on and articulate a story. And also in email, man, copywriting is storytelling. Like I treat every email I send as I do on a stage presentation. Because the story is what drives the emotion is what drives the desire.

It’s what drives the connection and the rapport and the relationship and all that stuff. So I think early on, I had to get really good at storytelling because my businesses have always been built with a podcast first and email second. Okay. So that gave me reps. I’ve recorded over a thousand of my own podcasts.

I’ve done over 200 interviews and from 2015 until 2020, I wrote an email to my list five days a week. So reps, when you’re a storyteller are the most important thing. And then taking that feedback, watching the crowd, so to speak, that’s going to tell you almost more than anything you ever need to do. And some people are trying to get into storytelling or speaking, but just not getting the reps.

Start a podcast, email your list every day. I promise. You’ll get good at telling stories. Now, the second thing that I learned early on was actually something that Russell Brunson said. I went out to a mastermind in 2015, I think it was 15, maybe 16. I don’t know. Sometime back then. And he did a mastermind and he said something that will never leave me is tell the right story, tell one story if you can, and then tell it to everybody that listens.

You’ll never run out of people. There’s 8 billion people on the planet. Right. So it’s that one putting mud on the wall, getting all the reps of all your little side quest, adventures, micro stories, and just reps every day of being a storyteller. And then the second thing is you have one core story, one core story that is the most important story you will tell.

Like when you go speak that, you got a couple talks you give, you just give them the different stages, right? Like that’s what we do. So when you take that one story, that’s a never ending story. Y’all remember that movie from the 80s? Falkor, you know what I’m saying? I’m still scarred when Atreyu, the horse, was drowning in the mud.

That killed me. Dude, don’t even. I got to take my kids to see that in the movie theater. They had it locally. Really? So my kids have had the never ending story experience in the theater. Okay. Side, side quest. All right. But when you come back, come back to the one story. Like my story is never ending. Like even to this day, about once a month, I’d say two days with our core story, which is the story of I was a teacher. I found out something was going on at my son’s daycare. I needed the day off work. My boss told me, no, So I decided to cash my own checks for the rest of my life. Started an online business, quit our jobs and changed our life. That’s the nutshell version of the story.

When I first made that for speaking on big stages. I spent like two or three hours on every single minute of that story because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t waste any words when I was up on that stage to tell it to people. And once a month now, even still, I go back to the story. I just plan a couple days where I’m going to go back through it.

Did I catch a new joke that I improvised? Did I see a reaction? Did I see a gasp from someone in the front row? And I’m just constantly refining that one story because dude, that one story. Has created everything in my life. Like we’ve done some huge things. Like we started a seminar company that did over 30 million in its first two years, we have flipped lifestyles, then over 10 million, we’ve reached thousands of people, you know, from stages and podcasts and everything starts with the first domino. And that’s your story. If you understand your story, you understand your offer. You understand how you serve people. You understand who the avatar is you’re looking to tell it to, because everybody don’t care about your story. Y’all somebody’s not going to like it. So that’s the first thing I tell all storytellers do the work.

Get the reps, 10, 000 hours, you’ve got to get that in first. And then probably about five or six years in really when I went on stages in 2021 and I was talking to a lot of people at once. So I was like, I’ve got to hone my craft, like I’ve got to go out and study this. So I started reading, I’d say 80 percent of what I read now is like storytelling books, like Joseph Campbell, the science of storytelling.

I think David Korver wrote that. I’m reading another one right now called the power of storytelling. I just started that last week. And I’m always looking for frameworks, new things to build up story out. So through that whole process, and I want to stress to everybody too, I always think of a set of a story as a sales presentation.

And if I’m giving it on stage, I call it story pitch. You’re always pitching an idea, at least. And probably something for sale in the best possible situation. So, I can give you the outline. You want the outline?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, dude. Give it to us. If that’s okay.

Shane Sams: So when I sit down and create a presentation, a book, a podcast, an email, I’ve got a very simple framework.

The first thing I do, I call it prologue. Every story is going to need a little bit of background information. Just to catch them up to where they are in the story. It’s not your life story. I don’t care what you ate for lunch in fourth grade. What’s the story you have to tell now, right? That’s the prologue.

So in my story, it’s I was a school teacher in Southeast Kentucky. That’s it. You know what I’m saying? You just need to know that I was a teacher. My wife was a teacher, right? So I’m just giving you the main characters, the main thing. Let’s get you started. Just like a book. All those characters were alive before the book started.

They’ll be there after it ends, but where does this story actually need to start? The next step is called once upon a time. Every story needs a long, long ago, right? It needs something to, you know, kind of transport the people to where they’re actually at. What’s the setting of the first scene? So my once upon a time for my story is one day I was dropping my son off at daycare and he was fighting me tooth and nail to get out of the car seat.

Right now, you know, I’m in a parking lot. I’m going to work. I’m ready to rock. As I studied all of these different frameworks from the hero’s journey, all the way to anything you do for marketing or sales, I noticed that every single story, movie, TV show, book, a problem always appears. A problem has to show up because if there’s no problem, you’re just going to do your commute and go home from work.

Okay. So my problem that appeared is my son told me that the daycare worker scared him. Bam. That led to me going to my boss’s office to get out of work. And guess what? She told me, I know your son needs you, but your job needs you too, and you’re going to have to handle your personal problem after work.

So now, I’ve got this problem that I have to solve in my life, but this is the next part. I’ve kind of discovered this little place that I think most people miss. Most people jump straight into how they’re going to be the hero, and they’re going to do something different. But the greatest stories, especially persuasive stories, demonstrate decision making.

You have to really highlight the place. Like I made a decision that I was going to change something and people just jump straight into the action. They go straight into how they figured everything out, even going into failures. That’s a good thing too. I’ll talk about that in a second, but like there was a moment in my story where I was in my car and I looked in the rear view mirror, like this is a true thing.

And I just remember looking myself in the eye, almost like your dad would look at you. I was so angry that I had accepted this as my life. Okay. That I had accepted someone else paying my checks. That they could tell me where to be and when I could be there for my child. And I made a decision that come hell or high water, I would find a way to create my own income.

That’s probably a part I linger on on stage is I made a decision. I want them to see me modeling decision making because action’s irrelevant. If you don’t make the decision to actually do it. Okay. Now, after that, I’ve got, I can zoom through this. I’ve got a, I’ve got an acronym. It’s called baddada as I was planning out how to teach this, I wanted to be able to get on stage when I’m teaching storytelling and say yadda, yadda, yadda, but I didn’t want to say yadda, so I came up with baddada, baddada, baddada, baddada.

It’s close enough. You can bear with me here. Okay. Alright. Because of that, I took action. Because of that last decision, I took action. Something happens, you decide. This is real life entrepreneurship stuff too. And then you take action. The first baddada I always put my failures in a story. Like I want to show myself screwing up.

Because nobody succeeds and the hero is always winning. It’s a boring story. So the first baddada is failure. Baddada two, because of that failure, I usually have to go get help. And this is the baddada two is where I let my mentor come in. Don’t position yourself totally as the only person that figured it all out, because that’s going to BS meters is going to go all over the place in a story, if you’re just special.

And if you’re trying to convey an idea and they think you’re just special and you’re unique, and you came up with this on your own, they’re not going to believe you anyway, when you try to sell the idea or the offer. So the mentor in my story, which is why I take you everywhere on the road. I talk about Pat Flynn pretty much every single week is as the lawnmower story.

When I discovered you, and I started following you, and I started reaching out to you, and I started going to your live events, and I started getting coaching from you, that gave me the unknown information I could have discovered on my own, but it would have taken me a decade to do it. So the mentor is like Obi Wan Kenobi, or Gandalf, or somebody like that, you know?

You know, whatever it is, once you get some support from outside of you through friends, mentors and stuff like that, you get enough information where you can form a plan. So, baddada three when I’m telling the story is what plan emerged? What was the idea? What was the direction that we’re going to enact. Now in baddada I call it tension. There has to be tension in a story toward the conclusion or the conclusion will not be satisfying. So when I create tension here, that what I always talk about is how I first started my businesses and nobody came to my website. Nobody ever clicked anything. Nobody signed up for my email list.

Like it was just failure. And like Jocelyn got like you are spending every waking hour and every extra dollar we have trying to do this. And it’s not working. Working right and then when I break the tension here, you got to break the tension before you get to the conclusion when I break the tension, it’s that 11 cent.

You remember the 11 cent story that I tell. So I the first money I ever made online. I had not made a dime up to this point. And one night someone clicked an ad on Google, my Google ads. And I made 11 cents and I was like, Oh my God, it’s real. You can make something, put it out in the world and money comes back.

So then we can start riding toward the climax. I call this next part until finally, right. That’s where victory comes in. Success comes in. The story I tell is how my wife got on board. She believed in me after 11 cents guys. Can you believe that? Like 11 cents convinced her that Pat Flynn wasn’t full of crap. And online business is real. And finally, we go out and we start our first company, which was called ElementaryLibrarian.com over the next year, replaces our income. We’re able to quit our jobs. Now, once you’ve told the core story. I have a section called, and ever since that day, all right, we fast forward back to the future to right now, preferably on the stage, and we catch people up to where we are now.

I do this very simply with one slide in my presentation. I show a picture of Isaac and Anna Jo now. Isaac was three years old when this happened, and Anna Jo was like one, and now they’re 15 and 13 and driving me absolutely insane because teenagers are hard. Oh, I’m getting to know that. But I show a quick picture.

I’m closing the loop from what happened to Isaac, because the story I tell is very emotional on stage. People cry, and usually there’s just a hutch over the crowd when I talk about that part of the story. So I’ve closed any unclosed threads, and then that’s where I introduced the concept of, we helped a friend quit her job, her name was Lindsay, and we launched Flipped Lifestyle, and now we’re doing this, and we’re going around the country to teach people how to do this too.

The last thing that you can put in, there’s some other parts to this. Like after I get the core story written, I go back in and put my jokes in. Jokes come last. Yes. Don’t write your jokes first. I’ve learned that too. And, and jokes suck until you tell them 20 times and figure out how they’re supposed to be funny.

So just go bomb. That’s the best way to do jokes. Then I’ll put in a thing at the end. This is the, you know, you can say epilogue or the pitch itself. Like when you’re pitching anything in a story, whether it’s the end of a book, the end of a stage presentation, the end of a webinar, Pitch your idea. Like Jesus when he taught parables told them what the parable meant because they were confused.

Don’t assume like say the moral of the story say the idea cast your stone out upon the water and cause many ripples. I’m Shane Sams. Or pitch your product and once you get to the end of that You have this nice cohesive story that everybody can follow and I actually keep this written down right on my desk And like when I’m interviewing you, like when I did the 500th episode of smart passive income, I followed that exact format to pull the story out of you of the building of SPI and to be able to launch that out in the world.

When I write an email, I start with whatever story I’m telling. I’m about to do a 16 hour seminar for a buddy of mine. 16 hours, baby. We got to do this over 16 hours and we just fill in the gaps with more details. So that’s how I teach storytelling to the speakers and people that I coach.

Pat Flynn: Amazing. I know that you have had a drive to go bigger with helping people tell their story.

Is that, I mean, it’s one of the many things on your list of things I know you want to do. Is that coming soon? When is that? Yeah, because I think. It’s very clear that you’re doing it now. How are you doing it?

Shane Sams: So in 2020 I got an email from a guy named Joe Johnson and he wanted to have a meeting with me to see if I wanted to partner with him in a live event and a seminar company.

So I get on a call with him and he’s like, Hey, we’re going to start this big live event company. We’re going to go around the country and equip people to learn about finances and stocks and real estate and business and all these things. And we’re going to create this massive live event company and I want you to be a part of this.

And I’m like, Joe, It’s 2020. There are no live events. And he said, that’s right, but I’m going to hire all the best people cause their home not working. And we’re going to have the best team in the industry when we’re allowed to go back on stage. I thought, well, that sounds cool. I’m in. So I jump in and I told my story at the first partner meeting.

There was four of us with all of our companies there and the whole place just lost their minds. I mean, they just, they’d never heard anything like it. They jumped up and he walked up to me and said, you have got to be on the main stage. Now I got nervous at this point, cause I wasn’t a speaker back then.

Right. I spoke a little, so I went up and I did my thing and I, told my story on stage and the first time I went up there, man, there were a lot of really big name speakers at this event and I just dominated. I was in the top three of the surveys of the stories that they enjoyed and people were like, how did you do that?

You’ve never done this before and they didn’t see all the reps on the podcast. They didn’t see all the emails. They didn’t see how much work I’d put into every webinar to dial that story in before I went on that process. Then we started the seminars. That was a big deal. I did them at first for the first two years.

And then I taught my people how to do it just like me with this exact same framework. And I was training up people who were getting big results right under me. And you know how it is, man. You help one, you can help a hundred and one, a thousand and one. I started getting inundated by, please help me make this presentation.

Please help me do this. And I realized that this framework could work for just about anybody if they could just plug their story into it. So last year we started this program called Story Pitch, where every story leads to a pitch. It’s key, you know, keynote speaker, sales speaker, whatever it is. And I started coaching people through this.

People started like getting these huge results. This one guy named Steven Faust. He was a student of mine at Flipped Lifestyle. Quit his corporate job in a C suite to run his website, helping like military people. I can’t remember exactly what he does, but he helps military veterans do stuff. And he, on his first time he ever did a seminar using this framework, he sold 300,000 dollars in a weekend from stage.

And I was like, we’re onto something here. And then we just started helping some of our best students on their webinars. We started helping other people. And that’s really what I’m dialed in and focused on now, because I noticed that when I taught people how to start an online business, I spent so much time on the idea and their story already in Flipped Lifestyle. And I was like, man, when they get that, they know exactly what they’re selling, doing clarity, how much team they need. They know what to sell. Like, that is the first domino in any business is the story of the brand, the story of the company. And I was like, I’m going to laser focus all my talents, gifts, and skills on that.

Because if we get that right, the other stuff is just make a sales funnel, right? So that’s what we’ve been doing now all year. This year is we’ve been really focused on story pitch, really focused on helping high level speakers weapon our people, coaches, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs to do this, I don’t want to say right.

It’s just the way I’ve learned to do it in a decade because I can download a decade into your brain pretty fast. I don’t want anybody else to have to grind through a thousand podcasts emails. That’s they can practice it on the backside.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, man, you and I’ve gotten a lot of reps on the show. I think that is a true byproduct of this medium is the ability to have conversation to interview and to tell a story better.

And it just leads into everything.

Shane Sams: Everyone should have a podcast even if no one listens. A hundred percent. They really should. Yeah. It builds more skills than anything else that I’ve ever done as an entrepreneur.

Pat Flynn: It’s so true. So with all of this going on, why even write a book? What is the purpose?

What’s the goal behind it?

Shane Sams: We’ve made it to a place now where like when 2021, when I moved more towards speaking, I really felt a little bit of a shift happening. I felt like what we’ve built at Flipped Lifestyle is what it is. Not because it’s got not got to be updated or we don’t learn new tactics.

There’s AI and all this stuff, right? That happens. But the fundamentals of building a business online are pretty straightforward. And I needed a way to spread my message even farther. I can go on stages, I can talk to 10,000 people. That’s great. Those 10,000 people heard my message. But what about people who never come to the stage?

What about people who find my podcast, but they find a bunch of other episodes? They haven’t actually heard my story. So I wanted a way to sum up the first 10 years of our entrepreneurial journey in one place that I could hand to somebody. And they could get caught up to where they needed to be to find their idea to go out and build something for their family.

And when we were looking at ways to do that, like I saw you write all your books and I just do what everybody else does. I look at my mentors. I look at the people I look up to and hang out with and everybody who was killing it in that way was writing a book. And I said, now’s the time I put this off long enough.

We have this amazing story right up to 2021 of two school teachers from Kentucky to figure this out. And we’ve got all these dozens of other stories of amazing people that we’ve worked with that you use that methodology to figure it out. I’ve got it dialed in. When I start a company now, I pull up a Google document.

This is exactly what we do. We don’t mess around anymore. So, like, I wanted to encapsulate not only the stories, but, you know, the basic overarching frameworks to do everything. And let that be the front end of our funnel. That thing can go farther than the stage, farther than the podcast, anywhere. And nothing does it better than a book.

Cause it’s a moment in time that makes it scary because you’re writing it down one time and you’re not going to write the updated version, you know, second edition four years from now, but it let me be able to have something in my hand when they’re like, how did you do that? This is how we did it. And if you need more help, you know where to find me.

So the book is going to basically become now like the front end of our funnel where come get the book. And I want to get it as many people’s hands as possible when it comes out. I don’t even care. You don’t make money on books, guys. You make money after books. So that’s the goal is get it into as many people’s hands as possible to keep inspiring people to do stuff.

Pat Flynn: It’s about time. It’s about time.

Shane Sams: And I know you’ve been harping on me for years, dude. Like when are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book? I’m busy. I’m on the airplane right now, Pat, you know,

Pat Flynn: No, but the timing is perfect, I think, for what you’re building. And in addition to the book, you’ve made a really big decision in your brand recently to change it up a little bit.

Can you tell us about the rebrand and all the thinking that goes behind that?

Shane Sams: I mean, Flipped Lifestyle is definitely an anchor part of our portfolio. You know, one of the greater things about being in, you know, business for a while, hang on and you’ll own yourself on the internet. I am, if you search for me or Flipped Lifestyle, you’re gonna find us.

It’s, it’s everywhere. Yeah. When the speaking started taking off, we really wanted to make this more of a personal brand. I know a lot of people go the other direction. You know, they try to, I want to, I want a brand with a name that I can sell later. I don’t ever want to sell nothing. My kids can figure it out on the backside.

I’ll leave them as much money as I can. I don’t care if whatever happens after me. That’s on them, right? I want to serve as many people as possible while I’m on this earth and I’m 46 and on the back nine. We got stuff to do people. So Jocelyn and I basically were like, well, we are most known as Shane and Jocelyn, a team.

I’m most known now for speaking and being on stage and being in that world. We’re known for our podcast thing. So we’re actually going in the opposite direction. A lot of people go, we’re going back toward just more of our personal brand. Like we really want to lean into rapport and relationship with actual humans.

What does that mean? It means we’re going to be spending more time with the Shane Sams show, my other podcast, then we are on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. We’re going to really focus on, you know, getting flipped lifestyles message in front of people and then opening doors for people to go out and tell their story, speak and do things like that.

And by making it more personal, it’s the weirdest thing, man. It’s become so much more energizing. We just started doing this in the last six months, right? And it’s let us say things we couldn’t say before. Like, of course, there’s a brand Flipped Lifestyle and things like that. But now I can literally just say, I’m Shane Sams.

I will teach you how to earn more and live more. I’m Shane Sams. I will teach you how to tell your story. We’ll turn your life story in the Lord of the Rings. And you can go out and say these things that you want to say out in the world. And it’s just simplified the whole process. The business got a little complicated there for a while because it grew so fast.

Dude, we went from three to thirty employees in two years. That’s bonkers, right? Insane. Are you still at 30? No, we’ve downsized back down now. I still have my sales teams. We’re actually about to start launching seminars again, so I’m going to spool up about 10 of those people. But it’s just our core team now, like project manager, the people who make slides for us, the people who do our website, you know, just the core people now.

You watched me go insane in 2023 when you were on every call with me.

Pat Flynn: I was watching, like, a Netflix series every time we got on a call together.

Shane Sams: It really was. Hey, catch me up. Well, that’s it. Since last episode. Yeah, so I think just going back to that personal brand has really made it more peaceful for me.

I get to be totally myself. You know, SPI, once a brand takes off, it’s kind of its thing. It’s its own entity and you get sucked into the wake of that entity. So all that can now live in a better place where it’s just like, Oh, you wanted to start an online business. You want to launch a membership. You want to build a community.

Great. Earn more, live more. That’s awesome. Oh, you want to tell a story better. You want to do webinars better. You want to speak. Shane Sam’s will teach you how to do that. Oh, you want to have a better life for your kids and a family and have work life balance, Shane and Jocelyn. We’re gonna talk about that together.

So it’s just made it more personal. It’s made it easier. It’s made it more energized. Dude. I had a meeting this morning with my team on a project. I literally, at the end of it said that was fun. And sometimes business is not fun, but we want business to be fun. I actually, when I, when I said, it’s going to be Shane Sanders and Shane and Jocelyn from now on, I promised myself this too.

I will only talk to people I love every day. That means team. That means customers. That means friends, mentors, whatever. So we’re not going to chase all the big guests and all the things like that anymore. I want to be talking to Pat Flynn. I want to be talking to my buddy Joe or my buddy Grant. And so that’s how we’re kind of building it.

Just have a more personal brand. I think it’s gonna be a lot more fun.

Pat Flynn: Dude, it’s so inspiring to remember where we started this journey together, you and I, and to see where you’ve ended up and where things are going with you and Jocelyn and the personal brand now. It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible.

I want to congratulate you here on everything you’ve done and everything.

Shane Sams: You’re a big part of it, dude. I could not have done this without Pat.

Pat Flynn: Oh, I appreciate that. I, you always give me credit, but I know that you and Jocelyn are the ones who took action. I’m just the guide, just like how you are the guide for so many others out there now.

And again, we’re just kind of continuing those ripples that have come across our wake. I’d love to have you share where people can get access to the book.

Shane Sams: The best place to go is at ShaneSams.com. You can find my podcast there. You can find the book there. I think when this comes out, it’s going to be out, but it might be a waiting list, but whatever it is, we’re going to figure out a way to put it in your hands, whether it’s free, just pay some shipping or a Kindle link.

I don’t know what it is, but we’re going to get the book in your hands. If you’re out there and you’re doing, if you’re a speaker, author, coach, or an entrepreneur, and you’re telling your story, whether it’s podcasts, interviews, stages, webinars, whatever it is to sell your ideas or your stuff, check out Story Pitch.

I’m devoting a lot of time to that right now, because I think it’s going to make a huge impact for a lot of people. So ShaneSams.com brother, that’s all you got to do. And also to hit me up on LinkedIn. Hit me up on Instagram and Twitter. I answer my own messages. I will write you back. Go ahead.

Pat Flynn: Shane Sams on most of those places?

Shane Sams: All of them. It’s sometimes it’s Shane underscore Sams because I had all the Shane Sams, but then I lost the email to log into them and we can’t figure it out. Oh no. So we went with Shane underscore Sams in some locations you will find it. But if you type in Shane Sams into Google, you will promise I’ll pop up.

That’s the best way to do it.

Pat Flynn: Or we’ll have it on the show notes page, of course, but Shane, thank you so much for this. Say hello to Jocelyn for all of us. And until the next one, we’ll have you on again at some point in the future. I’m sure of it.

Shane Sams: I love you, Pat Flynn. I love you, dude.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, man.

Awesome, awesome episode. Thank you so much for listening in. You can get the resources and links and everything mentioned at smartpassiveincome.com/session815. Again, smartpassiveincome.com/session815. And of course, please visit ShaneSams.Com and get word of where the book is at and all the things that are going on over there.

And I’m just so stoked for everything that Shane and Jocelyn are going to continue to do to keep those ripples going and just, I mean, I’ve met people who have started businesses as a result of them as well. And it’s life changing. It’s life changing. That’s, that’s all we’re trying to do here at SPI and everybody in the community is just so, so generous and shame. Thank you so much for your time today and all my best to Jocelyn and your entire family. Thank you. I appreciate you.

And I appreciate you for listening all the way through as well. Please hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already. We got a lot of great episodes coming your way as we head into the final bit of the year here. And I’m excited to share a lot more advice and very, very specific and tactical things to help you grow your business. We’re at an interesting time in the world and in the internet right now. We need to hear these stories. We need to learn from each other and that’s why we’re here. Thank you so much.

Cheers. And I’ll catch you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!