September 27, 2023 • 50 mins
The term “hustle” might be synonymous with “entrepreneur” for a lot of folks. And they might be interchangeable because it certainly does take hard work to get your own business off the ground, but it doesn’t have to mean giving up everything else that’s important to you along the way. Steve Chou is our guest today and he’s launched multiple businesses- everything from an eCommerce site, to an online course, to an annual conference, and he wants everyone to consider how they can achieve financial freedom by starting their own businesses… but not the kinds of businesses where growing, scaling, and maximizing revenue is the goal. Instead it’s all about discovering a business that works for your goals and your lifestyle, and that’s what Steve writes about in his book The Family First Entrepreneur. We discuss coming up with an idea for a business, having priorities other than work, transitioning away from a day job, what holds some folks back from getting started, and plenty more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Had a Money. I'm Joel and I am
Mad and today we're talking family first entrepreneurship with Steve Chu.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, our guest today. He might be considered a serial entrepreneur, right, so.
Fed up with his traditional lane of five, Steve launched
an e commerce site after he saw some success with
selling on eBay, and then the success of that site
led to a blog, and then once that was making
some serious money, he created an online course, and then
the success of that led to a podcast and a conference,
(00:48):
and I think today he's in the process of launching
a couple more businesses. I will be honest, this sounds
a bit overwhelming to me personally, but what is important
to note is that Steve Cho's goal isn't to simply
grow to scale to maximize the revenue. Instead, he is
interested in businesses that allow him to achieve his goals,
(01:08):
and in his case, to create businesses that are family first.
And even though that is the name of his book,
Family First Entrepreneurship, Steve is really just writing about how
regular folks can achieve financial freedom without sacrificing what matters
the most to them. So we're gonna be talking about
that today. And we're gonna discuss why everyone out there
should consider entrepreneurship, how to figure out what kind of business,
(01:30):
to start marketing that business, and you know the things
that whole book's back. We're gonna be talking about all
that plus plenty more today, Steve, thank you for joining
us on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I am happy to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
You know what's funny is I don't actually consider myself
a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
No, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I basically have two things. I got the online store
and I got the content side of the business.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Okay, that's exactly what a serial entrepreneur would say, Steve,
if they would downplay all their endeavors. So I'm gonna
think you protest too much, but will get into specifics.
The first question, though, we ask, I don't have a
problem right exactly any time about one. That's just your perception, Okay, okay, man.
But the first question we ask everyone who comes on
the show, Matt and I. We splurge on craft beer
while still saving and investing for the future, trying to
(02:10):
be smart on both ends, living life in the here
and now while also thinking about tomorrow. What's that for you?
What do you Splurgeohn currently that some people might think
it's a little bit crazy.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
The only thing I splurge on really is NBA finals games,
and I've just been lucky, like the Warriors have just
been really good for these past I don't know, seven
or eight years. So I've heard that I go to
the playoffs, I go to the finals, and I spend
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Like my friends are like, what are you crazy? But
you know it's fun. It's my only splurge.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Your a man named Stephen Curry, who I hear is
very good with the basketball.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So I know nothing about basketball, but I do see
celebrities and the fancy folks sitting court side. Is that
you like, can you are you feeling the sebt? Are
they falling into your lap?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So that's beyond my budget. So those court side seats
are like thirty grand. I usually invest around seven, which
is usually good for like the fourth or fifth row.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Okay, well, i's still really doting close though, fourth or
fifth row.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I will say. Maggot Matt and I we both we
splurged on an MLS final game. But it's such an
inferior sport that you can get tickets to that for
one hundred and eighty bucks. I think, so it's just
a big difference in quality and that's I think that's
why it's so much cheaper. Well, Steve, can you, I'm
curious about your your humble origins. One time I heard
you say that when you were referring to your childhood,
(03:25):
that you started studying for the SAT in fourth grade.
So I feel like that's indicative maybe of just something
interesting going on behind the scenes in childhood. Why are
you studying for this? Like most kids don't even study,
they just show up and take it. So why are
you studying in elementary school?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I mean, it wasn't by choice.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You're not that much of a go getter.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
No, No, my parents actually made me do that. And
the problem I had was my brother. He's pretty much
a genius. He took the SATs, I believe in sixth
grade and I think his first score that he got
was like thirteen something.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Oh my god, go goodness, and then.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He eventually got fifteen fifty. And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
My parents just wanted me to study for it because
back in the day it mattered a lot more for college. Sure,
And oh, here's the real reason why I started so early.
It's because they wanted me to qualify for this nerd Camp.
And in order to qualify for that, you had to
break a thousand I believe in sixth grade.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, all right, well I like that there is a
more immediate goal than for you to progressively get better
and better at the set every single year.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Did you end up going to nerd Camp? And if so,
how was it?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I did? Ye, I went to nerds Camp.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
To nerd Camp, Come.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
On, guys, come on, No, It ended up being a
great experience because I got to say, like I was
kind of cocky as a kid, you know, because you know,
because of my parents, I was always way ahead of
everyone else. But that NERD Camp was like the first
time where I was like probably the dumbest person at
that camp.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So Steve, let's kind of I mean, we're going to
be discussing entrepreneurship this entire episode, but just kind of
quickly here, like what is the biggest point of entrepreneurship?
You know, like if you were talking to someone who
just have the like a standard normal W two job,
what would you say to convince them to consider at
least starting their own thing?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I mean, really, people start businesses for freedom. You know
what's funny, when I was in college. You know, when
you when you're in college, you have the best life.
You have no responsibilities, you just have to study, do
whatever you want. And I remember when I was about
to graduate, I was like, wait, so now I got
to go into this office forty hours a week. Yeah,
and then they only get weekends off. And I think
(05:32):
most people just don't want to be working forty hours
a week. They want they want to have options, and
really that's the appeal of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah. No, I think you're right, And it's interesting people
have different reasons for different things. I was listening to
Walter Isaacson being interviewed. He wrote the new Elon Musk biography,
and he's talking about the thing that helps you to
succeed in Elon Musk world is just it is not
having other priorities life, basically, not wanting balance, not wanting freedom,
just wanting to put you know, being inner planet, Harry
(06:00):
species and put people on Mars. And so you're saying, well,
the reason there are some people who are that dedicated
to their work. But if you want balance, if you
want freedom, then entrepreneurship is is there out to go?
Speaker 4 (06:11):
I mean, there's no such thing as balance. I don't
know how far you guys got in my book, but
I talk about the four burners theory, which states that
your life is basically dictated by four burners. So you
got family, you got health, you got business, and friends. Right,
in order to do one thing well, you got to
turn off at least one of those burners. In order
to do something really well, you turn off too. And
(06:33):
if you're like Elawn Musk, you turn off all of
them except for the work burner. That's right, right, So,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So basically the theory is about priorities.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You can't do it all, so you really got to
choose what you want to be good at.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
As much of a proponent of starting your own business
as you are an entrepreneur, you talk about the lies
of hustle in your book, right, Like, there's a lot
of folks out there and they're like, you got to
get after, you got to grind, and a lot of
folks kind of wear it almost as a badge of honor.
But that's kind of the opposite approach of how it
is that you like to approach entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
You know. The thing is, and this is one of
the reasons why I wrote the book.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It's because if you look at all the business books
out there, and maybe all the videos that you see
about entrepreneurship, they're all written by single dudes, right, I
mean to be frank, I mean, they can work sixty
hours a week. But I got a family. You guys
got lots of kids. I actually want to see my wife.
I actually want to see my kids. So there had
to be a different way. And that's the way basically
(07:29):
I run my businesses. And I can't tell you how
many people that I've interviewed on my podcast that have
gotten divorced over their business.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And it's hard, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And I think the problem is, and this happened to
me actually too, when you start making money that you're
not used to making, you start getting this fever and
you just start wanting to make more and more money.
And I was setting these ridiculous goals for our business
where we try to grow like fifty percent, and then
once we hit that goal, I'd moved the gold posts again,
and pretty soon I was driving my wife crazy. And
(08:00):
then one day she came to me and she broke down.
She said, Hey, why are we doing all this? I mean,
we don't even spend a fraction of what we make.
Why are we killing ourselves to meet this ridiculous goal
that you've been setting. And that's when I came to
the revelation and kind of got out of that fever
and realized why we started our businesses in the first
place was which was to hang out with the kids.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh man, isn't that the thing? Like that rudder can
get off slightly and over, you know, a few months
or a few years, even you just you're aiming for
the wrong thing. And that sounds like a yeah, a conversation.
It sounds like I'm glad you responded that way, because
there's a lot of people would say to make more money, duh.
But yeah, when your target, when your aim is off,
you're going to be moving in the wrong directions. And
(08:40):
I want to dive just a little bit deeper on
the four burners thing, because you talk about that and
it is so interesting. There's like, how do you suggest
people then if you're like, you see how successful somebody
like Elon Musk is, but most people don't realize and
don't see the effort, the grind, the lack of like
interpersonal relationships that someone has to go through to reach
(09:01):
those heights. So how have you thought about which burners
to turn on and turn off? And are you constantly
adjusting those? Like what does that look like in your life?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I mean, realistically, all the burners are constantly being adjusted.
I mean, if you think back to when we first
started our first e commerce store, which is over at
Bumbleby Linen's, we basically turn off the friend and the
health burner to get up and running pretty quick. We
weren't hanging out and then I was eating like crap.
I was really out of shape. But hey, you know,
we were spending all of our time on the business
(09:29):
and that's why I did so well on that first year,
and that's why it eventually became a seven figure business.
Here's the other thing about the burners that they're all
not quite independent. Like if your health burners up, then
you got a lot more energy to devote to the
other burners.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you talked about that in your book.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Can you, yeah, talk more about how in your mind,
Like you basically said that the health burner is almost
like a like a foundation in order to succeed like
a turbo booster for the others.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I didn't discover this until much much later, in fact,
So I went low carb in twenty fourteen. I lost
about thirty five forty pounds, got a six pack, and
all of a sudden, like I don't get tired anymore,
like I have energy to go the entire day.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I thought they were gonna say, that's when you started
mail modeling.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
No, okay, so I don't have the six pack anymore.
It's impossible to maintain that thing. Let me tell you.
It was purely a vanity thing that I just wanted
to say. I had took a couple photos and that
was that. But I still, you know, eat correctly, and
I make sure I exercised two to three times a week,
and I feel great, never had food coma or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, so let's let's rewind the clock a little bit too.
So you kind of jumped to where you got to
a breaking point with you and your wife with the
business bumblebe linens. But take us back in time a
little bit. Took us to when it was that you
decided to kind of launch into that I mean you
basically discussed it was again, it's sort of your your
wife having a moment where she said she didn't she
(10:56):
didn't want to keep her job anymore, and she had
a pretty size income. Can you talk about that event
and how that led you down the path of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah, so that was back in two thousand and six.
I want to say, and you know, here's the thing.
Like I grew up my parents are first generation. Her
parents are first generation. We didn't see our parents much.
My parents basically came here with nothing. So I used
to play club volleyball. I used to play volleyball for
the school and guess what, my parents were never really
(11:24):
there on the sidelines watching me and my friend's parents were,
and I you know, you know, I didn't blame them,
but I always wish that they were there. And so
when my wife told me she was going to quit,
and was like, okay, I'm full, fully on board with
that decision because I think we need to be more
present in our kids' lives. And where we live in
the Silicon Valley, it is expensive. You pretty much need
(11:45):
two incomes in order to get a good house in
a good school district. And if she was going to quit.
She was making six figures at the time working for
a fortune five hundred company. We basically needed another income
and so that's basically how this whole thing got started.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Okay, so you're like, it's basically this, Hey, my wife
wants to stay home. I got to figure out a
way to pull this off. And then how did that
translate to starting a linen's company to jail? Like a
history in you know in that space, did you have
like some proprietary knowledge or what was like, Oh, yeah,
this is this is the small business to start.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
So the only history we had was when my wife
and I got married in two thousand and three. You
got to understand this about my wife. She's a crier,
and usually it's tears of joy. Sometimes a maker cry
for non joy reasons, but at our wedding, she knew
she was going to cry. We spent all this money
on photography, like I think the whole wedding industry is
just way overpriced, and she didn't want to be seen
(12:43):
in the photos drying her tears, you know, with a tissue.
She wanted to be classy with a handkerchief, and so
we looked all over the place in the US, couldn't
find any. Finally found this place in China that it
was a factory essentially, and we had to buy a bunch.
So we bought a couple hundred, which was the minimum
order quantity, and we use maybe a handful of them
and then just listed the rest on eBay and they
(13:03):
sold like hotcakes. So when it came time to start
that business, you know, in two thousand and six, two
thousand and seven, we got back in touch with that factory.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, So that kicked it all off, and we're going
to spend more of the episode talking about how folks
can essentially launch their own businesses. But you know, this
is the one that y'all started.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It sounds so serendipitous, by the way, when you say
it that way just kind of happens. Yeah, it sounds
some extras and oh wow, what a great business.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well there's more to that. I mean, that wasn't like
our first choice. Actually, our first choice was actually starting
a coumon. Do you guys have Kumans over in in Georgia?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, the ar Learning Center. Yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
That's right up my alley right, SAT's fourth grade. Yeah,
I can drink.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's like your own proprietary nerd camp for.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Kids, exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
But it turns out it would have cost us about
three hundred and fifty to four hundred thousand to open
one of those. And then we looked at like other
things like boba stores and whatnot, and it just required
so much capital, whereas with our store really only we
invested six hundred and thirty dollars to start that thing exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Well, and that's one of the things you addressed in
your book. You talk about how truly like a lot
of folks when they think about entrepreneurs, they think, oh,
I've got to bet the farm, I've got to go
big or go home. You know, you quit your day job,
you go all in on a new idea. But talk
to us about how you were able to gradually cut
back at your nine to five as you were able
to ramp up your online e commerce site, because that
(14:27):
was one of the ways that you were able to
mitigate that some of that risk.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
I mean to be honest with you, it's even easier today.
You don't need a lot of money to start any
business today thanks to the Internet, all right, and thanks
to AI now actually even more. That's like the next generation.
So we started everything. Like back in the beginning, we
could have run our business for like maybe thirty dollars
a month. There's zero risk, and we just went in
(14:52):
with the attitude like, hey, let's just give this try.
If it works great, If not, you can always go
back to work in case things get really bad, and
I'm going to keep my job. And what ended up
happening is the business started taking off, and then I
launched my wife quitter Job, which is basically a journal
of our business. I launched that in two thousand and nine.
That started making money I think around twenty eleven, and
(15:15):
then I started thinking to myself, Hey, you know, I
really liked my job.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That was the difference.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Like I was an engineer, It's pretty much what I
wanted to be all my life. And I had my
dream job designing microprocessors alongside of a whole bunch of
really smart people. So I actually didn't want to leave
my job. But at some point we were making so
much money with the businesses that it didn't really make
sense for me to be there five days a week,
Like I wanted to be there with the kids too,
(15:41):
so I dropped down to four days. I dropped down,
the three days dropped down to two days, and then
finally I was just there once.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
A week and I had the sounds like the dream.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Well it was because I still got to hang out.
But the only reason I had that luxury was because
I was one of three people that designed the main
product that was making the bulk of the money for
the company. So I was essentially there as an insurance policy.
The problem is is my big boss eventually left, a
new boss came in, brought me into their office and
was like, Hey, what exactly do you do here? One
(16:13):
day a week?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
You had an office space moment where the yeah, I
boost the morale of everyone around me come.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
On and I was like, I'm going to be stripped
with you. I don't do anything, but you know, I'm
here in case anything breaks, or to attend meetings and advise.
And then you know, he was like, Hey, either work
here for at least three or four days or you're out,
and so I left.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And sometimes it gets to that kind of ultimatum point
in the process. And that's the goal, right, is for
the ramp up, for the line to keep going up
into the right when it comes to the revenue that
your business is generating so that you can eventually like
take off and go do that full time. We want
to talk to you more, Steve about specifically like which
business ideas to bet on and how to get started.
So we've got some more questions for you on that front.
(16:58):
We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Steve Chu and Steve, we're gonna get a little you know,
we kind of talk through your story kind of how
it is you view entrepreneurship at a high level, but
we're gonna get maybe a little more practical and hopefully
we can leave a lot of listeners out there with
some ideas, maybe with some takeaways. And I think a
lot of folks might be wondering how outside of the
(17:29):
box that they could potentially get with a business idea,
right because it feels like the sky might be the
limit when it comes to just some of the different
brainstorming that they might do. But how do you know
if there's someone out there in there listening and they're like, man,
this is a good idea or this is a weird,
crazy idea, Like is there a way that you help
(17:49):
folks to distinguish whether an idea is just crazy or
if it's just crazy good.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
I mean, are we talking about physical products here or
content dealer's choice?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
All right?
Speaker 4 (17:58):
All right, well let's just start with physical product because
that's something easy to understand, right, You sell something, you
get money for it, all right, So these days you
can pretty much tell what anything sells for and how
much they're making. There are tools such as jungle Scout
that will literally tell you how much every single listing
on Amazon is making. Right, so there's really very few
(18:19):
there's very few mysteries now in terms of how much
you could potentially make given a product. Just look it
up on Amazon, use jungle Scout.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
It'll tell you. Now.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The other thing is I got students in my class
that sometimes they tell me they're going to launch something
and I'm like, dude, that's really saturated. It's going to
be a very hard road. But then they succeed. And
the thing to realize here is that if you're good
at selling something, you can pretty much sell anything. And
you got to realize this. When you're selling anything online,
(18:49):
chances are it's already a commodity. Like there's very few
inventions being sold, Like, hey, we sell handkerchiefs, we sell towels,
we sell linens. Right, No one's really invented that anything
in that industry for a very long time. So what
you got to realize is, if you're trying to sell something,
it's really about the emotions that you can evoke in
a customer to get them to buy. Do you guys,
(19:11):
have you ever heard of doctor Squatch? No?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Is that a soap?
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yes, okay, men's soap. And I don't know about you guys,
but I don't care about soap. I just use whatever's
in the bathroom. So it's really hard to sell soap
to a guy's market. But if you watch their commercials,
you'll notice that there's always a female in the picture
and she's always like smelling the guy, going, oh my god,
you smell so good. I want to jump you right now.
(19:36):
So they're not really selling the soap what essentially, they're
selling sex, and that's why they became this one hundred
million dollar company. It's about the emotions that you evoke,
and there's a whole bunch of emotions that you can
evoke to get someone to buy something, and sex just
happens to be one of them.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, talk about the other emotions, because there are other
ways which you can you can make a product stand apart,
not necessarily, and that's what Coke's doing, right, Coca Cola.
It's the response from the sip of coke in the
commercial and you're like, yeah, that does look refreshing, but
clearly it's not like quenching your thirst. That's not what
Coke's there to do. But they're selling kind of a lifestyle,
a way of being, and that's what a lot of
(20:11):
the most successful brands do. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Technically this is it's called the Life Force eight, which
by the way, sounds like some indie band, but yeah,
it's some of these different ways that you're able to
appeal to folks.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Yeah, anything that shows that you're enjoying life, or you're
keeping up with the joneses like your high class, or
anything that helps you protect your loved ones. I mean,
there's a number of different emotions that you can evoke,
and if you can do that, you can make someone
buy anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Makes me think, like my daughter recently bought used her
own money to buy a really expensive water bottle, a
Stanley water bottle, and I didn't realize these were things
bladed watercut and now I look around and I see
like all the ladies around here drinking out of Stanley
water bottles. They're forty five dollars apiece, and it's like
you get a water bottle for a dollar fifty. But
for some reason, these evoke something and they've somehow in
(21:01):
their marketing, they've gotten enough people in on the expensive
water bottle game that it's it's kind of starting to
trickle down into other places. It's almost like selling itself.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I mean, just look at the iPhone. I'm an Android guy,
and so whatever. I look at the iPhone, I'm like,
this is just way overpriced for what you get. They're
always behind in terms of technology, but they do these
little things like when my front and iPhone messages me
it's not green or whatever call it, you know, and
so I'm like this outcast paria.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
And so these are just things that Apple Apples like
phenomenal at marketing. I remember when they released the iPad
and then Google released their tablet. Google was touting features
like processor speed and battery.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Life and all this stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Apple comes out with this commercial where like these little
kids create this video for.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Grandpa, and.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yeah, Grandma had passed away and they put together this
really good skit and you know a lot of people
start tearing up at the end of that video.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, it's like Public's commercials during the holidays, they like
they make you cry. It's not about hey, look we
got the best selection at the lowest prices. It's all
about shopping is a pleasure and it's just a different
way of selling a product in the way.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
To market it, way to stand out. Steve so as
folks are kind of brainstorm and thinking through what it is.
Like You've got an individual and maybe they're not thinking products,
they're just thinking about, like, I just want to do
something for myself. You in your book you warned against
chasing things, chasing businesses that we think are going to
make us happy. What role do you think passion should
(22:30):
play when it comes to starting up a side business.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I mean, I'm a practical guy, and when I think
of the word passion, I think of like, you know,
when you first start dating and you know you're really
interested in this girl or whatnot, but you know that
might fade after a while. But if you have some
sort of special skill or knowledge or advantage, you should
always take advantage of that first when it comes to business, right,
(22:55):
I mean I have students in my class they're having
problems figuring out what to sell, and then you know,
in casual conversation, it'll come up, Oh, by the way,
did I mention that my wife.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Is a chiropractor?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Like this guy wanted to sell back pillows and I'm like, dude,
that's really competitive and whatnot. And then he mentions his
wife's a chiropractor and like she's known for this. I'm like,
oh my god, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That this is your unfair advantage that you exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah. So, like different businesses makes sense for different folks
based on kind of their life experience, their expertise, their passion.
Like it's it's a combination of all of those different things, right,
and you have to kind of, what would you say,
put all those together to figure out maybe the best
route forward for you.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
I mean, passion fades. I think that's the problem. I mean,
you look at us. We sell handkerchiefs. Definitely not my
first choice. I'm not really in the hankies. But over
the years, I've actually come to know the industry really well,
and I'm very passionate about the business because once you
start making money, you'll get all excited over, you know,
just the business aspects.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
A lot of times you call these side bets, right,
it's something that you are working on while you are
maintaining your nine to five in order to pay the bills.
But you are exploring, you're following your curiosities, and essentially
you talk about how folks oftentimes will end up falling
into whatever side business that they happen to start and
ends up being successful. I guess I'm thinking of specifically.
(24:18):
You mentioned a gamer and he's just like, man, all
I do is I work, I come home, I eat,
I play video games for a few hours, and then
I'm not good at anything. And then you just start
asking him questions about his gaming specifically. Can you share
that story?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Yeah, I mean essentially, I mean I deal with a
lot of people who are stuck deciding what they want
to do, and sometimes it's just right under your nose.
So yeah, just like you said, I asked him what
he did during the day, what he was good at,
and he's like, I'm not good at anything.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, that's impossible, man, that's impossible.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And so when we got to this game that he played,
because I know I game a little bit, so I
asked him when he was playing, and he got all
excited and animated. I'm like, okay, what you got to
do is just just document like your excitement for the game.
And he ended up creating this YouTube channel and the
last time I checked, it had thousands of subscribers, and
you know, instantly, that's that's like how Twitch got started, right,
(25:13):
People wanted to follow gamers and watch them play, and
so there's a totally a market for this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Stuff, all right. So sometimes we talked about like physical
products a lot. What about you mentioned creating other things
that You've started a blog as well, and there people
have made businesses specifically launched on social media, you know,
sites like Instagram, TikTok, whatever. You can have a fully
fledged business literally most of it based all around social media.
(25:39):
So what are your thoughts, like, how how do you
help people think about whether or not they should be
getting into the physical product game or getting into kind
of the online content game.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah, So when someone asked me that question, I always say, hey,
you know, it really just depends on your time frame
for making money, Like if you want to make money
sooner rather than later, it's always easier to sell if
as product, because you know, the product kind of stands
on its own right. So I would say, if you
want to make money within a year, physical products is
probably good. If you don't have the budget for physical products,
(26:11):
then content is great. If you have a runway of
let's say two or three years, Nothing I ever did
in the content space made me money less than I
would say two years, because it takes time to build
an audience. But once you do build that audience, and
you guys can probably attest to this for your podcast,
the money just goes exponential after a while. So e
commerce ramps up pretty quickly, but you know, it kind
(26:34):
of goes up into the right, but content is like
flat and then all of a sudden hockey sticks up
in terms of revenue.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So like back in your early blogging days, you were
writing writing, not seeing much in return from like a
monetary perspective, What was it like and how did you
turn on kind of the cash flows bigot from that website?
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't think I made any
money for two years or anything significant. And the way
you got to view content is you got to grind
through it. Like I just put myself on a schedule
where I just wrote one blog post a week and
after a while, you'll know when it's time. Because when
I started writing about my e commerce store, everyone started
(27:14):
asking me for a class, right and I didn't want
to do a class, but people just kept asking for
and asking for it, and finally I said, Okay, fine,
I don't have any content right now, but if you
guys pay me three hundred bucks and if I sign
up you know ten people, I'll launch this class. And
then thirty five people signed up, and I was like,
oh man, okay, I guess I got to start this class.
(27:37):
And I've been running it now for over a decade
and it's been very lucrative for me. I'm very happy
that I did it. So that was one way that
I monetized. A different way was, you know, I use
a whole bunch of products in my store, and almost
all these products they have an affiliate program, and I'm
just recommending out the existing products that I used to
run my online store, and so it's a win win.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And one of the things you did there that you
mentioned was the fact that you kind of asked your
audience what they wanted and they were telling you what
they wanted, and then you had to deliver on that.
And just like you were assessing the demand before you
went through the trouble of creating the product. Is that
kind of a recipe that others can follow, whether we're
talking about physical products or whether we're talking about how
(28:18):
to interact with your audience, to kind of get that
idea of how much demand there is in the marketplace
before you go through the trouble of creating the thing.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
I mean, you always want to validate. So we already
talked about how I did it for my class, and
in fact, I didn't even ask them what they wanted.
They just kept telling me what they wanted. It was
driving me nuts. On the physical product side, there's things
that you can do. So we already mentioned Jungle Scout.
You can see, you know how much every listing on
Amazon is making. But if you're still a little bit
squeamish about launching a product, there are these services where
(28:49):
you can literally just create a product photo of potentially
what you want to sell, and then pit it up
against existing Amazon listings, send out a poll of just
random Amazon shoppers and they'll tell you which one they
would buy out of those different images and product descriptions,
so you can get a pretty good idea of whether
you're going to succeed before you even get started.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
That's great specifically from a product standpoint, but as I guess,
as you're thinking about services and maybe content, Like some
folks they specifically start a business because they're able to
just simply identify a problem and then they are able
to provide a solution. But like what you're talking about
here is niching down and oftentimes you can focus on
a like a specific customer base figuring and then figure
(29:31):
out what it is that they need. Like, are those
two approaches at odds with each other? Because on one
hand it seems like you're starting with the problem, but
then with the other approach, it sounds like you are
starting with a customer base.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So are are those at odds?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Or are they essentially kind of different sides of the
same coin.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I really just think it depends on which marketplace. So
everything I mentioned on the physical product side was regarding
Jungle Scott, that's just for like the Amazon marketplace, because
you can't really you know, there's no real content involved
with Amazon and pretty much the picture sells, right If
this is your own website. However, then yes, what you
have said is absolutely true. You need to find a
(30:10):
group of people, a small group of people that'll be
interested in your products, and then market that product to
that particular individual. So I guess the strategy just changes
depending on where you're selling and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Talk to me about pricing, because when you're creating an
online course, for instance, you said, what three hundred bucks
I think is what you were going to charge, and
then thirty five people signed up? How'd you come up
with that number? And physical products it might even be
a little bit easier you can see your competition, But
even in that realm, right, no one thought that one
hundred and fifty dollars leggings from Lululemon. People were going
to buy those things because hey, I can get something
(30:43):
really similar a knockoff on Amazon for twenty So how
do you think through pricing of your product or your service?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, so when it comes to products, I always say
just target the high end because just running the business
is so much easier. These days, you pretty much have
to have your own brand because of Amazon, Like a
whole bunch of these manufacturers are just throw up stuff
on Amazon. Everything looks the same over there. Yeah, So
you got to have your own brand, You got to
have a strong value prop. And if you can target
(31:13):
the high end, that just makes everything easier customer service,
it makes advertising easier and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, if you're going for the cheapest
absolute price, I mean, that's the race to the bottom.
And you, I mean, you're virtually never going to win
when it comes to scale against some.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Of these larger even if you do, when you lose
by winning, yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Mean you might make a little bit of money in
the beginning, but eventually other competitors will hop on and
just a race to the bottom unless you have a
brand and a and a value prop, right, And a
brand isn't established overnight. I mean the way you establish
a brand is you bring people back to your content
over and over and over again until you become kind
of ingrained in their mind. There's a lot of brands
(31:52):
that that I follow and and I'll just buy no
matter what. So for example, Tide laundry Detrogent, I'll buy
Tide even though there's like this urgent at the supermarket
that's like one third the price.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, it's just because you have an affinity for the brand.
The story that they've told over time is essentially you
just have an allegiance to that brand essentially.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah, because I mean, why experiment when I already have
something that I like.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Well, it's funny because I've developed something similar to like
a men's clothing seller online. It's like, man, you get
men's clothes anywhere, but there's this one place and they
just curate so well and so like, I really that's
my one stop shop now for when I'm getting something
new in my closet. But their stuff is definitely it's pricier.
(32:37):
I'm looking for sales, but it's interesting how that can
be the case. They're also like, you could go buy
these clothes at the individual product maker sites, but I
always find myself going back to this one website because
they're doing such a good job curating everything.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah, and a lot of times the personality and this
might not be the case for you, but sometimes it's
the personality of the curator that matters too.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yeah, there are these guys I follow on you to
pretendis because it's a sport I really like, and I
basically follow all their recommendations.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
A lot of times, I think it's it's almost like
a combination of both things, right, Like I guess, so
far we've been talking about creating a product or creating content,
But as I think about it, you're kind of talking
about Tide or Jill, You're talking about the Men's site.
Like I can think of a couple brands where the
reason that I think and I kind of know that
they're the best is because of the fact that they
are also creating content to kind of go alongside the product,
(33:28):
and so they like that's just a part of their
marketing story, but it truly is content. Like I am
learning things and it just so happens that they have
products that helped me to solve the problems that they
are present that they're presenting. But Steve, we have a
couple more questions that we're going to get to here
right after the break. We're gonna, I guess, discuss some
of the things that hold folks back as entrepreneurs. And
we also want to know what keeps you going even
(33:50):
though you have found such an amazing success.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
We'll get to all that more right after this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I we're back.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We're still talking with Steve Chu. We're talking about entrepreneurship,
but doing it in a way that allows you to
keep the family first, not going overboard and you know,
sinking your whole ship, turning off all those other burners
so that you can, yeah, actually enjoy the reason you
started the business in the first place. And Steve, you've
given a lot of great tips already. But even when
(34:25):
folks know the right things to do in order to
launch a successful business, they can fail taking that first step.
So how how would you suggest people get over get
over the fear of oh what if I'm not successful?
Oh what if I'm you know, putting five hundred bucks
into this thing and it falls flat on the face,
or I spent six months even maybe working towards this
goal and it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I mean, for most cases, the failure is entirely an
ego thing, right, because it really is so cheap to
launch something these days, I can't imagine it's about the
money for most people.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I should say, it's really about your e.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Go right, Like when we were starting the handkerchief business,
we had a lot of people going, oh, you know,
how's your business doing, kind of like in a derogatory manner.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And basically making fun of you by asking how things
are going.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Exactly, And I knew that if I failed, you know,
this would hurt my ego. I mean, I guess the
easiest thing to do is just to play the what's
the worst that can happen gameh So, if our business failed,
I mean, my wife would just go back to work, right,
I would keep my job, and that's the worst thing
that could happen. Let's say we both lost our jobs.
(35:32):
Worst case scenario, I'd boom back in with my parents.
I mean, that'd be really bad. But you know, it's
not like I'm in danger of anything. And I think
if most people play that game, they'll find that none
of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Is really drastic.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I think the hardest part for people not starting is
really analysis prolysis. And whenever an engineer signs up for
my course, I'm always like, oh.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Man, yeah, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Because wanting to analyze everything, they dissect every possible scenario.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, they want to know all the answers, whether it's
guaranteed to be profitable and all that stuff, And that's
kind of not the way it works. You know, you
got to take a small leap of faith, a small risk,
and it's just a matter of probabilities, and you know,
if something doesn't work, you try something else.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
One of the things you're getting out here too, or
I wanted to touch on, was you tell folks that
they need to go ahead and start before they actually
feel ready, because there are always going to be different
obstacles that crop up, excuses, other things that you can analyze.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And it's real things.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It's things that yes, technically could happen, but the likelihood
of those things happening who knows. But I think a
lot of folks might find themselves in that position where
they're thinking, oh, I am interested in pursuing this. Oh,
this is something I want to I do want to
hang my own shingle.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
But they, yeah, that fear. I think it does hold
them back a little bit.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Here's a common one that I get all the time.
They're like, hey, you know what happens if someone knocks
me off? Spent all this money a lawyer to protect this,
And I'm like, if you're getting knocked off, that's a
good thing. That means you're selling a lot that someone
wants to knock you off, and by then you'll have
enough money to take care of this.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
No, that's good stuff. Okay, So how do we define success? Then?
Part of you the way you define success is by
being able to not let the business take over your life.
But it can also be difficult to know whether a
business is successful or not. It's like, oh, well, it
feels mediocre success right like that, That's where I feel
like I'm at right now, And so I'm just not sure, like,
(37:29):
am I on the right track? Is this something that
I need to keep leaning into yet? Or not? All right?
Speaker 4 (37:35):
So I always ask myself a couple questions when that happens.
First one, and probably the most important one, is am
I still learning?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Right?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
If I'm still learning and picking up skills, I'll probably.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Continue to do it.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
The other thing is, you know, do I hate doing it?
If I have that attitude, then I'm probably going to quit.
Everyone's going to have different parameters, you know, for certain
things like if I feel like I'm actually doing good
and helping people, that might be enough for me to
continue doing something.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
All right. So we talked about this right before we
started recording. And you live in a really high cost
of living area, and even though you don't necessarily and
it's Silicon Valley, right, So it's one of those places where, yeah,
that's what the high paying jobs are for people in
your former industry. So it makes sense that you were
there in the beginning. But when your wife says, I
want to quit my job and you're thinking, and especially
(38:24):
once you get to the point where the new boss
comes in and he says, Steve, we don't need you anymore.
If you're not gonna if you're not more committed, and
you peace out, you could totally save so much money
by moving elsewhere. What is it that kept you in
a really high cost of living area. Do you have
to be there for your businesses that you operate solo
(38:45):
now or is it just because family friends like what
keeps you rooted there?
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Yeah, I mean it's the businesses can be run anywhere, right,
that's not the problem. It's mainly family and friends and
then plus you know, worst case scenario, this is back
in the day and when we first started our businesses,
I could have just gone back to work as an engineer.
I had a lot of contacts. My wife could have
gotten easily gotten a job also.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So it was a strategic move in that sense.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Right close by and then you know, I've talked to
a lot of friends about this over the years, and
they're always like, Hey, you should never move just because
of the money, right, if you enjoy where you live.
You like the weather, I mean, the weather here is fantastic.
You guys are living through thunderstorms right now.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Right the rumbles that you're hearing on our end exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And I'm a pretty cheap guy.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I don't spend that much money, so I don't I mean,
I could save a lot of money, but I'm not
even really spending my money right now, So why not
just enjoy where I'm at?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Okay? I love that. What keeps you going then, because
at this point, you make you've talked about this way
more money than you could spend. You haven't really necessarily
moved the goalposts where you're like, I just really want
a Bugatti, or I want three different second homes so that
I can go to on my private jet. You don't
seem to care about that stuff. So what is it
that keeps you grinding with the business is that you
(40:00):
have which are multiple even though you're basically financially independent.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Yeah, you know, just the way my mind works, I
always have to be working on something, which is basically
why I tell everyone I'm never going to retire because
that sounds boring to me. Right, Whenever we go on vacation,
my wife actually likes lying by the beach or lying
by the pool. I can actually only do that for
like two hours and then I got to go do something.
And so you know what's nice now is I have
(40:26):
the opportunity to choose what I want to do. So
you know, one year, I might want to just do
YouTube because I like making videos, or ion wanting to
explore the TikTok platform. I love podcasting. I wouldn't give
that up for anything because I get to meet someone
new every single week. Right, So the freedom I have
now basically allows me to pick and choose what interests me.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, that's obviously an awesome place to be in, right
where Essentially, like all these different aspects of your business
is kind of like a It's like playing in a
sandbox and you're like, oh, I think I want to
go over here now kind of craft work on this,
learn something along the way, meet somebody interesting, and that's
I mean, that's one of the massive benefits of being
an entrepreneur is the ability to kind of focus on
(41:08):
some of the different areas, not only that you are skilled,
but the different areas that interest you.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Okay, So I've got one last question I guess for
you because you talk about so you shared a little
bit with I guess your story early on with your
folks being first gen but essentially you didn't see a
ton of them. But now I'm assuming your kids see
a ton of you, right Like you talk about how
you don't miss any games, any games at all period.
I think that your kids might have Joel, Like, We've
talked with a friend of ours, and I'm curious your
(41:35):
thoughts on this, because he was saying that he thinks
it's really important for his kids to see him working
right like him in his case, pursuing something he's really
excited about. And obviously, I'm sure your kids know that
you have businesses and this is something that you find fulfilling.
But I guess do you think it's possible for some
folks out there to maybe overly focus on family essentially
(42:00):
to the dutchment of maybe your own personal development or
in the case of your ability to really chase after
something and find fulfillment that way.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, I've questioned whether like all the time we spend
together is like you know, is harming them. But on
the flip side, I still have like my my parents'
Asian blood in me, and so like they've started businesses.
You know, we've my daughter's working on a course right
now on how to selln Etsy, and so we're filming
and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
So they're working.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
They see me work, and then they're they're doing their
own thing.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Well it sounds like they're following in your footsteps too,
and they're doing it in a way in which you
get to work alongside them, which sounds really cool. Not
just you know, playing board games together, which is fun,
which is fun. I love that part of it, but
also like, hey, let's you know, let's go down this
path and and let's see if the things that I
enjoy if you enjoy those things too. So well, Steve,
thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
(42:55):
Where can our listeners? Where can people and have the
money land to find out more about you and what
you'rre upot and obviously about your book too.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Yeah, if you guys are interested in learning about e commerce,
the easiest way is just sign up for my free
mini course over at my wife Quitterjob dot com. If
you guys are interested in checking out the book, that
can be found over at the Family First Entrepreneur dot com.
I'm actually still giving out over six hundred and ninety
dollars in free bonuses. You'll get a free workshop on
how to get started in e commerce and a free
(43:24):
two day workshop on how to get started making money
with content. I also run an annual e commerce conference
called the Seller Summit if you guys ever want to
hang out in person. I also run a top twenty
five podcast called My Wife Quitter Job. You should be
able to find it on iTunes or wherever you listen
to a podcast, and I'm also on YouTube and the
(43:45):
channels called My Wife Quitter Job as well.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So many irons in the fire. Steve, I love it.
We will make sure to link to all of that. Steve.
We really appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Thanks a lot of guys.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
All right, man, that was super fun talking with Steve.
Who Yeah, you heard it at the end, what's up?
He also does a lot of things. He has done
a lot of things, which just shows how interested he
is in a whole lot of different sorts of pursuits,
but he's also done well in a bunch of those pursuits.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
So it's like, I'm not a serial entrepreneur, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We totally believe you, but yeah, it's and I love
that he also says, you know what, this is fun
to build these businesses, but it's not the end all
be all. So I don't know what was your big
takeaway from this combo.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I like when he touched on ego, and I think
for a lot of folks out there, I think there
are there are a lot of folks in the position
where they're thinking, I really want to kind of go
do my own thing, but there, you know, there's that
fear that's holding them.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Back and what if I screw it up?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
When I screwed up? And I do think that oftentimes.
I think when you have gotten pretty good at your job,
maybe you're middle management or maybe you're even higher up
on the on the food chain, you don't want to
be perceived as a failure. And honestly, the more successful
you get at your nine to five, I think the
harder it is to be able to step back from
that and to pursue something else that yes, might actually fail.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Like you're only used to success, and so now failure
feels even worse.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Exactly as opposed to Like I guess, for me, I
think back to when Kate and I started our photography
company and we had very little success up until that point,
and now I realize, I guess we kind of knew
that at the time, Like that's one of the things
I remember that we're telling each other. We said that
what have we got to lose, Like this is the
time to do it. We were renting, we didn't have
any debt, we didn't have any kids, we didn't even
(45:27):
have any pets, very few possessions, and so there was
very little that was actually holding us holding us back.
But I guess hearing him talk about it helped me
to realize how much of a blessing that is. But
I like that he mentioned ego as well, because that
he mentions that in his book and we didn't touch
on it, but I wanted to share real quick and
how when it comes to an individual's desire to grow
(45:48):
a business to scale it that oftentimes folks call that impact,
but how truly what that is is ego disguised. It's
the desire for you as an individual to kind of
like prove yourself that like.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Oh, I've got what it takes.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Oh, we're a business that that rakes in a million
dollars plus every year and then eventually maybe it turns
into ten million, because now you've got to essentially raise
the bar. And how at the core of that oftentimes
is ego.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
And you know a lot of people in social media
tooting that horror. Now I've got to seven figure business
and it sounds so sexy, and you're like, oh, I'm man,
I'm not as cool as they are. Yeah, but you know,
behind that facade, I guess it might not be exactly
as they're making it appear. Sure, And that I mean
that's in that the problem with social media in general,
of course.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, And I think for us it's it's kind of
like getting to the point to where you just don't
care anymore, right like, And oftentimes, and this is why
it's family first entrepreneurs, Like that's Steve's book, but I
think a lot of times parents are able to identify
that could you get to a point to where a
lot of that ego doesn't matter, You're just trying to
successfully create more like raise this human being to be
(46:56):
a fully functioning adult, like Lacy Langford said in the
previous episode, and it's difficult to essentially to kill that
ego and to tell yourself that it doesn't matter anymore.
But yeah, what was your big takeaway? I think mine
was when he said that more money can create this
like fever. And that's where he was when his wife
came to him with that conversation, saying like, Hey, so
(47:16):
we're doing great revenue wise, like we're making money. We've
actually surpassed the goals that we had of making sixty
K a year and then surpassing my income so that
I could stay at home. So why are we like
but I hate this, Yeah, because like literally she was
just like she did not want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
And we live pretty frugally, so why in the world
are we going this hard? Steve? And that was the
light bulb moment for him that, like family first, entrepreneurship
was the way forward. And I think it's true that
as our income grows, as we're able to do more
things with our money, more more smart things, even right,
it can create sort of like a fever in us
where it starts to feel like money is the goal
(47:53):
rather than the tool. So that's something we talk about
a whole lot on the show because we want money.
More money is a goal in some ways, right, But
money is just a tool to allow you to do
so much of what you actually want to be doing
with your life. And so it's always smart to go
back to the drawing board, especially as let's say you
have a much better year this year financially than you
had in the prior two years or something like that. Well,
(48:14):
don't let that feed this desire to continue to grow
and grow and scale if that's not necessarily you know,
the underlying desire that you have, if family first entrepreneurship
is actually what you want, or living a balanced life
right where you work thirty thirty five hours a week
and you actually make a little bit less money on purpose,
if that's what you want, because that creates the lifestyle
you're looking for. It kind of goes back to the
(48:36):
for burners theory as well, too, like you can turn
all those other ones off and be a really unhappy,
highly successful entrepreneur, but that's not what most people are after.
That's right, man.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Let's get to our beer that you and I enjoyed
during this episode. This was an ubu Ale. Let's see,
this is brood right here in Lake Placid. So I
say that because that's what's written on the notes that
Rebecca and Dylan sent our way. That is we're not
broadcast from no no, yeah, yeah, that's this is their
their think you note. So we had them on the show.
They are the rab coaches where we talked about couples
(49:07):
and money, and they were kind enough to send us
a beer, so ubu Ale. This is by Lake Placid
Craft Brewing Company. It doesn't say what style this beer is, Joel,
but I wanted him to know, did you dig it?
It's kind of like it's kind of like a porter.
It's like an Yeah, it's got porter vibes. It's more
it's actually an English strong that's how they classify it.
But this one was like roasty notes, toffee vibes going on,
(49:27):
some fig notes going on in their two almost like
a little bit of a barleywine quality, almost like a
barleywine mixed with a porter. So this one was interesting, good,
good flavor. And this is definitely more of like a
fall beer getting into fall time. And so yeah, I
enjoyed this one big thanks to Rebecca and Dylan for
sending it our way. Yes, thank you to the rab Coaches.
But Joel, that's gonna be for this episode. We'll make
(49:48):
sure to link to some of the different resources that
Steve mentioned. He's got a lot of freebies up there
as well, and so yeah, we'll link to all that.
You can find those up on the show notes at
howdomoney dot com. But Buddy, that's gonna be it. So
until next time, best Friends Out and best Friends Out.
Welcome to Had a Money. I'm Joel and I am
Mad and today we're talking family first entrepreneurship with Steve Chu.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, our guest today. He might be considered a serial entrepreneur, right, so.
Fed up with his traditional lane of five, Steve launched
an e commerce site after he saw some success with
selling on eBay, and then the success of that site
led to a blog, and then once that was making
some serious money, he created an online course, and then
the success of that led to a podcast and a conference,
(00:48):
and I think today he's in the process of launching
a couple more businesses. I will be honest, this sounds
a bit overwhelming to me personally, but what is important
to note is that Steve Cho's goal isn't to simply
grow to scale to maximize the revenue. Instead, he is
interested in businesses that allow him to achieve his goals,
(01:08):
and in his case, to create businesses that are family first.
And even though that is the name of his book,
Family First Entrepreneurship, Steve is really just writing about how
regular folks can achieve financial freedom without sacrificing what matters
the most to them. So we're gonna be talking about
that today. And we're gonna discuss why everyone out there
should consider entrepreneurship, how to figure out what kind of business,
(01:30):
to start marketing that business, and you know the things
that whole book's back. We're gonna be talking about all
that plus plenty more today, Steve, thank you for joining
us on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I am happy to be here.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
You know what's funny is I don't actually consider myself
a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
No, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I basically have two things. I got the online store
and I got the content side of the business.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Okay, that's exactly what a serial entrepreneur would say, Steve,
if they would downplay all their endeavors. So I'm gonna
think you protest too much, but will get into specifics.
The first question, though, we ask, I don't have a
problem right exactly any time about one. That's just your perception, Okay, okay, man.
But the first question we ask everyone who comes on
the show, Matt and I. We splurge on craft beer
while still saving and investing for the future, trying to
(02:10):
be smart on both ends, living life in the here
and now while also thinking about tomorrow. What's that for you?
What do you Splurgeohn currently that some people might think
it's a little bit crazy.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
The only thing I splurge on really is NBA finals games,
and I've just been lucky, like the Warriors have just
been really good for these past I don't know, seven
or eight years. So I've heard that I go to
the playoffs, I go to the finals, and I spend
a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Like my friends are like, what are you crazy? But
you know it's fun. It's my only splurge.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Your a man named Stephen Curry, who I hear is
very good with the basketball.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
That's my brother.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So I know nothing about basketball, but I do see
celebrities and the fancy folks sitting court side. Is that
you like, can you are you feeling the sebt? Are
they falling into your lap?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So that's beyond my budget. So those court side seats
are like thirty grand. I usually invest around seven, which
is usually good for like the fourth or fifth row.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Okay, well, i's still really doting close though, fourth or
fifth row.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I will say. Maggot Matt and I we both we
splurged on an MLS final game. But it's such an
inferior sport that you can get tickets to that for
one hundred and eighty bucks. I think, so it's just
a big difference in quality and that's I think that's
why it's so much cheaper. Well, Steve, can you, I'm
curious about your your humble origins. One time I heard
you say that when you were referring to your childhood,
(03:25):
that you started studying for the SAT in fourth grade.
So I feel like that's indicative maybe of just something
interesting going on behind the scenes in childhood. Why are
you studying for this? Like most kids don't even study,
they just show up and take it. So why are
you studying in elementary school?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I mean, it wasn't by choice.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You're not that much of a go getter.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
No, No, my parents actually made me do that. And
the problem I had was my brother. He's pretty much
a genius. He took the SATs, I believe in sixth
grade and I think his first score that he got
was like thirteen something.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Oh my god, go goodness, and then.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He eventually got fifteen fifty. And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
My parents just wanted me to study for it because
back in the day it mattered a lot more for college. Sure,
And oh, here's the real reason why I started so early.
It's because they wanted me to qualify for this nerd Camp.
And in order to qualify for that, you had to
break a thousand I believe in sixth grade.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, all right, well I like that there is a
more immediate goal than for you to progressively get better
and better at the set every single year.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Did you end up going to nerd Camp? And if so,
how was it?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I did? Ye, I went to nerds Camp.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
To nerd Camp, Come.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
On, guys, come on, No, It ended up being a
great experience because I got to say, like I was
kind of cocky as a kid, you know, because you know,
because of my parents, I was always way ahead of
everyone else. But that NERD Camp was like the first
time where I was like probably the dumbest person at
that camp.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So Steve, let's kind of I mean, we're going to
be discussing entrepreneurship this entire episode, but just kind of
quickly here, like what is the biggest point of entrepreneurship?
You know, like if you were talking to someone who
just have the like a standard normal W two job,
what would you say to convince them to consider at
least starting their own thing?
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I mean, really, people start businesses for freedom. You know
what's funny, when I was in college. You know, when
you when you're in college, you have the best life.
You have no responsibilities, you just have to study, do
whatever you want. And I remember when I was about
to graduate, I was like, wait, so now I got
to go into this office forty hours a week. Yeah,
and then they only get weekends off. And I think
(05:32):
most people just don't want to be working forty hours
a week. They want they want to have options, and
really that's the appeal of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah. No, I think you're right, And it's interesting people
have different reasons for different things. I was listening to
Walter Isaacson being interviewed. He wrote the new Elon Musk biography,
and he's talking about the thing that helps you to
succeed in Elon Musk world is just it is not
having other priorities life, basically, not wanting balance, not wanting freedom,
just wanting to put you know, being inner planet, Harry
(06:00):
species and put people on Mars. And so you're saying, well,
the reason there are some people who are that dedicated
to their work. But if you want balance, if you
want freedom, then entrepreneurship is is there out to go?
Speaker 4 (06:11):
I mean, there's no such thing as balance. I don't
know how far you guys got in my book, but
I talk about the four burners theory, which states that
your life is basically dictated by four burners. So you
got family, you got health, you got business, and friends. Right,
in order to do one thing well, you got to
turn off at least one of those burners. In order
to do something really well, you turn off too. And
(06:33):
if you're like Elawn Musk, you turn off all of
them except for the work burner. That's right, right, So,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
So basically the theory is about priorities.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You can't do it all, so you really got to
choose what you want to be good at.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
As much of a proponent of starting your own business
as you are an entrepreneur, you talk about the lies
of hustle in your book, right, Like, there's a lot
of folks out there and they're like, you got to
get after, you got to grind, and a lot of
folks kind of wear it almost as a badge of honor.
But that's kind of the opposite approach of how it
is that you like to approach entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
You know. The thing is, and this is one of
the reasons why I wrote the book.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It's because if you look at all the business books
out there, and maybe all the videos that you see
about entrepreneurship, they're all written by single dudes, right, I
mean to be frank, I mean, they can work sixty
hours a week. But I got a family. You guys
got lots of kids. I actually want to see my wife.
I actually want to see my kids. So there had
to be a different way. And that's the way basically
(07:29):
I run my businesses. And I can't tell you how
many people that I've interviewed on my podcast that have
gotten divorced over their business.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
And it's hard, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And I think the problem is, and this happened to
me actually too, when you start making money that you're
not used to making, you start getting this fever and
you just start wanting to make more and more money.
And I was setting these ridiculous goals for our business
where we try to grow like fifty percent, and then
once we hit that goal, I'd moved the gold posts again,
and pretty soon I was driving my wife crazy. And
(08:00):
then one day she came to me and she broke down.
She said, Hey, why are we doing all this? I mean,
we don't even spend a fraction of what we make.
Why are we killing ourselves to meet this ridiculous goal
that you've been setting. And that's when I came to
the revelation and kind of got out of that fever
and realized why we started our businesses in the first
place was which was to hang out with the kids.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Oh man, isn't that the thing? Like that rudder can
get off slightly and over, you know, a few months
or a few years, even you just you're aiming for
the wrong thing. And that sounds like a yeah, a conversation.
It sounds like I'm glad you responded that way, because
there's a lot of people would say to make more money, duh.
But yeah, when your target, when your aim is off,
you're going to be moving in the wrong directions. And
(08:40):
I want to dive just a little bit deeper on
the four burners thing, because you talk about that and
it is so interesting. There's like, how do you suggest
people then if you're like, you see how successful somebody
like Elon Musk is, but most people don't realize and
don't see the effort, the grind, the lack of like
interpersonal relationships that someone has to go through to reach
(09:01):
those heights. So how have you thought about which burners
to turn on and turn off? And are you constantly
adjusting those? Like what does that look like in your life?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I mean, realistically, all the burners are constantly being adjusted.
I mean, if you think back to when we first
started our first e commerce store, which is over at
Bumbleby Linen's, we basically turn off the friend and the
health burner to get up and running pretty quick. We
weren't hanging out and then I was eating like crap.
I was really out of shape. But hey, you know,
we were spending all of our time on the business
(09:29):
and that's why I did so well on that first year,
and that's why it eventually became a seven figure business.
Here's the other thing about the burners that they're all
not quite independent. Like if your health burners up, then
you got a lot more energy to devote to the
other burners.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you talked about that in your book.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Can you, yeah, talk more about how in your mind,
Like you basically said that the health burner is almost
like a like a foundation in order to succeed like
a turbo booster for the others.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
I didn't discover this until much much later, in fact,
So I went low carb in twenty fourteen. I lost
about thirty five forty pounds, got a six pack, and
all of a sudden, like I don't get tired anymore,
like I have energy to go the entire day.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I thought they were gonna say, that's when you started
mail modeling.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
No, okay, so I don't have the six pack anymore.
It's impossible to maintain that thing. Let me tell you.
It was purely a vanity thing that I just wanted
to say. I had took a couple photos and that
was that. But I still, you know, eat correctly, and
I make sure I exercised two to three times a week,
and I feel great, never had food coma or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Okay, so let's let's rewind the clock a little bit too.
So you kind of jumped to where you got to
a breaking point with you and your wife with the
business bumblebe linens. But take us back in time a
little bit. Took us to when it was that you
decided to kind of launch into that I mean you
basically discussed it was again, it's sort of your your
wife having a moment where she said she didn't she
(10:56):
didn't want to keep her job anymore, and she had
a pretty size income. Can you talk about that event
and how that led you down the path of entrepreneurship.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah, so that was back in two thousand and six.
I want to say, and you know, here's the thing.
Like I grew up my parents are first generation. Her
parents are first generation. We didn't see our parents much.
My parents basically came here with nothing. So I used
to play club volleyball. I used to play volleyball for
the school and guess what, my parents were never really
(11:24):
there on the sidelines watching me and my friend's parents were,
and I you know, you know, I didn't blame them,
but I always wish that they were there. And so
when my wife told me she was going to quit,
and was like, okay, I'm full, fully on board with
that decision because I think we need to be more
present in our kids' lives. And where we live in
the Silicon Valley, it is expensive. You pretty much need
(11:45):
two incomes in order to get a good house in
a good school district. And if she was going to quit.
She was making six figures at the time working for
a fortune five hundred company. We basically needed another income
and so that's basically how this whole thing got started.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Okay, so you're like, it's basically this, Hey, my wife
wants to stay home. I got to figure out a
way to pull this off. And then how did that
translate to starting a linen's company to jail? Like a
history in you know in that space, did you have
like some proprietary knowledge or what was like, Oh, yeah,
this is this is the small business to start.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
So the only history we had was when my wife
and I got married in two thousand and three. You
got to understand this about my wife. She's a crier,
and usually it's tears of joy. Sometimes a maker cry
for non joy reasons, but at our wedding, she knew
she was going to cry. We spent all this money
on photography, like I think the whole wedding industry is
just way overpriced, and she didn't want to be seen
(12:43):
in the photos drying her tears, you know, with a tissue.
She wanted to be classy with a handkerchief, and so
we looked all over the place in the US, couldn't
find any. Finally found this place in China that it
was a factory essentially, and we had to buy a bunch.
So we bought a couple hundred, which was the minimum
order quantity, and we use maybe a handful of them
and then just listed the rest on eBay and they
(13:03):
sold like hotcakes. So when it came time to start
that business, you know, in two thousand and six, two
thousand and seven, we got back in touch with that factory.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, So that kicked it all off, and we're going
to spend more of the episode talking about how folks
can essentially launch their own businesses. But you know, this
is the one that y'all started.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It sounds so serendipitous, by the way, when you say
it that way just kind of happens. Yeah, it sounds
some extras and oh wow, what a great business.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well there's more to that. I mean, that wasn't like
our first choice. Actually, our first choice was actually starting
a coumon. Do you guys have Kumans over in in Georgia?
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Yeah, the ar Learning Center. Yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
That's right up my alley right, SAT's fourth grade. Yeah,
I can drink.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's like your own proprietary nerd camp for.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Kids, exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
But it turns out it would have cost us about
three hundred and fifty to four hundred thousand to open
one of those. And then we looked at like other
things like boba stores and whatnot, and it just required
so much capital, whereas with our store really only we
invested six hundred and thirty dollars to start that thing exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Well, and that's one of the things you addressed in
your book. You talk about how truly like a lot
of folks when they think about entrepreneurs, they think, oh,
I've got to bet the farm, I've got to go
big or go home. You know, you quit your day job,
you go all in on a new idea. But talk
to us about how you were able to gradually cut
back at your nine to five as you were able
to ramp up your online e commerce site, because that
(14:27):
was one of the ways that you were able to
mitigate that some of that risk.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
I mean to be honest with you, it's even easier today.
You don't need a lot of money to start any
business today thanks to the Internet, all right, and thanks
to AI now actually even more. That's like the next generation.
So we started everything. Like back in the beginning, we
could have run our business for like maybe thirty dollars
a month. There's zero risk, and we just went in
(14:52):
with the attitude like, hey, let's just give this try.
If it works great, If not, you can always go
back to work in case things get really bad, and
I'm going to keep my job. And what ended up
happening is the business started taking off, and then I
launched my wife quitter Job, which is basically a journal
of our business. I launched that in two thousand and nine.
That started making money I think around twenty eleven, and
(15:15):
then I started thinking to myself, Hey, you know, I
really liked my job.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That was the difference.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Like I was an engineer, It's pretty much what I
wanted to be all my life. And I had my
dream job designing microprocessors alongside of a whole bunch of
really smart people. So I actually didn't want to leave
my job. But at some point we were making so
much money with the businesses that it didn't really make
sense for me to be there five days a week,
Like I wanted to be there with the kids too,
(15:41):
so I dropped down to four days. I dropped down,
the three days dropped down to two days, and then
finally I was just there once.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
A week and I had the sounds like the dream.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Well it was because I still got to hang out.
But the only reason I had that luxury was because
I was one of three people that designed the main
product that was making the bulk of the money for
the company. So I was essentially there as an insurance policy.
The problem is is my big boss eventually left, a
new boss came in, brought me into their office and
was like, Hey, what exactly do you do here? One
(16:13):
day a week?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
You had an office space moment where the yeah, I
boost the morale of everyone around me come.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
On and I was like, I'm going to be stripped
with you. I don't do anything, but you know, I'm
here in case anything breaks, or to attend meetings and advise.
And then you know, he was like, Hey, either work
here for at least three or four days or you're out,
and so I left.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
And sometimes it gets to that kind of ultimatum point
in the process. And that's the goal, right, is for
the ramp up, for the line to keep going up
into the right when it comes to the revenue that
your business is generating so that you can eventually like
take off and go do that full time. We want
to talk to you more, Steve about specifically like which
business ideas to bet on and how to get started.
So we've got some more questions for you on that front.
(16:58):
We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Steve Chu and Steve, we're gonna get a little you know,
we kind of talk through your story kind of how
it is you view entrepreneurship at a high level, but
we're gonna get maybe a little more practical and hopefully
we can leave a lot of listeners out there with
some ideas, maybe with some takeaways. And I think a
lot of folks might be wondering how outside of the
(17:29):
box that they could potentially get with a business idea,
right because it feels like the sky might be the
limit when it comes to just some of the different
brainstorming that they might do. But how do you know
if there's someone out there in there listening and they're like, man,
this is a good idea or this is a weird,
crazy idea, Like is there a way that you help
(17:49):
folks to distinguish whether an idea is just crazy or
if it's just crazy good.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
I mean, are we talking about physical products here or
content dealer's choice?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
All right?
Speaker 4 (17:58):
All right, well let's just start with physical product because
that's something easy to understand, right, You sell something, you
get money for it, all right, So these days you
can pretty much tell what anything sells for and how
much they're making. There are tools such as jungle Scout
that will literally tell you how much every single listing
on Amazon is making. Right, so there's really very few
(18:19):
there's very few mysteries now in terms of how much
you could potentially make given a product. Just look it
up on Amazon, use jungle Scout.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
It'll tell you. Now.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
The other thing is I got students in my class
that sometimes they tell me they're going to launch something
and I'm like, dude, that's really saturated. It's going to
be a very hard road. But then they succeed. And
the thing to realize here is that if you're good
at selling something, you can pretty much sell anything. And
you got to realize this. When you're selling anything online,
(18:49):
chances are it's already a commodity. Like there's very few
inventions being sold, Like, hey, we sell handkerchiefs, we sell towels,
we sell linens. Right, No one's really invented that anything
in that industry for a very long time. So what
you got to realize is, if you're trying to sell something,
it's really about the emotions that you can evoke in
a customer to get them to buy. Do you guys,
(19:11):
have you ever heard of doctor Squatch? No?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Is that a soap?
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yes, okay, men's soap. And I don't know about you guys,
but I don't care about soap. I just use whatever's
in the bathroom. So it's really hard to sell soap
to a guy's market. But if you watch their commercials,
you'll notice that there's always a female in the picture
and she's always like smelling the guy, going, oh my god,
you smell so good. I want to jump you right now.
(19:36):
So they're not really selling the soap what essentially, they're
selling sex, and that's why they became this one hundred
million dollar company. It's about the emotions that you evoke,
and there's a whole bunch of emotions that you can
evoke to get someone to buy something, and sex just
happens to be one of them.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, talk about the other emotions, because there are other
ways which you can you can make a product stand apart,
not necessarily, and that's what Coke's doing, right, Coca Cola.
It's the response from the sip of coke in the
commercial and you're like, yeah, that does look refreshing, but
clearly it's not like quenching your thirst. That's not what
Coke's there to do. But they're selling kind of a lifestyle,
a way of being, and that's what a lot of
(20:11):
the most successful brands do. Right.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Technically this is it's called the Life Force eight, which
by the way, sounds like some indie band, but yeah,
it's some of these different ways that you're able to
appeal to folks.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
Yeah, anything that shows that you're enjoying life, or you're
keeping up with the joneses like your high class, or
anything that helps you protect your loved ones. I mean,
there's a number of different emotions that you can evoke,
and if you can do that, you can make someone
buy anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Makes me think, like my daughter recently bought used her
own money to buy a really expensive water bottle, a
Stanley water bottle, and I didn't realize these were things
bladed watercut and now I look around and I see
like all the ladies around here drinking out of Stanley
water bottles. They're forty five dollars apiece, and it's like
you get a water bottle for a dollar fifty. But
for some reason, these evoke something and they've somehow in
(21:01):
their marketing, they've gotten enough people in on the expensive
water bottle game that it's it's kind of starting to
trickle down into other places. It's almost like selling itself.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
I mean, just look at the iPhone. I'm an Android guy,
and so whatever. I look at the iPhone, I'm like,
this is just way overpriced for what you get. They're
always behind in terms of technology, but they do these
little things like when my front and iPhone messages me
it's not green or whatever call it, you know, and
so I'm like this outcast paria.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
And so these are just things that Apple Apples like
phenomenal at marketing. I remember when they released the iPad
and then Google released their tablet. Google was touting features
like processor speed and battery.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Life and all this stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Apple comes out with this commercial where like these little
kids create this video for.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Grandpa, and.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yeah, Grandma had passed away and they put together this
really good skit and you know a lot of people
start tearing up at the end of that video.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, it's like Public's commercials during the holidays, they like
they make you cry. It's not about hey, look we
got the best selection at the lowest prices. It's all
about shopping is a pleasure and it's just a different
way of selling a product in the way.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
To market it, way to stand out. Steve so as
folks are kind of brainstorm and thinking through what it is.
Like You've got an individual and maybe they're not thinking products,
they're just thinking about, like, I just want to do
something for myself. You in your book you warned against
chasing things, chasing businesses that we think are going to
make us happy. What role do you think passion should
(22:30):
play when it comes to starting up a side business.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
I mean, I'm a practical guy, and when I think
of the word passion, I think of like, you know,
when you first start dating and you know you're really
interested in this girl or whatnot, but you know that
might fade after a while. But if you have some
sort of special skill or knowledge or advantage, you should
always take advantage of that first when it comes to business, right,
(22:55):
I mean I have students in my class they're having
problems figuring out what to sell, and then you know,
in casual conversation, it'll come up, Oh, by the way,
did I mention that my wife.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Is a chiropractor?
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Like this guy wanted to sell back pillows and I'm like, dude,
that's really competitive and whatnot. And then he mentions his
wife's a chiropractor and like she's known for this. I'm like,
oh my god, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
That this is your unfair advantage that you exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah. So, like different businesses makes sense for different folks
based on kind of their life experience, their expertise, their passion.
Like it's it's a combination of all of those different things, right,
and you have to kind of, what would you say,
put all those together to figure out maybe the best
route forward for you.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
I mean, passion fades. I think that's the problem. I mean,
you look at us. We sell handkerchiefs. Definitely not my
first choice. I'm not really in the hankies. But over
the years, I've actually come to know the industry really well,
and I'm very passionate about the business because once you
start making money, you'll get all excited over, you know,
just the business aspects.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
A lot of times you call these side bets, right,
it's something that you are working on while you are
maintaining your nine to five in order to pay the bills.
But you are exploring, you're following your curiosities, and essentially
you talk about how folks oftentimes will end up falling
into whatever side business that they happen to start and
ends up being successful. I guess I'm thinking of specifically.
(24:18):
You mentioned a gamer and he's just like, man, all
I do is I work, I come home, I eat,
I play video games for a few hours, and then
I'm not good at anything. And then you just start
asking him questions about his gaming specifically. Can you share
that story?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Yeah, I mean essentially, I mean I deal with a
lot of people who are stuck deciding what they want
to do, and sometimes it's just right under your nose.
So yeah, just like you said, I asked him what
he did during the day, what he was good at,
and he's like, I'm not good at anything.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, that's impossible, man, that's impossible.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And so when we got to this game that he played,
because I know I game a little bit, so I
asked him when he was playing, and he got all
excited and animated. I'm like, okay, what you got to
do is just just document like your excitement for the game.
And he ended up creating this YouTube channel and the
last time I checked, it had thousands of subscribers, and
you know, instantly, that's that's like how Twitch got started, right,
(25:13):
People wanted to follow gamers and watch them play, and
so there's a totally a market for this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Stuff, all right. So sometimes we talked about like physical
products a lot. What about you mentioned creating other things
that You've started a blog as well, and there people
have made businesses specifically launched on social media, you know,
sites like Instagram, TikTok, whatever. You can have a fully
fledged business literally most of it based all around social media.
(25:39):
So what are your thoughts, like, how how do you
help people think about whether or not they should be
getting into the physical product game or getting into kind
of the online content game.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Yeah, So when someone asked me that question, I always say, hey,
you know, it really just depends on your time frame
for making money, Like if you want to make money
sooner rather than later, it's always easier to sell if
as product, because you know, the product kind of stands
on its own right. So I would say, if you
want to make money within a year, physical products is
probably good. If you don't have the budget for physical products,
(26:11):
then content is great. If you have a runway of
let's say two or three years, Nothing I ever did
in the content space made me money less than I
would say two years, because it takes time to build
an audience. But once you do build that audience, and
you guys can probably attest to this for your podcast,
the money just goes exponential after a while. So e
commerce ramps up pretty quickly, but you know, it kind
(26:34):
of goes up into the right, but content is like
flat and then all of a sudden hockey sticks up
in terms of revenue.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So like back in your early blogging days, you were
writing writing, not seeing much in return from like a
monetary perspective, What was it like and how did you
turn on kind of the cash flows bigot from that website?
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't think I made any
money for two years or anything significant. And the way
you got to view content is you got to grind
through it. Like I just put myself on a schedule
where I just wrote one blog post a week and
after a while, you'll know when it's time. Because when
I started writing about my e commerce store, everyone started
(27:14):
asking me for a class, right and I didn't want
to do a class, but people just kept asking for
and asking for it, and finally I said, Okay, fine,
I don't have any content right now, but if you
guys pay me three hundred bucks and if I sign
up you know ten people, I'll launch this class. And
then thirty five people signed up, and I was like,
oh man, okay, I guess I got to start this class.
(27:37):
And I've been running it now for over a decade
and it's been very lucrative for me. I'm very happy
that I did it. So that was one way that
I monetized. A different way was, you know, I use
a whole bunch of products in my store, and almost
all these products they have an affiliate program, and I'm
just recommending out the existing products that I used to
run my online store, and so it's a win win.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And one of the things you did there that you
mentioned was the fact that you kind of asked your
audience what they wanted and they were telling you what
they wanted, and then you had to deliver on that.
And just like you were assessing the demand before you
went through the trouble of creating the product. Is that
kind of a recipe that others can follow, whether we're
talking about physical products or whether we're talking about how
(28:18):
to interact with your audience, to kind of get that
idea of how much demand there is in the marketplace
before you go through the trouble of creating the thing.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
I mean, you always want to validate. So we already
talked about how I did it for my class, and
in fact, I didn't even ask them what they wanted.
They just kept telling me what they wanted. It was
driving me nuts. On the physical product side, there's things
that you can do. So we already mentioned Jungle Scout.
You can see, you know how much every listing on
Amazon is making. But if you're still a little bit
squeamish about launching a product, there are these services where
(28:49):
you can literally just create a product photo of potentially
what you want to sell, and then pit it up
against existing Amazon listings, send out a poll of just
random Amazon shoppers and they'll tell you which one they
would buy out of those different images and product descriptions,
so you can get a pretty good idea of whether
you're going to succeed before you even get started.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
That's great specifically from a product standpoint, but as I guess,
as you're thinking about services and maybe content, Like some
folks they specifically start a business because they're able to
just simply identify a problem and then they are able
to provide a solution. But like what you're talking about
here is niching down and oftentimes you can focus on
a like a specific customer base figuring and then figure
(29:31):
out what it is that they need. Like, are those
two approaches at odds with each other? Because on one
hand it seems like you're starting with the problem, but
then with the other approach, it sounds like you are
starting with a customer base.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So are are those at odds?
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Or are they essentially kind of different sides of the
same coin.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I really just think it depends on which marketplace. So
everything I mentioned on the physical product side was regarding
Jungle Scott, that's just for like the Amazon marketplace, because
you can't really you know, there's no real content involved
with Amazon and pretty much the picture sells, right If
this is your own website. However, then yes, what you
have said is absolutely true. You need to find a
(30:10):
group of people, a small group of people that'll be
interested in your products, and then market that product to
that particular individual. So I guess the strategy just changes
depending on where you're selling and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Talk to me about pricing, because when you're creating an
online course, for instance, you said, what three hundred bucks
I think is what you were going to charge, and
then thirty five people signed up? How'd you come up
with that number? And physical products it might even be
a little bit easier you can see your competition, But
even in that realm, right, no one thought that one
hundred and fifty dollars leggings from Lululemon. People were going
to buy those things because hey, I can get something
(30:43):
really similar a knockoff on Amazon for twenty So how
do you think through pricing of your product or your service?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, so when it comes to products, I always say
just target the high end because just running the business
is so much easier. These days, you pretty much have
to have your own brand because of Amazon, Like a
whole bunch of these manufacturers are just throw up stuff
on Amazon. Everything looks the same over there. Yeah, So
you got to have your own brand, You got to
have a strong value prop. And if you can target
(31:13):
the high end, that just makes everything easier customer service,
it makes advertising easier and whatnot.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, if you're going for the cheapest
absolute price, I mean, that's the race to the bottom.
And you, I mean, you're virtually never going to win
when it comes to scale against some.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Of these larger even if you do, when you lose
by winning, yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Mean you might make a little bit of money in
the beginning, but eventually other competitors will hop on and
just a race to the bottom unless you have a
brand and a and a value prop, right, And a
brand isn't established overnight. I mean the way you establish
a brand is you bring people back to your content
over and over and over again until you become kind
of ingrained in their mind. There's a lot of brands
(31:52):
that that I follow and and I'll just buy no
matter what. So for example, Tide laundry Detrogent, I'll buy
Tide even though there's like this urgent at the supermarket
that's like one third the price.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, it's just because you have an affinity for the brand.
The story that they've told over time is essentially you
just have an allegiance to that brand essentially.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Yeah, because I mean, why experiment when I already have
something that I like.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Well, it's funny because I've developed something similar to like
a men's clothing seller online. It's like, man, you get
men's clothes anywhere, but there's this one place and they
just curate so well and so like, I really that's
my one stop shop now for when I'm getting something
new in my closet. But their stuff is definitely it's pricier.
(32:37):
I'm looking for sales, but it's interesting how that can
be the case. They're also like, you could go buy
these clothes at the individual product maker sites, but I
always find myself going back to this one website because
they're doing such a good job curating everything.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah, and a lot of times the personality and this
might not be the case for you, but sometimes it's
the personality of the curator that matters too.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yeah, there are these guys I follow on you to
pretendis because it's a sport I really like, and I
basically follow all their recommendations.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
A lot of times, I think it's it's almost like
a combination of both things, right, Like I guess, so
far we've been talking about creating a product or creating content,
But as I think about it, you're kind of talking
about Tide or Jill, You're talking about the Men's site.
Like I can think of a couple brands where the
reason that I think and I kind of know that
they're the best is because of the fact that they
are also creating content to kind of go alongside the product,
(33:28):
and so they like that's just a part of their
marketing story, but it truly is content. Like I am
learning things and it just so happens that they have
products that helped me to solve the problems that they
are present that they're presenting. But Steve, we have a
couple more questions that we're going to get to here
right after the break. We're gonna, I guess, discuss some
of the things that hold folks back as entrepreneurs. And
we also want to know what keeps you going even
(33:50):
though you have found such an amazing success.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
We'll get to all that more right after this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I we're back.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We're still talking with Steve Chu. We're talking about entrepreneurship,
but doing it in a way that allows you to
keep the family first, not going overboard and you know,
sinking your whole ship, turning off all those other burners
so that you can, yeah, actually enjoy the reason you
started the business in the first place. And Steve, you've
given a lot of great tips already. But even when
(34:25):
folks know the right things to do in order to
launch a successful business, they can fail taking that first step.
So how how would you suggest people get over get
over the fear of oh what if I'm not successful?
Oh what if I'm you know, putting five hundred bucks
into this thing and it falls flat on the face,
or I spent six months even maybe working towards this
goal and it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I mean, for most cases, the failure is entirely an
ego thing, right, because it really is so cheap to
launch something these days, I can't imagine it's about the
money for most people.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I should say, it's really about your e.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Go right, Like when we were starting the handkerchief business,
we had a lot of people going, oh, you know,
how's your business doing, kind of like in a derogatory manner.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
And basically making fun of you by asking how things
are going.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Exactly, And I knew that if I failed, you know,
this would hurt my ego. I mean, I guess the
easiest thing to do is just to play the what's
the worst that can happen gameh So, if our business failed,
I mean, my wife would just go back to work, right,
I would keep my job, and that's the worst thing
that could happen. Let's say we both lost our jobs.
(35:32):
Worst case scenario, I'd boom back in with my parents.
I mean, that'd be really bad. But you know, it's
not like I'm in danger of anything. And I think
if most people play that game, they'll find that none
of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Is really drastic.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I think the hardest part for people not starting is
really analysis prolysis. And whenever an engineer signs up for
my course, I'm always like, oh.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Man, yeah, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Because wanting to analyze everything, they dissect every possible scenario.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, they want to know all the answers, whether it's
guaranteed to be profitable and all that stuff, And that's
kind of not the way it works. You know, you
got to take a small leap of faith, a small risk,
and it's just a matter of probabilities, and you know,
if something doesn't work, you try something else.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
One of the things you're getting out here too, or
I wanted to touch on, was you tell folks that
they need to go ahead and start before they actually
feel ready, because there are always going to be different
obstacles that crop up, excuses, other things that you can analyze.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And it's real things.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
It's things that yes, technically could happen, but the likelihood
of those things happening who knows. But I think a
lot of folks might find themselves in that position where
they're thinking, oh, I am interested in pursuing this. Oh,
this is something I want to I do want to
hang my own shingle.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
But they, yeah, that fear. I think it does hold
them back a little bit.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Here's a common one that I get all the time.
They're like, hey, you know what happens if someone knocks
me off? Spent all this money a lawyer to protect this,
And I'm like, if you're getting knocked off, that's a
good thing. That means you're selling a lot that someone
wants to knock you off, and by then you'll have
enough money to take care of this.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
No, that's good stuff. Okay, So how do we define success? Then?
Part of you the way you define success is by
being able to not let the business take over your life.
But it can also be difficult to know whether a
business is successful or not. It's like, oh, well, it
feels mediocre success right like that, That's where I feel
like I'm at right now, And so I'm just not sure, like,
(37:29):
am I on the right track? Is this something that
I need to keep leaning into yet? Or not? All right?
Speaker 4 (37:35):
So I always ask myself a couple questions when that happens.
First one, and probably the most important one, is am
I still learning?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Right?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
If I'm still learning and picking up skills, I'll probably.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Continue to do it.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
The other thing is, you know, do I hate doing it?
If I have that attitude, then I'm probably going to quit.
Everyone's going to have different parameters, you know, for certain
things like if I feel like I'm actually doing good
and helping people, that might be enough for me to
continue doing something.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
All right. So we talked about this right before we
started recording. And you live in a really high cost
of living area, and even though you don't necessarily and
it's Silicon Valley, right, So it's one of those places where, yeah,
that's what the high paying jobs are for people in
your former industry. So it makes sense that you were
there in the beginning. But when your wife says, I
want to quit my job and you're thinking, and especially
(38:24):
once you get to the point where the new boss
comes in and he says, Steve, we don't need you anymore.
If you're not gonna if you're not more committed, and
you peace out, you could totally save so much money
by moving elsewhere. What is it that kept you in
a really high cost of living area. Do you have
to be there for your businesses that you operate solo
(38:45):
now or is it just because family friends like what
keeps you rooted there?
Speaker 4 (38:49):
Yeah, I mean it's the businesses can be run anywhere, right,
that's not the problem. It's mainly family and friends and
then plus you know, worst case scenario, this is back
in the day and when we first started our businesses,
I could have just gone back to work as an engineer.
I had a lot of contacts. My wife could have
gotten easily gotten a job also.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
So it was a strategic move in that sense.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Right close by and then you know, I've talked to
a lot of friends about this over the years, and
they're always like, Hey, you should never move just because
of the money, right, if you enjoy where you live.
You like the weather, I mean, the weather here is fantastic.
You guys are living through thunderstorms right now.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Right the rumbles that you're hearing on our end exactly.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
And I'm a pretty cheap guy.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I don't spend that much money, so I don't I mean,
I could save a lot of money, but I'm not
even really spending my money right now, So why not
just enjoy where I'm at?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Okay? I love that. What keeps you going then, because
at this point, you make you've talked about this way
more money than you could spend. You haven't really necessarily
moved the goalposts where you're like, I just really want
a Bugatti, or I want three different second homes so that
I can go to on my private jet. You don't
seem to care about that stuff. So what is it
that keeps you grinding with the business is that you
(40:00):
have which are multiple even though you're basically financially independent.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
Yeah, you know, just the way my mind works, I
always have to be working on something, which is basically
why I tell everyone I'm never going to retire because
that sounds boring to me. Right, Whenever we go on vacation,
my wife actually likes lying by the beach or lying
by the pool. I can actually only do that for
like two hours and then I got to go do something.
And so you know what's nice now is I have
(40:26):
the opportunity to choose what I want to do. So
you know, one year, I might want to just do
YouTube because I like making videos, or ion wanting to
explore the TikTok platform. I love podcasting. I wouldn't give
that up for anything because I get to meet someone
new every single week. Right, So the freedom I have
now basically allows me to pick and choose what interests me.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, that's obviously an awesome place to be in, right
where Essentially, like all these different aspects of your business
is kind of like a It's like playing in a
sandbox and you're like, oh, I think I want to
go over here now kind of craft work on this,
learn something along the way, meet somebody interesting, and that's
I mean, that's one of the massive benefits of being
an entrepreneur is the ability to kind of focus on
(41:08):
some of the different areas, not only that you are skilled,
but the different areas that interest you.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Okay, So I've got one last question I guess for
you because you talk about so you shared a little
bit with I guess your story early on with your
folks being first gen but essentially you didn't see a
ton of them. But now I'm assuming your kids see
a ton of you, right Like you talk about how
you don't miss any games, any games at all period.
I think that your kids might have Joel, Like, We've
talked with a friend of ours, and I'm curious your
(41:35):
thoughts on this, because he was saying that he thinks
it's really important for his kids to see him working
right like him in his case, pursuing something he's really
excited about. And obviously, I'm sure your kids know that
you have businesses and this is something that you find fulfilling.
But I guess do you think it's possible for some
folks out there to maybe overly focus on family essentially
(42:00):
to the dutchment of maybe your own personal development or
in the case of your ability to really chase after
something and find fulfillment that way.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
Yeah, I've questioned whether like all the time we spend
together is like you know, is harming them. But on
the flip side, I still have like my my parents'
Asian blood in me, and so like they've started businesses.
You know, we've my daughter's working on a course right
now on how to selln Etsy, and so we're filming
and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
So they're working.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
They see me work, and then they're they're doing their
own thing.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Well it sounds like they're following in your footsteps too,
and they're doing it in a way in which you
get to work alongside them, which sounds really cool. Not
just you know, playing board games together, which is fun,
which is fun. I love that part of it, but
also like, hey, let's you know, let's go down this
path and and let's see if the things that I
enjoy if you enjoy those things too. So well, Steve,
thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
(42:55):
Where can our listeners? Where can people and have the
money land to find out more about you and what
you'rre upot and obviously about your book too.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Yeah, if you guys are interested in learning about e commerce,
the easiest way is just sign up for my free
mini course over at my wife Quitterjob dot com. If
you guys are interested in checking out the book, that
can be found over at the Family First Entrepreneur dot com.
I'm actually still giving out over six hundred and ninety
dollars in free bonuses. You'll get a free workshop on
how to get started in e commerce and a free
(43:24):
two day workshop on how to get started making money
with content. I also run an annual e commerce conference
called the Seller Summit if you guys ever want to
hang out in person. I also run a top twenty
five podcast called My Wife Quitter Job. You should be
able to find it on iTunes or wherever you listen
to a podcast, and I'm also on YouTube and the
(43:45):
channels called My Wife Quitter Job as well.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
So many irons in the fire. Steve, I love it.
We will make sure to link to all of that. Steve.
We really appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Thanks a lot of guys.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
All right, man, that was super fun talking with Steve.
Who Yeah, you heard it at the end, what's up?
He also does a lot of things. He has done
a lot of things, which just shows how interested he
is in a whole lot of different sorts of pursuits,
but he's also done well in a bunch of those pursuits.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
So it's like, I'm not a serial entrepreneur, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We totally believe you, but yeah, it's and I love
that he also says, you know what, this is fun
to build these businesses, but it's not the end all
be all. So I don't know what was your big
takeaway from this combo.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I like when he touched on ego, and I think
for a lot of folks out there, I think there
are there are a lot of folks in the position
where they're thinking, I really want to kind of go
do my own thing, but there, you know, there's that
fear that's holding them.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Back and what if I screw it up?
Speaker 2 (44:41):
When I screwed up? And I do think that oftentimes.
I think when you have gotten pretty good at your job,
maybe you're middle management or maybe you're even higher up
on the on the food chain, you don't want to
be perceived as a failure. And honestly, the more successful
you get at your nine to five, I think the
harder it is to be able to step back from
that and to pursue something else that yes, might actually fail.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Like you're only used to success, and so now failure
feels even worse.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Exactly as opposed to Like I guess, for me, I
think back to when Kate and I started our photography
company and we had very little success up until that point,
and now I realize, I guess we kind of knew
that at the time, Like that's one of the things
I remember that we're telling each other. We said that
what have we got to lose, Like this is the
time to do it. We were renting, we didn't have
any debt, we didn't have any kids, we didn't even
(45:27):
have any pets, very few possessions, and so there was
very little that was actually holding us holding us back.
But I guess hearing him talk about it helped me
to realize how much of a blessing that is. But
I like that he mentioned ego as well, because that
he mentions that in his book and we didn't touch
on it, but I wanted to share real quick and
how when it comes to an individual's desire to grow
(45:48):
a business to scale it that oftentimes folks call that impact,
but how truly what that is is ego disguised. It's
the desire for you as an individual to kind of
like prove yourself that like.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Oh, I've got what it takes.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Oh, we're a business that that rakes in a million
dollars plus every year and then eventually maybe it turns
into ten million, because now you've got to essentially raise
the bar. And how at the core of that oftentimes
is ego.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
And you know a lot of people in social media
tooting that horror. Now I've got to seven figure business
and it sounds so sexy, and you're like, oh, I'm man,
I'm not as cool as they are. Yeah, but you know,
behind that facade, I guess it might not be exactly
as they're making it appear. Sure, And that I mean
that's in that the problem with social media in general,
of course.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, And I think for us it's it's kind of
like getting to the point to where you just don't
care anymore, right like, And oftentimes, and this is why
it's family first entrepreneurs, Like that's Steve's book, but I
think a lot of times parents are able to identify
that could you get to a point to where a
lot of that ego doesn't matter, You're just trying to
successfully create more like raise this human being to be
(46:56):
a fully functioning adult, like Lacy Langford said in the
previous episode, and it's difficult to essentially to kill that
ego and to tell yourself that it doesn't matter anymore.
But yeah, what was your big takeaway? I think mine
was when he said that more money can create this
like fever. And that's where he was when his wife
came to him with that conversation, saying like, Hey, so
(47:16):
we're doing great revenue wise, like we're making money. We've
actually surpassed the goals that we had of making sixty
K a year and then surpassing my income so that
I could stay at home. So why are we like
but I hate this, Yeah, because like literally she was
just like she did not want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
And we live pretty frugally, so why in the world
are we going this hard? Steve? And that was the
light bulb moment for him that, like family first, entrepreneurship
was the way forward. And I think it's true that
as our income grows, as we're able to do more
things with our money, more more smart things, even right,
it can create sort of like a fever in us
where it starts to feel like money is the goal
(47:53):
rather than the tool. So that's something we talk about
a whole lot on the show because we want money.
More money is a goal in some ways, right, But
money is just a tool to allow you to do
so much of what you actually want to be doing
with your life. And so it's always smart to go
back to the drawing board, especially as let's say you
have a much better year this year financially than you
had in the prior two years or something like that. Well,
(48:14):
don't let that feed this desire to continue to grow
and grow and scale if that's not necessarily you know,
the underlying desire that you have, if family first entrepreneurship
is actually what you want, or living a balanced life
right where you work thirty thirty five hours a week
and you actually make a little bit less money on purpose,
if that's what you want, because that creates the lifestyle
you're looking for. It kind of goes back to the
(48:36):
for burners theory as well, too, like you can turn
all those other ones off and be a really unhappy,
highly successful entrepreneur, but that's not what most people are after.
That's right, man.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Let's get to our beer that you and I enjoyed
during this episode. This was an ubu Ale. Let's see,
this is brood right here in Lake Placid. So I
say that because that's what's written on the notes that
Rebecca and Dylan sent our way. That is we're not
broadcast from no no, yeah, yeah, that's this is their
their think you note. So we had them on the show.
They are the rab coaches where we talked about couples
(49:07):
and money, and they were kind enough to send us
a beer, so ubu Ale. This is by Lake Placid
Craft Brewing Company. It doesn't say what style this beer is, Joel,
but I wanted him to know, did you dig it?
It's kind of like it's kind of like a porter.
It's like an Yeah, it's got porter vibes. It's more
it's actually an English strong that's how they classify it.
But this one was like roasty notes, toffee vibes going on,
(49:27):
some fig notes going on in their two almost like
a little bit of a barleywine quality, almost like a
barleywine mixed with a porter. So this one was interesting, good,
good flavor. And this is definitely more of like a
fall beer getting into fall time. And so yeah, I
enjoyed this one big thanks to Rebecca and Dylan for
sending it our way. Yes, thank you to the rab Coaches.
But Joel, that's gonna be for this episode. We'll make
(49:48):
sure to link to some of the different resources that
Steve mentioned. He's got a lot of freebies up there
as well, and so yeah, we'll link to all that.
You can find those up on the show notes at
howdomoney dot com. But Buddy, that's gonna be it. So
until next time, best Friends Out and best Friends Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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