Travis Chapel (2:12)

What do you think? Yeah, what do you think it was that made you fear that? Like, I feel like a lot of people would look at that as like a pat on the back for a sense of certainty to be like, I know what I'm going to get paid for the rest of my life. Great.

Shane Sams (2:25)

Totally.

Travis Chapel (2:25)

I mean like I, I'm, I'm happy about that. But you looked at it as like, this is like a self made prison.

Shane Sams (2:30)

Well, there, there was, there was two things that happened. So I was a football coach and you know, teaching that that's what I was going for was the security. And if you get tenure as a teacher, you basically can't be fired unless you do something stupid, right?

Travis Chapel (2:43)

Yeah.

Shane Sams (2:44)

So the first thing that happened that made me really start to think about this was I had a job. I was the football head football coach. I was about to get tenure the next year. Everything was going good and I thought, I'm set. Nobody can take this away from me. But then the school districts, there were two high schools, they consolidated because when you consolidate, it ends all the tenured contracts. And I realized then that no matter how safe I think working for somebody else is, I can be let go.

Travis Chapel (3:14)

That even with tenure, it still would not.

Shane Sams (3:16)

Even with tenure, there nothing is a guarantee. The second thing that happened, and I won't go too deep into this, but I basically found out that my son was being mistreated at his, at his daycare. And you know, a lot of stuff came out later on, but I didn't really know what was going on at the time. And I tried to, to go in and get the day off, but my principal basically was like, you know, we all the subs are out. You're going to have to handle your personal problems after work because I had no proof that anything was going on at that moment. And I just realized that like these people don't care about me. They care about the cog that I am in their machine. And I knew that the only way I would be able to have total freedom in my life to pursue a great life that I wanted on my terms was to control my income. Because income equals freedom. If you control how you make money, when you make money, where you make money, that's going to give you the freedom to build the life you want. I wasn't exactly thinking, know, be a millionaire at this time, right?

Travis Chapel (4:15)

Yeah.

Shane Sams (4:15)

But I knew I had to take control of provision. If I could take control of that, I would have the choices that I needed. Yeah.

Travis Chapel (4:21)

It's interesting because it's the path to uncertainty that eventually creates the certainty. Right.

Shane Sams (4:26)

There's this unbelievable man. Nobody tells us that when grown up.

Travis Chapel (4:30)

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Did you ever see that Jim Carrey commencement. Commencement speech, Talks about his dad? Yeah. He's like. He says something about how his dad chose the. He's like, my dad could have been an amazing comedian. He was like. But he chose the safe path. And then when we were kids, you know, 20 years into this career, he got laid off from that safe job. And it taught me an important lesson early on, which is that you can fail at what you don't want, so why not take a chance on doing what you love? And it's something that I've thought about a lot since then, but it's. It's. It's because people sacrifice. They sacrifice the thing that they love for a sense of certainty, when the certainty doesn't actually exist.

Shane Sams (5:10)

To your point, it's an illusion.

Travis Chapel (5:12)

You know, you didn't. Yeah, it's an illusion. The only certainty that you can gain is confidence to be able to generate something out of nothing, regardless of the circumstances that are handed to you, which can only be figured out if you initially embrace the uncertainty of not knowing how to figure it out. You know what I mean?

Shane Sams (5:28)

And also to stay there, you've got to stay there, because, like, I, you know, I've had multiple times building all my businesses where I'm like, oh, this is it. We're going to ride this gravy train for the next 20 years. Well, then the market changes. Five years later, something else comes up, you get bored, whatever it is. And that's kind of like. It's kind of like they say, like, the only thing that's certain is change. Well, the only thing that's certain is uncertainty. Right. But there's beauty in that because that's where creativity is. That's when you destroy the old way. A new thing can be created from the pieces. And when you embrace uncertainty, it almost just gives you this unstoppable power that, like, I am inevitable. Shane Sams is inevitable. All I got to do is put myself in the right place to give my chance to be in the right place at the right time. And then the lightning. And you're not. Like, it's not catching lightning in a bottle, like they tell you growing up, like, you're the damn lightning. And when you realize that lightning's unpredictable, it's uncertain, it never strikes the same faith twice, but you can go build man, you can do whatever you want.

Travis Chapel (6:31)

Yeah, it's, it's the difference between convergent and divergent thinking. It's, it's, it's moving from like A or B, like.

Travis Chapel (6:38)

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Travis Chapel (7:48)

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Travis Chapel (8:56)

employment or unemployment to. The goal is not to have a job. The goal is to be able to provide for my family.

Shane Sams (9:04)

Yes.

Travis Chapel (9:05)

A job is not the only path to being able to provide for my family. You know what I mean? It's, it's. There's an infinite number of paths actually, that exist in your ability to see that end result. You know, it's just like people forget. People forget that what the end result really is. You know what I mean? And so in this context, we talk a lot about making that end result, gaining more money, because what I found, Shane, and I don't know if you feel experienced the same thing, but life will always demand much more money from you than you think it will.

Shane Sams (9:36)

Yep. So when you have kids.

Travis Chapel (9:37)

Yeah, exactly.

Shane Sams (9:38)

Exactly.

Travis Chapel (9:39)

Even if you have a leg up on everybody else and you've done the math and you've set your budget and you're telling your dollars where to go, which is already more than what most people are willing to do. Even if you've done that, you're probably wrong. You will probably need more than you.

Shane Sams (9:52)

Every damn time, dude. Every damn time, man. It was funny. I had this realization. It was funny, though. Like, I remember when we made enough money to replace our income, I thought, this is crazy. And then I remembered when we made enough money to double our old salaries. And I was like, I'm making two, two times as much money as I ever was. Then we sat down and we were like, well, what would our life look like if I, if we just said this is what we wanted to do every year and we came up with a number. At the time, it was $25,000 a month. You know what I'm saying? And then, like, when we got to there, that, that was the moment I was like, oh, my gosh, like, no one told me this growing up. You can, you can kind of pick the number you want, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then I think most entrepreneurs go through this experimental phase where they keep pushing that, that envelope as high as you can go. And there's, there's somewhere in the middle where the truth lives, like, for you, but you don't know it until you do it. And you've got to figure out how much life is going to demand out of You. How much do you have to generate to actually get there? And I think for most entrepreneurs, people. People discover this, but what I find with most people is you push past that point and you start pushing, then. Then the game becomes the goalpost. The game becomes that big number. The game becomes whatever your mentor, your coach or somebody else is doing. Whatever you see on Instagram, bullshit. And then, like. But you have to go push past that point to step back to figure out what you actually need. Not need, like warm, dry, and fed need. Like, this is what I need. I need to be able to, you know, take off a Tuesday and go talk to Travis Chapel. I need to be able to stop working at 3 o' clock to go to the gym with my daughter this afternoon. Like, what makes that life possible? And then you probably want to double it because something's going to come up, man, and you're not going to know. Yeah, yeah.

Travis Chapel (11:44)

There's always a family member that needs money. There's always a. A medical bill that's unexpected. There's always a new set of tires that your car needs or your house needs a new roof. There the H vac goes out in the heat of summer.

Travis Chapel (11:56)

You know what I mean?

Travis Chapel (11:56)

Like, there's always something that will.

Shane Sams (11:59)

Last year, last. Last year, I made a lot of money. I don't got to make the most, but I got to make a lot. That's kind of my rule, right? But like, last year, we're just rolling along about three months into the year and back to back to back. My wife trips in the garage over a dog. Ac shoulder surgery. My son tries to do something on the soccer field, breaks his arm. My daughter sneaks out at a sleepover and doing donuts in a golf cart, wrecks it and jacks up her leg. Like. And then I'm like, so one. I'm like, one. I'm sitting here like, okay, somebody put some bubble wrap around me. I am the last man standing. I cannot go down at this moment in life. But then, like, that's, that's. All of a sudden, man, you're looking at tens of thousands of extra dollars that you didn't put in your budget in January. You didn't put it on your vision board for the year. But you can create cushion. That's. That's the thing, man. That's what money does. I think money is like a force field. It creates a force field between you and the crazy crap that is going to happen in your life. And the real journey of an entrepreneur is deciding how much of that Comforter. How much of that cushion do I want? Some people take it to the extreme and they want to build, like, generational wealth where their grandkids, Grandkids can cover the surgeries. That's great. I'm going to be dead. So are you. We're all going to be forgotten by the third generation. So whatever happens to my grandkids, whatever. But like, it's that cushion that you're looking for. I'm creating enough to continue building that cushion and maintaining it, but I'm also not killing myself to create some. You're never going to be safe, people. You can lose everything. Everyone can lose everything. It's, it's that skill set that I can build it back is what gives me the most confidence. Really?

Travis Chapel (13:42)

Yeah. Whatever dreams you're chasing, just make sure that they're yours. You know, like what you alluded to, you know, if you want to be the person to build generational wealth and, and make sure your grandkids, Grandkids don't want for anything, that's fine, you know, go, go do that thing. Just make sure it's you that wants to do it and not your insecurity and the chip on your shoulder from people making fun of you that's causing you to do this thing. That's seeking validation when you're never going to get the validation, even if you hit the billion dollar mark or whatever,

Shane Sams (14:10)

you know, or let me tell you the worst piece of advice I ever got from someone who I dearly love and respect, okay? I, I became a speaker probably around 2020 is where I really said, I am a speaker. I'm going. I, I had spoken events, I'd hosted my own events. I'd done the speaking thing, right? But it was, it was, it was an accessory to everything else I was doing. And we were at this thing. I was starting a new company. The company goes on to make $150 million or something crazy annually. It blew up, but I was, I was not really going to be a speaker in this endeavor, right? But I'm a storyteller, man. And like, I've told my story from sea to shining sea for over a decade, right? So I've got this thing pretty dialed in. It's designed to do exactly what it does, which is tell people the story, tell the truth, and move emotions and let them react to it. And I tell. I'm at this big meeting with about 60 people that are involved in this thing. And I tell our story of being schoolteachers from Kentucky who replaced our income, quit our jobs and flipped our lives upside down. And at the end of it, all I said was, that's who we are and that's what we do for other people. That place lost its shit. Lost. Its just a bonkers, biggest, top reaction of the day. I had this legendary speaker come up to me and he's flipping cash in his wallet and he goes. He goes, I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you do. I don't know what you sell, but sell to me, baby. Everyone's reacting. But then this guy walks up to me and he goes, I did not know you could do that. And he looked at me and he said, you were born for this. To be on stage, to move the masses, to go sell hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm glad he said it. It let me push past the boundary of where I was comfortable with and get out there and extend myself and grow. But then I kept saying it was unfulfilling. It was. It was not fulfilling at all. Because as I went out and sold more and as I kept making higher and higher revenue numbers, like, I was like, why is this not feeling good? I've got. I got a line of people at a photo op. I've got. I'm making hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales a month. I've got. All these things are just falling in place. But it never felt right. It never felt good. And I'll tell you when it. When it happened. My goal was never to build a company like that. I never wanted to be a CEO. I'm more of a creator. I like having a small and mighty team. I got a number that I like to hit, and that's how I live. But I was pushed past that into the CEO seat, into the speaker seat. And then one month we were out. We did three live events that month, and we. We made. We did like $800,000 in sales. And my team was excited. Everybody was excited. It was crazy that we did that. Everything's going on. And I sat there and I was like, ah, it wasn't a million. And I started. I started, like, doubting myself. And I was like, maybe I wasn't born for this. Maybe I'm not a million dollar a month guy. Maybe I'm not. Whatever. And in that moment, dude, I realized, holy shit, that was never my goal anyway. Why did I listen to someone to tell me I was born for this? When I get to decide that, I get to decide what I was born for and I get to create meaning. And I Get to choose my purpose, and I get to live greatness on my terms. And, dude, I literally, three months later, decided to shut down a whole company that was printing money because I was like, I built a version of me that someone handed to me, and that's not good enough for Shane Samson's life. I'm not going to do that. Transplanted dreams, inception level, man, it's crazy.

Travis Chapel (17:48)

Yeah, that's how it goes. But that's the thing, man, is, like, sometimes you don't know unless you go, like, touch it, experience it.

Shane Sams (17:54)

You got it. You got it. Icarus, baby. You gotta fly up there and let the wings melt off.

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Shane Sams (18:27)

And then you gotta fall back down. You gotta, you know, but starting over, to me is not a big deal because I'm like, all right, what's next? Let's build it. Let's do it, man.

Travis Chapel (18:36)

And what's cool about it, though, is that you gain clarity along the way to say that, you know what, you know, like, it felt cool to do some of those things, but, you know, maybe that $800,000 month, like, maybe I would actually be cool with a $300,000 month where I keep 70% of it versus, like, I keep feeling like I gotta scale and push and scale and push and scale.

Shane Sams (18:57)

Oh, yeah. 80% of that's going to fulfillment.

Travis Chapel (19:00)

That's what I'm saying.

Shane Sams (19:00)

Yeah, that's what that is, man. Like, these numbers are crazy. We days, you know, I made.

Travis Chapel (19:04)

I made more like personal take home last year in like, and, but, but. But less total gross than like, the previous three years. You know what I mean? It was just like, it was a moment of. Of reckoning for me where I was like, I actually don't really care about, like, the continued pushing of revenue markers. You know what I mean? I actually. I actually would rather focus on, like, what does that mean for what we end up making as a family? What does that mean for the life that we get to live or the trips that we get to take our kids on?

Shane Sams (19:32)

Or, you know that saying, if you're not growing, you're dying? You heard anybody say that before. I hate that saying so bad, because it's like in the weight room, you don't just try to PR Every single week. You have to take seasons where you let your joints catch up, and you got to take seasons where you let your body heal so that it can heal back stronger and then you can do something else. That's crazy. If you're not growing sometimes that's when you live. Like, it's okay to run sprints and grow. We're in a sprint right now with a new brand and doing things like that. But then, like, these other. If you're not growing, you're probably living, right? You're not. You're not living when you're growing, you're not dying. If you. If you're. If your eyes open this morning, you saw the sun, God gave you another day. Don't waste it. Yeah, but it's. You got. You got to live sometime, man. It's. Who does it matter? What does it matter if you just build everything, every minute of every day, and then you look back and you didn't take advantage of any of it? It's crazy.

Travis Chapel (20:29)

Yeah. To me, it's more like. Like, I would. I look at that now more as, like, personal growth rather than objective metrics. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not necessarily like the business is growing. It's just that I grew as a person by realizing I didn't care that much about my business continuing to grow when it didn't impact, like, the bottom line that much. You know what I mean? It was like expansion for expansion's sake, not for growth's sake. It's like, well, that you've deluded yourself into believing that that's the metric of success that you have to achieve versus these other metrics of success that might actually be more meaningful to you and to those closest to you.

Travis Chapel (21:04)

So.

Travis Chapel (21:04)

So tell me. Tell me a little bit. Now you, you know, generate over $25 million online and stuff, but now you have this new project that you're working on. Tell me a little bit about this. About this men project that you're working on, dude.

Shane Sams (21:16)

You know, it's funny how great man came about. Like, I went through. I'm four. I'll be 48 on Saturday. Right. How old are you? How old are you right now?

Travis Chapel (21:25)

33.

Shane Sams (21:26)

33. So I'll be 48 this year. I called it that, too. That. By Jesus. Yeah, because he was 33. That's the peak. No, it's not. All right, So I turned 48 on Saturday. And about five years ago, I experienced my midlife moment. Now I'm still doing work, still grinding, still doing everything, taking care of business, but went through a period where I realized I had neglected my body. I went through a period of some depression and some anxiety and, you know, and I started looking around, man, and I'm like, I. There's no way anyone could look at my life and not think that it's a preposterous goal like I have. I got 40 acres with a private lake, 5,000 square foot house, right? That's one of the things you're supposed to get. I drive nice cars. I got a Tesla and a Navigator in the driveway, right? I got a hot wife. She's amazing, right? You know what I'm saying? I've got two kids who are straight A students, athletes. Like, all this stuff I have, every week, everyone cheers and tells Shane how awesome he is. You know what I'm saying? And it was just empty. And I, you know, but I. But I climbed. I climbed every ladder of success I ever set out to do, man. When I got out of college, I decided to be a football coach. I ended up coaching in NCAA Division 1 schools. I went to be a head coach. I was a head coach within two years. I started the business. I just did all the things, man, Right? But as I climbed the ladder of success, somewhere along the way, I realized I had put the ladder against the wrong wall. It wasn't it. I did not define all those things. I just got coaches and mentors and looked at people online and said, well, that looks cool. Let's do that. And I didn't build the life that I wanted. I did a lot of things. I got my physical health back, first. Started TRT did the GLP1s, got all that under control. Started doing a lot of mental health work.

Travis Chapel (23:16)

You look good.

Shane Sams (23:16)

And then I started talking. Thanks, man. I appreciate that, bro. And I got. I got. I got talking to some dudes, man. And I found out that, like, every single dude that I run with and respect in their 40s was going through the exact same thing, right? And. And. And I'm lucky. And you're. You're like me, Travis. Like, we go out and we build networks and we serve our friends and we. We really value deep, deep relationships, especially other men in my life, right? Like, I've got a text thread that we text every day for 10 years. Got guys like you in my life that I know I can holler at any time I want to, you know, with a Question or whatever. And as I started talking to a lot of these other people at these events and stuff, I realized that a lot of guys don't have that. They, they, they, they don't. They just have not had the opportunity to, to have that. And when you look at the stats on that man, like, they found that, like, when a, if a, if a widower, a man, his wife dies and that was his only friend, was his wife and his family, really, he dies in like a couple years, like, his life just falls apart. But women who usually have better, stronger structures around them, they got more friends, they just go on and live another life, may get married again, and they just keep on going. And then I looked at these midlife guys who are going through this alone, and I realized, God, if I hadn't had my buddies and my. And men around me, I would, I wouldn't have been able to get through this. So I, I'm a community builder. I'm a content creator, and I know how to get people in a room. And I was like, I, I would love to create a container for men, good men. The world makes you a good man. But sooner or later, you have to define greatness on your own terms. You got to get rid of the scripts, the dogmas, everything the church told you, your family told you, whatever it is. And you got to surround yourself with other men in that pursuit so you can actually live the life you want. Because a lot of dudes, man, I got friends, I got a family. I got family members right now. And I got, I got one. I got one family member, and they're just, they're just like, I'm done. I've run my life. I can't get through this. This is, it's too late to do anything different. And I'm like, that's unacceptable to me, man. Greatness is available to all of us. So that's what the Great Men project actually became. It wasn't called that originally. Dude. I was in the gym one day and I was like, I wonder if I can get a bunch of great men around a fire at a retreat, smoking cigars with me. That would be awesome. That was the whole genesis of this.

Travis Chapel (25:40)

Down.

Shane Sams (25:40)

Play it down. That's right. You're going. I'm coming to Denver and we're going to do this right? You're Flower from Vegas. We're gonna, we're gonna do this. You'd be at my first one. But, But I was like, when I thought about that, I was like, huh? Great men. And, dude, I looked up greatmen.org and I couldn't believe it was available a two word domain.org for like a thousand bucks, bro. You know how domain names are. That's a. And so I bought it. We started working on the Great Men project. We've launched the community. It's got a bunch of members in it now and we're moving toward getting these men in, in person where they can build those deep relationships and also too like to learn how to actually build that life. Like, not like the tactics and the strategies of business, but more like your physical health has to be your priority because you can't serve anybody without it. And then like your mental health, that's your shit. Like, you got to learn how to deal with that shit. And then you can't do this alone, bro. You need to get some dudes around you. So here is an online place, here is a podcast, here is a retreat that you can go to and put yourself in the right place to feed the right place, the right time.

Travis Chapel (26:43)

Love it, dude. I love, I love the continued willingness to reinvent yourself. I think that that's something that is highly underrated and that there's so many people who want to do something new, that want to do something fresh. They just, they're so stuck in that sunk cost fallacy that's like, well, I got my degree in this and I've been doing it for 15 years. So you know, what, what am I going to do? Like, I'm going to start over again at 45. And it's like, yes.

Shane Sams (27:10)

Yeah, dude, what's the alternative, man?

Travis Chapel (27:14)

Right, exactly. Exactly. The alternative is to continue doing the thing that you don't like forever just because that's what you've already done. Like, that's not a good reason to

Shane Sams (27:21)

continue doing, doing something if you're putting something on your tombstone that you did in your late 30s. You gave up. Yep. You quit, man. I, I want the last thing out of my mouth at. I want maybe about 69. I don't know if I want to experience the 70s and 80s. Just put me out healthy. Last thing I say. I dropped a good one on the way out. Mike drop, just carve that in and I'll see you on the other side.

Travis Chapel (27:44)

Shane, I always appreciate you, man. Love, love hanging out, spend some time together. Where can people go to get more from what you're working on and support the, that new project?

Shane Sams (27:51)

Yeah, man, of course. You know, check out the podcast Great Men with Shane Sams. I got an episode with Travis Chapel on there right now. Actually, you can head over to greatmen.org to figure everything out and I'm spending most of my time over on Substack. I believe it's. I believe it's substack.shanesams.com or something like that. I don't know. But just look me up on substack. I've got 32,000 subscribers over there reading along post an article every week and I check every message, every note. So if you want to reach out to me, those are great places to find me.

Travis Chapel (28:21)

Love a man, Shane. Always appreciate you. Thanks for taking the time. I don't take that. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of problems with money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.

Shane Sams (28:37)

You're probably driving, working out, or doing chores right now. Quick tip. TikTok isn't just entertainment. It's where I find fast, practical advice for real life. Download TikTok now.