FL284 - How a Christian Missionary Built His $4000 Per Month Online Business Around Dungeons and Dragons

In today's episode, we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jocelyn Sams: Hey y'all. On today's podcast we'll tell you how Matt makes over $4,000 a month selling his books on Amazon.

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. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started.

Shane Sams: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to The Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited, I am so excited about today's guest, because it is just gonna bring back so much nostalgia and my childhood and teenage years and college years back into my brain when we talk about this subject today. Our guest today is Flip Your Life community member Matt Davids. Matt, welcome to the show, brother.

Matt Davids: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me.

Jocelyn Sams: Matt, when I saw you in the community, I knew that you had to come onto our show. Because Matt works in the RPG game industry, which is ... Okay, I guess it's just RPG, role playing games.

Shane Sams: Dungeons & Dragons, all these cool things. We're gonna get into this, and I'm gonna be really pumped up about it. It's awesome.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, so before I met Shane I had no idea what a role playing game was. After I met him, I still don't really know what it is, but he is really, really excited about them and has been playing them for a very, very long time. Longer than some of our listeners have probably been alive.

Shane Sams: I think the first time I ever played a role playing game, I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was like ... Gosh, like 12 or 13 years old. I've always been into creative stuff and reading, you know, like science fiction, fantasy novels, Game of Thrones kind of stuff. The game is all pencil and paper and dice, right?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Sams: I remember the first time I ever played we didn't have any dice because we couldn't afford to go buy the dice. We're just a bunch of kids.

Matt Davids: Yeah, I've been there.

Shane Sams: So we took hats and we like ... There was a 20 sided dice, so we wrote the numbers 1-20 on paper and we threw them in a hat. Then we had a six sided hat and a 10 sided hat, and that's how I cut my teeth on role playing games.

Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it sounds very similar to me, too. I was nine when I first played Dungeons and Dragons, and yeah. I came home from that and I had to make dice, so I just wrote them on a piece of paper and threw them in a hat.

Shane Sams: Oh, love it. I love it. See, I knew there was gonna be some kind of connection in this episode. I just knew it was gonna happen.

Jocelyn Sams: Well, and I saw Matt in our community and I saw what he was doing, and I thought, "You know what? This is a really cool business first of all, and I know Shane's gonna be really excited about talking to him." So I knew that we had to have you on the show, so thank you so much for being here today.

Matt Davids: No problem.

Shane Sams: Also, too, we always say that our community is extremely unique, because a lot of other communities it's like sales and life go just until the end of the Earth, right? We have so many different people doing so many different niches and so many different business ideas that it's really cool to see like, "Man. You can actually make money doing this." And Matt is actually making four to five thousand dollars a month off of his RPG business. So without going any farther, without spoiling anything else, tell everybody a little bit about you, about your background, and about what you're doing online right now.

Matt Davids: Yeah. Well, I went to college in Kentucky. I went to Asbury, which is in the little town of Wilmore.

Shane Sams: When he says little, he ain't jokin. Wilmore is a little bitty place.

Matt Davids: Yeah. When the college, and there's a seminary there, when they're in session, the town like ... I think it increases, like triples or something the population of the town I think. So I went there. I kind of had my hopes set on becoming a screenwriter, and I did the starving artist thing for awhile. That really didn't work out too well, so I ... At another point in my life I became a missionary and I went to Haiti. I came back from there and then I've been working in search engine optimization ever since.

Shane Sams: Wow. That's amazing. That's another part that's very fascinating about your story, and I feel like the world is changing around all sorts of things, like how we used to view things. You know, like back in the '80s, I'm gonna date myself here a little bit, so anybody that wasn't born in the '80s that's listening, I'm sorry.

Jocelyn Sams: Turn this off.

Shane Sams: Yeah, turn this off.

Jocelyn Sams: I'm just kidding.

Shane Sams: Back in the '70s and '80s, Dungeons and Dragons was this taboo thing and they thought all these kids were devil worshiping and all this stuff. I am a Christian, and you were a missionary, and low and behold we played role playing games and nothing got us messed up or off the beaten path, right?

Matt Davids: Yes. Yeah.

Shane Sams: Now it's just such a part of pop culture. You know, you have Stranger Things where the kids are literally on the show playing Dungeons & Dragons, and then I was just reading the other day that there was this massive surge in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's up so high in sales it's overtaking other board games and things like that, like how it's surging in popularity because we're all online and we all see that this stuff is good, harmless fun, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah, oh yeah absolutely and yeah to be clear, you do not have to worship Satan to play Dungeon & Dragons. You do not have to.

Jocelyn Sams: There are probably people out there who do but you know...

Matt Davids: There probably are. But, you don't have to.

Shane Sams: There's a way to get into it that way. I think that's the first time that we've ever had to clarify that someone wasn't worshiping Satan, in their niche.

Matt Davids: Yes.

Shane Sams: So this is good for all you guys-

Matt Davids: Yes, I have never worshiped Satan. I have never had the desire to worship Satan.

Shane Sams: Okay back to the missionary stuff, let's refocus.

Jocelyn Sams: Thanks for clearing that up.

Shane Sams: Alright, so when were you a missionary in Haiti?

Matt Davids: I was a missionary in Haiti through 2009 and 2010 and I was there during the earthquake, when the earthquake actually happened.

Shane Sams: Wow, like were you in Port de Prince?

Matt Davids: Yes I was in Port de Prince.

Shane Sams: Oh my goodness. Like what was that like?

Matt Davids: Well you know I thought I was gonna die. It was January 12, 2010, about 4:50 pm in the afternoon and there was just a kind of a quiet beautiful day. Haiti in January is beautiful because it's like 75 or something, degrees, and it's beautiful. You know I was working in an orphanage and I was sitting on the second floor of this little building that I lived in across from the orphanage and I just started noticing this little tremor and I heard some of the kids down in the courtyard just kind of getting scared about it and I walked out onto the little veranda and I remember myself saying, I was like, "Don't worry, it's just an earthquake." Well at that point the little tremor became something else. The ground just started shaking, like going just up and down, maybe like a foot and bouncing around, then the whole ground just like moved three feet to the left and I'm watching the orphanage building that's in front of me. It's a very big building, just swaying back and forth.

Matt Davids: The wall of the compound, because everybody's in a compound there. The wall of the compound just breaks and collapses. The water tank on my roof of the little apartment that I was in breaks and I get hit with water. And the sound of the earth just going, you just can't imagine, you just can't even hear anything, it was just so loud. And then like, things started calming down just a little bit and I noticed the youngest girl who's in the orphanage, she was three years old and she was sitting down in front of the orphanage building and I'm just watching concrete blocks and things falling around her and I kind of got my wits about me. I said, "Okay, well I guess I'm not gonna die," and so I ran down there and grabbed her and all the other girls had run out into the streets, so I ran out into the street, got them together and I said, "Okay, we're gonna start praying," and I got a big Amen that day.

Shane Sams: Wow. That is unbelievable. Like absolutely.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah like I'm kinda speechless on that one. I mean I've obviously never experienced anything like that but wow.

Shane Sams: And like I guess the next few days were just like packed with rescues and helping people and all that because it destroyed like 80% of the buildings.

Matt Davids: I think it was even more, I think it was 90%. Yeah like, the official death toll was like 350,000 people, so if you can even imagine that.

Shane Sams: Gee, man. Wow.

Matt Davids: I still can't really even imagine that.

Shane Sams: Have you been back since? Or how much longer did you stay after that?

Matt Davids: I stayed a few days and then we'd kind of were all, wanted to, the head of the orphanage and stuff wanted to evacuate us and stuff so, I was evacuated at that point and came back to the states but then after a few months I went back and I stayed there for a few months, tried to wrap up some of my work and that. I actually wrote a movie and shot a movie there that kinda went, I did some film festivals with and stuff but-

Shane Sams: Wow. Crazy, dude.

Matt Davids: But yeah it was something else, it was something else.

Shane Sams: I mean, when you've faced something like that, the other challenges in life kind of get smaller, right? I mean when you really see, like true devastation like that, like gosh, you know, and once you put the pieces back together for yourself, because I'm sure that was like post traumatic stress stuff going on there. How did that kind of get you thinking about your future and what you wanted to do with your life, like did things change for you after that?

Matt Davids: Yeah definitely. It just kind of really, yeah it kinda made me step back and think about a lot of things and made me take things more seriously and to be more intentional about the things I'm doing, yeah absolutely.

Shane Sams: Do you have a family right now?

Matt Davids: I do now, I do now.

Shane Sams: Yep, yep. So do you have kids?

Matt Davids: I do. I'm married, I have three boys.

Shane Sams: Okay so were you married then or single?

Matt Davids: No I was single.

Shane Sams: Awesome, awesome. Well I'm glad you made it back, brother. I'm glad you made it through that and I'm a big believer that God puts people right where they're supposed to be at all times and hey man, if you weren't there, that little 3-year-old girl might not have got picked up and those people might not have anybody to pray with and I just appreciate you for doing that, that's awesome.

Matt Davids: Thank you.

Jocelyn Sams: And I love how, you said, "Oh yeah we have three boys," but what you didn't mention were how old they are. Tell us how old they are because I can relate to you on this one.

Matt Davids: Okay so yeah I have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and then an 8-month-old.

Shane Sams: Oh my goodness gracious, you are outnumbered and they are little.

Jocelyn Sams: So we also started our business when our kids were super little, so I totally understand what you're going through right now. It is not easy, it's not easy to be a parent of young children anyway, but it's really not easy to try to start a business while working full time and having little bitty children.

Matt Davids: Yes.

Shane Sams: What does your wife think about the roleplay?

Matt Davids: Well she likes roleplaying, she actually has played with us a number of times and she enjoys it.

Shane Sams: See, look at this model wife.

Jocelyn Sams: Matt, gimme a break, you know.

Matt Davids: The business, however, she wasn't really on board for the business.

Shane Sams: Why was that? I'm looking at your sheet that says you started like 2015ish, really starting to put these resources together, getting them on Amazon. So are these like, are these roleplaying modules, are these adventures that the players go on, like what are these resources that you are selling or that you started selling on Amazon?

Matt Davids: Yeah these are resources that help the game master run their sessions. So I don't really do adventures or things like that. I do some setting kind of material but basically these are, there's a lot of random tables, or different things that help the game master not have to prepare a lot before the session that they run.

Shane Sams: Interesting.

Matt Davids: So in roleplaying games, just to explain a little bit, if somebody out there is not familiar, there's a group of players, they create characters that they assume the role of and then there's one player called the game master, dungeon master, and they run the session. And so they present the players with obstacles and different things like that throughout the world and so running a game can be a challenging thing so I make resources for the game masters so they don't have to spend 20 hours prepping a session just to hang out with their buddies.

Shane Sams: And I always equate when people are like, "What is that?" When they're talking to me about it, I always say it's like, "Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books? Well that's kind of what roleplaying games are. Like the players are all the characters in the book, the game master is kinda like the book. You're the narrator, you're like, okay what do you want to do? Go left? Or go right? Right? So it's like that, that's their job, is to weave the story and then the characters' jobs, the players' job is to live the story and actually change the flow of the story. You're not like forcing them down a path, you're giving them as many paths and choices as possible and I can tell you, I used to plan a game when I was in college and we played like every Sunday night and man, it was a lot of work. Like you had to like, really think about things and be prepared because you never knew what the players were gonna do.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Like, you didn't know what to do, left or right or up or down or sometimes they just go backwards. Right?

Matt Davids: Yes.

Shane Sams: So your resources are not full adventures then, they're not like the story, it's like maps or dungeons or whatever.

Matt Davids: Yeah I have dungeon maps, so the game master can just grab a map and kind of fill it and then I have random tables that help cut down the prep of, because you have rooms or you have places and your players always want to explore those rooms and places if you don't want to spend five hours deciding what is all on that one place, you can just use my resources to roll dice and you'd figure out what's in that room.

Shane Sams: So this is almost like filler. Like because the big companies, like Hasbro, who owns Dungeons & Dragons, like, betcha didn't know that, folks at home. The same people making the Uno cards are making the other stuff too. They sell the big adventure but you're like the side adventures that randomly pop up, kinda deal.

Matt Davids: Yes. Kind of. And just also to fill in extra, just extra flavor or if... I also find a lot of game masters don't even like to run some of the big published adventures. They kinda want to do their own thing but they don't want to spend four evenings planning for two hours with their buddies, so they wanna, they just wanna be able to come in and you can just grab my books and just roll that and just roll dice on those tables and that and you know exactly what your, get items and things right there.

Shane Sams: That's amazing, yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay so tell us a little bit about what you're selling right now. So know that you're selling the books and the resources, but how are you selling those?

Shane Sams: All on Amazon? Every bit of it?

Matt Davids: No, I'm selling some on Amazon and then there's a third party marketplace for roleplaying games, it's called DriveThruRPG and then of course I have my own website which is, DiceGeeks.com. And it's just the word "Dice" and the word "Geeks" just kinda squished together.

Shane Sams: Which is the greatest domain name I have ever said out loud on this broadcast actually.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah we were discussing that earlier. But like that is an amazing domain.

Shane Sams: So is the bulk of your income from Amazon?

Matt Davids: Yes.

Shane Sams: Okay. It is just interesting. I want to break this down for a lot of people, because we just went into game speak, we went into the table, y'all. That's where we went right there. But like this is really fascinating how these templates can be applied to all businesses. Like because you're selling, we'll say Amazon is your primary place you're selling. But you have a website and you're kinda selling it in multiple third party market... that's what Amazon really is, right? You're selling it, people are searching for stuff, you're selling stuff there, you're selling stuff on this third party market, you've got your website, that's your thing and you've done this consistently over time and it's built this... A lot of people would love to make $4- to 5,000 doing something they love, you know?

Shane Sams: And it works that way in almost every business, like we see, like we have our education websites. We have our website where we clearly sell lesson plans for teachers, we have third party markets, we have this one called TeachersPayTeachers, where we actually sell lesson plans on and you just kind of find all these places. Really, all you've done is you've created a resource that saves people time, which is one of the best things you can do in any niche... if you can save people time, or get people somewhere faster, you are going to make money, okay? So and then you found third party markets and you've built your own site and if everybody would just do that, consistently, they'd eventually make a little money and that feels pretty good at the end of the day to wake up and see that somebody bought your books overnight, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely.

Jocelyn Sams: So tell us a little bit about, what are the challenges that you're facing right now? So I know that you're making some money on third party sites. What are you doing on your own website right now?

Matt Davids: Well yeah, not too much actually. On my own website, you can see the products which lead you to the marketplaces and of course I collect email addresses and I am also, I blog about game master tips, so tips and things like that to improve your games and cut down your prep time.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay.

Shane Sams: And that, the sales there like what would you say is the percentage of traffic in sales that your website is actually delivering right now?

Matt Davids: Oh gosh.

Shane Sams: Just ballpark it, doesn't have to be perfect.

Matt Davids: Yeah probably like 5% or less.

Shane Sams: Interesting.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay.

Shane Sams: So what's your greatest fear right now that you're just relying too much on Amazon and these third party markets?

Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, absolutely.

Shane Sams: Yeah because if they change the algorithm you could be bottom of the list or.

Matt Davids: Yeah I know.

Shane Sams: Have you seen spikes like that in your revenue? From a month-to-month basis?

Matt Davids: Yes, yeah I definitely see sometimes and then also just like, listening to some self-publishing podcast or whatever hearing people talk about what's going on with Amazon or something like that. I can definitely track when they're changing things, absolutely.

Shane Sams: Do you find that, are your sales very seasonal? Like you average maybe four or five thousand, but like, you find like, is Christmas time really big and other times very slow or anything like that?

Matt Davids: Not yet and the reason for that is that, I've really just, in the last six months or so, really started getting consistent income. And like I mentioned before, I said my wife wasn't into it too much as a business at the beginning, because at the beginning when I started in 2015 really trying to do something like this, I was going to my day job, coming home, working on this until late into the evening and stuff. And I would make like $5 a month or something like that.

Shane Sams: Hard to generate the belief when you're bringing home-

Matt Davids: Exactly, exactly, so...

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's a bit of hard sell when you have a new baby, because at this time I assume that you had a pretty brand new baby.

Matt Davids: Oh yes, yeah our first son was just a few months old at the time.

Shane Sams: You're like, "Check this out baby, I got $5, that's at least three diapers."

Matt Davids: Yeah and it only took me a month to make $5.

Jocelyn Sams: Yes, listen I totally understand what your wife was thinking at that time.

Shane Sams: Yes.

Jocelyn Sams: She's like, this is ridiculous but the cool thing about it is that you keep going and you keep making sales, which is really good.

Shane Sams: Because you had some consistency. I'm looking at your sheet again, it says that you got 10 books for sale on Amazon, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: And you've got four...

Matt Davids: Eleven. I just launched one a couple weeks ago.

Shane Sams: Oh, prolific. We're getting prolific around here. You've got 49 resources available for free on the marketplace, now is that just to generate leads?

Matt Davids: Yeah most, not all 49 are free, but probably, yeah probably 40 some are free and there's a few paid ones that I have on the marketplace.

Shane Sams: Right so generally what you've done is you're finding your traffic from these marketplaces and then trying to, and they buy your books and then hopefully they buy more. How big is your email list right now?

Matt Davids: My personal email list is getting close to 4,000.

Shane Sams: Oh wow that's amazing, yeah. Now is that coming from your website?

Matt Davids: That comes from my website, yeah. I've done some Facebook ads just to drive some traffic to a lead magnet.

Shane Sams: Perfect. But you've not really sold a lot to them or do you just sell them to the Amazon links?

Matt Davids: Yeah I sell them to the Amazon and to the DriveThruRPG links.

Shane Sams: Okay gotcha, okay interesting. So your blog is generating leads and you're driving traffic to these third party marketplaces and a lot of your sales are also coming from just people searching for this stuff, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Okay, so what do you think is next then, like what would make you happier, make you feel more diversified, make you feel safer about your income or even growing or maybe like what's holding you back from doing something like a membership or a recurring revenue type thing?

Matt Davids: I think the only thing that's holding me back from doing kind of recurring revenue or membership is that, I can't, I don't really understand the model, like I don't understand what exactly I would offer in a membership and I just, I have a hard time understanding like, community building and stuff. I mean it's just, I don't know, I try to look at it and I try to understand it but it's just hard for me to get my head around some of that. So that's kind of a big thing but you know I did create, I created a PDF on self-publishing, with like a strategy that people could use on the third party marketplace DriveThruRPG and I've tried selling that, I just don't really know exactly how to market that very well, but I mean another thing though is, it's just like, I love creating the books, I love creating the books, so like creating something about, self-publishing or business strategy just doesn't do it for me and so I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. Well the good news is that if you don't love doing something, you don't have to do it, so that's something really exciting. One thing that I wanted to kind of pull out of this questionnaire, we have everyone fill out a little questionnaire and one thing that you didn't mention is you say that, "I don't know if there's a need for a recurring model in the area of roleplaying games", I found that kind of interesting.

Shane Sams: Oh, Matt.

Jocelyn Sams: And I think that's a big assumption that a lot of people have that is not necessarily true, it's a story that we tell ourselves.

Shane Sams: That's right. And also too like, of course there's hobbies and things like that, but man, D&D is like golf. If you're into golf, you're buying golf stuff. You know what I'm saying?

Jocelyn Sams: And not everyone is going to be into it.

Shane Sams: That's right, but if you're into collectibles, you're collecting everything. That's what that game really is, like people buy the miniatures, they buy every book they can get their hands on and it just becomes this passion, right? And that's usually some of the best, like you don't need a new putter, but you gonna buy one when Nike releases a new one, right? Like that's what golfers do. And it's the same thing with gaming stuff, there really is probably a need for this and actually it's very interesting because the game master's job is often the hardest in the game and two, they're the ones who are usually the most obsessed with roleplaying games, they're the ones paying the most attention, spending the most time on it and that's usually the person that you really need to give something recurring, something because they need their fix, you know what I'm saying?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: Which is, I would be willing to bet that a lot of people that buy your books buy a lot of the other books, like you have repeat buyers in that Amazon system somehow because they're like "Whoa, this book was cool, I'm gonna go buy five more of Matt's books." Right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: That's all recurring revenue model is, is how you bought the one thing, it was so good you're gonna give me money the next month and I'll send you the next thing. Right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So let's talk about that a little bit, let's talk about how we can, one, maybe up some of the sales on your own site, but two, create a membership or recurring revenue out of this, okay? Because wouldn't it be nice to know you're making $4- to $5,000 a month instead of, "I made $4- to $5,000 last month." Like that's why we shift to the recurring revenue model, like if I know that I have enough members to give me $5,000 a month, and I know my average member stays for six months, let's just guess, okay? Now that your whole equation changes to the future instead of the past, not, "well the last couple months I've made $5,000 a month." It's "wait a minute, I can predict now that I will make $5,000 a month for the next six months, which lets me buy ads to grow that and get it to $10,000 before I get there."

Shane Sams: Does that make sense?

Matt Davids: No, absolutely.

Shane Sams: And like that's what you really want, is that's why we're so, a lot of people get mad at us sometimes, like some of the only criticism we really get for the podcast is, "man y'all talk about memberships every time." Well like yeah, because that's how you're free and that's how you have predictable, stable income for your family and that's how you know that you can invest into ads and hire people and grow to whatever you wanna become because you've got money that you know is coming in and you don't have to worry about paying your lights. Right?

Matt Davids: Yeah, absolutely.

Shane Sams: So one, you touched on this a little bit, about the community aspect. Which really surprises me that you went down that path because dude you're a game master, that's all you do is create community every Friday night when your buddies come over, right? So it's like, you're just trying to create that for DMs, like I can imagine like a space of those dungeon masters in a colloquial terms, alright. But you're just, your community would be something where, I would guess that you would come on and talk to these people about being a game master, like these tips you send out or these emails that you're like, "Hey here's a tip or here's a blog post about the tip." You really would just go on live and discuss that with people, right? And share that with people. It doesn't even have to be a big forum, it can be just a Facebook group where you go live every other week or something like that.

Shane Sams: But I was talking to Jocelyn in the car on the way back from an appointment we had earlier and we were talking about you and your business and I'm like, this has to almost be like a physical thing if you were gonna do a recurring membership, like because that's one thing in roleplaying games people love is to flip through books, right? Love the paper, love the pencil, love to flip through books, like, I'm almost even thinking like some kind of monthly printed newsletter, where you send them a resource or you send them ideas and you send them maybe even a little worksheet that they get to pencil in some stats or something, right?

Shane Sams: And I can see people paying for that, man. If I was a game master and I was really fired up and I was like, "Man, twice a month, I get to go hang out and geek out with other dungeon masters, right? I get to be led by this guy who's wrote 11 books, you know? And then I get that Christmas present in my mailbox once a month, not my email inbox, like a physical printed thing that I get every month. I think you could charge anywhere from $50 to $100 for something like that a month. And it would only take a hundred of those game masters in the world and there's a lot more than a hundred of them, so all of a sudden we're double your income. And be consistent with it. Have you ever thought about doing anything like that?

Matt Davids: Yes, absolutely. I've definitely thought about it and that was actually kind of what I had been thinking about, was something that was recurring and that was physical that they could have. Yeah I'm just kind of struggling with the idea of just then producing... cause I can launch a book now on my own schedule, if I had to do something every month, I'm just kind of struggling with some of those things. Let's like, how do I create processes to get that out every month? How do I create engaging content and then how do I find those people that are willing to pay, if you're saying $50 or $100 or something like that a month, where do I find those people because in a lot of the forums and stuff that I hang around in, people are complaining that they have to pay $4.99 for D&D Beyond, which is just launching and just things like that that.

Matt Davids: So I just keep kind of struggling with how to make it work, but I mean I think the idea is sound, it's just like I don't know how exactly I can make it work.

Shane Sams: Well for one thing, the only people that post in those forums complaining are the people who are cheap, that are freeloaders.

Jocelyn Sams: Who are freeloaders.

Shane Sams: And that's why they're in the forum, freeloading and complaining.

Jocelyn Sams: And you know what? That's fine, like there are always going to be those types of people in the world, it's not a big deal. There are always people who think they should get something for nothing.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Jocelyn Sams: But thankfully, there are a lot of other people who believe in paying, trading money for value.

Shane Sams: Yeah you only need 50 people to pay you $50 a month to make $2,500 a month right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: I would be willing to guess that somewhere in the world, as big as this thing is...

Jocelyn Sams: Probably on your email list.

Shane Sams: Right, exactly, you got 4,000 people who have opted in, who have said, "I want more game materials." Now, maybe 3,500 of those people are cheap and they are gonna complain about it, right? But maybe there's 50 to 500 of them that aren't and they just love the game so much and they're older, they've got good jobs and they just do this as their hobby for fun and they love it, like it's the same thing as the golfer analogy. They're gonna go pay for it, right? And a lot of the people, like, what's that famous show now that's on, it's a huge podcast and they just did a KickStarter to raise money, they actually have a podcast where they play D&D every week and it's like...

Matt Davids: Critical Roll.

Shane Sams: Critical Roll, that's what it is and they bring in famous actors, these, some of them play, some of them... like these are like, world-class A-list actors that come in and play these games.

Matt Davids: Yeah they're voice actors.

Shane Sams: They're voice actors, right, exactly. And some of them are learning D&D, some of them are playing D&D, but they do it every single week and that podcast has millions of listeners and they did a KickStarter. They raised enough money to make an animated movie about their game. Listen, there's people throwing money at them just to go make a cartoon.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: There's gonna be somebody that's gonna be willing to pay for this, so you gotta get past that block immediately.

Matt Davids: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so as of right now, you have 4,000 people on your list, if 200 of them, that's 5% of your list, bought something from you right now, which is a totally doable number, I mean that's a lot of money.

Shane Sams: That's like 200 times, let's say that you charge something like $29 a month, what's 200 times 29, Jocelyn? Let's do 200 times 30. That's $6,000, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So it's like...

Jocelyn Sams: So that's on top of the money you're already making for your books.

Shane Sams: Yeah this is not a mountain that we have to climb, it's really just like a hill we kind of have to pop over.

Matt Davids: Okay, yeah.

Shane Sams: Okay? Now as for the logistics, like the logistics is probably as easy as... are you in St. Louis? Isn't that where you work?

Matt Davids: Yeah, St. Louis.

Shane Sams: Alright you're in a big town, man. There's a print shop somewhere that will do this for you, all you have to do is upload a customer list once a month and the file. Usually it's just go to the local print shop and say... a lot of times, these print shops will actually handle the mailing for you, like there's online places too but...

Matt Davids: Yeah there's online places that do it. Yeah I've looked into it, so yeah.

Shane Sams: For sure. So I mean just check around, I actually recommend going a little local even if it costs you a little more per unit because it's just nice to be able to walk in, have somebody to talk to, you know? But online's fine, whatever you wanna do.

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: Basically it's as easy as create PDF upload, create Excel customer list, upload and you do that once a month. And then if you, then it's just about showing up, maybe once or twice a month, maybe once a month, right, just to talk to GMs, give them some tips, let them ask you some questions, right? Be their leader. So it's not like you're, this is not a huge ask in hours. The only hard part is the content, but luckily you have 11 books and 49 other resources online right now that 90% of your list has probably never seen, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So you can just repackage and re-shift around things, maybe it's five resources a month, so that's 60 resources a year. You already have 49 and 10 books, like you could pull things from other things you've already done and put together a nice 10-page newsletter type thing which is more than enough content for a GM to flip through, get a few great ideas, go have a blast over the next four weeks with their friends and then look forward to the next one. Or they're not even gonna be able to use all those ideas in one month, right?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: So like they've got this library, like I subscribe to this email newsletter that's like, it's all about subject lines and copy and all this amazing stuff and I've got this, what do you call the little things that sit on your desk where you put folders in... just like a file holder or something and I have the last two years of them and I can just go flip through them. I love that file folder.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah it's like a, how many pages would you say it is?

Shane Sams: It's an 11-page, stapled thing on paper and I paid $99 a month for it and it's worth every penny. Like when I get it, it's the happiest moment of the mail of the month, you know? And like that, that's what you're trying to create here, is Christmas every month for these GMs and a nice place they can go talk to somebody that gets them and they don't have to talk to their players and they can just geek out about being a dungeon master for an hour and a half.

Jocelyn Sams: And you don't need everyone, you just need a few. To make a really good living. Okay. Everyone's not gonna like it and that's okay. We've talked about that over and over on the show, you know.

Shane Sams: And if you're worried about the hours you're gonna put into it, it's really not gonna take that much time every month. Because if you show up for an hour and a half member call, you spend about an hour and a half getting the newsletter ready and you're pulling from resources you created, maybe you create one new thing a month, just to kind of add something, you know there's always something new in that thing, right?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: And then the rest of it is fleshed out with stuff you've made in the past that's spread out through different books, like, man that's really probably about five, six hours of work a month, to set this thing up.

Matt Davids: Okay. I mean it's...

Jocelyn Sams: Matt, you don't sound very convinced.

Matt Davids: Well I'm just, I'm thinking pretty hard over here. Cause I have thought about it but yeah I'm just trying to go through it in my head again, just trying to see how I could make it work and...

Shane Sams: What scares you the most about it? Because something's holding you back, I can feel it.

Matt Davids: Yeah, yeah something is. Pretty much for all of 2018, I released a lot of free content on my blog, I put out dungeon maps, city map and a free random table and I was just dumping content and I did a like a Patreon launch for it. If you're familiar with Patreon, and I thought producing that much content, I could get some Patreon followers and I got like a couple.

Shane Sams: How much were your tiers?

Matt Davids: It was like, $2, $5, $10, $20, and like $50 ones or something.

Shane Sams: Right. But see like, look at the difference though. You got all this content and you're asking people to support you and that's fine but man there's a big difference than what's behind the platinum wall. There's a reason people drive by the country club and they want in, right?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: It's because it's premium and it's exclusive and it's like, you could call it Elite Game Masters and make people feel really - or something - and make people feel really good about themselves and like...

Jocelyn Sams: Dice Geeks Elite.

Shane Sams: Dice Geeks Elite.

Jocelyn Sams: That's pretty good.

Shane Sams: Only the best. You could make people apply, like alright you have to fill out an application to even get in, right? And then you can look through them and send them a sales pitch, but it's like, they got to tell you how many hours a week are you playing? How much time do you really put in your game? Right? You know like whatever, you could come up with something fun to make it cool but there's a big difference in saying, "Hey, I'm already gonna make this stuff, if you'd like to come support me, come support me." Then, "I'm making amazing stuff and you can't get it unless you pay at the front door" right? And that's what pushes people, it's why people line up around the block to get the new iPhone that costs $1,200, which really only has two new apps than their last iPhone. It's like they want anything they can get that other people are not getting right then. Right?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Like that's kinda what you're trying to create, is some kind of exclusive. This is the elite thing, this is what real, if you're a real G, if you're toying with this, buy my book, but if you're in it for real, come on down. Right. And you could do things for them too like you could tell them, like every month I'll send you a PDF copy of my paperback books. Right. That in of itself... how much do you sell the books for?

Matt Davids: Right now they're, the smaller books are $7.99, although I'm gonna raise those prices here and then a bigger book is like 15, $14.99.

Shane Sams: So man you could say like, "When you join, every month I'm gonna send you the PDF of this book, right? Cause now it's $29 to email them the PDF and you're gonna get the printed newsletter, right? And that printed newsletter is gonna cost you $5 to ship, so you're gonna be making like $25 a member, every month. So like you've got all this stuff, you're not really putting the extra work in, but you're making it feel good, like a club, like a belonging, like a community, I'm elite and that's why they will give you money for it, right.

Shane Sams: Now are we really gonna have to work on this launch? Forums and you need to go through some of the trainings on like, cause this is gonna take a email campaign, this is gonna take a launch campaign, it's gonna take probably some kind of live webinar to sell this thing and get these people in there.

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: But once you've seeded, it's gonna stay full and you've got an endless supply of customers.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay so let's pump the breaks just a little bit, because I feel like we're getting a little bit overwhelmed, so let me tell you what I would do if I were in your situation right now.

Matt Davids: Okay.

Jocelyn Sams: So what I would do is I would start emailing my list. Do you email them very regularly now?

Matt Davids: Yeah once a week.

Jocelyn Sams: Okay. So what I would do, is I would sort of put some feelers out there and I would say, "Hey guys, look I'm really excited about something that I'm getting ready to start. I'm going to be starting my Dice Geeks Elite, TM." I'ma trademark that. Sorry about that, Matt.

Matt Davids: Oh, no.

Jocelyn Sams: I'll send you my marketing bill, okay?

Matt Davids: Oh that's great.

Jocelyn Sams: Anyway, I would just say, "I'm planning on starting this, this is what I had in mind. What else would you like to see? What are you interested in?" See who's opening that, see who's clicking it, see who's responding. Those are the people that you really want to start targeting with future messages toward that. There are gonna be some people who write you back and say, "This is stupid and I'll never pay for anything." Remove them from your list because...

Shane Sams: Bye.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. And that's the beauty of being a list owner, okay? But most people are gonna write you back and be like, "This is amazing, I cannot wait, this is what I would like to see you do." Okay? And that's not scary, right? You're just telling people you have an idea and you're asking them what would you like to see?

Shane Sams: And then you start dripping out after the fact. Let them tell you, you'll have people write you back, you'll have people complain, blah blah blah.

Jocelyn Sams: You could do a survey, you can do a Google forum.

Shane Sams: Like get them involved, they can feel like they're... what do dungeon masters love to do? Create things. Help me create this. Then you start sending them back a thing that says, "What if you could get a weekly, or monthly thing? What if you could get all of my books? What if you could get this, that and the other? People are gonna be like, yes yes yes. Whatever it is, right. Once in a while send them a D20. Doesn't matter. Just like, all this stuff's going on and then when you launch, you've got all this hype built up and you'll find those couple hundred people that are hiding in the weeds you know.

Matt Davids: Okay.

Shane Sams: I just did some math, okay?

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: Alright. I'm actually looking this up right now with actual public data from a publicly traded company. Alright, so it is estimated that 20 million people in America today have played Dungeons & Dragons. Okay.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: It is estimated that 6 million people in the world play it regularly. I think regularly is once a month on this. Okay. Alright. If the average play group is four people, that means there are 1.5 million people out there running games. You need 200 of them to make $6,000 a month.

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: That make sense?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: So like don't be afraid. 99.9% of these people can hate paying money for anything. That's true for all people. It's 80/20, right.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: We just have to find the ones that are willing to do it, right.

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Yeah.

Shane Sams: I think you could do it. You got such a great following, you got such a huge product library. And man if you just say, "I've written 11 books about this," that's giving you so much more street cred than anybody else could ever have. You're perfectly qualified, you're perfectly positioned and we just have to put it together and make it happen. Doesn't have to look exactly like me and Jocelyn just laid out, it's just how we would do it.

Jocelyn Sams: And you don't have to do all this stuff tomorrow, okay? Sometimes I think people feel like, "Oh if I'm gonna start, I have to go all-in." Basically right now, all you need to do is just gather some information and figure out what people want. That step alone is going to help you immensely.

Matt Davids: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shane Sams: Yeah and we're recording this podcast in March and you told us off air some exciting news though, you're gonna go all-in on this in April, right?

Matt Davids: Yes I am.

Shane Sams: You're leaving the day job and you're like, flipped lifestyle, here I come. Now let's grow this thing and ready to go, right?

Matt Davids: Yeah absolutely, yeah. I am ready to do this. I want to work for myself, I want to do what I love and it's just amazing that this time in this place in the world that I have this opportunity, it's just amazing.

Shane Sams: Yeah, Matt, to be able to take something that you've grown up with, that lets you be creative, that you're passionate about and actually put food on the table with it.

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: That is the opportunity that everybody listening to this podcast right now has, you just have to go out and make it happen. It might take time, remember, Matt's been doing this for what, since 2015?

Matt Davids: Yeah.

Shane Sams: Right but and you've gotten to the point now though where in a few days you're gonna have total control of your life and your family's future. That is absolutely amazing. Let's just take it to the next level and we'll help you do it. Okay?

Matt Davids: Okay.

Shane Sams: Alright man, what a great conversation. I am so glad that I literally got to geek out, not only about online business today and I actually got to geek out about geek stuff and talk about Dungeons & Dragons on this podcast, so I appreciate you for giving me that opportunity.

Matt Davids: No problem, that's why I'm here, Shane.

Jocelyn Sams: Yeah thanks for putting that in his head too, I'm sure he'll start that up again soon.

Shane Sams: And I'm just saying, I'm looking for a play group. I'm just saying.

Matt Davids: Oh well there you go.

Shane Sams: Have a go. I mean I may be jumping into the game here man. Honestly man, thank you so much, just for coming on the show, being transparent. Our podcast is so bizarre, because a lot of podcasts, the guests are used to being podcast guests, but our people, everybody that comes on this show is just a real member of the community, a real person out there with their own idea, their own niche, making it happen, and it's hard to open up, tell everybody, like "oh this is going on and I might be quitting my job next week and I wanna grow," and it's hard to talk about that but I really do appreciate you and all our other guests because without you guys being that transparent, all the people that listen to our podcast can't be inspired, can't learn, can't grow too, so thank you for doing that, man, I really appreciate you for being on the show.

Matt Davids: Yeah no problem. Thank you for having me on.

Shane Sams: Alright and then we got one more thing. Since you were a missionary, and we always ask all of our guests, would you like to share a Bible verse? And I would guess that a former missionary would probably have a Bible verse that brings them a little inspiration that they might just share with the world, so you have a Bible verse for us today?

Matt Davids: I do, I do. It might sound a little negative at first but I can explain it just a little bit. But there's proverbs 18:9, and it says, "One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys." And like I said, you might seem a little negative but just thinking about that and just kind of thinking about where I was when our first son was born and I was working a day job that my wife left her job and because that's what we wanted to do. And just realizing that I wasn't making enough money and kinda just looking at my life and realizing that I was coming home from my day job saying that I was spending time with my family but I was spending an hour on Facebook or an hour here on YouTube or something like that and just the idea that it was just, that I was slack in my work, that I was no better than somebody who destroys something and so, just some things with the earthquake and some different things that happened in my life, it's just I realized that it was time I needed to get to work and really put some food on the table for my family.

Shane Sams: Ah dude, that inspired me. When I hang up, I'm gonna go work. I told Jocelyn before I got here, like I think I'm gonna take the rest of the afternoon off but now you said that, I'm like, nah man I'm gonna go write five emails. Because I don't want to be slack in my work. Thank you so much for sharing that verse. That is an awesome and powerful message.

Matt Davids: No problem.

Shane Sams: Alright guys, that wraps up another amazing episode of the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. Take everything that you learned today to heart especially that last thing about being slack in your work. You've gotta put the work in and you've gotta get started and you've gotta keep taking those baby steps forward if you're ever going to get to a successful place. Like when Jocelyn and I started out, it took us 13 months to even be in a position to even think about quitting our job. Matt started back in 2015 and he's just now quitting his job and ready to grow in scale this amazing, passion-based business and you could be in the same place a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. If you get started. If you put in the work. We never sugarcoat anything here on the podcast, guys. It takes effort, it takes commitment, it takes dedication to change your family's future, just like we did and just like Matt did. We know you can do it too.

Shane Sams: That's why we make this podcast and that's why we have the Flip Your Life community. If you need help coming up with your business idea, if you need helping taking your next steps in your online business journey, we would love to help you inside of the Flip Your Life community. To learn more about the Flip Your Life community, go to FlippedLifestyle.com/flipyourlife. That's all one word. Flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife. We have plans starting as low as $19 a month to give you all the training, all the community, all the support you need to start your online business, become and stay self-employed and flip your life. That's all the time we've got for this week. Tune in next week, we're gonna have another great guest from the Flip Your Life community. Til then, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes. Flip your life.

Jocelyn Sams: Bye.