How This Couple Built Freedom: Rentals, RVs & a Media Agency | Shane & Victoria Childress

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Entrepreneur DNA with Justin Colby

Episode: How This Couple Built Freedom: Rentals, RVs & a Media Agency | Shane & Victoria Childress

Date: October 20, 2025
Guests: Shane & Victoria Childress
Host: Justin Colby (Jess)

---

Episode Overview

This episode features Shane and Victoria Childress, a married couple who built financial and lifestyle freedom through determination, unconventional choices, real estate investing, and entrepreneurship—including running an RV dealership and launching a successful media agency. The conversation centers on how their backgrounds shaped their drive, their approach to business, and how they prioritize family, flexibility, and fun over chasing traditional markers of success.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins: From Tech & Tough Upbringings to Entrepreneurship

• Backgrounds: Shane started in tech after leaving college, rising through hard work. Victoria grew up experiencing poverty and instability due to her parents’ substance issues, which gave her the grit to negotiate with landlords as a child. ([02:38–05:19])
  • Victoria: “One of my goals in life was to own properties and be the landlord.” (04:30)
  • Shane: “If I’m down, what does my family do? … It’s my job if I leave this world to make sure they're taken care of.” (03:51)
• Entrepreneurial Spark: Both realized early on that the conventional path wasn’t satisfying or secure enough, so they began investing in real estate and exploring side ventures.

2. Building a Real Estate Portfolio

• Strategy: Started simply—“keep it simple.” They acquired properties based on straightforward math, focusing more on bottom-line profits than sophisticated real estate metrics. ([13:38–14:22])
  • Shane: "The simpler it is, the more profitable it is ..." (13:56)
• Scaling & Challenges: Grew to nearly 55 properties at their peak but underscored the reality of maintenance and the importance of economies of scale. Realized managing rentals remotely is onerous without Victoria’s hands-on management. ([13:38–15:20])
  • Jess: "If you’re gonna buy five rentals, do something else with your money." (14:39)

3. Pursuing Freedom—Geographically and Financially

• Adventures: Sold almost everything, lived on a sailboat, traveled Asia and the Caribbean, homeschooled their kids, and lived in an RV for more than a year. [10:25–12:29, 24:52–26:43]
  • Shane: “We were traveling … the traveling piece of it, you have to be close together, right?” (11:18)
  • Victoria: “It lets you shed like all of—What kind of car do you drive? ... We lived well below our means. Stuff doesn’t matter to us.” (12:02–12:25)
• Philosophy: Experience and family connection outweigh material status. The journey is more rewarding than the destination.
  • Shane: "If we stay here for another 10 years, we’re not going to make it. Like, this shit is boring. We gotta shake this up." (08:15)

4. Stumbling into New Ventures: RV Dealership & Media Agency

• Origin Story: Bought real estate zoned for a dealership, started with cars, hated it, pivoted to RVs (following their own needs and interests).
• Media Agency Emergence: Competitors took note of their marketing prowess, requesting help, leading to the birth of Savva Media Group. ([16:34–19:21])
  • Shane: "Our competitors are coming to us saying, 'Why are you—why are my customers walking in with your ad?'" (16:52)
  • Victoria: "It's just, it was born inside the RV dealership." (18:54)
• Approach: Focus on results, not vanity metrics. Only take clients where they can drive real outcomes.
  • Shane: "We focus on results...I want to be able to say, you gave me $10,000 this month, I put 50 back in your pocket." (19:57–20:23)

5. Adapting to a Changing Business Landscape

• AI & Search: Early adopters of AI in marketing, finding ways to rank first in AI-driven search even when not on page 1 in Google ([22:01–22:46]).
  • Shane: "We pop up first. So that’s caught the attention…" (22:16)
• Broader Insight: Future belongs to personal brand and AI, and the entrepreneurial space is shifting rapidly.

6. Entrepreneurship as a Couple: The Personal Side

• Partnership: Deeply collaborative—share everything from work commutes to running businesses side by side for 20+ years.
  • Shane: "There's days that we do not like each other at all… but we chose each other for that reason.” (33:01–33:15)
  • Shane: “Finding the right partner means the world. I would give every last bit of it up today, no questions asked, because I know that we can build it back together. No questions.” (32:37)
• Navigating Egos: Learning to keep each other’s egos in check, maintain focus on fun, and keep life interesting ([32:55–34:20]).
  • Shane: “At the end of the day we’re like, ‘Hey, if it ain’t fun, we gotta change it up or it won’t last.’ Period.” (34:17)

7. Building Businesses Around Lifestyle—not the Other Way Around

• Freedom vs. Grind: Acknowledged how hard it is to break out of "hustle culture," but value designing their work to fit their life.
  • Shane: "Breaking that habit of building your companies to support your lifestyle is just as hard...takes a tremendous amount of focus every day to stay on task." (28:45)
  • Jess: "You guys have done it, in my opinion, the right way." (28:22)

8. On Mistakes, Resilience, and Authenticity

• Learning by Doing: Mistakes are inevitable and essential; they openly discuss struggles from real estate headaches to learning car dealership operations ([42:27–45:14]).
  • Victoria: “The first 13 cars that I sold, I owed them thousands of dollars…did it all backwards.” (42:57)
  • Jess: “Part of that is the authenticity of, like, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it…you learn from it.” (44:18)
• Advice: Perseverance and authenticity are more important than trying to seem perfect or following the crowd.

9. Looking Ahead: The Next Chapter

• Media Agency Focus: Aim to stabilize and grow Savva Media Group, with an emphasis on travel-focused “working vacations,” leveraging barter and partnerships with international clients.
  • Shane: "We want to see Savva Media in the Middle East…talking to boat manufacturers in Eastern Europe right now." (41:14)
  • Jess: "The media company is going to be a head down venture for the next 36 months to build it." (41:46)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Victoria: "I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. We just keep moving and grooving and trying stuff." (07:12)
• Shane: "If you have a home and a white picket fence and two kids and a dog, that's perfect…We achieved that early on and it wasn’t. It wasn’t it." (08:15)
• Victoria: "We own an RV dealership. We’re not from the industry…We’re like, fuck it. Why not? Let’s go." (09:33)
• Jess: "If you ask anyone who’s actually made it in business, they’ll tell you: Enjoy the journey." (42:02)
• Shane: "Bigger is not always better…If we’re happy and it’s given us the freedom to do what we want, that’s what I want." (38:51)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Early Upbringings & Mindsets: 02:38–05:23
• Real Estate Beginnings: 04:23–08:33
• Breaking from Convention: 08:15–09:32
• RV & Travel Lifestyle: 10:25–12:29, 24:52–26:43
• Launching the RV Dealership / Media Agency: 16:34–19:21
• Organic Marketing Success & AI: 19:47–22:46
• Partner Dynamics & Living Authentically: 32:37–34:20
• Building Lifestyle-Driven Businesses: 28:22–29:45
• Mistakes & Resilience: 42:00–45:14
• Looking Forward (Three-Year Plan): 39:43–41:51

---

Final Takeaways

• Shane and Victoria’s story is a testament to designing life and business on their terms—trading the rat race for adventure, opting for meaningful work, and prioritizing family and flexibility.
• Their path hasn’t been linear or without mistakes, but they own their failures, learn fast, and aren’t afraid to pivot.
• They remind entrepreneurs that success is not about having it all or being perfect—it's about building something meaningful, enjoying the journey, and doing it with people you love.

---

Follow: Savva Media Group on Instagram (@savvamediagroup) and Shane Childress (@shanechildress).

---

“If it ain’t fun, we gotta change it up or it won’t last. Period.” — Shane Childress (34:17)

Transcript

[Jess]

What is up the entrepreneur DNA. Welcome back to another incredible episode. I have a dynamic duo here. They are a couple that was able to make a way out of no way. Everything was working against them. However, they decided they wanted something in life and they went for it. And now they've created an incredible business, great rental portfolio, and now they have a whole lot of options because they can RV around the US doing what they want when they want with each other. With. We have Shane and Victoria Childress here. What's happening?

[Shane Childress]

Yeah. Thanks for having us, Jess.

[Jess]

Yeah. So I started that by saying you made a way out of no way. And we were talking off camera just about your. Your start of all this. And you guys wanted something different, you wanted something more. You were at home, you were working in the tech field, and you just made a decision. And from that decision, you now have a life that I think most husbands and wives and children would like because it has a connective tissue.

[Victoria Childress]

Depends on the day.

[Jess]

It depends on the day. And I. I want people to understand your story. So I want to kind of start from the beginning a little bit about you being in the tech space, you having your nine to five, you being at home, starting to buy real estate, breaking into this entrepreneurial world, which was not normal. So let's start there, and then we'll get that whole story all the way out.

[Victoria Childress]

Go ahead.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah. So we were living in Dallas at, you know, I guess almost 21 years ago now, right? 20. 21 years ago. And.

[Jess]

And how old are you? Okay.

[Shane Childress]

Yes. Our daughter Ava. Off screen here.

[Jess]

Off screen.

[Shane Childress]

Our son. We have a son that's 18 as well, and he's actually traveling. He's just landed in Mongolia yesterday morning.

[Jess]

So that's so cool.

[Shane Childress]

They're going to the Eagles.

[Jess]

Feel about that.

[Victoria Childress]

I feel great. Like, he graduated and he went straight to travel. So they've. Yeah, he's been traveling since May. Like, I think.

[Jess]

And maybe you'll agree, I think boys, they should graduate and, like, not be able to go to college. Yeah, I don't think we're ready. Maturity wise, mental wise. Like, we're a mess with all the hormones. Like, I think either military or, like, go travel, get life experience.

[Shane Childress]

Exactly.

[Jess]

Go to work, go do something. College, isn't it? In my opinion.

[Shane Childress]

Yep. No, I. It's. That's 100 where we are. Like, college is great if you have a very specific practice you're going after. Like, Ava wants to be a chiropractor and then eventually work in the equine. So that's A little different story. Right?

[Jess]

100.

[Shane Childress]

But I 100 think she needs to go travel for at least a year.

[Victoria Childress]

Yes.

[Jess]

What the hell? What were you doing graduating high school exactly? My dad was a. I was an idiot. How much more beer can they drink? Right? Like, that was me.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

You know, and so anyways, back to your story. I love that you guys have a song that's like going out to Mongolia, of all places. Like. Yeah. You know.

[Shane Childress]

No, it's great. It's the adventure. Right? So we started. I was. You know, I had a dream. I went to college. And about a year into it, I realized, you know, school was never for me, college wasn't for me. So I left and joined the tech space, got really lucky, worked my ass off, got into some really good companies.

[Jess]

Funny how luck works, right? When you work your ass off and you can get harder, you work harder and luckier. Yeah, it's weird.

[Shane Childress]

So I worked myself into a position where I was traveling all over the US and kind of owned my own schedule and had larger accounts. It was doing some really good things. It was a great. It's like, textbook story life. That's exactly what people work for. And then I met Victoria St Patrick's Day at the Dallas parade on Greenville Avenue. And we. We. We met one day, and we. We haven't left each other's side since then. Right.

[Victoria Childress]

So let's do this until it's not fun anymore.

[Jess]

There you go. And here we are.

[Shane Childress]

Twin tr.

[Asana Announcer]

Oh, yeah.

[Shane Childress]

That's fun. Yeah.

[Jess]

That's great. Well, and so that was not the. The whole story is. Is you didn't stay in tech. You now.

[Shane Childress]

No. Yeah. So we. We started rolling through as we started have, you know, build. Getting closer together, and we started building a family together. I realized as, like, holy as a father and a husband, like, if I'm down, what does my family do? She got to go work on the corner. Like, what. What's got to happen?

[Jess]

Right where, like, what are the options here?

[Shane Childress]

So I was like, you know, it's my job if I leave this world to make sure they're taken care of. So we started looking at, you know, all these different options. Do we start a business? Do we buy a business? Do we get a rental house? Like, what do we do? And after a ton of research and, you know, there's a little bit of history before that too, that we've looked at some other properties and stuff. But we started. We found a location. We started buying houses in that location. And we got to a point where we had we had three properties, and then, like, all the realtors, we were finding realtors, too.

[Victoria Childress]

Like, we. I grew up really, really poor and in housing and stuff like that. So one of my goals in life. Yeah.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So one of my goals were. Was to own, like, properties and be the landlord.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So that's kind of how we got.

[Jess]

So you knew that. When. When did that start for you? When you looked around as a child and it was like.

[Victoria Childress]

I mean, I remember. So, you know, my. Both my parents had substance abuse issues, so I remember negotiating with landlords and being like, hey, rent this property to us. Like, I promise it's going to be taken care of.

[Shane Childress]

And she was doing all this at, like, 11 years old.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

So I have a similar story where my family, my mom, my dad and stepfather were all alcoholics. So, like, not the negotiating landlords, but, like, I was always fending for myself and doing the things that I needed done. And so I can. I can empathize greatly with that. Right. And so as a kid, you were able to see kind of like that side.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

But then real estate, to some extent, was appealing.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

Because.

[Victoria Childress]

Oh, yeah. 100. And, like, I wanted to be on the other side and help people.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So really, that's what it.

[Jess]

You know, it's. I find that when people, like, I'll give you a quick tidbit about me is. Is I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur because when I was a kid, I would drive around on recycling day, and I'd go pick up the bottles and the cans and bring it to recycling. So I can make one penny or five pennies, depending upon the jar or the can.

[Shane Childress]

It must have been in Oregon or Washington.

[Jess]

I was in California.

[Shane Childress]

Okay. Yeah, there too.

[Jess]

Yeah, same, same. Right. Or like, when I got a little older, like 8 years old, I would ask my mom to take me to the baseball card shop. I'd borrow $20. I'd say, hey, Mom, I'm gonna go buy a box of cards. I. I know how to flip them and sell them, and I'll give you your money back. And she's like, whatever, kid. Right. So she literally would sit in the parking lot, I'd buy a box of baseball cards. I would open them in front of the store owner. I would sell him the ones he would want back. And almost every time, I would double my money. Yeah. And I'm sure he made a great profit because I still sold it wholesale, so he could sell it retail. But, like, I would come back and I would have my own $20 and she would get hers back. And she was like, she was always like, oh great, right now. Meanwhile, she'd end up going to the bar, but neither here nor there. But that was always ingrained in me. Yeah. And it's interesting to hear your journey of like your life actually became entrepreneurship in real estate because of your experience of it. I had none. But when I lost everything, when I was personally as an adult, like destitute, sleeping on a couch, real estate was that like I could make it with that. Like I could really make it. And so that's a very interesting story that you had that at such a young, young age. And what did it like continue to, to exist or did you lose it a little while and then as you guys started to build a family, like I really think real estate's my thing. Or did you always have an interest?

[Victoria Childress]

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. So we, I just, we just keep moving and grooving and trying stuff. So we hit goals and we put like, you know, one year goals, five year goals and we always crush them early. So then we're like, that's it. All right, what's next? What's next? I don't think I'll ever be satisfied. Or you know, even when you hit that goal, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, I think probably here over the last 90 days, we really sat down. Our, our kids are leaving the house, are getting older. What do we want to do? Who do we want to be even after they're gone?

[Jess]

Right.

[Shane Childress]

Because Shane and Victoria still have to, to move forward is that we've always hit, we've set goals, you know, like you said, one year, two year and five years out. And we've always crushed them. So we're like, well shit, now our goals are just way too small. Right. We got to go way bigger. So it's, I think what we realized here over the last 90 days is that it's not the goal that we, that makes us, that fulfills us. Because it's not right. Like everybody, if you have a home and a white picket fence and two kids and a dog, that's perfect. When we achieved that early on and it wasn't. It wasn't it. So we sold everything. That's way boring.

[Jess]

Boring, right.

[Shane Childress]

And I mean, we literally looked at each other like, hey, if we stay here for another 10 years, we're not going to make it. Like, this shit is boring. We got to shake this up.

[Jess]

Always the journey, like, I Bet when you thought about getting the house, the white picket, the kids, the dog, and that's exciting. And you start building to it, and then you get it and you go, that's it.

[Victoria Childress]

That's it.

[Jess]

Shit's boring. Yeah, great.

[Shane Childress]

But it, you know, growing up with, you know, her background, mine was a little bit different, but I didn't come from a wealthy family or anything like that. Nothing at all. Right. My parents didn't really give me anything except for the opportunity to go do what I. To go earn it myself.

[Victoria Childress]

And the support.

[Shane Childress]

And the. Yeah, the support to go earn it myself. Not financial support, but just the. You know, if you do fail, you got a place to come back home. As long as you got a plan, you got a plan, you ain't coming back.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah, I failed. I ain't got nowhere to go.

[Shane Childress]

That's it. Yeah.

[Jess]

So you couldn't. You didn't have an option.

[Shane Childress]

Right.

[Jess]

Sometimes that's the best place to be.

[Shane Childress]

It is.

[Jess]

Right when your back literally is against the wall or you are at a place of, like, rock bottom. Yeah. Like, there's only one option. There's not really a lot of angles. And. And I find as someone that I've coached a lot of entrepreneurs in a lot of different sectors, primarily in the real estate space. But, like, when people have options, it is a lot harder for them to be successful.

[Shane Childress]

That's where we're sitting right now.

[Jess]

Okay.

[Shane Childress]

We've hit. We've reached those goals. It's kind of boring. We love the stress. We love the journey. You know, we have some.

[Victoria Childress]

We own some. We have.

[Shane Childress]

We own an RV dealership. We're not from the industry. Right. We've bought a piece of real estate that was zoned for it. We, like, fuck it. Why not? Let's go. Right. We actually started a car dealership on it.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

And it made money. Right. But it was so slimy. It was so backstabbing.

[Jess]

Like. Any experience in car dealerships?

[Shane Childress]

No, actually.

[Jess]

Any experience.

[Shane Childress]

Our experience in a car V deal, in a. In a car dealer in a car dealership was one day when we lived in the white picket fence house in North Texas. We were driving down the road and Victoria wanted a new car, and she's like, why don't you just buy a car dealership? And then I can just drive what I want every day. That's literally going to the car started. That is exactly.

[Victoria Childress]

I just want. I don't want to negotiate with a salesman. Like, tell me the price and if it works, let's go. Like, I'M very black and white back and forth. Stuff like it doesn't work for me. Yeah, like I just want to go buy it. I want to click a button.

[Jess]

Yes or no.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

Yes. So you went and bought a car dealer.

[Shane Childress]

Well, we bought the property like it was a piece of real estate.

[Jess]

Sure.

[Shane Childress]

That was a great deal for us. So we bought it. It was zone. We started the dealership. It was doing good, but we hated it. So we put our personal RV on it that we were living in. Because after we left Texas, we sold our home and everything, kept our properties. We moved on to a sailboat, traveled, lived in the Caribbean for a while, came back for hurricane season, put the sailboat up for sale and then we moved to Asia. So our kids went to 6th grade, 5th grade. Relevant equivalent over there. They went to school in Thailand. They speak Thai. She could probably sing a Thai song for you right now. Speaks a little Russian.

[Jess]

That's amazing.

[Shane Childress]

So we came back, bought another boat. We had a bunch of different things that we were doing there for probably about a five year period, just traveling and living. And it really, as a. From my perspective, she and I got a lot tighter, a lot closer.

[Jess]

We worked together.

[Shane Childress]

The traveling part, the traveling piece of it, you have to be close together, right when we're on the boat. I mean, she spent her 32nd birthday 600 miles offshore, like five days in a row. We didn't see some champagne. Actually, Ava baked her a cake while we were on the way offshore and stuff like that. But when you're offshore in that capacity, like, I'm the mechanic, I'm the medic, I'm the fire chief. We are everything, right? We make our own water, we do our own sewer, we make our own electricity, everything. So one person can't do it. So it put us in a position where, you know, I was the captain. Everybody had a very specific role to do and play. And we just came together as a family, like really tight and to. For us, that was a really great thing. And that has carried on and it lets it.

[Victoria Childress]

It lets you shed like all of. What kind of car do you drive? How many garages do you have? You know, what kind of shoes do you have? Like, you know, we lived in a. We lived in North Dallas and I.

[Shane Childress]

Mean our house was smaller than most of our friends. Garages. Yeah, let's put that way.

[Victoria Childress]

So we've always lived well below our means. Very humble.

[Shane Childress]

You know, stuff doesn't matter to us. Things don't matter.

[Jess]

The more I interview people and the.

[Shane Childress]

More.

[Jess]

Elevation I get in success and whatever. There's always some level of a common theme, and one of those tends to be the ultra successful for a very long period of time. More than reasonable, live below their means until there's like this breakout. Like, okay, we can really afford to not do this anymore. Like it's unreasonable for us. Right. And so I love to hear that level of success that you guys had came from kind of this fundamental. Like you would live on a boat. Right. You didn't need the biggest and best and nicest. I mean, we're so caught up in the US on, oh, huge. What are you wearing and where. What zip code do you live in and how many bedrooms do you have and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's literally just ingrained in us through and through. I believe the next 12 months is going to get pretty tricky for people and I think the. The government's going to have to address it.

[Victoria Childress]

Oh, yeah.

[Jess]

Because it is such a thing right now. Yeah. So let's, let's go. Current state of affairs. We're in an rv.

[Shane Childress]

Our state of affairs. We have, we still have our properties in Texas.

[Jess]

Okay.

[Shane Childress]

We've sold a few of them.

[Jess]

How many you have now?

[Victoria Childress]

We're down to 12.

[Jess]

Down to 12. And your peak was almost 40, 50, 55, 53. With no real estate background, just kind of like learning as you go. Some basic economics. Like if you buy it for this and rent it for this, it seems pretty good. Right.

[Shane Childress]

That's one thing that kind of irks us all the time is when, like Victoria's in some different mastermind classes groups, and they talk about cap rates and noi and all this stuff. It's like. No, look, it's. Keep it simple. The simpler it is, the more profitable is how much are you paying for it, what's your mortgage, what's your insurance, what's your taxes, what's your maintenance and how much can you rent it for? And if that's the profit you want to make, that's what you do. It's simple. All the other stuff to us doesn't matter.

[Jess]

Yeah. The only downside, just because I've done it for 20 years, is the maintenance of it. All right? The unforeseen, like, everything was great for 18 months and then month 19, you know what, you know, AC or whatever, you know. Oh, that.

[Shane Childress]

You know, why you gotta have 20, not two.

[Jess]

Economies of scale is the only way to do it. I tell people all the time, like, if you're gonna go buy five rentals, do Something else with your money. Yeah, it is a tough game. Like, I actually believe economies of scale in the single family space just because that's my vertical. You need to have 100 doors before it's even a little bit sexy. Like it can exist at 50 doors. And you did fine, but like it was good. But a couple things happen. You take the whole year's profit out of that year because, you know, a roof here and A.C. here and Hurricane windows and whatever. Right. And you're just like, that kind of sucks. But so now we're liquidating, maybe pressing reset. What's, what's the.

[Shane Childress]

We're pressing reset because it's become the management of it since we're not there locally anymore and she's not there when she's met. She's an excellent operator.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

So in, in all of our businesses. So we're liquidating that a little bit. We're going to go a little bit bigger into either RV parks or larger apartment complexes that we've been looking at different things here.

[Victoria Childress]

So we had a 29 unit townhome complex that it was. Rents were like 350, 400 bucks. We exited out around 1300 bucks.

[Jess]

You bought it when it was renting it? 350, 400.

[Victoria Childress]

I changed, I changed and, and I did it myself. Like, I would never tell people I owned it. I would always go there and be like, I'm the manager. But I mean, I would knock on people's doors. You know, I grew up pretty rough.

[Jess]

You have to remember you're not scared. You're not scared. What part of. Where was that? Was that in Texas?

[Victoria Childress]

North Dallas.

[Jess]

Okay, that's incredible. Yeah. And so as you guys, you're liquidating for what purpose?

[Victoria Childress]

Well, just changing like, so we, we own a bunch of commercial properties in here.

[Jess]

In Florida.

[Victoria Childress]

In Florida now.

[Shane Childress]

And just we're building some. We're building some offices. So we now own. We took the car dealership and converted it into an RV dealership. And it's actually been doing extremely well.

[Jess]

Your income comes. Not all of it, but that is.

[Shane Childress]

Part of it comes from the RV dealership. So when we started the RV dealership, we didn't want to be just like every other RV dealer. Like the top four largest RV dealers in the world are all within a two mile circle around us. So we can't compete with that. Right, right. So I took like, how do I leverage this? They're marketing geniuses.

[Jess]

They're.

[Shane Childress]

They're just. I wouldn't say they're geniuses. They are the gorillas in the room when it comes to marketing and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars. They outspend everybody, so they're not genius. So I went out where we went out and hired our own in house marketing team, social media team. And we just started getting after it and it, it worked. We went through some iterations and we finally fine tuned it down to where it's starting to make a difference. Where our competitors are coming to us saying, hey, why are you, why are my customers walking in with your ad? They're asking me to compete with your ad. And These are like $100 million companies, right? Like, well, pay me X amount of money and I'll show you how we do it. I love it. And that's exactly how it started. So now we have a Sava Media Group is our media company. And it's not a big sexy online and presence and everything, but we have just good solid businesses that come to us that we're running campaigns for. We got a customer now out of the Indiana area that's got five locations, a dealership, a big dealership, got five locations and we're running their full social online profile for them. We got med spas, we have some dentists that we're working with now. We got a couple retail shops that we're working with and it's completely off the radar. So earlier on you asked us like, who are we, what are we, what kind of target audience are we going for? It's our online presence. Even in my own social media company sucks right now. So we're looking to expand that networking bigger. This is something that we've never done before. We've never put ourselves out there. We've never networked. We've always just looked at each other and said, what do we want? Let's go get it together. And that's exactly how we've gotten to where we are.

[Jess]

Well, listen, I lean into. So I really am firm believer of what you guys are about to start your journey on, which is the networking and building the people capital. Right. Because the people capital will last you a lifetime. It'll feed you for a lifetime, right? Yep. And you know, you're. There's good and bad years in business. Right. Everyone has them. But if you have good people capital that can last throughout the bad years and the droughts and whatnot, this, this media company came out of nowhere.

[Victoria Childress]

It's just, it was born inside the.

[Jess]

RV dealership because someone said, hey, how are you doing what you're doing?

[Victoria Childress]

Yep.

[Jess]

Again, it, it never ceases to amaze me when I sit here in front of individuals and I go, how great is that? Right? Like, you had no agenda. You weren't trying to become some social media agency. Was never a plan, didn't draw it up. And you know, okay, here's how we're going to launch it. It was because someone said, hey, you're doing something I'm not. Can you help? Yep. You said, all right, I think I can.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, I can definitely. We can do it. So we brought them on board. And then that happened. And then another vendor that we use that supplies us with parts and stuff for RVs came in and said, Man, I see your TikToks and Instagrams everywhere. I want to do that. How do I do that? Pay me this much and we'll do it for you. I'll send the people down.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

And it just. The light bulb went off and we broke it out. And so now we're running the RV dealership. We have seven media group that's. That's growing, actually.

[Jess]

Who's. Who's. I mean, it sounds like you're from dental to RVs to auto. Like, what's a. What's an avatar that you could do? Can you do it for anybody? Anything? Is there kind of a.

[Shane Childress]

We're not a fit all, end all, be all for everyone. Like, we focus on results. So when we have people that come to us quite often and. And we're like, what result you're looking? They're after impressions and views and all this kind of stuff. Well, that's not us.

[Jess]

Okay.

[Shane Childress]

Like, I want to be able to say, you gave me $10,000 this month. I put, you know, 50 back in your pocket, and we track it. It's a real conversion, real straight results. 100 black and white, black people.

[Jess]

Right? Cost of acquisition.

[Shane Childress]

That's it.

[Jess]

And you want to keep yours. So in this sense, your agency fee is not the same as the marketing spend. So you would say, I'll do this for ten grand. Does that include whatever spend is going on, or is it.

[Shane Childress]

No ad spend is on top of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do organic and then ad spend on top of that, depending if we need to get ad spend out of it. So.

[Jess]

And we don't pick up every organic.

[Shane Childress]

We're. We're getting pretty good at it. Yeah.

[Jess]

That seems.

[Victoria Childress]

That's not my wheelhouse, so.

[Jess]

No, but, but. Which is incredible because as someone who does a lot of content, obviously organic is the hardest to bring.

[Shane Childress]

It is very hard. And it changes so fast. And Every platform's different, right?

[Jess]

I mean, so talk about masterminds and being a part of communities. My buddy who's done a really good job with Tick Tock, which I've done, and Instagram and I've done pretty good, he's like, hey, I'm just gonna create a group to mastermind around everyone's success and because whatever, someone I'm happy to introduce you guys to, yeah, that'd be great. But I'm always, you know, everyone has said a couple things recently. Not everyone, but some people I've interviewed. Slash billionaires. Brand and AI. And if you lead into either a personal brand or AI, you're gonna do really, really well in the future. And if you don't, you're gonna have a tough time because everything is going into AI, service based whatever. But your personal brand, your personal brand and no one can be you. Right. And so I think leaning into that, leaning to those type of communities and being a leading source there, that could be something special for you guys. Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

When it comes to AI, like that's a big, that's a big market, big focus for me. That's what I do a lot of research on going forward and how do we get better at that, whatever the reason or for however we fell into AI. So if you go into some of your top AI search. I use AI for everything when it comes to search. And if you search certain parameters on RV dealerships, we pop up first.

[Jess]

Okay.

[Shane Childress]

So that's caught the attention of, you know, in Google, I'm not first, not even close. But in these AI engines which are the future, we are first. Um, so we, I wouldn't say we've cracked the code. I don't know the process on how we got there. I know what we did to get there. So we're doing that with some of these other businesses. So when you go on chat GBT and type in certain things, now these other, our customers are starting to pop up in that, in that chat engine as well or the AI engine.

[Jess]

It is so funny to hear like Google is the, the 800 pound gorilla in terms search engine. Right, right. It owns YouTube and it's just. But I mean, gosh, is chat GBT not just gonna like speed by them?

[Shane Childress]

90 of my stuff is GPT or I use GROK a lot. First we have Claude. Yeah, just straight search.

[Jess]

I just. This is gonna be wild to see because we're all old enough that like Internet didn't exist to now where we're at. And you go like, we're like, how is anything ever.

[Victoria Childress]

I mean, I'm not saying my age or anything, but I mean, you, you.

[Shane Childress]

Go back to my tech days. I was, I was the guy that was walking into a, you know, a Fortune 5 company telling them the 14 data centers you have in the US where everything's on premise. We're going to move it to the cloud. What's the cloud? Everybody was scared of the cloud and we, well, cloud is just outsourcing. It's all that. Now here we are, right. YouTube was coming out when I was sitting in Orlando with one of my customers. I remember this like it was a day. And he was like, YouTube is where it's going to be. We're going to be uploading all of our content. And it was a state and local agency that I was meeting with. They were like, there's no way we're ever going to put our information out there now. It's all it is. Right. So you're right. AI Chat, GPT, Google better. They, you know, they, they got a lot of work to do.

[Jess]

It's going to be wild to see how fast it blows by Google. And they're the 800 pound gorilla. Yeah. And I think Chat and these other guys are going to speed by them. Not like, no, it's not going to.

[Shane Childress]

Be a traditional tech.

[Jess]

It's going to be, it's gone like within 18, 24 months. And I'm not a tech guy. Like, you are way smarter than me when it comes to tech. I'm not. That's not my thing.

[Shane Childress]

And I got involved.

[Jess]

All right, what. So what I think is really cool that I want to speak to here is you guys currently are living in an rv. No, no, no.

[Shane Childress]

We have a house. We lived in an rv.

[Jess]

I thought you guys were living and traveling with your daughter and kind of just.

[Shane Childress]

We do. We have an RV that we travel with.

[Jess]

You do it more for fun as she travels. You do it with her.

[Shane Childress]

We go with her. Oh yeah, we're part of it.

[Jess]

But this is still the same storyline whether you live in RV.

[Victoria Childress]

We did live in an RV for a year. So we traveled over 10,000 miles in the US in 2020.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah. So during COVID we were on a boat going to Colombia and all the countries locked down. Of course, we're disconnected from the world. We didn't have Starlink. We didn't have any of that stuff then. Right. So we were disconnected. We didn't, we had no idea what was going on. And it was only five years and.

[Jess]

They'Re like Sorry, you can't.

[Shane Childress]

Well, we were. We were cutting out south and Coast Guard. And everybody's like, hey, you're noticos. Yeah. About Turks and Caicos. Like you guys aren't getting in the country. Like, you either have to stay where you are or. Or you go by your US flag boat. You go back to the US and so we hung out. There's some remote islands down there and there's another family that we were with. There's a lot of families that do this. It was pretty amazing. Pretty eye opening. But we hung out for another six or eight weeks and then all of a sudden it just. It got boring.

[Victoria Childress]

It was on our second boat. So we did start in a. Let me back up, because he jumps a lot. We were on a sailboat with no ac, no generator. We did make our own water on it and it was amazing. Like, it was great, but the thing went six knots and I was like.

[Jess]

Dear God, is that essentially like 10 miles an hour?

[Shane Childress]

You walk faster than that down the hallway. Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So I was like, you know, so.

[Shane Childress]

You go from driving up and down the highway and flying all over the US to going like max speed of like seven miles an hour.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

Best case.

[Victoria Childress]

So that that boat ended up. We plus our. We had a chocolate lab on the boat at the time and she wasn't doing well. So we. We came back actually.

[Jess]

Fort Lauderdale area. Yeah. And got a new boat.

[Shane Childress]

Well, we put that one for sale. We moved to Asia.

[Victoria Childress]

Great.

[Shane Childress]

That. For a year or so we bounced all around Asia and different countries and different things. And they went to school for a little while and then we bought a.

[Victoria Childress]

A power cat. We actually did buy a bigger boat, a 52 foot power cat. And it had all the bells and whistles and it was very nice. That's the boat that we were on in during COVID Okay.

[Jess]

So the lifestyle plays where I'm leaning into. Yep.

[Shane Childress]

That's when. That's when the light bulb went off for me is like we. Why am I like. We were getting to a point where it was fun, but being retired was boring too. Right. We were on a boat like this, but it wasn't. It wasn't fulfilling like we thought it was.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

So we were coming back. We were going to reset, get our properties back in shape. We had started a property management company that was taken care of that we owned and everything, so. And a lot of the employees that started with us day one are still on the same. We still had the exact same team in place. So I looked at, you know, I did take another corporate job for about a year in there, and it just. It wasn't the same. I mean, I was making tons. I could have made a killing in this company. I could have. It could have been so easy. But I would walk in the office every day, I was like, God damn. Why am I letting somebody tell me I have to be in San Francisco Monday morning? I don't want to be in San Francisco Monday morning. It ain't me anymore. So that's when we started having the dealership. Yeah. So we started having that white shirt.

[Victoria Childress]

In the back seat.

[Jess]

Put it on.

[Shane Childress]

And no, I'd be on a zoom call with, you know, here she's taking, you know, running credit applications out front, you know.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

And then I take my shirt off, run outside and wash an rv, and they come back in and take another call. But it came to a point, it's like, what are we doing here? Like this. This isn't us. We're not happy. This isn't going to end well. So let's build businesses and properties and portfolios that feed into the lifestyle that we want. And that also kind of helped us get into the RV side of the place too.

[Jess]

Right.

[Shane Childress]

Because we were still traveling a lot with our kids. We were still traveling back to Texas a lot.

[Jess]

How do you. This is a big issue in our space. I deal with it a lot in terms of building a business that satisfies the life you want versus your life having to try to satisfy the business you build. You guys have done it, in my opinion, the right way.

[Shane Childress]

Have you ever. Have you ever been addicted to anything?

[Jess]

Coffee.

[Shane Childress]

Cut coffee. Can't you know how hard it is? Yeah, that's how hard it is to do that. Because like you said earlier, right. We are so conditioned to have a bigger house and have nice clothes and what kind of car you drive. We're conditioned to go to work and build this and work, work, work. You know, night over 40 hour week. No, you need to be putting in 90. You need to be doing this. And then whatever you have left over is where you live. Breaking that habit of building your companies to support your lifestyle is just as hard. And it takes a tremendous amount of focus every day to stay on task.

[Victoria Childress]

And I will say, he never did it when we were traveling on the boat or the rv. He had a very hard time with it. I did it. Now I'm back in, like, grind mode and he's trying to pull back. So.

[Shane Childress]

So it's kind of a. I couldn't let go.

[Jess]

Like, you were still in grind mode even when you were traveling, Even in the rv, I think. So that. That is. Is nature. Yeah. I think men are built this way. Right. I mean, we are the lion. We have to go hunt and feed the tribe and protect the tribe. And some of that I would argue is going to be nature more than necessarily him. I don't think it's a Shane thing. I think it's a man thing. But I think the other side is maybe how you're raised and. Yep. That thing of I still kind of want these things or the ability to get them at least. Yep.

[Victoria Childress]

Or when you didn't have anything growing up.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

You want those things. You know, there's certain things that I. Stupid things that I've checked off my list. I'm like, that's it. Like, I don't want.

[Jess]

Well, you know what, What? I. It's funny because I. As you guys follow me now because of this, I'm going to go through an interesting journey in my socials and it's going to be a totally authentic congruent, like exposure of the truth of what happened in the last 18 months of my real estate business. The reason why I really want to do that. And it's going to be like stressing out talking about it because it's like it was definitely not pretty.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

Let's say it that way. And it wasn't because the, the interest rates. It wasn't because of the political climate and what was going. It was literally just personal things that I could have controlled that I didn't control that because of that created a catastrophic scenario. Right. And I say that to say part of all of the things we want are the things that we build come out of a pride and. Or ego side. Yeah. And I will tell you, if I have to take a 30,000 foot step back, which is a large step back, I could probably pinpoint that if I removed my ego and my pride 18 months ago. I'm not in the scenario I'm dealing with today in the real estate space. And I say that because I think if people can also realize, like you can build a business and create a lot of financial success without the ego or pride being involved in talking to you two. I feel like that's really a hype mark on your agenda. It's not about the things. It's not about the ego. It's not about the pride of what we're doing. We want a really cool life.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

We want stories. We want to travel with our daughter. We want our son to Go travel. Like, that is a unique characteristic in entrepreneur space. And you guys, seemingly, whether you feel like you have it all under control or not, like, from the outside perspective, I applaud you. You guys should apply yourself, because I. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. This is quite literally what the show is about. It is very rare, very rare to have the qualities you guys have of. Of what is most important. And being on a boat, being the rv, right? In, like, creating more of a life than creating a thing or a pride or ego statement. That's.

[Shane Childress]

That's awesome. That's true. It's very tough because what I can say in our aspect, probably for both those. But for me, for sure, right.

[Jess]

I had.

[Shane Childress]

I had a big ego when I met her. I was charging and, you know, I. That's what you got to do, right? You got to put your blinders on and everybody.

[Jess]

You also love that about him when you guys.

[Victoria Childress]

I was attracted to that. Yeah. For sure.

[Shane Childress]

But finding the right partner means the world.

[Jess]

Amen.

[Shane Childress]

There's. I will get every single bit of it up today, no questions asked, because I know that we can build it back together. No questions. Come on.

[Victoria Childress]

Yes.

[Jess]

I love that.

[Shane Childress]

Yep. You gotta give sense shivers.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

No doubt about it.

[Shane Childress]

I mean, that. That is the best thing about it. And so when you're talking about egos and stuff like that, good or bad.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

You know, there's been a. There's days that we do not like each other at all. There's drives in the morning because we do everything together. We don't own a car.

[Victoria Childress]

Right.

[Shane Childress]

The dealership has cars that we drive and stuff. Like, we own our kids cars, but. So we drive in together. We do everything together.

[Victoria Childress]

We shower together, we eat breakfast in.

[Shane Childress]

The morning, brush our teeth together.

[Victoria Childress]

We got everything kind of.

[Shane Childress]

But we chose each other for that reason. Right? So there are drives in the morning when we're talking about our day or a week or he's crunching apple, and.

[Victoria Childress]

I'm like, dude, you're.

[Jess]

If you don't stop eating when you're.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah. You know, I didn't know my breathing could get on her nerves so much, you know, so that. That stuff happens. But we have learned each other and read each other well enough and respect each other enough in that aspect that we can't put each other's ego in check. Because there are a lot of times that it. That ego comes out and you just want to like. And they're like, hey, six months from now, what do we want to be? Does that matter? Does this matter and we're able to keep that in check.

[Victoria Childress]

I have a strong personality myself. I'm pretty spicy.

[Shane Childress]

And I'm not talking about her keeping my ego in check. I'm talking keep. Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

Really?

[Jess]

The reverse.

[Shane Childress]

It's backwards now. Yeah. So it's big. Yeah. If. If I didn't have her, it would be. Who knows what would be going on. It's it that makes a huge difference. Huge difference. And the fact that we're both locked in on keeping it fun. Like we're. Yeah, we're married, we have kids and all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day we're like, hey, if it ain't fun, we got to change it up or it won't last. Period. So we always keep that core.

[Victoria Childress]

We've been together 20 years, so.

[Shane Childress]

20 years.

[Jess]

That's awesome.

[Wix Announcer]

How many times have you wished you could be in two places at once? With wix, you practically can. Wix's website builder is packed with powerful AI tools to make running your business online easier. Build a full site just by talking with AI, get an AI agent to manage your sales and marketing, or work like a 10 person team, even if it's just you. So you don't need superpowers to get everything done. You just need Wix. Try it out for [e-mail] Jen's the.

[TransUnion Announcer]

Mother of two teens. Her online shopping cart is always full of amps and auxiliary cables, so you might think she's funding her kid's garage band. But what you don't know is she's actually the one shredding on stage. With TransUnion's 360 degree view of consumer identity, you can get a clear picture of your marketing audience and reach people like Jen with messages that are more headbanger, less homebody. See how TransUnion is bringing clarity to marketing chaos through deeper insights, smarter reach, and precise measurement. @transunion.com clarity when too much work bogs.

[Asana Announcer]

You down, Asana helps you handle it. AI makes it easy to hand off routine tasks and stay focused on important work. That's how work gets handled. Visit [e-mail] Hiring isn't just about finding.

[Indeed Announcer]

Someone willing to take the job. You need the right person with the right background who can move your business forward. If you want candidates who truly match what you're looking for, trust Indeed Sponsored Jobs With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post stands out to quality candidates who actually fit the role. According To Indeed data, 90% are more likely to be hired and trusted by 1.6 million companies. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podcast13 just go to Indeed.com podcast13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com podcast 13 terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Do it the right way with Indeed.

[Shane Childress]

So building on, like building the lifestyle. Right. When the media company came out and people started, you know, businesses started coming to us as it's growing, I was like, well, holy shit. You know, we have the RV dealership that allows us to travel all over the US and go to these barrel races and we'll be in Las Vegas in December. She qualified to run in and race in Las Vegas. So we'll be out for probably three weeks doing that. So all this stuff.

[Jess]

And so you'll grab the rv, you'll be.

[Shane Childress]

We'll have the horse and a trailer on the back of the RV and.

[Jess]

We'Re driving out and you're working and hanging and working and doing the dinners and going to her shows.

[Shane Childress]

Y.

[Victoria Childress]

We're always working. People ask me like, do you take days off? No, I work eight days a week. Yes, I like it.

[Jess]

Let's enjoy it. Genuinely. I think it is something that the outside world doesn't really understand about entrepreneurship.

[Shane Childress]

And it's not really working. We enjoy it, we love it. But it's constant.

[Jess]

You're on your phone or you're on your laptop or you're dealing with something where a 9 to fiverr can be like and fuck off.

[Shane Childress]

That's part of the network I want to grow. That drives me fricking nuts.

[Jess]

What?

[Shane Childress]

The nine to fiver.

[Jess]

You want to grow that network?

[Shane Childress]

No, I want to grow the network of owners who can help me deal with that. Because right now, I'll cut it quick. I want a result. I don't care if you got something on the weekend. I hired you for a result.

[Jess]

That's right.

[Shane Childress]

But I don't get that with 9 to 5ers and it drives me freaking nuts.

[Jess]

And part of what I do love about real estate is for the most part, it's a seven day a week. Like you can always kind of get somewhere. Holidays, every realtor takes off for whatever reason, which is annoying. Fridays end awfully early for realtors as well. But you know, I would tell you I'm the same way. And I think that is something that Entrepreneurs, at least people that want to be, or maybe aspiring as they sit here and listen or watch this. I would encourage those to take a lesson from these two because it is not, you know, 9 to 5. It is quite literally like 24 7, 24 8, like all day, every day. It is a hustle, it is a grind. Now there's a certain level you can hit that maybe you guys don't even want to get there and that, that could be a reality of like building a big enough business that you can remove yourself. But to do that, what it takes to do. And that's not for everyone either. Bigger is not always better.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, it's about, yeah, that's, that's a, that's very key. Right. It's, it's not about being a big giant company. So on the media side, I set out and we don't do big pushes. We're not trying to be the end all, be all to everybody. Because I want a good core of great employees, which I have some now. And I want them to have growth, I want them to have future, I want them to have freedom and I want them to love being in the company. I don't care If I'm billing 400 grand a month or 100 grand a month or 50 grand a month. If we're happy and it's given us the freedom to do what we want. That's what I want.

[Victoria Childress]

And part of the success, like, we love to see people win. If you want to win or you want to better yourself, like, we are all for it. Like, I want people on my team to win. I want them to, you know, like, make more money than me. Like, I want that.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So when people have that drive and stuff, like I want to, I want to love that.

[Shane Childress]

Fire in the ass.

[Jess]

Yeah. The, the next chapter going into the next, let's call it three years. Give you guys a three year target. What do you see you guys doing for the next three years? Where do you think your push, your goal, your agenda will be for the next 36 months?

[Shane Childress]

Stabilizing. Growing and stabilizing the media company. I mean, we, we love that from a travel perspective. Like I was able to, we wanted to travel. We wanted to go to Iceland. So I was able to pick up the phone, make some phone calls. I found a couple rental companies in ICELAND that rent RVs out. I said, hey, here's who I am. I have a marketing company. We want to come shoot some content.

[Victoria Childress]

Which it was only three weeks old at the time.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, the media company is Only three weeks old, but the experience there, we had it. So we, next thing I know, boom, we book flights, we took off. We spent seven or eight days in Iceland. Victoria and I had an RV that we were driving around. Our son and daughter had an RV. So we've had two RVs. We caravan all around Iceland for like eight days.

[Victoria Childress]

It was incredible.

[Shane Childress]

We shot incredible footage and we were on that, that vacation, we call it a vacation. That trip was great because it wasn't just going to the pool and sitting by the pool on the beach or it wasn't just going on vacation. Right. We were working, but it was a working vacation. That was just excellent. We all had roles, we had. We're going to this waterfall we're shooting. So we were working while we were doing it and it was great. We really enjoyed it. It was great. So that piece of it going three years out. I want to see savvy media and like in the Middle East, I want to see us overseas a little bit more. I'm talking to some boat manufacturers in Eastern Europe right now.

[Jess]

So they'd be clients for you?

[Shane Childress]

They'd be clients for us.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Shane Childress]

That allow us to travel. They would allow my entire team to travel.

[Jess]

So they be a client for you. In return they give you their pan.

[Shane Childress]

As a retainer and paying travel and you know how we worked it out.

[Jess]

Right.

[Shane Childress]

Maybe a boat or you have to.

[Jess]

Pay them for the boat that you take for three weeks.

[Shane Childress]

That's right, yeah. So whatever it is. Right. It's all about the barter system.

[Jess]

That's a loss system by the way. There's a lot of bartering that should be done these days, don't you think? Like I'm down what I want to have what you want. Why don't we barter for that?

[Shane Childress]

Yeah. Then you can pay me X amount of money or give us access to this for so many months and then.

[Victoria Childress]

Yeah, why not?

[Shane Childress]

So we're open.

[Jess]

The media company is going to be a head down venture for the next 36 months to build it.

[Shane Childress]

Yep.

[Jess]

You don't. Do you have a goal? Do you have like. I want to get it to this. This is where I'd like us to be.

[Shane Childress]

I have a revenue number.

[Victoria Childress]

Yes, but no.

[Jess]

Yes, but no.

[Shane Childress]

I got to enjoy the journey is what she's telling me. Don't focus on the end result. I agree that keeping, keeping in check, that's what she.

[Jess]

Because otherwise you're going to get there and say yeah, but now what? Yeah, but if you enjoy that whole journey, it is A struggle is a fight every day for me, and I'm sure it's for you to really take, like, be aware of the moments in the journey. Because we're builders. That's who we are as men.

[Victoria Childress]

I'll go back to, like, that 9 to 5 job.

[Jess]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

So there's days that I wish I was on a salary, like, where I didn't have to do anything because I would say the first. The first year we opened up our car dealership, I. The. Probably the first 13 deals that I did, I didn't realize, like, I'd never done financing before. I'd never done, like, sales tax. I'd never done title work. None of this stuff. Like, I'm selling cars. I'm like, I'm selling these cars. First 13 cars that I sold, I owed them thousands of dollars, you know.

[Shane Childress]

Like, no, we did it all backwards.

[Victoria Childress]

I was like, it was great. Like, there's days that I would grab my purse, it would beat me. And Shane, I'm like, I quit. I pack my purse up, and I'd go home.

[Shane Childress]

She'd cry in the car on her way home. And I'm sitting there like, well, damn, I ain't got a car to get home with, you know, But I sold all the cars.

[Jess]

But we actually have to pay them to take them. And now I don't have a car.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sales tax was a tricky thing. We had to learn the hard way. Luckily, we were in a position where we could pay it out, and we. We got an accounting firm now that pays it monthly and all that stuff now. But, man, that was. That was. That could have been.

[Jess]

You said something that I. I almost want to end with this just for the sake of time. By the way, everyone make sure you're following them on socials. Would you like them to follow you specifically anywhere personally or nothing personal?

[Victoria Childress]

Sorry.

[Jess]

Well, no, like Instagram, LinkedIn.

[Shane Childress]

You can follow us at Savvy Media Group, Savva. Sav S A V A Media Group.

[Jess]

Savva Media Group. Make sure you're following this two incredible company couple. You said something that you made all kinds of mistakes when you started this rv. Yeah, I say something in today. Like, even as I start to go through this journey of what happened to me, you know, in 2024, and tell everyone and expose it all and say what happened. Part of that is the. The authenticity of, like, I don't care how long you've been doing it. Whether it's your first day or it's your hundredth year, you're gonna some up.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah.

[Jess]

But there's a quote called or that says something about doing it wrong enough, long enough, and if you just keep going, even though you're doing, you learn from it. And that's such a powerful statement for you guys to say. Now, we still have this RV dealership. It's profitable. We pay ourselves. Like, but to start that, you weren't, like, crushing it and you didn't realize you had the taxes that you were gonna owe. Like, but people don't realize that. They're like, oh, look at this couple now. They're amazing. They're traveling the RV and they're. Yeah, they don't remember those days. They don't know the days that you get in a car and you're crying and you're freaking out and like, oh, my God.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah.

[Victoria Childress]

Or the days, like, in the early days, the rental properties, you know, like, my painter wouldn't show up, and I was like, I got tenants that are moving in in two days. I got to go clean this house and I got to go paint the damn walls. And I'm there till 1am painting.

[Shane Childress]

And he's like, literally have our kids at 6 and 8 years old in there with a scraper scraping the old lium up so we can lay new throwing down at, like, one in the morning.

[Jess]

You know, you guys are just so endearing because that's what it takes, regardless how build big. You want to build it or not. Like, entrepreneur. This isn't easy. It's not for everybody. It's really not.

[Shane Childress]

Just not.

[Jess]

People, like, I have a couple friends are like, oh, everyone should be an entrepreneur. And I'm kind of like, it's not psychos.

[Shane Childress]

I think it'd be a lot easier for us if everybody was. We could learn from their mistakes and they'd fall out. Right? That's what builds the baseline.

[Jess]

This audiobook game. I'm just, like, constantly listening to these things, trying to learn from these mistakes, man.

[Shane Childress]

We need more people failing so they can blaze a little bit of a trail and show us what not to do.

[Jess]

Right, guys, you're incredible. You're going to have a great journey. I'm excited to now get closer to you guys and your family and to see where all this goes. And this has been great.

[Shane Childress]

Yeah, we appreciate it.

[Jess]

Thanks for having us, Shane. Victoria Sava Media Group on Instagram. Yep.

[Victoria Childress]

Or Shane Childress.

[Jess]

Or Shane Childress. Instagram. Check it out, guys. If these two were pretty cool, if you learned something or just like this episode, share it to your friends. I'd Greatly appreciate it. See you on the next episode. Perfect.

[Victoria Childress]

See ya.

[Wix Announcer]

Wix it's where website creation meets AI and where your boldest ideas become real. It just takes one platform to build a site that looks great and does everything you need it to. And it just takes one person you to start taking care of business. Like a 10 person team with AI tools for creating an entire website from scratch or testing new ways to make money. WIX is there with you from day one. Try it out [e-mail] Jen's the mother of two teens.

[TransUnion Announcer]

Her online shopping cart is always full of amps and auxiliary cables, so you might think she's funding her kid's garage band. But what you don't know is she's actually the one shredding on stage. With TransUnion's 360 degree view of consumer identity, you can get a clear picture of your marketing audience and reach people like Jen with messages that are more headbanger, less homebody. See how TransUnion is bringing clarity to marketing chaos through deeper insights, smarter reach, and Precise [e-mail] clarity when too much.

[Asana Announcer]

Work bogs you down, Asana helps you handle it. AI makes it easy to hand off routine tasks and stay focused on important work. That's how work gets handled. Visit us at asana. Com.