Mindy: Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we introduce Steve Chu from my wifequitherjob.com and talk about starting a business that doesn’t take over your family time. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my his wife quit her job co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: Thank you, my her husband quit his job co-host, Mindy Jensen.
Mindy: Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary. Less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.
Scott: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments and assets like real estate, start your own business or enable your spouse to quit their job. We’ll help you reach financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Mindy: All right, Scott, today we are talking to Steve Chu and in the beginning of the show, I might give him a little bit of hassle for his current side hustle, which is selling handkerchiefs online. I should disclose that I am a handkerchief user myself. So, my my jabs at him are in jest and I’m not sure that they came across, but I really wanted him to explain why that was the product that they started selling when they had literally the entire catalog of the world to sell and they focused on handkerchiefs.
Scott: Yeah, you know, at the beginning of the show, you know, I I really believed you that you didn’t use handkerchiefs. So you really pulled the wool over me and Steve. Over our eyes today.
Mindy: Scott is full of puns in this episode. So, if that’s your thing, stay tuned, you will not be disappointed. But before we jump into today’s show, we have a money tip. This is the money moment where we share a money hack tip or trick to help you on your financial journey. Today’s money moment is take advantage of all of your work benefits. How? Read. Read the documents that your HR department provides you. Some companies offer a wide range of benefits outside of the standard healthcare and 401k, including gym memberships, tuition reimbursement, adoption assistance and more. But you won’t know what’s offered if you don’t read through everything. So, make sure you read through all of your documents and ask your HR department questions because you could be missing out on some pretty sweet benefits. Do you have a money tip for us? Email moneymoment@biggerpockets.com.
Scott: If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP money listeners need term life, and the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths tacked together so your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online. Same day coverage, no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is e h s.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Speaker 1: When I was CEO of Bigger Pockets, Upwork was the number one place that we went to hire freelancers to power our business. One of the biggest growth hacks is realizing that you don’t have to do it all yourself. Upwork made it easy to bring in the right freelancer when we needed them, so that we could stay focused on what we do best. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It’s free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire flexible, high-quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That’s upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That’s .com upwork.com.
Scott: You know how the change in seasons hits and suddenly you just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets and get everything all organized. That same feeling hits me with my finances every spring. I used to have accounts scattered everywhere, making it hard to stay on track with my money goals. Let Monarch do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins, just accounts, investments, property and more all in one place. One thing that really surprised me was pulling up the cash flow view and seeing what percentage of my income was quietly going to lifestyle creep, dining out and subscriptions I’ve barely noticed. It motivated me to make some quick adjustments. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just 50 bucks with the promo code pockets. Use the code pockets at monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code p o c k e t s.
Mindy: Steve Chu is the founder of mywifequitherjob.com. He has been featured in Forbes, the New York Times and MSNBC. He’s an influencer in the e-commerce space and got his start selling handkerchiefs on eBay. We’re going to talk about that. Steve, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: I am so happy to be here. And Scott, I know we we met like many years ago. It’s great to be back in touch again.
Scott: Yeah, it was like eight years ago at Finconn, right?
Guest: Yeah, you weren’t running Bigger Pockets at the time. I think Dorken was still on it, right?
Scott: Yeah, I was so amazed when he invited me to the cool kids club which included you, Jim Wayne, JD Roth, a whole bunch of the other OG personal finance folks. So, it’s an honor to speak with you again and thanks for coming back on the show.
Guest: Yeah, happy to be here.
Mindy: So, Steve, let’s jump into your background and your money story. Where does your journey with money begin?
Guest: Yeah, Mindy, so I was always brought up to go to school and this may be because I’m in a traditional Asian family, but I was taught to go to college, find a job, work at that job for the rest of my life, and then uh that’s that. Get married, have kids. But what was funny is I ended up starting a business selling handkerchiefs and that led to a blog over at mywifequitterjob.com because I started documenting that business, which led to a training class, which led to a podcast, which led to a YouTube channel, which led to an annual e-commerce conference that I run. And I’ve just come to learn over the years that the way I’ve been brought up is kind of wrong. Uh sure you can go to school and get a good job, but I think the only way to make life-changing money today is to have some sort of side hustle.
Mindy: Okay, you just said you sell handkerchiefs. I know like two people who use handkerchiefs. My dad and my friend Ray’s dad. This seems like a kind of outdated product to sell. Why did you choose handkerchiefs?
Guest: Mindy, those are fighting words. Um I’m sorry, how many people do you know that you think? All right, so here’s the back story. Uh when my wife and I were engaged to be married, my wife wanted the perfect wedding and she cries a lot. Not because I I make her cry. It’s because she whenever she’s happy, she starts crying. And we paid all this money for photography for our wedding and she knew she was going to lose it at the altar and she didn’t want photos of her drying her tears of joy with a ratty tissue. So we looked all over the place for a handkerchief. We actually could not find anyone in the US. Finally, we found like this factory in China, but there’s a minimum order of I think 200. So we ordered 200, we used maybe a handful of them, and then just to get rid of the excess, we listed them on eBay, and they ended up selling like hot cakes. So fast forward three years, my wife became pregnant with our first child. She ran up to me and she said, I want to quit my job and I want to stay at home with the kids. And I’m a firm believer in that because my parents, I didn’t get to see them as much as I would have liked. The problem is, she was making six figures at the time. We live in the Silicon Valley, which is very expensive, and you pretty much need two incomes to get a good house in a good school district. And that’s when we remembered the handkerchiefs from the wedding and we decided to open a store selling handkerchiefs. That’s the backstory.
Scott: What was the store called?
Guest: Our store is called Bumblebee Linens. Uh there’s a story behind that name as well. Uh so my wife when she got laser eye surgery, she had to wear these like bug eyed covers to protect her eyes and I just called her Bumblebee for that entire time. And so that’s how we came up with the name. It’s pretty random.
Scott: So, you know, you stumbled upon this space, but why do you like looking back, um why do you think it was so successful of a niche?
Guest: I think it was successful because there is demand, unlike what Mindy says for handkerchiefs. Uh I think the pieces of fabric in themselves aren’t in demand, but it’s all about framing the product in a different way. So, we sell most of our handkerchiefs to brides and grooms who want their initials on it as a keepsake. We also sell them for funerals. We also sell them for baptisms. And there’s just all these uses for them. But if you just say handkerchiefs in itself, not that interesting. But if you frame it in a different way, all of a sudden there’s more demand for it.
Scott: Okay, so it was a positioning element in in terms of how you position the product, an age-old product that’s been around for hundreds or thousands of years.
Guest: And I will say this, Mindy. Uh you are correct. Most of our customers are over the age of 45, who the people who collect handkerchiefs who don’t buy them for, you know, for weddings and that sort of thing.
Mindy: So you’re targeting a specific person on a specific day for a specific use. You’re not just selling random old handkerchiefs.
Guest: Random old handkerchiefs. Well, they’re not used. They’re They’re they’re brand new, but there’s two classes of customers, right? The people for the occasion and we get those people primarily through Google search because they’re actively searching for something. And then for the other people who collect them, we have a different way of positioning things. We tend to carry the styles that those people tended to use when they were kids or their parents tended to use when they were when they were younger.
Scott: Awesome. So what what what did this business look like, um from a revenue standpoint and how did it lead to, um what I suppose uh is your wife quitting her job and then staying quitted?
Guest: Yeah. So what was funny is, so we we managed to replace their salary of $100,000 in profit in our first year. And so what ended up happening is as soon as she became pregnant, we started working on the business and by the end of her maternity leave, we had enough to replace her salary and she could have quit in good conscience. Our backup plan of course was that she would keep working, which was not ideal, or we’d just live on my income. So we had a backup plan.
Mindy: When did your wife actually quit her job?
Guest: She quit her job as soon as her maternity leave was over. So that would put it around 20008-ish? 2008, 2009. Yeah.
Mindy: And she immediately started working at Bumblebee Linens?
Guest: Yeah, so it wasn’t glamorous. Uh we were actually running it out of our house. Our garage was our warehouse and so we set up these racks in the garage. And so what was nice about that was that you know, our kids, our baby at the time was going to bed at like 7:00 p.m. and so from from when our baby went to bed until we went to sleep, we would fulfill the orders. That’s incidentally one of the bonuses of running a business. You can time shift everything. So even though it’s it’s it’s a lot of work still, you can work on it whenever you feel like it.
Scott: So, I have a question about this where this is what you did this in 2008, 2009, somewhere around that time period.
Guest: We started in 2007.
Scott: 2007. Okay, great. And at that time, I imagine the space was a little bit less crowded. This was more of a novel concept. Um it feels really crowded today. It feels like it’s uh packed. There’s there’s no more niches or niches depending on what you prefer to go and actually find an opportunity to stand out. How would you go about someone starting, how would you go about it today if you were starting over and trying to find an e-commerce niche?
Guest: Yes, so I will say this. I think today everything is a commodity for the most part. Like think about how many apparel stores there are. Think of how many, you know, gadgets there are. Nothing is new and nothing I would argue has been new for a very long time. It’s really how you position the product. It’s really about the emotions that you can convey when you buy something. So let me give you an example. Uh you guys familiar with a brand called Dr. Squatch?
Scott: No.
Guest: They sell soap for men. Now, if you ever watch one of their commercials and if you want to Google them, what they’re really selling is sex. So this commercials are of women going, oh my god, you smell so good. I just want to jump you right now. It’s all PG. But and then as a guy, you’re watching this and you’re like, hey, you know, I want my girlfriend to pay more attention to me. Maybe I’ll start using Dr. Squatch. But they’re just selling soap that you can pick up at any store, right? So, there’s this book called cashtizing where they they talk about what is called the life force 8. And if you can evoke these eight emotions and it’s like survival, um keeping up with the Jones, sex. There’s a number of them. There’s eight eight of these emotions that you can invoke. If you can invoke them in your product, whether it be through a commercial or story, you can sell pretty much anything.
Mindy: Steve, can you tell us about your approach to e-commerce?
Guest: So the way we sell today and this is actually the way I teach it is you want multiple ways of getting people to your store and you want to sell on as many different places as you can to just kind of maximize your reach. Some people prefer to shop on Amazon, some people prefer to shop at boutiques, and some people prefer to shop on eBay for example. So I try to be on as many different platforms as I can. The way I like to get traffic is all inbound. So uh one prong of our store is SEO. So we put out content, uh like these could be wedding crafts, these could be craft supplies, these could be just wedding tips or gift ideas and that sort of thing. People find us on Google, they they buy the products after they find us. Uh the second prong is paid advertising. So we advertise on Google, Facebook, Instagram, you name it. And the third prong is repeat business and a lot of people throw out like starting your own brand and what a brand is really, if you think about it, is just repeated exposure to your content and your products. And so the way we bring people back is I try to grab an email as well as an SMS number, and I just send them out content on a regular basis, and they might not be ready to buy when they get our content. But when they think about getting a wedding handkerchiefs, they’ll think about our store. So those are the three main ways we get our business today.
Scott: Which one of those should you start with if you’re aspiring in this business? Is it attack all three simultaneously or is there one that you recommend as the first lever to pull?
Guest: If you’re just starting out, I would just pick one thing. and they all kind of go in different phases. So I I know just from teaching my class that some people need quick wins. So if you want quick wins and you want to see a sale, which will kind of get you excited to continue on, paid advertising is probably the best way to get immediate sales. But you want to have a long-term way of getting traffic to your site. And so this is why I always advise, hey, in the beginning, just pick one thing, but always have content in the background and you don’t have to post that frequently. Maybe once a week or once every other week, but over time it compounds. And I remember when we first started our store, I think it took maybe six months for SEO to kick in. but now that just generates free traffic for us every single month.
Scott: What would you say to someone who says that uh SEO is dead with the arrival of AI?
Guest: Yes. Okay, so I think honestly, that SEO is going to change dramatically for content-based sites. But have you guys used the new Bing? Mhm. Okay, yeah, so the new Bing, if you do an e-commerce search, you still have to go over to the site in order to make the transaction. The only hard part now is you have to rank in the top five in order to show up in the AI search. If you’re doing a content site, it’s going to be completely different because AI’s just going to give you the answer. So I think content sites might be in a little bit of trouble. I think e-commerce is safe for the time being.
Scott: Okay, so it’s just a little bit more competitive, but the the concepts don’t really change for SEO marketing for e-commerce sites. As long as you’re in the top five and are truly one of the best.
Guest: And I don’t want to get too complicated, but there’s there’s going to be apps for AI where you can actually program your site directly into it so you can actually make transactions on the AI. I plan on getting into that when that finally comes out.
Scott: Okay, awesome. Um so, you know, we we’ve talked about uh how to get started in marketing your site. What um, we talked a little bit about positioning, but what are the steps or processes that you would encourage or coach somebody who’s new to this to getting started in e-commerce? Like what what what would they what would they do first?
Guest: I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to figure out what you want to sell, right? Because if you don’t have anything to sell, you you can’t like there there’s no commerce in the in the e-commerce part. So uh the best way, I would say to brainstorm products to sell is to look at your own problems. Let me give you an example. I actually just got back from a trip from Japan and unfortunately it rained during one of those days. And I was trying to hold an umbrella, use my phone, and then hold all the junk that my kids had bought at all the souvenir stores and it was getting a little bit out of hand. And then I saw this guy and he had this like umbrella like duct tape to his backpack and he was hands-free. And I was thinking to myself, hey, what if I just made a contraption where it’s just like some sort of harness that you wear where you can just plug an umbrella in, and all of a sudden you’re walking around in the rain hands-free. I don’t think I’ve seen that product anywhere yet. And I just kind of saw it in Japan with this duct tape setup and so maybe that’s something that I would sell that would do really well.
Mindy: Ooh, create that before somebody hears this show and steals your idea.
Guest: Have you guys seen that ever? I don’t I don’t think I’ve seen that ever.
Mindy: You know, if I was going to see that, it would be in Japan. They are so creative. Japanese inventors are so creative with great products and like weird, why would you ever think anybody would ever buy that products at the same time. But that’s a good one because yes, I I don’t need to use my phone and hold all the crap that my kids have now, but when I had a baby, I would try, you know, you can’t hold your baby and an umbrella and a baby bag and like all this other stuff. The applications are literally endless, Steve, and since you came up with that idea or announced it on our show, I think we should get a cut of the profit.
Guest: Yeah, so someone’s going to use it and they’re going to make a lot of money and they’re going to make it rain. So, thank you, Steve.
Scott: There you go. There you go. Give them like all my ideas on your podcast but it will make this episode a lot more special, so I’m all for that.
Guest: Okay, so we’ve got this idea for the uh uh hands-free umbrella. Uh how do we identify the market that we’d sell it to?
Scott: Well, okay, so for that particular product, it’s easy because everyone can probably use that product. If I want to get really granular, I would probably target like the Northwest part of the US. So Seattle and Oregon where it rains, you know, nine months out of the year and maybe just focus on that market first and see how it goes.
Guest: Okay. Awesome. Uh I’m surprised you haven’t asked about how to produce this.
Scott: That is the next question we should have asked there. Yes, how do how how okay, I’ve made my I’ve I’ve uh how do I design invent it and then produce it?
Guest: Okay, so here’s a common misconception. The common misconception is you actually have to know how to design something in order to create it. But there’s all these factories, um let’s just take China as an example. They’ve worked with the US for a very long time and they’re willing to make stuff for you under your own brand so you can actually sell it under your own brand, like Steve brand or whatever you want to call this thing. And so I would go and I would I would probably approach umbrella manufacturers actually, and I would say, okay, I want an umbrella that hooks into a harness. So instead of putting like the handle, I would just make it a cylinder and then I would I would find another harness manufacturer, maybe like a backpack manufacturer, just to stick a little hole, like a little tube on it, and so they could just stick the umbrella into the tube. And they are willing to make small modifications to their product for you. The only catch is that you have to find the right size factory that will work with you because you do have to purchase a minimum order quantity. So if I were to just start from scratch here, I would probably go to the factory and try to get this made. And the first thing you need to do is you need to order a sample. You you give them your specifications and you don’t it this doesn’t need to be like a schematic or anything. You can just draw a on a napkin and just go back and forth and say this is what I’m looking for. Can you make it? And then you order a sample. A sample is going to be more expensive than in production because they’re making it custom for you. But then you get the sample and you can get, sometimes you can get a number of samples from different manufacturers. All you got to do is just try to sell it. I would probably just go on maybe some Facebook group for Seattle or Oregon or I don’t I don’t know. Maybe uh who who would use these? People who like to hike maybe and don’t like to get wet or maybe moms who who need to carry their babies, just like you said, Mindy. And I would just try to sell these. And whatever it took to get me enough courage to actually place a bulk order of these items from the factory.
Mindy: So I used cloth diapers on my children and one of the brands that I used was called fuzzy buns and I was watching Shark Tank and I saw the creator of fuzzy buns come on the show and share how she had $3.9 million in sales and $20,000 in profit. And they were like, whoa, those numbers are awful. What happened? And she said, one of my uh overseas partners knocked off my product and sold it out from underneath me. So there’s all of these products out there that aren’t really mine. Um how do you prevent intellectual property theft when going overseas?
Guest: Um so that definitely can happen and and it has happened. Um I’ve partnered with an intellectually intellectual property lawyer to handle these cases actually. Uh I don’t want to get into the law too much since that’s not my area of expertise, but the answer is to register the copyright for that and and trademark your brand of course. If someone’s going to sell that under your own brand that’s trademarked, that’s actually illegal and you can actually get them to stop selling that item. Similarly, if they copy your design and you have a registered copyright, you can prevent them from selling on a marketplace. Also, you can actually go over, and believe it or not, this kind of blew my mind too. You can actually prevent the factory from making it if you register the copyright and the trademark in China, which is something that this lawyer does as well. So you can actually nip it in the bud over there. You just need to do these things ahead of time before you uh you know, before you get too far into the sales.
Scott: So what what does all this cost to get into it? I’m I’m trying to to buy uh or I’m trying to get my first backpack hands-free umbrella product out. What am I going to be selling out in legal fees, production costs, marketing before I earn my first dollar in revenue?
Guest: Uh that is a hard question to answer because I don’t know anything about this example that I just gave you guys, like how much it would cost. But how much does an umbrella cost? Maybe uh I don’t know, 15 bucks in the US? So which means that they’re probably paying less than three or four dollars to make the umbrella. I’m just guessing. Um and then for like the harness, let’s just let’s just say it’s like four bucks. So let’s say you can make this thing for eight bucks at at quantity. And I’m just throwing out numbers here, but typically in a factory, when when I order something, I order a minimum anywhere from 200 to 500 units. So to make this product, just kind of back of the envelope, including customs and everything, I would say you probably need like $8 to $10,000 to make this product.
Scott: Okay, and then how much how much would it cost to hire a lawyer to register in the US and and China?
Guest: Oh, the trademark and the copyright and that sort of thing? Uh I would say to get a trademark, it can be like, if you want to do it yourself, it’s I think the fee is like $300 to register a trademark. You know what’s funny is we actually didn’t register a trademark for a very long time. Uh most people are worried about getting knocked off, but what they don’t realize is if you’re getting knocked off, you’re already doing pretty well. So this this cloth diaper person, uh I would imagine that they’re still doing, if they did a good job of branding, and cloth diapers is one of those things that you have to you have to keep getting them over and over and over again. It just means that that person probably didn’t do a great job of branding because I know especially in the cloth diaper space, like I want my kid to have the best chemical free cloth diapers. And those are things that I would put in my value prop. And that Chinese person who got knocked off, I’m willing to bet that they didn’t do a good job. They’re probably just competing based on price. So you want to focus on the benefits and whatnot and then people will buy from you because as I mentioned earlier, everything is a commodity, right? It’s really how you portray your product and the value props and the emotions that you can instill. So if I were that person on Shark Tank, I might say, hey, you probably seen our product cheaply knocked off from China. But what you don’t realize is that it was probably produced with chemicals, uh you know, or what not. I don’t know. I would find out more.
Scott: By the way, our umbrella idea’s already been done. There’s like several different hands-free umbrellas out here. There’s one that attaches to a backpack. There’s one that like attaches to your head and it’s like a chin strap kind of thing. Uh so
Guest: There you go. It was a good. But they’re all low-rated. They’re all like four stars or below on uh on Amazon. So maybe there’s a better product out there.
Mindy: Let’s talk about reviews. When you are on Amazon or a similar website where you see a product and it has three reviews, you instantly think I’m not going to buy that because nobody else has bought it either. How do you get reviews if nobody’s had your product and how important is it to have reviews if you haven’t sold anything yet. Like how do you it it seems like a chicken and egg thing.
Guest: Correct. Yeah. So if you’re selling on Amazon, that is absolutely the case. And if your if your goal is to sell on Amazon, what I would recommend that you do is sign up for the Amazon Vine program. This allows you to give away up to 30 units and these are people in the Vine program that are their goal is their their job is actually to review stuff. And you can get up to, I would say 25 to 30 reviews right off the bat. Now, usually what happens is, as long as you have some amount of reviews, that’s good enough. Like three is a little low, but if you if you start out with like 25 and they’re good reviews, that’s usually good enough. And you have to be very deliberate about asking for them. So on Amazon, there are these tools that you can use that automate the asking for reviews and then you just build up gradually that way. On your own site, however, that’s a different story. You don’t necessarily need to have reviews in order to make sales. It helps of course, but the important thing to remember is that if you are selling something with no reviews, you don’t advertise the fact that you have no reviews like shares. You literally just hide those counts and you’re okay in the beginning.
Scott: When I, um, and I’ll give you a personal example. When I launched, when we launched set for life, right? My book, um, five or six years ago, you can’t just have your friends and family write reviews, right? I mean that that’s that’s unethical. It’s not it’s not in the bounds of there. So what I did is I said everyone who buys the book on Amazon, send me your receipt and I’ll give you this bonus content. Uh a webinar that I was going to do just for those folks, um, a spreadsheet, uh, whatever. And then I said, thank you so much, here’s your thing. and by the way, I would be very grateful if you offered, if you left me a review on Amazon and I sent a personal message to over 2,000 people over the course of a few weeks, and many of them, not all of them, then left a review, often a five-star review. So there’s not and you know, I think that controlling this process is really important in the early stages of launching a product. Um because you want, you know, you want you want to get your your customers, your your happy customers, the ones that you you know, to leave you a good review, um most of the time. What what does your response to that approach?
Guest: That is ingenious. In fact, uh I always leverage my email list and people tend not to leave reviews organically, right? I would say the review rate on Amazon probably around a percent or two, single digits. So anything you can do and and and on Amazon if we’re talking about Amazon, you are technically not allowed to incentivize someone to leave a review.
Scott: I didn’t say you have to get the bonus content, you have to give me a review to get the bonus content. I said send me a receipt. Everyone who buys at the launch will get a bonus content for free. No no review, no trade what so ever. And then I said thank you so much. I asked a little bit about the person and then I asked at the end, would you mind giving me a review? There was no incentive for it. It was just a please leave me a review. Right, which is what Amazon wants. They want you to leave a review.
Mindy: But he got the email because he said, hey, send me your receipt and I’ll send you the bonus content. Then he’s got email that he can then say, hey, thank you so much. I’m glad you like the book. Uh could you leave me a review?
Guest: That’s ingenious. That’s what I’m doing with my book right now actually. Uh I’m actually not really selling the book, I’m selling the bonuses. Uh so, you know, I’m giving away a three-day class on e-commerce, a two-day class on how to make money with content and I’m doing this six-week family first challenge where I’m going to help people with their first side hustle. And you get all that stuff instantly when you pre-order the book. So it’s similar. And then I’m going to use that list, Scott, once I have their emails, you’re right, to ask for reviews once the book is out.
Scott: And and it’s the same concept for selling anything on here. Now that we’ve brought it up though, what what is this book? What what what’s what’s the title? What’s it about? Can can you give us some insight?
Guest: Yeah. Uh so the book is called The Family First entrepreneur and it’s about how to achieve financial freedom without sacrificing what matters most. And what matters most is different for everyone. For me, what matters most is family. Uh for other people what matters most might be doing things that they love. And it’s about doing more while working less.
Scott: Awesome. And does the book will the book highlight some of the topics we talked about today? Will it go into depth about how to build an e-commerce business?
Guest: Uh it’s not e-commerce focused. It’s more about getting that side hustle off the ground. We talked about AI earlier. I really do think that AI is going to disrupt a lot of jobs and I feel like the way of the future really, in order to be safe from getting disrupted with AI, you really need that side hustle because I know in my area right now, a lot of my friends have actually lost their tech jobs. There’s mass layoffs going on right now. and if they had that side hustle, they would have something, you know, as a backup plan. and who knows, maybe that side hustle, maybe that little handkerchief business that you started could go on later to become something much bigger. But you have to get started. So like the first half of that book is really about getting the courage and understanding the need to have that side hustle and how to brainstorm ideas kind of like how we did earlier on this episode. And then the second half of the book really is about getting traffic and making it sustainable without killing yourself.
Mindy: Ooh.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use indeed. When it comes to hiring Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job noticed on other job sites. Indeed’s sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking and it works. Sponsored jobs on indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored posts. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I’ve been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through indeed worldwide. There’s no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com/biggerpockets. Just go to indeed.com/biggerpockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. indeed.com/biggerpockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed is all you need.
Mindy: Let’s talk about that because you ended up on the today show, a small little program that a couple of people watch in the mornings. and after you were featured, like it was a blip that you were just like, hey, they sell handkerchiefs, bye, and then all of a sudden you are swamped with orders. At the same time your wife’s like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m burnt out. And I’m making light of her saying that because this sounds like, oh wow, what a hard problem you have. so much success. But in reality, she’s been doing this. You didn’t start the company and instantly go on the today’s show and then she’s like, forget it, I’m done. She was running this for several years, like six or seven years before the today’s show. And then you jump on the today’s show and all of a sudden there’s this avalanche of orders and she’s like, I’m so burnt out. I can’t breathe. How did you go from growth at any cost to let’s pull back and have this relationship with my wife again. How do you not just ditch the business?
Guest: So first off, she cried and those were not tears of joy. Um So so what ended up happening is, I think most people don’t realize that when you get a sudden influx of sales like that, and it was 7X the amount of sales sustained for, I would say about a two week period because the show was getting reaiaired in different regions. And it was probably the most miserable, I mean, I was overjoyed at the business. I don’t know if you guys remember the pets.com commercial or back on the internet, there was like this commercial where this company that got a bunch of orders and they were cheering and all of a sudden they got like millions of orders and they had their heads down on the table. That’s how we felt because we only had three employees, we only had me, my wife and one employee at the time to fulfill all those orders. and like you mentioned Mindy, early on, I think my ego got in the way and it’s something like when you’re not used to making a lot of money, you kind of want to put the pedal down to the metal every time. and so I was setting these insane goals for revenue and we’d hit them and then I would just move the goal post the next year. Meanwhile, we’re making a lot more money than we’re spending and that’s when my wife broke down. She was like, why are we doing this? Uh we already made more than we spend, like why are we killing ourselves to hit some artificial goal that you decided to make? And I think the reason why was because I’m in a bunch of these mastermind groups with other entrepreneurs who are just so successful that I want to just keep up with them. And it was only after my wife broke down that I realized that I mean basically I have an ego problem, right? Uh like I’m doing these things and I kind of lost track of why we started the business in the first place, which was to hang out more with family. So, the way I resolved that today, actually, let me just tell you another story real quick. I belong to this program called the Mayfield Fellows program and it’s this group at Stanford where they try to breed students to to get funding and create like the next billion dollar business. So just to give you an example, Kevin Systrom is a member of that group. And every year they have this retreat and we go and we and we go around and you know, we talk about what we’ve been up to and everyone’s like, oh yeah, I just had a $400 million exit, I just had a billion dollar exit. And it always comes around to me and I’m like, yeah, I’m still selling Hankies. And that always hurts me each time. So I I had this ego and I think a lot of us have this ego and and don’t admit it. But the way I resolved that today is we we dropped all income goals after my wife broke down. And what I do today is I just pick one thing to work on for the year and I work on it to the best of my ability and whatever happens happens. So this year is the year of the book, last year is the year of the YouTube channel and I managed to hit 200k subs. The year before that it was Tik Tok, the year before that it was like Google performance max ads. So every year I just do one thing, I go all out on it and I try to do it well. So that’s how I kind of have managed to quell my own ego.
Mindy: So did you pull back on making new goals? Did you pull back on the actual goals that you had already set? Did you hire more people?
Guest: So the way, I’m actually anti-employee, which is also a little controversial. Like if I can, and my background just happens to be engineering, if I can write a piece of code that can replace something a human does, I will do it. Um if I can if I We just happen to be living in this great era now with AI and I know it’s still kind of new. We’re we’re kind of at the beginning of the year, but I think today more than ever, you can probably get a lot more done with fewer people with AI or software than you can have in any time in in recent history. I used to be an engineering director and I used to have a group under me, and they were great workers, but what I didn’t like dealing with were a lot of the like kind of like the emotional issues of being a manager. And most people don’t realize that when you have a large team, there’s a lot of overhead involved that kind of goes way beyond the work. And I used to just hate whenever I went to an event and people would ask me, oh, how large is your team? Because I sincerely believe that if all you want to do is make a couple of million dollars, you can do that with one or two employees. If you want to start like the next Amazon or the next Facebook or the next bigger pockets, then yes, you need a lot of employees. But for most family first entrepreneurs, you can probably just get by with a lot of automation.
Scott: I think that’s a great point. And I I I think that there’s always two sides to the coin here though. And we recently had Cody Sanchez on, and she listed areas that she stays away from, which included e-commerce, consulting, a lot of these these uh uh businesses that I think are right up your alley and you have a very contrary viewpoint to her, um, which is ironically because her contrarian thinking. Yeah. Um uh but anyways, you know, what would you say to that uh say to her to her philosophy and her instinct to stay away from Amazon or e-commerce or these types of businesses.
Guest: I like her philosophy. If your goal is just to make money. My goal, my because she specializes in boring businesses, but for me, if the business is like super boring, then why are you doing it? So for me, it’s it’s more than just the money. It’s something that actually keeps me interested, satisfies my ego at the same time and makes money. But you’re right, I agree with Cody. Like, if your goal is just to make money, I might do real estate, for example, or I might I might run that laundromat. But do I want to run a laundromat? Do I want to run a car wash or an ice cube dispenser? That does not interest me at all. And I think a lot of entrepreneurship also has to do with longevity. Like, you need something that kind of keeps you interested. You don’t have to be passionate about it, but it has to be interesting in a way so that you want to keep going. So that’s my philosophy. And we just have different viewpoints on that.
Scott: Walk me through this concept of longevity. Is your business going to have longevity for the next several decades without you running it or is it automated and ready to go? Because I I wonder which one is I I wonder if Cody would also argue her businesses have longevity. So I I I wonder I I would love your your take on that.
Guest: Yeah, that’s a good question and I don’t really know the answer. All I can tell you is I’ve been running our store for 15 years now. And every year there’s been growth. And for the blog, I’ve been running it since 2009 and both are seven figure businesses. Who knows what happens in the future? And I would argue that, um, you know, we’re right for disruption for a lot of these things and maybe Cody is safer, I guess, because she’s going after staples. But here’s what I always think with her stuff. Like, if she manages to build a huge audience of people who are trying to do these boring businesses, there’s really not that many barriers to entry for that. So if enough people do it, then it will be harder, right? And maybe at that point, it won’t be boring anymore and you actually have to leverage like some creativity or some marketing to get more business. So I think, you know, it’s it’s kind of unknown. I don’t know.
Scott: I think they all work and there’s a there’s a right you can be successful in this world with e-commerce, with consulting with real estate, with short any variation of real estate investing, with a boring business, with a tech business with, um, a public company, with a private company, with private equity, with venture Capital. I mean, there’s people winning in every single one of these fields and I think it’s just a matter of what resonates with you. And I think that your approach to dealing with not not building businesses that are centered around large amounts of people and you know, operating overhead and those kinds of things is very attractive and should be to a lot of people out there, um, and it’s something that that you can you can run and and and run as a lifestyle business and provide a very, very good life and and keep for many, many years if you maintain it and nurture it over time. And so I think it’s it’s it’s worth, worth considering for a large portion of the population.
Guest: I mean, I optimize for sleeping at night. Um, like if if I can be self-sufficient in a way and depend on a computer which never complains, I would rather do that. Uh, because if I have a lot of employees, and we have this problem at Bumblebee Linens sometimes because we do have employees to pack and fulfill orders, let’s say two of them decide not to show up, we’re kind of in a little bit of trouble, right? So, it’s it’s I’m kind of dealing with both types of businesses at this point, and I would always like to air on the side of automation and robots as opposed to. It sounds terrible now that I’m saying it. But, uh, yeah, because if you’re in control of more of your stuff and you’re already making more than you need, that’s the ideal business for me.
Scott: One last question then that I’ll have for you which is you, you know, you’re you’ve surrounded yourself with entrepreneurs in this mastermind that are talking about $400 million exits and that kind of stuff. How did you arrive at enough? How how and how would you recommend somebody else arrives at that at that word enough? Um because I think that a lot of investors struggle with resetting the goal posts.
Guest: Yeah, so first off, uh, I actually I’m kind of stuck in that group now. I actually, I don’t have to go to the retreats, I guess. But I’d recommend that you first hang out with people that are kind of in line with what you want to be, right? So the question of enough really just you got to remember why you started these things in the first place. And for me, my wife constantly reminds me because I’m always off trying to do some other thing. And she’s like, okay, remember, the reason why we started these businesses are for this. And we actually have this this document in place where we talk about not getting carried away. So I don’t travel more than maybe five or six times a year and we pay ourselves what we need to live and we treat the rest like gravy. And when you treat the rest like gravy, then all of a sudden, you know, making that extra money doesn’t matter as much, right? And I already mentioned before how I keep my mind interested. Like I always have to be working on something just to keep my mind stimulated. So that’s why I just choose one thing to focus on for the year. And so, the question of enough is going to be different for everybody. But I would think that the people, since this podcast is called Bigger Pockets money, I would imagine the finances, you have to figure out how much you spend to make you happy. Like how much would you need to earn to make you happy? Pay yourself that first, treat the rest like gravy. and I think that’s a really good start.
Scott: And love it. And and the way you get there is I think through a combination of all these things we talk about, your side hustle, the business, a business that you can create, your active income from your job, how you invest it, and stocks, real estate, or whatever that asset class, and love it. Cover what you need and have some gravy and and you’re done. It’s that simple and that hard. Um and this is and the approach that you talk about, Steve, is one great way to get there.
Mindy: Steve, this has been so much fun. I always love talking to you. Where can people find out more about you and pre-order your book? So they can get all that free stuff you have.
Guest: Yeah, if you’re interested in learning about e-commerce, you can go over to mywifequitterjob.com. I offer a free six-day mini course. It’s a video course and by the end you should know whether you want to do it or not. Uh if you want to pre-order my book, that can be done over at thefamilyfirstentrepreneur.com. And I wish I picked a different domain because I always have problems spelling entrepreneur, but it’s the I was just thinking that same thing. Thefamilyfirstentrepreneur.com. And I’m giving out three amazing bonuses as I mentioned. First is a three-day workshop on how to get started in e-commerce. uh specifically print on demand because print on demand, if you guys aren’t familiar with the business model. This is where you create a design and someone else fulfills the order. It’s a very easy low cost way to get into e-commerce and I call it like a gateway drug. You’re probably not going to make life-changing money with this business model, but it will get you excited into trying these other things that we talked about like the umbrella idea, which was already taken. Uh the second workshop is how to make money with content. So I have a blog, a podcast, and a YouTube channel which collectively make over seven figures and if you guys are interested in that, there’s a workshop on that. And then I’m doing a very interactive six week Family first challenge where I’ll be in the Facebook group, going live and basically helping you figure out what your next side hustle is going to be because I really do think it’s important to have something on the side even if you’re fully happy with your full-time job.
Scott: Awesome. Well, we will link to all of those things. You don’t have to worry about the spelling too hard on the on the show notes. So go check those out. Thank you, Steve, and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for having me.
Mindy: Holy cats, Scott, that was an awesome show. I love Steve and I love that he is so giving of his information. We created a whole new product on this show, the umbrella backpack holder, except it already exists.
Scott: Yeah, but it’s not done well. But yeah, uh no, no, at least it doesn’t seem to be for the reviews. I don’t want to insult whoever the uh backpack umbrella inventor is because it’s clearly selling something. Um but yeah, Steve’s a a very smart entrepreneur. I love the fact that, you know, like so many other of the financial, the the financially independent guests we have, he not only has been successful in his career, but he has settled on enough uh with his portfolio and allows him and and and and prioritizes lifestyle. And I think that’s again, that’s a hard transition. Um we emphasize it here on the show, but it’s remarkably hard to find those uh those people that that that that do kind of uh uh embody enough uhh in in their career and and are are happy and content and not necessarily striving for the next, you know,on dollars or $400 million exit or whatever it is.
Mindy: Yeah, I really liked his answer on that. Um, I love what he’s doing. I don’t think that we gave his Bumblebee Linens.com website address when we were talking to him, but the the handkerchief I think is an interesting business model. I love that they’re focusing on specific people. They have an idea in mind, they grew too big, decided, hey, that’s not what we need, we’re going to step it back a little bit and now they do have enough and they are focusing on more of a steady, I don’t want to say slow growth because they’ve been running this for 16 years and every year has grown, but it’s more sustainable instead of this frantic, mad rush. How much money can I grab sort of thing.
Scott: Yeah, I think he’s found the right pattern for his business.
Mindy: Oh, look at that. I told you in the beginning, Scott’s got pun after pun after pun and he just brings it all the way to the end. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen in honor of Steve’s wife who quit her job. We’re saying.
Scott: There’s a reason most big wealth management firms don’t like talking about flat fee planning. It’s because it puts the power and the profit back in your pocket. I’ve been working with David Jackson at domain money because I wanted a fiduciary who didn’t care about selling me products or making asset under management fees that grew as my portfolio grew. I wanted a partner who would look at my whole financial picture with all of its complexity and give me a personalized step-by-step roadmap to reach my goals faster. If you want a plan that’s built for your benefit, not your advisors, you need to check out biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp. This is a promotion for domain money, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Bigger Pockets money may receive compensation if you choose to work with domain money as a client. I, Scott Trench, am a current client of domain money and received non-cash compensation related to this promotional activity. This is not personalized investment advice. For the full disclosures, visit biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp.
Speaker 1: When you’re ready to start your business, Northwest registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwor. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one, a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. These are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. With Northwest, your business is set up to stand on its own from day one. That means your home address, personal email and phone number stay private. Don’t pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit Northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/moneyfree.
Mindy: toodlely do Bumblebee. Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Wine. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
