FL277 - High school senior launches business and makes money online!

In today's episode, we talk to a high school senior who launched his own business and made money online.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast we talk to a high school senior who launched his own business and made money online.

Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. And now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? Alright, let's get started.

Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It's great to be back with you again. Today, super excited to have another guest on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast and help them taking their online business to the next level but this is a special episode. Normally we have our Flip Your Life community members on the show. We help them with a consulting call. We answer their questions and we take their business and take their life to the next level. And usually the person that's on the show comes from our success forum. We really single out and focus on our action takers inside of the Flip Your Life community. We see those success stories happening in the community and when they happen, we invite them on the show so we can magnify, multiply everything that they're doing in their online business.

Shane Sams: Well this is a special success story because this is my own flesh and blood. Our guests today are actually my nephews Dustyn and Devyn Sams. Dustyn, Devyn, welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.

Dustyn Sams: Hey guys. Thanks for having us.

Devyn Sams: Hey guys.

Shane Sams: Now, I know you think they might be plants, which they kind of are, but they have had some recent success because about a year ago I started badgering these guys to start an online business. Do something online because they're both action takers, they're both entrepreneurial kids, and I just knew that they had talent and they could do something out there and make some money online. But they resisted and they wouldn't do it. Then finally we got them to take action and some amazing things have happened in their online business.

Jocelyn Sams: I actually have a fun fact for you guys. The very first time that I ever visited Shane's family here in southeast Kentucky, it was for Dustyn's first birthday.

Shane Sams: All right. So wait, Dustyn, how old are you right now?

Dustyn Sams: I'm 21.

Shane Sams: All right. And what grade are you ... You're in college right?

Dustyn Sams: Yeah. I'm a junior in college in right now.

Shane Sams: All right. And Devyn-

Jocelyn Sams: Was not even alive.

Shane Sams: Devyn was not alive when Jocelyn started coming around here y'all. But Devyn, how old are you right now and what grade are you in, in high school?

Devyn Sams: Currently I just turned 19 years old and I'm a senior in high school.

Shane Sams: All right. So, guys, you know where this is going today. A senior in high school started an online business, got his brother in college to help him and they've made money online. So I'm not sure what you're waiting for. But we're going to talk more about that.

Shane Sams: First, tell everybody guys, about your online business itself. What you've actually created online before we talk about sales and stuff like that.

Devyn Sams: We created a guitar beginners video course that teaches people who are struggling to learn how to play the guitar or just people in general who want to learn how to play the guitar. It actually teaches them in-depth through a five step process how to play the guitar.

Shane Sams: And what's your domain name?

Devyn Sams: Our domain name is conqueringguitar.com.

Jocelyn Sams: Tell everybody a little bit about why you started this particular business. What does this mean to you? What is your background as far as playing the guitar?

Devyn Sams: We just created it because number one you guys challenged us and from the beginning we were really confused about what y'all did. You guys started donning on us and so we were like, "Hey, if they're making money online, why can't we just go ahead and start it?" So, we created the website and here we are.

Jocelyn Sams: All right. So the whole guitar thing. This is something that's meaningful to you also. Tell everybody a little bit about that.

Devyn Sams: Oh, right. I taught myself how to play the guitar when I was around 13. I actually bought a guitar with my own birthday money and I actually taught myself how to play. It took probably around two to three years to actually teach myself how to play and I was just thinking, "You know, what if I was the next shortcut to help people play the guitar?" So, we created the website and so forth.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, great. Now, I want to ask you this because I know that there are probably a lot of people out there thinking, "Oh, well these guys, they're in high school and college. They have nothing else to do. They're just sitting around making websites and stuff." I want you to just tell everybody a little bit about what really both of your involved in. Let's start with Devyn. What else were you doing in addition to school and creating this website?

Devyn Sams: First and foremost I was a football player by heart, so I was always at football practice. Other things I was in, I would have church, homework from school. So I was a pretty busy dude.

Dustyn Sams: He played in two state championships.

Shane Sams: That's right he did. That's right he did. That's the genetics coming through right there. But you worked too, right Devyn?

Devyn Sams: Yeah, I did work.

Shane Sams: Also, not only that, you're selling yourself short here. One, when he says he taught himself how to play guitar guys, it means no lessons. He got the guitar and just started figuring it out and started listening to songs and sitting around and playing for hours and hours and hours at a time. Okay? And number two, when he says he was a football player, he was a starting football player. A leader who was at practice all the time. Probably three and four hours a night after being at school all day long. And when he says he played guitar at church, he's literally leading 1200 people every Sunday in worship. He is up there with the song leader, he's the lead guitar, he's up on a mic, and he's working with the group and he's practicing all the time to be ready for these big services on Sundays. So this is not a guy who's sitting around playing Fortnite eight hours a day. That's not what's happening here.

Shane Sams: And Dustyn, now what do you do? Devyn is basically ... Devyn you do all the courses and you're the front of the business, right? You're the show? Correct?

Devyn Sams: Correct.

Shane Sams: Now, Dustyn, what are you doing in the business right now with Devyn?

Dustyn Sams: Particularly, I'm the better looking brother but I'm not out front. No, I'm just joking. But basically I have my own photography and videography business, so I have a lot of background in technology and stuff. So, I've basically been the one who's made all the courses and recorded all the videos. Basically just built the website and membership site.

Shane Sams: You did that mostly with our courses, correct?

Dustyn Sams: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I just go on the ... I finally convinced y'all, or I didn't convince y'all but I finally got a membership from you guys and then I went through all the videos and taught myself how to make a website through those. Basically through brand design and Canva and all that it worked out.

Shane Sams: What's funny you say that is, we have been harassing you guys to do this for 18 months. It's been a year-and-a-half ago you all would come over and you'd be hanging out at our house. You'd look around and be like, "What do you guys do again? How is all this possible?" And we would tell you start an online business. Start a website. You're like, "That's not what you do. That's not what you do." And we kept harassing you and harassing you. I remember that you guys wanted to tip toe into it but I wouldn't let you because we hated giving things away for free and I didn't feel like you guys were ready. You really just weren't going ... You weren't serious enough or us to give you the opportunity yet. Does that make sense?

Dustyn Sams: Part of it personally was I feel like we were just so young. We weren't mature enough to understand. And then now that we're a little older, we actually understand what's going on and it's helped us out a whole lot.

Shane Sams: Let's talk about that a little bit because even as you were building this stuff out, there was a lot of disbelief, a lot of this can't be real, a lot of this isn't possible. But Dustyn actually was the videographer last year for Flip Your Life LIVE. All the commercials, all the videos. All the things that you see on our Facebook page and online, Dustyn came in and filmed those, edited those. What did you ... How did that event really fire you up? Because when you came back from Flip Your Life LIVE-

Jocelyn Sams: I'm not really sure you knew what to expect when you went. You're like "Okay, this is an event. I don't know what this is going to be."

Shane Sams: "Just shooting or wedding or whatever. Just another thing." What happened when you got there and you saw all that. You saw these hundreds of people from all over the world coming in. You saw what we were doing on stage and you heard ... I mean you were in the room for every session. Right? When you came back, you were on fire. You guys really went after it, really got on it. What changed after you went to Flip Your Life LIVE?

Dustyn Sams: Well, going in Flip Your Life LIVE, it basically was another event for me just as a job I'd say. But I also knew what you guys had done since you're my uncle and aunt. I knew that I wanted to learn a little bit more about that, so I was very interested in going to that. On that part of the half anyways. So when I got there, not only did it turn out being a job but it was basically like I was a member in the community with all the other people. I really just learned a whole lot about online business and I knew that even though I'm going out week in and week out filming and videoing, it's a lot of hard labor work where I could be doing this online and making money another way.

Dustyn Sams: So really, that event just inspired me to take action and get Devyn onboard and we made something work.

Jocelyn Sams: It was really funny because I remember at first you were out there mostly videoing stuff. And then later in the event, I just saw you writing. All the time.

Shane Sams: Taking notes, baby. I'm like, "Damn it. I'm paying. Dustyn, I'm paying you here. Pick up your camera. Start taking some more photos, man."

Jocelyn Sams: I'm not insinuating that you weren't doing any work.

Shane Sams: No he did a great job. The videos are amazing!

Jocelyn Sams: It just makes me laugh because at first you were like, "Oh, video." And you're like

Shane Sams: "I gotta write this down this is something I can do later." We brought all of the staff that helped at the end of the thing and I asked you on stage, I was like, "You didn't really know what we did. Now what do you think?" And I remember your eyes just got as big as saucers and you were like, "This is crazy. I can't believe all these people are actually doing this." It was just cool when you got back.

Shane Sams: All right, let's talk about ... All right. You guys piddled with it. You're taking the courses. You're building some stuff. Then you see it's real because you're in a room with real people and you're like, "Man, there's other people doing this. Not just Shane and Jocelyn. If they can do it, we can do it too." You come back, you guys really hammered down. You guys were making courses, putting up courses, getting stuff out there, toying with some Facebook ads, sharing stuff. You all were just crushing my Facebook newsfeed sharing stuff locally. It was ridiculous. Telling anybody you could. I kept getting messages. Everyone in our family would be tagged in them. Dustyn and Devyn were like, "Hey guys, could you share this everywhere that you talk on social media? That'd be awesome. Thanks." You guys were really just hustling.

Shane Sams: And nothing was happening. And nothing was happening. I remember Devyn, talking to you a couple of times here and there, you're like, "We got stuff out there. The course is ready. I just want someone to buy this. I just want someone to tell me it's real."

Jocelyn Sams: Some of you guys have been there before, people listening to this right now are thinking, "I have so been there. I just want somebody to buy it." So we just keep saying, you have to be patient. You have to wait. Everybody wants to build it and then overnight they get 4,000 people to buy their thing. And it doesn't work that way.

Shane Sams: And then the other night I get a rampaging, crazy, all caps text message. I can't remember who text me first. I think it was Devyn. So, Devyn, I'm going to lead this over to you. What happened the other day in your online business?

Devyn Sams: You know, I was getting frustrated. I was getting frustrated and frustrated and more frustrated because no one was buying it. Right? But I kept listening to ... It's funny because I kept listening to your guys' YouTube channel and your podcasts. You would always say, "Be persistent and prolific and something will happen and take action." You know, I just kept doing that. And then that night, I made my first sale.

Shane Sams: You sent me ... You FaceTimed me three times. I'm like, "Leave me alone. What are you doing?" And you sent me the text and I call you back. I started snapping pictures because we were both so excited.

Jocelyn Sams: I was in a different room and I kept hearing screaming. I'm like, "Okay, what in the world is going on here?"

Shane Sams: I'm like, "Devyn made his first sale! Dustyn made their first sale!" I remember it was funny because the two weeks before that, I went back and just looked at our ... I thought about our conversations at church or when we were together. I looked back at some texts here and there. I started piecing together a progression. Something was heating up because you would tell me we got some traffic. Hey, someone signed up for our email list. Hey I sent an email out and two people opened." Right? And then finally that one person bought. Where was that person from? Don't say their name, but where were they from?

Devyn Sams: They were from Australia.

Shane Sams: All right. So we got two guys in Kentucky. We got a high school senior, and a 21-year-old guy in college that threw up this website and literally started from scratch. Devyn you don't even know how to use the website still, right? You don't even know what-

Devyn Sams: Right.

Shane Sams: All you know how to do is play guitar. Is that what I'm feeling right now? All right. Dustyn, you barely know how to do it because, what was it? A week or two ago you all were sending me a message and something broke on the website?

Dustyn Sams: Yeah. It was ... Yeah.

Shane Sams: What happened? Someone couldn't buy or the buy button wouldn't work?

Dustyn Sams: I still don't fully know what happened but I fixed it. Somebody was trying to sign up for the ... And this was ... Don't get me wrong. This was the day we got our first member. Somebody messaged me and was like, "Hey, I'm interested in buying the course, but I want to sign up for your free version first." But he said for some reason when he signed up it sent him to a link to the back end of WordPress. I texted Shane and I said, "This is a problem. I need to figure out what to do."

Jocelyn Sams: We were actually in the car. Shane was driving and you guy were texting him and calling him. Basically he said ... He was like, "I'm not going to help you guys." I felt bad! I was like, "We have to help them." He's like, "No. They have to figure it out on their own." I was just saying the other day in a Facebook group, I don't even remember which one it was now but somebody was asking what's the number one skill that you need to have in online business or a business of any kind? My answer was problem solving. Problem solving skills. That is the most important thing, I think, to having any type of business. That's exactly what he said. He said, "They have to figure it out on their own."

Shane Sams: Because I said, and I remember in the car, this was after I hung up on you and told you to figure it out yourself-

Jocelyn Sams: And that really happened.

Shane Sams: That really happened. I looked over at Jocelyn and we were talking about this. I'm like, "Look. This is the place where people get beat. Something gets hard and they have a choice. To quit or to fight." I said, "If they figure this out," and like Dustyn just said, he's not even sure how he fixed it. That happens all the time in your business. There's stuff going on in our community all the time, in the forums, I don't even know why it works, but it does. If you fight through that, you realize that you can solve any problem and still make money. Even if it's not perfect.

Shane Sams: But a lot of people, the tech gets hard and they quit. Or they run out of money and they don't want to sell anything else. Or they don't have enough time, and they don't want to sacrifice Netflix. If you can't get through those problems, if you can't figure out how to make time in your schedule for the online business, if you can't figure out how to find money to invest in your business, and if you can't overcome tech challenges because no matter how many people you hire, no matter how long you're in this, every day is a tech challenge. I was dealing with a tech problem just yesterday in a hotel room in Indianapolis because I couldn't figure something out. If you can't get past that, you'll never get to the promise land.

Shane Sams: So, you guys fought through it. Because I didn't rob you of your problems. I always want to help and give people direction and give you guidance, but I don't ever want to rob you of your problems. Because I can't do it for you. I can't run your business for you. Jocelyn can't run your business for you. Only you can. If I helped you and saved you every time you needed it and me and Jocelyn get hit by a bus tomorrow, who's going to help you the day after that? Right?

Shane Sams: You got through this, you make your first sale. It didn't stop there. What happened after that first sale came in just out of nowhere?

Devyn Sams: We got that first sale and about I would say two hours later, I looked at the email and boom. There was another person that bought our membership.

Shane Sams: And then what happened?

Devyn Sams: And then another.

Shane Sams: And then what happened?

Devyn Sams: And then another.

Shane Sams: It's funny because I kept telling you there's a tipping point. You just gotta go. You just gotta go because if you can find one, you can find more than one. You might even find 101 or a 1,001. They come in bunches. All of the sudden people kept going. It was funny because after you guys sent me the message, that first sale got y'all fired up. Y'all started sharing stuff and there was ads going, we're going to start a Facebook ad. You all were hunting every conversation you had ever had with anyone in your email and your Facebook just trying to figure out where you were getting traction. I could just feel that first sale excitement from you guys. Because that's what makes it real. Right? When you made that first sale.

Devyn Sams: Right.

Shane Sams: I remember back when we made our first sale. We got to that point too in our journey where we almost gave up. When I first started doing this online thing, I didn't know how people were making money. I didn't know if it was real. I didn't know if it was some kind of scam, like an MLM or something. I didn't know what was going on. I just knew that people were saying they were making money online. I kept trying to get Jocelyn on board and she just kept saying, "Prove it. Prove it's not a scam and then I'll believe it. But until I actually see you make money, I'm not wasting my time on this." Right?

Shane Sams: So I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to make money. I was about to give up. One night right before bed, I went to brush my teeth and I said a little prayer. I said, "God, is this real? Are these people scamming me? Is all the stuff I'm reading online, all these things people are telling me, is it true? Because I'm about to quit. I've been trying for months. Nothing's happening. I've put hours and hours and hours into this and I just don't know if I can do this anymore." I went back to bed and right before I went to bed, I opened my computer. I went to my analytics and I hit refresh. Where there was a zero in my analytics before, no money, no sales, no nothing, when it came back there was 11 cents in my account.

Shane Sams: It's funny because at the time the only way I knew to monetize anything was with ads. What had happened I had created something, put it on my website, someone came to that page through search to read it or whatever and they happened to click an ad on that page. It's funny because that doesn't seem like a ton of money, right? 11 cents. That's a dime and a penny. But it was proof that I could create something and get money back. So how much was your first sale? How much was this first sale that you all made?

Dustyn Sams: Well, initially ... Okay. I'm going to go off on a little tangent here to set the stage. Back in the-

Shane Sams: Can you tell that he's my nephew?

Dustyn Sams: We got to be visual here. So, back in the summer is when me and Devyn really took off on the idea of getting this up. It wasn't until Flip Your Life LIVE that we actually got serious about it. But I started building this site back last summer around ... I was traveling in between mission trips and I remember sitting on a plane editing all these videos and me and Devyn were trying to come up with a price. Initially, we created a price of $97. We thought that was going to gain us some traction.

Dustyn Sams: But through all this time, we did not make one entire sale until just recently. Devyn actually came up to me. He's like, "Hey, we're not getting any sales." I was being stubborn. I was like, "No. I've done all this work. You've done all this work. We have to make this work." He said, "We need to lower the prices a little. Maybe have a Christmas, New Year's sale or whatever." I said, "Okay. Let's figure it out and we're going to do $19 or ..." It's actually $20. So we did that $20 and that was our first sale. Then from there we've hit the ground running really.

Shane Sams: That's literally and my math may be terrible here, but that's like 2,000 times more than my first money I made online. Because I made 11 cents, bro. Right? Look at it in perspective. You guys made 2,000 times more money on your first money online than I did. You guys are going to be probably passing us up here in a couple of years.

Shane Sams: There's something else I want to really highlight in that story. Fearless changing and testing of prices. Because that's a huge problem that a lot of our older members, like pretty much everybody else that's a member of the community but you guys, have. Scared. They're really scared to change anything or try a new price or to even set a price for the product. And you guys were just like, "Ah, 100 bucks. Let's try it. That didn't work. $20. Let's see what happens." But that fearless changing of the price, that you might not even have a clue you were doing, that's what made you find the first price that would work. Now you are in the ballpark and you can try different things. You can go up. You can down. You can go monthly. You can do some other things to test that thing out.

Shane Sams: Anybody out there, if that's holding you back, listen to these guys. Just try something and see what happens.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah and the thing about it is people are always scared to change their price. "Oh, well, I've already told people it was $99." Well, nobody bought it. So ... there you go.

Shane Sams: Even if they know, they didn't react to it. It doesn't matter.

Jocelyn Sams: Chances are people don't even care what it was anyways. You could email them six months ago and say, "They it's $97." You could email them again and say, "Hey, we're having a special sale and it's $20. Here's what you get." People probably don't remember that first email anyway. And if they do, well, they'll be happy because you lowered the price.

Shane Sams: Also too, let me ask you this guys, you had this discussion, you talked back and forth and you decided to try something new. You used a holiday as a sale. What a great ... That was another great decision. Just, "Okay, we got a holiday. That's an excuse. Let's lower the price." But did you just pull $20 out of your hat? Did you just try something? Were you just throwing mud on the wall to see what stuck? How did you go from $100 to $20? Just because one was high and you wanted to try low? What was that thought process?

Devyn Sams: We were just thinking $97 hasn't got us jack and so let's just come up with some random number that someone may happen to have. A $20 bill in their pocket. A $20 here, a $20 there. We just came up with $20 and thought it would be the best.

Shane Sams: That's amazing.

Dustyn Sams: I think it's really cool because we're not stopping at that $20. As soon as we made our first sale, I talked to ... After we got done celebrating with you, I talked to Devyn and I was like, "Okay, so you know we can't stay at $20 forever because this is obviously worth a lot more than $20." So, I think what we're going to ... We made a deal after our first five members or so that we were going to make it $20 a month. So I think pretty here soon me and Devyn are going to make it $19 a month recurring monthly payment to us, so it's worth our while. But those first five members really gave us a lot of traction I think.

Shane Sams: Right. That's what we teach in the community. Find the price that people are wiling to pay and then find the price somewhere near that, that they're willing to pay monthly. Because monthly recurring revenue is where you build a stable online business. You can't just rely on random people finding you for sales. You gotta turn it into something where people pay month, after month, after month, after month so that you can go get your 100 people paying you $19 or your 1,000 people paying you $19 to get access to that product.

Jocelyn Sams: We talked about this already with you guys, but your main objective right now is to really over deliver for those people who bought. Get a solid testimonial, preferably on video from those people and that is going to help you. There's social proof as you move forward and try to start this recurring revenue stream.

Dustyn Sams: Yeah, definitely. And that's something ... I actually just whispered over to Devyn. I said, "Write that down."

Shane Sams: Listen guys, you're paying attention and you're taking action fearlessly. Right?

Dustyn Sams: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And that's what you have to do if you're going to make it online. So, before we get going guys, listen, I'm really proud of you two. Honestly. It's hard enough for us sometimes to convince people out there that ... Got people in their 30s and 40s to go out and try this. But to see a high school senior with stuff going daylight to dark do this and base it around something that they knew about, that they felt like they could go out and reach out and maybe hit an avatar that nobody else could do and to see you guys work together as brothers, because that's not easy. Right? I'm sure there's been some heated conversations.

Jocelyn Sams: As someone who's had a sister or still does have a sister, yeah, that would be very difficult.

Shane Sams: Right? And also too, I don't want to sell short Dustyn's role in this. Dustyn, he is a full-time college student, pre-law. He has a full-time business that he's running on the weekends basically flying around doing weddings and editing all week during that time. You guys really have a lot going on but you made it happen. You took action. You got a result and now you've got a fire lit. And fires get bigger when you pour gas on them.

Shane Sams: With that being said ... Oh, one more thing. Everybody listening to this out there, I got a high school senior and a sophomore in college building an online business. What are you waiting for? Gotta get out there and get ... You gotta get off the bench y'all. You gotta get on the field and you gotta try. Maybe your prices are locked in. Unlock them. Maybe you need to go to Flip Your Life LIVE this year, so that you can get inspired too and you can see other real people doing this. You can learn from me and Jocelyn live. But you can do this. Anyone can do this. Even if you don't know how to do the technology. They figured it out. Even if you don't know how to do all the pricing and the sales and the marketing. You don't understand how social media ... It doesn't matter. Start and figure it out. Maybe you're stuck on some technical problem because your website broke down two weeks ago and you just gave up. Well, go get back under the hood and figure it out because you can do it if you keep moving forward.

Shane Sams: Let's talk about getting you guys moving forward. How can we get you to the next level? What is your question on your next steps now that you've got your first few members?

Devyn Sams: All right, one of the big questions that I've been contemplating on asking you guys is, how can we get more organic search to our website? Right now we're running Facebook ads. Some of the members that we have gotten, we've had to pay for through the Facebook ads. We're looking for ways to get those members without having to pay for a Facebook ad or getting so many members off of one ad itself.

Shane Sams: Sure. Okay. There's only two ways to get traffic online. You can open your wallet or you can roll up your sleeves. That's it. One takes time and one takes money. So the one you're talking about, Facebook ads, take money. Which if you have some decent ... If you have some money each day, we highly suggest that you always use some kind of advertising. Maybe five bucks a day, 10 bucks, whatever you can afford. Figure that out. But if you want more organic traffic, that means rolling up your sleeves and being extremely consistent in prolific in content creation.

Shane Sams: If you want more organic traffic, you're going to have to go create a ton more content. That might mean getting on YouTube for 15 minutes a day to teach something. Every day. And then taking that and putting it on your blog and writing out a blog post. Right? To talk about what is in the videos, so that people can actually find it and search.

Jocelyn Sams: It can be super quick. It doesn't have to be an hour long training session or anything. Just show people how to play a chord.

Shane Sams: "Today's thing, I'm going to show you how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb." Whatever. You do it and you say, "If you want to learn more about this, click here. Here's your quick tip for the day." Bam. "I'm Devyn. I'm out." Then you go in, you type a blog post.

Shane Sams: Maybe you carve out one hour every day and that's the hour that you're going to do a YouTube video, embed it in a blog post, type it and go. This is a long-term play. It's hard. I'm not trying to ... You guys are young. It's hard for you to see long-term. Because you're always looking at what's going next. Let's go. Let's keep moving forward. Right? But this is a long-term play. You're going to make a 100 of these videos over the next 100 days and you're not going to see anything from it. But next year, this same month, those videos you made in those first 100 days are going to start getting traction and you're going to start getting more traffic. Maybe they're getting 10 views a piece a day. But then you do a 100 more and then they stack. And then you do 100 more, then they stack. And then all of the sudden, 10 of your videos get 5,000 to 10,000 views and drive a bunch of traffic.

Shane Sams: But if you don't have a lot of money, which you guys don't, if you don't have a lot of resources, then that's the route you have to take. If you want organic traffic, you're going to have to put in the work. You're going to have to create content.

Jocelyn Sams: As you're planning this content out, one of the things that you really want to keep in mind is who your customer avatar is. For you, it is people who are just starting to learn to play the guitar. Is that accurate?

Devyn Sams: Right. Beginners who are wanting to play the guitar.

Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. So what you don't want to do is you don't want to create a video or a piece of content that's, "The best guitars to buy when you lead worship at church." Well obviously these people aren't going to be leading worship at church, so that content doesn't make sense to create. So, what you want to do instead is maybe, "The best guitar for beginners." And talk about what kind of guitar you would recommend for people who are learning to play guitar. "How to clean your guitar." You know, think about things who people who are brand new they would have no clue, and that's the type of content.

Shane Sams: How to change a guitar string. Jocelyn's got a really good avenue for you guys here. When you're making this free content, you don't want to hard teach. That's not how you get traffic. You get traffic by all the other stuff that people wonder about, about their thing. Then they come in and learn how to do it from you. But you just tell them what to do around that. "How long should my guitar strap be?" "Where can I hold my guitar?" "I need a guitar case." Maybe somebody gave them a guitar and they don't even have a case. "Here's a good guitar case." Show them yours. Doesn't matter what it is.

Shane Sams: Inside the Flip Your Life community there's a course that shows you how to research content. One of them, I got two courses, one is what kind of content you should create and how to do it free to make sure that you're not giving away your best stuff. And then another one is how to research what real people are actually looking for. That's our keyword. Research tutorial. You need to watch both of those. You need to be strategic just like you would a game plan for a football game. You're not going to go in without a game plan. You need to know what you're going to create over the next month and then you gotta sit down and do the work. You just gotta get out there and start creating videos. It won't happen overnight. It's going to take time.

Shane Sams: But that is the only way to create traffic organically. To create a lot of content. We were looking the other day. We have basically almost 300 podcasts. We have something like ... Jocelyn and I are releasing around 1,000 videos on YouTube this year. It's all old content that we've cut up and sliced up. We're going to roll it out on YouTube. But we've been creating content for like four years to get to the point where we're going to roll this out on YouTube. Did we see any benefit from that over the first four years? No. We've been recording all these things. All these Q&As and all these things that we've been doing for years and now we've cut them up, and we're going to use SEO, Search Engine Optimization, to go out there and put it on YouTube and grow our YouTube channel.

Shane Sams: But we're playing the long game. We're the glacier. Not the prairie fire. We're an unstoppable force moving forward that will be here 10,000 years from now. Not an amazing fire that burns out and goes away. That's how you build organic traffic online. It's the only way to do it. And people try to be viral. "Ooh, I'm going to make something viral. This video's so good it's going to go viral." What they don't see on most of those viral videos is that that person made 400 other videos before that one went viral because you can't guess that game. You just gotta throw stuff out there and see what gets shared.

Dustyn Sams: Yeah. Sweet. I guess on the opposite end of the spectrum, one side is rolling up your sleeves, the other is spending money. Basically the question I had was how can we ... Because I have a good video background but wedding videos are a lot different than business videos or advertisements. So, what would be some tips you guys could give for us to make the best ads to put out there on social media to get the best bang for our buck?

Shane Sams: Well, the first thing we would tell you is professional looking videos don't always work the best.

Jocelyn Sams: Especially in this space. Because you're really trying to teach people who want a DIY. So I wouldn't make it too polished.

Shane Sams: Yeah. Videos are more like ... Have Devyn just sitting there in front of the camera a be like, "What's up. This is Devyn. I'm going to teach you your first chord. Right now. In this video on Facebook. All right here we go. Get your guitar out. Get the fingers where they go." Whatever blah, blah, blah. And you show them that one chord. That's the basis. And be like, "Watch this. Now if you know this chord and you know these other two, you can play this song." You play a little song. Then you're like, "If you want to learn the next two chords, click the link in the description. I'm going to go." But it's just a video there.

Shane Sams: Your best thing to do is make sure your audio sounds really good. Right? But think about how people are using the platforms you're advertising on. If you're advertising on Facebook, if I'm scrolling through my newsfeed, if I see some super slick, polished thing that's clearly an ad, not a highlight reel, not a good video on teaching something, it's clearly and ad, I'm just going to scroll on by it. But if I see a guy playing guitar and in the description it says, "Learn your first chord." And look over at that guitar sitting there, I'm going to maybe watch it. That's what you're thinking more of. It's not really just the video production that matters. It's what you're actually teaching.

Jocelyn Sams: I would even say it might be a cool idea to get either a picture or a video of somebody that you worked with in the past. Maybe even a kid. Somebody young. Because that shows people that hey, if this person can do it, if I can teach this person, I can also teach you.

Shane Sams: Another thing too is your demographics of the people that are buying matter. You need to figure out how old those people are. Have you talked to any of the people that have bought?

Devyn Sams: I've actually talked to two of them.

Shane Sams: Okay. Do you know how old they are?

Devyn Sams: I don't really know but I can guess on their age.

Shane Sams: Okay, guess. What do you think the one in Australia is?

Devyn Sams: I'm going to say she was around 40.

Shane Sams: Okay. And then there was another kid, another mom bought it for her kid. Correct?

Devyn Sams: Right.

Shane Sams: Okay. So, you got two little hints there. That's not enough data to matter, but it can give you some clues going forward. For example, you're a young guy teaching people how to play guitar. What if you played on that. You're like, "Hey, my name's Devyn and I would love to teach your kid how to play guitar." Because you're talking to the ... The only person you talk to in an ad is the person who has the wallet. You don't care about who you're actually teaching. You're like, "Hey, I'm Devyn. I got this testimonial here of this kid I taught guitar." Maybe you get a picture of her playing guitar. Edit that video in there real quick. Then you're like, "I would love to teach your kid." If I saw that, I'd probably be interested. If Isaac wanted to play guitar and I saw this young guy ... I don't want some creepy old person or somebody trying to teach my kid guitar. I mean seriously. I don't know this person but I see this young guy and he's teaching another kid how to play guitar. That's trustworthy looking.

Shane Sams: That's the kind of advertising you gotta do. Keep it real. Use the picture as a 1,000 words. Show them who you help on the video. Show them who you are and show them who you help. Once they see themselves in your marketing, they'll react better to click through. Also, you're not just selling your product. You're selling the next step. Your ads should go to opt-ins. Your opt-ins should sell the product.

Jocelyn Sams: And your ads can also go to content. As you start creating these little mini pieces of content, say so many times a week, you can also put some money behind a post about that. So, "Hey guys, I did a post today about the best guitar for new players. You can check it out here."

Shane Sams: All those things stack. It's just like you did when you launched. We always tell everybody to start product first. You guys listened and did it in order. You created the course, you created the website, and then you started promoting it. Because you had something to sell. That's why you're where you are right now. Content will work the same way. Don't worry if your ad or your content is right. As you do them, you will start to feel what's working and you can pivot and you can move. Don't get so caught up in data and perfect testing one ad versus another. There is a lot of art and science to this. Most of it is just doing stuff. That's why I email our list every day because I can see the replies. I can see what got opened on Tuesday and what didn't get opened on Wednesday. I can start feeling and moving and bobbing and weaving.

Shane Sams: It's like our ads. We usually start a bunch of different Facebook posts or a bunch of different tweets in the week and if I see one that's getting a lot of traction, I'll go put ad money behind it to get in people's newsfeed more. Does that make sense? The more you do this, the more you will feel it for your business. That's why we're really adamant, "Do it." Don't worry what's right. Don't worry what's wrong. And don't even worry if your ads aren't perfectly bringing back a good return right now. It stacks. Six months from now, a year from now, you'll start making so much money monthly that any money you might have invested early will come back to you in spades. Right?

Jocelyn Sams: And the one thing that I would say too, just on that note of trying things and seeing what happens, is just don't get stuck in the cycle of learning. We see this happen all the time with people who come into community. They want to read all the books and take all the courses and make sure they're doing things "Correctly." But then they never do anything. Because they're just paralyzed by, "Okay, well, I don't know. This person said I should do this. This other person said I should do something different. So which one would I listen too? I don't know. I better do some analysis on this." I say this to myself too because I get in the same type of situation all the time where I want to analyze everything and research everything. I would say just don't do it. Keep doing what you're doing. You got here by trying things, seeing what worked, and trying something new. Keep doing that.

Shane Sams: And you guys have an unfair advantage that there's two of you. Right? What would probably be good is for ... Devyn, you should really figure out a way that you can create content without Dustyn. That means you're going to have to learn a little more about how WordPress works. Do a YouTube video. Learn how to embed it. And you're going to have to type out the blog posts. Okay?

Shane Sams: Dustyn, you should probably go to the ad side because it is a little more technical anyway and you could probably figure it out. But let one of you handle the paid part and one of you handle the content creation part. One of you can get over here and open the wallet a little bit. And I'm not saying a lot. Do it two bucks a day. Three bucks. Just enough to poke the fire and keep it going.

Jocelyn Sams: Let it run for a little while and see what's working before you turn it off.

Shane Sams: Try one ad a month. Three to five bucks a day. Whatever. Y'all just made five membership sales. You got 100 people. There's $100 for ads next month. Invest everything back into your business in the beginning. Don't keep it. Don't go out and take your girlfriends to the movies at 50 bucks each. Go bum some money off your mom and dad. Do that. You can still do that.

Jocelyn Sams: Good luck with that.

Shane Sams: So do that. Put that money back into the business. That's your ad money for next month. Dustyn, your challenge is to make more than $100 back, so you've got money for the next month. Go make $150 back but spend $150. Then go make $200 and then spend $200. Then go make $400 and spend $400. Then go make $1,000 and spend $1,000. Oh, now we're making money. Right?

Shane Sams: While you're doing that, Devyn you're over here creating content and you're just going to create a schedule. I don't care what you pick. Like three days a week, five days a week every day. Do whatever you want. If you went crazy and made a video every day for a year, I promise you somebody's going to pay attention. You know what I mean? So you guys divide and conquer a little bit and go promote this thing that you know will sell for that $20 bill but make it $19 a month. Then you're going to be on your way.

Devyn Sams: All right.

Dustyn Sams: Okay. That sounds good.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay guys. We have had a lot of fun talking today. We are really, really proud of you guys. You've done something that so many people who listen to this podcast or just in general are either too scared to do or just have not taken the next steps to doing it. So, we love it. We can't wait to see what happens next and we hope to bring you back on again when this thing really blows up. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

Jocelyn Sams: But before we go, we want to ask you what is one thing that you plan to do? What do you plan to take action on based on what we talked about here today?

Dustyn Sams: Well, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go back and write an essay on the Rwanda genocide, but the second thing I'm going to do ... And then the second thing I'm going to do is I'm really going to focus on creating an ad that will drive traffic to our free opt-in We have a guide that has ... Is it ... How many videos?

Devyn Sams: It's like five or six.

Dustyn Sams: It's like five or six videos that teach people some chords to play. I think I'm really going to focus on driving traffic to that, so we can get more people on our email list. Because that's ... Once we started emailing our list really hard, that's when we got our first member.

Shane Sams: Awesome. Devyn?

Devyn Sams: The first thing I'm going to do is probably work on some stats homework because I've got a big test come up. But other than that, I'm going to probably write a blog post or start filming some videos teaching people how to play the choruses of some popular songs.

Shane Sams: I'll tell you this Devyn, for you especially, don't record the videos and let Dustyn edit them. Go to YouTube Live and do a live video and it'll be on YouTube already.

Jocelyn Sams: Even if you mess up.

Shane Sams: Even if you mess up, just do it live. Give yourself a time limit. 15 minutes for each video. You don't have time to wait for him to edit your videos, right? So just go do it live and you'll be able to crank that stuff out a lot faster.

Jocelyn Sams: Another thing I wanted to say is I want to see you do some research on what people are searching for too. It's one thing ... It's okay to just blindly create content sometimes just because you want to or because you feel like it may be something that people are searching for. But it's really a good idea to do a little bit of research. See what people are actually searching for and design your content around that. A great way to do that is to ask people what they want to know. So if you have a Facebook page, if you have an email list just say, "Hey, I'm working on creating some new free content. What do you want to know about?

Dustyn Sams: Right, right.

Shane Sams: All right guys. Great talk today. Man, what an awesome and inspiring story. You know, Jocelyn and I draw a lot of our inspiration from the Bible and we love to give our guests an opportunity to share one of their favorite inspirational bible verses. What bible verse do you guys have to share with our audience today?

Devyn Sams: Today we have a bible verse out of Galatians chapter six verse nine. It says, "Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Shane Sams: Wooh! That kind of applies to your story. I'm just saying. Hey guys, listen, great job today on the podcast. I didn't know if you guys were a little nervous. Didn't know if you knew what to expect when you got on here today. I know you've listened, but man it's a whole different thing when you're on the other side of the mic. We're just really proud of you guys. You guys are killing it. This should be an inspiration to everybody out there. If a high school senior and a college student can do this, you can do it too. So thanks for coming on the show guys. We can't wait to have you back when you get your first 100 members.

Devyn Sams: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Dustyn Sams: Awesome. Thank you.

Shane Sams: All right guys. That is all the time we have today but what an inspirational story to hear a high school senior and a college sophomore taking massive action, working month, after month, after month and overcoming technical problems, a lack of finances, lack of time, and getting to the point where they made that first sale. And then the second sale. The third sale. The fourth sale. The fifth sale. And on, and on, and on it goes. You can do this too guys. Anybody out there can do it. If a high school senior can build an online business, you can build an online business too. We can help you do it. We have all the training, resources and community support that you need inside of the Flip Your Life community to take your business and life to the next level.

Shane Sams: All you have to do to find out more is go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D Lifestyle.com/flipyourlife. You can learn everything about the Flip Your Life community and our plan to start building and growing an online business to flip your life blueprint. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and join today.

Jocelyn Sams: If you need a little bit extra motivation, we would love to see you at Flip Your Life LIVE in Lexington in September. You can join Dustyn. He will definitely be there. We'll even try to get Devyn to come so you guys can meet them in person. Come on over to Flip Your Life LIVE. You can learn more at flippedlifestyle.com/live. We hope to see you there.

Shane Sams: That's all the time we have for this week. Till next time, get out there. Take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.

Links and resources mentioned on today's show:

• Devyn & Dustyn's Website
• Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information
• Flip Your Life community

Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family!

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