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Podcast Summary: Afford Anything - Episode #445: Boldly Unemployed: Embracing Entrepreneurship with Steve Chou
Episode Overview In this episode of *Afford Anything*, host Paula Pant interviews Steve Chou, a successful entrepreneur who co-founded two seven-figure businesses with his wife. They discuss the journey of entrepreneurship, the challenges faced in the early stages, and the emotional aspects of running a business. Steve emphasizes the importance of resilience, managing expectations, and following one's curiosity rather than passion.
Key Themes and Concepts
- Shifting Mindset Towards Entrepreneurship
- Initial Motivation: Steve's journey began when his wife expressed a desire to quit her job to spend more time at home. This prompted them to explore entrepreneurship to replace her income.
- Multiple Pathways: Entrepreneurship is one of many ways to achieve freedom and flexibility in life, alongside alternatives like lifestyle changes (e.g., van life).
- The Role of Resilience
- Facing Challenges: Steve shares his journey from a traditional job to entrepreneurship, highlighting the fear and doubts he faced.
- Avoiding the Comparison Trap: Emphasizes the importance of focusing on one's journey without getting distracted by others' successes.
- Practical Steps to Entrepreneurship
- Starting Small: Steve began by selling handkerchiefs after discovering a gap in the market. Their method included testing ideas to discover what worked.
- Product Validation: The process of throwing "spaghetti at the wall" to see what sticks is framed as a necessary part of entrepreneurship.
- Marketing Through Emotions
- Emotional Connection: Key to selling is understanding the emotions that drive purchasing decisions. Steve identifies eight core emotions that can influence consumer behavior:
- Survival
- Enjoyment
- Freedom
- Sexual appeal
- Comfort
- Superiority
- Care for loved ones
- Social approval
- Brand Building: It's less about the product itself and more about how you portray it to evoke these emotions.
- The Importance of Iteration
- Learning Through Practice: Steve emphasizes that skills such as copywriting and marketing are developed through continuous practice and adaptation based on feedback.
- The Reality of Running a Business
- Daily Operations: The day-to-day tasks of running a business may be similar regardless of the product, and the grind is a significant part of the entrepreneurial experience.
- Avoiding Burnout: Discusses the notion that passion can fade; thus, it’s more sustainable to follow curiosity.
- Setting Realistic Expectations
- Time Commitment: Many entrepreneurs give up too early due to unrealistic expectations set by social media portrayals of success. Steve advises committing to a timeframe of at least one to three years to see real growth.
- Understanding the Grind: Recognizing that the entrepreneurial journey is often long and filled with challenges is vital to success.
Key Takeaways
- Emotional Selling: Focus on the emotional connection behind your product rather than just the product itself. Understanding consumer emotions can significantly enhance sales.
- Follow Curiosity, Not Passion: Sustainability in business often comes from following curiosity, which keeps the journey engaging and prevents burnout.
- Set Realistic Expectations: Avoid the pitfalls of comparison and set a longer-term commitment to your entrepreneurial journey; success often takes years rather than months.
Additional Resources
- Book: *The Family First Entrepreneur* by Steve Chou.
- Website: Visit [mywifequitterjob.com](http://mywifequitterjob.com) for resources and free mini-courses on starting a business.
Conclusion This episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone considering entrepreneurship, offering insights on navigating the challenges, understanding emotional marketing, and maintaining resilience throughout the journey.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00More than a decade ago, Steve Chu decided that he wanted to start a business so that he and his wife could spend more time with their kids. What he found out initially was that running a business could be a nonstop workathon or it could be designed in a family first style. We're going to hear from him about that in today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands that you can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a tradeoff against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention to any limited resource you need to manage.
0:36which opens up two questions, what matters most and how do you make choices accordingly? My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today we'll be chatting with Steve Chu about how to build a business that's designed towards giving you freedom of time, time freedom. So if you want to quit your nine to five and start your own company, but you don't want to be working 80 hours in order to not work 40, or if you want to start a side hustle, but it has to be hyper-efficient because you don't have a lot of time. You're already working a full-time job. For whatever reason, whether it's a side hustle or a full-time business, if you want an efficiently run, time-friendly business, a lifestyle business that allows you to spend more time with your family or doing the things that you love, then you'll enjoy hearing some of the practical advice that comes from Steve Chu.
1:38He runs two businesses, both of which make seven figures in revenue, and he just wrote his first book called The Family First Entrepreneur. Enjoy.
1:51Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Oh, man. I'm so happy to be here. Steve, tell us, you had a traditional start in life. You went to Stanford, you became an engineer, you dreamed of living in Palo Alto in a big mansion with a fast car. What shifted for you? I drive a minivan now. No, what shifted for me was when my wife told me that she wanted to quit. And where I live, it's just super expensive. You really can't get by with a single income and still get a good house and a good school district here. You know, I was on board when my wife wanted to quit to stay at home with the kids because when I grew up, my parents weren't around as much.
2:32They were first-generation immigrants. They worked their butts off so that they could support my brother and I through college. So that's what started it. I mean, sheer panic, really. So we looked for different ways to make money to make up my wife's six-figure income, and that's when we came upon entrepreneurship. When someone says, oh, I want to quit my job, that is the goal, but there are always multiple paths to get to the goal. Entrepreneurship is one. Living in a tent in Costa Rica is another way to go. The van life thing. Why was it that you selected entrepreneurship specifically? Yeah, you know, I think at the time I was already doing a little bit of arbitrage.
3:12So what I was doing was I was going on Craigslist, finding people who are moving out and I would just buy all their stuff and then just eBay it. And I was doing pretty well with that. I was doing maybe$1 ,500 a month. And my wife had actually always wanted to start a business. And in my undergrad years, I was a member of this program called the Mayfield Fellows Program, which was an entrepreneurship program where they were kind of grooming you to start the next billion dollar company. And so we already kind of had it in our blood. So ultimately, we decided to sell handkerchiefs, but we didn't start out with that.
3:46We were looking at opening a Kumon's. I don't know if you guys know what that is. Yeah, it's that math tutoring center. Exactly. Which is right up our alley, right? Because we wanted our kids to go there. We figured, you know, two birds with one stone. We also looked at like meal prep places, because at that time it was big. We even looked at opening a boba shop because we love boba. But handkerchiefs just kind of fell into our lap because when we got married, life cries a lot. And we spent all this money on photography. And she knew she was going to cry and she wanted to dry her tears with a nice handkerchief.
4:19And so we looked all over the place, couldn't find any anywhere except for these factories in China. So we had to buy a couple hundred, use maybe a handful of them, and then just sold the rest on eBay and they sold like hotcakes. Wow. So you stumbled upon this. essentially what you've just described is the process kind of accidentally of testing a handful of different ideas and seeing which one has product validation. Yes, accidentally. I mean, now that's the way I teach it. But at the time I was, we were all over the place, right? Because you never know what's going to stick. Which is, I mean, testing product validation is kind of a, just a fancy way of saying, throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, like being all over the place.
5:00It's just a more formal way of saying that. It's a more educated way of saying it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's the feel-good way of saying, I don't know. When you decided that you wanted to sell handkerchiefs, how did you go about this process? You never had entrepreneurial experience before. How did you learn where to source these handkerchiefs from, how to brand them, how to determine a price point. Like there's so many decisions that need to be made. I mean, there was so many lucky things that happened all at the same time in retrospect. So first off on the hankies, we found that vendor because we were kind of desperate to find one for our wedding.
5:44And when we actually started the store, we got back in touch with that same vendor and bought a larger order. Right. So that took care of that. In terms of the actual store, you're right. I had no idea how to put the website, but my buddy just happened to have put up a store selling his photography at the time. And I was like, wow, how did you do that? That looks really complicated. And keep in mind, this is back in 2007. This is like before Amazon, before Shopify, all that stuff. And he was like, oh no, it's easy. And it's free. I'm like, what free? And so I had him show me how he put up his website.
6:16It was actually really easy. Plus I have a technical background. So none of the tech really scared me. Just like the complication of doing it, like I didn't want to write something from scratch. But if you look hard enough, there's probably someone who's written something that you need in general. Right. And so I got the website up. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part obviously was getting business. We were already on eBay. I had this elaborate plan of bringing people over from eBay and saying, hey, don't buy from me. Like we make a sale and we'd be like, hey, what your next purchase? Why don't you buy from our store.
6:47Here's a coupon. So eBay would be like the lead generator. Yeah. Then we got suspended because that's illegal. It's against terms of service. Second prong of our attack was I started going on the wedding forums. I'd just be like, hey, you know, I'm looking for wedding handkerchiefs and whatnot. Do you know anywhere that I can find them? And then I'd go and help everybody else with their wedding stuff. And then I'd be like, oh, I found some, you know, at the store. And then I guided a lot of people over that way. I thought you were about to say that then you answered your own question under a different username.
7:19No. And so this one time I did this, I said, Hey, I have a bunch of extras, right? So if you guys want some here, I was just trying to prove the concept. So I was like, I have some extras. If you want them, I'll sell them to you really cheap outside of the store. And so I knew there was demand at that point for these. And yeah, I was, I was heavily on the wedding forms, the knot.com wedding channel. Those are my main avenues in the beginning. Wow. And you're describing 2007, 2008, 2009 tactics. If a person were to start today, and I know that you coach a lot of students who are starting today, what are the tactics that work in 2023 that didn't work then or weren't available then?
7:59You know, not much. A lot has changed, but at the same time, not a lot has changed. I mean, really what you're ultimately trying to do is bring people back to your shop over and over and over again until you develop a reputation or a brand. I mean, that's all a brand is, right? So the same things hold true, collecting emails, collecting SMS, which is kind of new, creating Instagram audiences, you know, other social media audiences, and really just content, right? Content and advertising. By the way, one of my classmates, I recently had this discussion. One of my classmates is 22 years old and he didn't know what an SMS was.
8:37He never heard the term. For anyone who's listening to this, that's how old people say text message. I was going to say, I thought that's how new people say text message. One of my friends is writing a book about the history of emojis. Emojis came from, among other things, from that font Wingdings. What we quickly discovered as we were editing this book is that all the 22-year-olds in our class had no idea what Wingdings is. And also it was through that same conversation. No idea what SMS means. Yeah. You know, here's the thing. Like when people start shops, they're always scared about the sales part.
9:19They're always scared like whether their product is going to be good enough. What I've just kind of discovered over the years that it's less about the product and it's more about like the emotions that you can stir into someone. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr. Squatch. This guy sells soap. They sell men's soap, right? Right. If you're a guy, anyone listening out there and a guy like we don't care about soap, like we don't care whether it smells good. It's not like my wife who has like 20 different products on the shelf. So what are the value props of soap? You smell good. It cleans well, whatever, whatever.
9:51If you were to do that, you wouldn't be able to sell soap because it's a commodity product you can get anywhere. Right. So what Dr. Squatch does, and if you ever watch any of their commercials, you'll notice that in every commercial, there's always a woman going, oh, my God, you smell so good. I want to jump you right now. And so what they're really selling is sex. Right. There's this book I read a long time ago called Cashvertising. Cashvertising. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. And then there's the Life Force Eight. And there's eight emotions that if you are able to instill them into someone, you can sell anything.
10:24So it's really about less about the product and how you portray the product. And those eight emotions, the first is survival. Second is enjoyment, especially a food and beverage. Third is freedom. Number four is sex. Five is comfort. Six is the feeling of superiority, the feeling of winning. Seven is care and protection of your loved ones. And the eighth is social approval. Yep. Keeping up with the Joneses. So if you can have a compelling ad that instills any of those emotions, you can really sell anything. I mean, think of how many apparel stores there are. Think of how many jewelry stores there are out there.
11:03It's really less about the product. So don't get too hung up on that. How do you then become skilled at conveying emotion, particularly through that combination of words, imagery, design, primarily online messaging? That in and of itself is a skill set. And so many people spend years honing their craft as copywriters or as graphic designers to be able to land that skill, how can some person who's listening to this, whose background is in HR, how can they begin to acquire that skill set? I thought you were going to say engineer, because that's what I used to be. I used to be an electrical engineer.
11:51All I did was stare at my monitor all day long and not really talk to anybody. So I'm proof that it can be done. It can be learned. It's just really just practice. Once I started the business, I started just reading all these copywriting blogs. I was really horrible at it. I was creating content at the same time. So the other two prongs that I forgot to mention and how we marketed our store was I would create these wedding crafts because we had a lot of brides who wanted to do DIY stuff. So we put out these crafts that attracted Google traffic and then we started advertising online. In the course of running ads actually is when I learned a lot of these skills because what's nice about running ads is like everything is kind of automatically split tested and you know what works and what doesn't.
12:35So by changing around the copy a little bit, you can gradually find something that works. And if you do that long enough, you start becoming good at it just like any skill in life, really. Right. So it's that constant process of iteration. Yeah, exactly. That was actually as soon as you said practice, the first thing that came to mind was practice only works when you have rapid feedback about what you've just done. If you're practicing, but you're constantly just practicing the wrong thing, then all you're doing is creating muscle memory out of bad habits, out of the wrong thing. Correct. And the fact that there's money involved makes it that much more involved, right?
13:15Because you know that if you do this one thing, more money comes in, you have that feedback loop. Right, exactly. So to summarize, the A-B split testing, which is just, again, a fancy term for test two things, see which one does better, try to figure out why one did better than the other, do more of that, and then you keep just branching, branching, branching, branching, iterating the best thing over and over and over. Essentially, the takeaway is by virtue of doing that repeatedly, that was how you improved at generating those emotions. Paul, I don't know if you listened to your first podcast episodes, but I have, and they were horrible.
13:53Yeah, they were. They're absolutely terrible. Same with my YouTube channel. I literally privated some of those videos because I went back and watched them. I'm like, oh my God, these are just terrible. Yeah, a handful of my first blog posts I pulled down. I left the very, very first one on the website just for posterity and just for historical record. But many of the first ones I have pulled down. Yeah. It's just like anything in life, right? The more you do it, the better you get at it. Right. One point that I've heard you make is that when you are choosing a business idea, the day-to-day of what you're doing is going to be fairly similar regardless of the specific product that you are selling.
14:38So you, Steve, happen to be selling handkerchiefs, but you could just as easily be selling candles or soap or computers. And the daily work is actually quite similar. Yeah. I mean, e-commerce isn't complicated. When an order comes in, you got to get it out the door. And if someone complains or has questions, you got to be there to answer them. The reason why I put that in the book is because so many people just get hung up on finding an idea that they're passionate about or an idea that it's going to be the next big thing. That's why I kind of caution against being too excited about what you sell, because the day-to-day, the grind is really what you're going to be experiencing.
15:17And you have to be willing to put through and suffer through that grind in order to be successful. Tell me about your day-to-day. What does that look like? The reason why we started was the business was great so that we could time shift everything. Our kid was always up in the middle of the night or during the day we wanted to hang out. But, you know, if you have a small baby, they go to bed at like six or seven. And so the business allowed us to do all the business tasks after the child went to bed. And so in the beginning, we actually ran out of our house in the garage. Once our child went down, we would just sit there, pack and ship orders.
15:52And at the time also, we started doing customized embroidery. And my wife, she was really into embroidery. She was really passionate about it, I should say. But once we started selling it to customers, she started hating doing it. But it was such a profit center for us that I was like, hey, we can't stop doing this. So I started sewing. So I would go to work for like eight to 10 hours and then I would come home, sew for a couple hours and then go to bed. Wow. That was my schedule. Did you know how to sew prior to doing that? I did not. Do I look like someone who knows how to sew? Just pick it up.
16:29Wow. And did you burn out? Is this one of those don't burden your passion by making it feed you? Is this one of those your wife loved to sew and now she doesn't anymore? She hates it now. Here's the thing about passion. Like it kind of fades. Like I always think about it like being in a new relationship. You know, when you're really into something or a person, like you're all in and it feels great and everything. But then that eventually fades. Right. That excitement. It's the same thing about your passion. So it's better if you choose something where it's like rock solid, you're really knowledgeable about something.
17:07Because something funny happens when you start charging someone for it, it no longer becomes fun. Like I'm really into designing websites and whatnot. I would never do it for pay because that would instantly suck out all the joy from it. Right. Turns it into an obligation. Yeah. And so rather than chase passion, what you advocate is following your curiosity. What does that mean? Curiosity and what you're good at. So I'm just thinking back to when I was a kid, and I used to just do things for the hell of it, right? Because I wanted to do it, not because there was some necessary monetary aspect to it.
17:44Let's take this book. This is the perfect example. This book that I just wrote, The Family First Entrepreneur, has been on my bucket list for a long time. We know it's a lot of work, and I was always very curious what the process was like. And that's what kept me going because it took me three years to write it. And the only way you're going to be able to get through those years of the grind is if you're really into it or if you want to enjoy the process of doing it. How do you know if you like the process if you haven't tried it yet? Because often the idea, for example, of writing a book is very different than the reality of writing a book.
18:19See, this is kind of like the way I was brought up. I was brought up to kind of get used to the grind or my parents instilled in me like the grind is like regular life. So for example, I was studying the SATs in fourth grade. And while all my friends were out playing, I was sitting there studying. And I just kind of got used to that. And so my parents kind of brought me up to just realize that everything you see on Instagram is pretty much false. Instagram, you see everyone's highlight reels, they don't see you grinding away in the background. And my parents just taught me that grinding away in the background is normal.
18:53So I was really curious about the book. So I knew that if I were to start it, I was committed to it. And once I commit to something, I always follow through in general. You know, once you commit to doing something and you kind of know enough about it, like I didn't just say, hey, I'm going to write a book. I talked to a bunch of authors. I talked to a bunch of book launch coaches. I talked to the publishers and I just kind of knew what I was getting into before I started. Book Launch Coach is a perfect example of one of those forms of lifestyle business, one of those forms of self-employment, where if you no longer want to clock into your nine-to-five job, assuming that you have experience in launching books or in launching any product, that's an interesting side hustle slash career.
19:44Well, what's interesting is I was playing Super Mario Kart with my buddies the other day. And I'm not good at that game. And they were just talking so much trash. And I hate losing. So I actually looked up Super Mario Kart coaches. Really? Yes. Does it exist? And there are coaches. Yes. So any more trash talking, I might hire one of these guys and start kicking butt. Wow. But yes, there's a coach for everything. Okay. So to everyone who is listening to this podcast right now, who is great at Super Mario Kart, Reach out to Steve. Shoot your shot. Send your best pitch.
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24:33you've got this chapter in your book about how to make your first thousand dollars and you list a handful of small business ideas and one of them i noticed was apocalypse consultant ah yes i was just brainstorming ideas because people are often like hey i'm not creative i can't think of anything one exercise in that book that i did was you know i just thought of random things that we needed in our lives. And yes, one of those was an apocalypse consultant because my wife is just paranoid about global warming. She's afraid of like, you know, the wealth gap and how there's going to be just social chaos all over the place.
25:09So literally we have a barrel of water outside. We have rations like we can survive a month without anything in case there was an earthquake. There was wildfires here in California. And I was thinking to myself when we were going through this process, like we don't know what to buy. It would have been ideal if there was just someone out there. And it turns out there is actually, that just tells you what you need to buy, depending on how paranoid you are. Are you paranoia level nine out of 10, then just get this like year supply of food in your house. Yeah. Most people don't sit down and think about the problems that they have in life.
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25:46They just kind of work around their problems. But if you actually sit down, like I got lots of problems, Paula, lots of ideas that I could solve. Right now, actively right now, we're actually looking for a college consultant because we want our kids to do everything correct to get into the school that they want. How old are they? They're teenagers now. All right. So it's coming up. It is coming up. Wow. And I'm probably more stressed than they are, actually, about the whole thing. So yes, we're looking for a consultant there as well. Interesting. What other problems are you facing right now? What other problems are you dealing with that could be a potential business idea for someone?
26:29I just did an episode on this. Last time I went on vacation, my plants died, right? No one there to water them. So I was thinking if there was like a plant hotel where I could just kind of drop off my plants, they take care of it. And then when I get back, I pick them up. Why wouldn't you just hire a house sitter, somebody to come to your home and water them so that you don't have to transport them? Here's the thing. That requires more trust. That requires someone to actually physically walk into your house. And again, we're talking about apocalypse consultant here. My wife's a little paranoid about having people in the house, right?
27:01Right, right. Okay, yeah. So for the plant lover who values their privacy, there's your slogan, there's your tagline. Yeah, and you don't want to ask a friend here because they're going to be doing you a favor like coming into your house, you know, every day to water plants. It's not something I would ask them to do. Yeah. Yeah. See, and it's different in New York because New York, we all live in apartments. So it's easy to find someone who lives in the same building. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's a geographic concern as well. Yeah. You know, stupid ideas like that. I have a ton of them.
27:30Oh, here's one just off the top of my head. In California, you actually get five cents back for every can that you send back for recycling. And every time I take out the trash, I'm thinking, man, that's a lot of money I'm leaving on the table here. but yet I'm too lazy to take it over to the recycling plant. So if someone just came and collected my stuff, we'd split the revenue 50-50, I'd be down with that. Right. Let's say for someone listening, they've gone through the process of generating a bunch of ideas. They've listed out their problems and their friends' problems, their family's problems.
28:04They've come up with a handful of interesting sounding business ideas. how do they then start evaluating those ideas? We sort of kind of danced around the answer earlier when we talked about testing and validating and iterating. But let's say that these ideas are as disparate as a plant hotel, which would be a brick and mortar establishment, versus a boba shop, which is also brick and mortar, or maybe it's a food truck. Let's say these are not online businesses. These are physical localities and not something that's particularly easy to test in the way that being a chess consultant would be. What should they do?
28:48So if we want to do the plant hotel idea and you want to test that, first place I would go to right now are moms groups. My wife belongs to all these moms groups on Facebook and they talk about all sorts of stuff and they share these ideas. There's no such thing as a dad's group for some reason. But these moms groups are kicking. And so I would go in there and say, hey, don't you hate it when like your plants die while you're away and you don't want to ask your friends or whatnot? Chances are there's gonna be like, oh, yeah, I have that problem, too. I'm like, hey, I was thinking about starting this plant hotel idea.
29:19Tell you what, if you guys are willing, let's give it a try. Do you think this has legs and whatnot? And just try and see if there's any demand. And if there is, I would just clear out an area of my garage and put up, you know, lights and make it an environment, like maybe a little greenhouse, mini greenhouse or something like that. and just test the idea, really. And if it has legs, eventually you'll grow out of your garage, just like our e-commerce store grew out of our garage, and you just kind of take it baby steps that way. My friend has a 14-year-old daughter, or she was 14 years old at the time, and she was trying to make money on the side, and she's really into opossums, right?
29:56Random, right? She wanted to make opossum pins, and she went on Facebook, and it turns out there's all these opossum Facebook groups. That doesn't surprise me, but all right. Yeah. And so she just started posting her designs, ingratiating herself into the community and saying, hey, do you guys like these designs? I like sketching these. And people were like, hey, those are great. And then she said, oh, yeah, I decided to put them on some pins. If you guys want, check them out. And she pointed them over to her Etsy shop. She was making like$1 ,000 a month just selling these pins. And she was a teenager.
30:31That's a lot of money for a teenager. Yeah. I mean, almost anything can make money. Wow. That actually reminds me of a different story that you tell in your book where you talk about someone you know who sold, he makes a fairly lucrative living selling art. And what's interesting about that is that, as you mentioned, art is the type of thing that sells in part based on the reputation of the artist, which means that you have to have a brand, a reputation, a following. You choose your synonym here in order to be able to move product. And so there's that significant hurdle to getting started. Can you describe that?
31:15Yeah. So this guy is Joel Cherico. He's actually one of the very first students in my class. So I really appreciate him so much. What he does, remember, it's all about the emotions, right? So he started, he's a potter. And so he started throwing his pottery live online on Facebook, on YouTube live. And people would just sit there and watch him throw pottery. And as he's doing it, he'd say stuff like, hey, this is like one of a kind. And he'd walk him through the entire process, which if you don't know anything about pottery, it's actually quite an extensive process. And just through watching him throw the pottery, knowing that every piece is unique and how much time and effort that he puts into every piece allows him to charge premium pricing.
31:57And he's also a very personable guy. So the people watching him actually started liking him as a person, liking his story. They started knowing everything about him and they really wanted to support him. And that is how he's able to charge, you know, like$500 for a mug. I actually have a couple on my shelf right now. Wow. It's all about how people feel about you and your products that determine the price. Yeah, the show your work model, that is often the same reason that everything from a chocolate factory to the Coors beer plant, the reason that they have those factory tours is because people appreciate the product so much more when they've taken the factory tour, when they've seen how the product is made.
32:41Yeah. A lot of times it's about the person behind the product or the brand behind the product and not necessarily the product itself in a lot of cases. So what do you do for the people who are listening? What do you do if you have no personality, right? If you are shy, if you don't come across well on camera, if you have a lot of social anxiety about putting yourself on YouTube or on social media generally? It doesn't need to be video. I mean if you're shy you can just start writing. I mean that was incidentally one of the reasons why I started my blog before the YouTube channel before the podcast.
33:19I had to get the courage to do those things. And if you're a writer, you know, you can just hide behind a computer. That's what I that was my whole life for a while. I was an engineer. I just hid behind my computer. So that's why I started out blogging. Now, obviously, if you have no skills whatsoever, I don't consider that an excuse either because everyone starts out with no skills. And you just have to want it and you'll get better at it. Right. Yeah. Writing is a very tough skill to master. And we have AI now, too. So I don't know how things would have changed if AI was around when I first started.
33:49But AI certainly makes things a hell of a lot easier. Yeah, for sure. As we are talking, I'm seeing the image of the room behind you. And I noticed that you have that placard that YouTube sends you when you hit 100 ,000 subscribers. Yes, I'm proud of that placard. I know YouTube has been a big part of how you've promoted your business. Given how noisy it is, given how competitive it is, what would you tell someone who wanted to start out on YouTube today? who's maybe like that potter, maybe they're putting up videos and every video is getting 40 views, if that. Everyone is different. Everyone has a different personality.
34:32I don't even think about the competition in general today when I do anything. Like think of how many podcasts there are in this world. There's a lot of YouTube channels, but there's only one me. There's only one person like me that presents material like I do. I'm the only one with the experiences that I have. You just have to have faith that you're just going to attract a certain type of person. If you put stuff out, it will come. There's a field of dreams quote for you right there. It just, I mean, if you haven't done it yet, then you just have to believe that it's going to happen. I started the YouTube channel three years ago and it has about 225k subs.
35:13It's just all about consistency is really what it is. I told myself that I wanted to try this YouTube thing. and so I just said, hey, I'm going to put out one video a week for at least five years is what I told myself. Wow. Once again, I wanted the plaque.
35:32But good things have happened for YouTube. Actually, most of the people who find me now are through YouTube and the podcast, not necessarily the blog. So it's been really good. But if I hadn't taken a chance and committed to it, none of that would have ever happened. And again, maybe I'll let you publish one of my early YouTube videos to show everyone how bad it was. But even back when the videos were horrible, I was still attracting people. What are the biggest mistakes that you see people make when they make the pivot from their nine to five job, as you and your wife did, to going into business for themselves?
36:11I would say most people just don't follow through and here's the problem Because of social media There's all these success stories that you see out there of people hitting it rich in a short period of time Which generally is not realistic So one cut out social media and then just tell yourself that you need to follow through for at least one year Because if you have the expectation of riches within a short period of time Once that period elapses, you're probably going to give up So you have to set your time frame longer. Like for me, I don't start anything unless I'm willing to follow through with it for at least three to five years.
36:48That's my time frame because that's how long it really takes. Right. Don't listen to the success stories out there. Oftentimes they're actually fake. I've been running my podcast for almost a decade now actually. One thing that I've noticed when I interviewed these really successful people is that they're really successful in business. But as soon as you hit the stop button, you start having a real conversation. A lot of times these people are miserable. They're really stressed out, burnt out and that sort of thing. So what you see online is not necessarily representative of what's actually happening in real life.
37:23Right. So I'll tell you the true story after we hit stop here, Paula. And what do you think is the source of that stress or that burnout? I think we just get greedy. I mean, I had a similar experience. Once we saw success with our e-commerce store selling handkerchiefs, all of a sudden I developed what I call like this fever. All of a sudden I wanted to make more money, even though I'm really cheap. We don't spend much money at all. We were making way more than we spend. But all of a sudden I was moving these goalposts. We hit our goal and I'm like, okay, let's make 50 % next year. And we just kind of burn ourselves hitting these artificial goals that didn't matter.
38:04you have to know what you need and what makes you happy in life because unless you know what makes you happy you're just going to start doing everything right and so for me obviously as a title of the book family is my everything like I know how much I spend every year and what we do is we pay ourselves that money and then all of a sudden everything else is gravy and psychologically that makes me feel just good about how much we earn I used to play club volleyball it was a traveling team and my parents weren't able to travel with me because they had to work. But I remember on the sidelines, especially when I was playing well, I would look over and I'd see my friends' parents, but my parents weren't there.
38:42And I still have these memories ingrained in my head. And so today I try to hit every single one of my kids' games. I try to hit all their activities to just kind of make up for what I didn't have growing up. So your kids are teenagers. Do you have any thoughts about how your life will change when they move out? Yes. It's always been on my bucket list to start a SaaS business or a software company. And so once they're out in school and I have more free time, then I'm probably going to start something. I'm always of the belief that I'm never going to retire because I believe that you always have to be using your brain on something.
39:24And I'll be straight up. Like in my prior job, I was an engineering director of microprocessor design. And compared to that job, what I do today, which is YouTube, podcasting, e-commerce, none of what I do is rocket science. And what I used to do at my job actually was actually more mentally stimulating. So who knows? I might even go back to work. Who knows? because what I like to do requires a large team and it requires a lot of funding. Right. And you have, by the way, the most fantastic story of quitting your job. It sounded like a script straight out of office space. Will you tell that story?
40:01Yeah. Yeah. So once we started making like 8 to 10x what I was making at work, I was like, hey, this isn't really making sense for me to spend five days here every week. And so I asked my boss, hey, can I drop down to four days? And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, no problem, no problem. And then a month would pass by. I was like, can I drop down to three days? And he was like, yeah, sure. Yeah, we can probably get by three days. And then it dropped down to two. And then it dropped down to one. And that was like the ideal situation. One day out of the week, I'd go and I'd hang out with my buddies.
40:34I was kind of like an insurance policy because I was one of three main designers of the entire product that was making the bulk of the revenue for the company. So I had the power to do this. And I was basically the insurance plan. I'd sit in on meetings. And then one day my big boss left. And then a new guy came in. And he pulled me into his office and he said, Hey, Steve, I noticed you're only here one day out of the week. What exactly do you do? And at that point I didn't care. So I was just like, I'm going to be straight up with you. I don't do anything here. I am here as the insurance policy in case anything breaks.
41:08And at that point he was like, all right well that's not good and then that's what I love. I love that answer. I'm gonna be straight up with you. I don't do anything here. Well here's the funny thing is I didn't start getting promoted until I stopped caring because in the meetings I was always brought up to just work hard and people would notice you and once I stopped caring about getting fired or whatnot I used to start speaking my mind. I remember this one meeting where the boss was presenting something And I was like, that's not going to work. I don't think that's a good idea at all. Right.
41:42And everyone else was like, oh, my God, what? You know, you're embarrassing him, you know, in front of everybody. I'm like, well, I'm just telling you, I don't think it's going to work. You should probably consider doing it this way. And the more I spoke up, the more I started getting promoted. So to this day, I'm always like, hey, if you want something, you got to ask for it. And you shouldn't just be huddling there in the background. Right. You got to be noticed in order to get ahead. And that's something like very anti-Asian, actually.
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45:34All right, final question. You mentioned that you quit your job, or actually you've started reducing your days at work, when your income was eight to 10 times what you were making at your day job, that's a substantial barrier. For people who are listening, who are wondering, all right, I've got a side hustle. How do I know when it's time to quit my job? How do I know when it's time to go all in? What's that marker? It depends how you feel about your job. I actually loved my job. I was working with people much smarter than I was. And I actually liked going in. Actually, I didn't like physically going in.
46:12I liked working with them. So that's why it took me so long to quit. If you're in the opposite situation where you just want to get out of there or need to get out of there, I would probably consider quitting as soon as you start making enough to get by, really. Because once you have that extra free time, you can focus on your business. And I'm willing to bet that you'll be able to grow it a lot faster if you focus on it. Right. Well, thank you so much, Steve. Steve, where can people find you if they want to know more? Yeah, so you can find the book over at thefamilyfirstentrepreneur.com. I've included a bunch of incredible bonuses.
46:47I'm including a three-day workshop on how to get started in e-commerce, a two-day workshop on how to get started with blogging, podcasting, and YouTube. And starting in June 22nd, I'm actually doing a live six-week, what I call Family First Challenge, where I will personally help you find your next side hustle. You can also find me over at mywifequitterjob.com. I offer a free six-day mini course there as well. How do you scale personally helping each individual find a side hustle? That's done in a group. I'm going to go live and just kind of answer questions live. It works really well. Oh, wow.
47:22And it scales at the same time, right? Yeah. Wow. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me, Paula. It's been a long time.
47:35Thank you, Steve. What are the key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Here are three. Number one, if you are thinking about starting a side hustle or starting a business and you are worried that your product idea might not be quote unquote good enough, remember that much of what you're offering is not just the product itself, but also the emotional reassurance that a person is looking for. for through the product or the service that you offer. In fact, Steve Chu talked about eight major emotions that play a huge role in our purchasing decisions. There's the life force eight, eight emotions that if you are able to instill them into someone, you can sell anything.
48:28So it's really about less about the product and how you portray the product. And those eight emotions, the first is survival. Second is enjoyment, especially a food and beverage. Third is freedom. Number four is sex. Five is comfort. Six is the feeling of superiority, the feeling of winning. Seven is care and protection of your loved ones. And the eighth is social approval. Yep, keeping up with the Joneses. So if you can have a compelling ad that instills any of those emotions, you can really sell anything. I mean, think of how many apparel stores there are. Think of how many jewelry stores there are out there.
49:06It's really less about the product. So don't get too hung up on that. And so that's the first takeaway. Don't be scared of the sales part. Don't be scared of the marketing part. Remember, the product or the service that you offer carries many layers of value. And over time, you'll learn what that is. you'll learn how it connects with people and how to express that. So that's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two, people often talk about pursuing their passions, but passion can fade. What you want to do rather than follow your passion is follow your curiosity because following your curiosity is sustainable.
49:48There's always more that you can be curious about. And if your source of income, something that you're not going to burn out on, is something that fuels your curiosity, then you're always going to stay fascinated by your business. Curiosity and what you're good at. So I'm just thinking back to when I was a kid, and I used to just do things for the hell of it, right? Because I wanted to do it, not because there was some necessary monetary aspect to it. Let's take this book. This is the perfect example. This book that I just wrote, The Family First Entrepreneur, has been on my bucket list for a long time.
50:24We know it's a lot of work, and I was always very curious what the process was like. And that's what kept me going because it took me three years to write it. And the only way you're going to be able to get through those years of the grind is if you're really into it or if you want to enjoy the process of doing it. How do you know if you like the process if you haven't tried it yet? because often the idea, for example, of writing a book is very different than the reality of writing a book. See, this is kind of like the way I was brought up. I was brought up to kind of get used to the grind or my parents instilled in me like the grind is like regular life.
51:01So for example, I was studying the SATs in fourth grade. And while all my friends were out playing, I was sitting there studying. And I just kind of got used to that. And so my parents kind of brought me up to just realize that everything you see on Instagram is pretty much false. Instagram, you see everyone's highlight reels. They don't see you grinding away in the background. And my parents just taught me that grinding away in the background is normal. So I was really curious about the book. So I knew that if I were to start it, I was committed to it. And once I commit to something, I always follow through in general.
51:36You know, once you commit to doing something and you kind of know enough about it, like I didn't just say, hey, I'm going to write a book. I talked to a bunch of authors. I talked to a bunch of book launch coaches. I talked to the publishers. And I just kind of knew what I was getting into before I started. And so that's the second key takeaway. Follow your curiosity. Finally, key takeaway number three. People often underestimate the amount of time and hustle that it takes to become successful. And that can lead them to quit too early or to leave a situation or an opportunity that hasn't yet had the time to grow to its full potential?
52:15I would say most people just don't follow through. Here's the problem. Because of social media, there's all these success stories that you see out there of people hitting it rich in a short period of time, which generally is not realistic. So one, cut out social media and then just tell yourself that you need to follow through for at least one year. Because if you have the expectation of riches within a short period of time, once that period elapses, you're probably going to give up. So you have to set your timeframe longer. Like for me, I don't start anything unless I'm willing to follow through with it for at least three to five years.
52:50That's my timeframe. Because that's how long it really takes. Right? Don't listen to the success stories out there. Oftentimes, they're actually fake. I've been running my podcast for almost a decade now, actually. One thing that I've noticed when I interviewed these really successful people is that they're really successful in business, but as soon as you hit the stop button, you start having a real conversation. A lot of times these people are miserable. They're really stressed out, burnt out, and that sort of thing. So what you see online is not necessarily representative of what's actually happening in real life.
53:25Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Steve Chu, the author of The Family First Entrepreneur. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you want to support this show as well as support the mission of teaching entrepreneurship, income empowerment, and financial stability, then please share this episode or any of your favorite episodes with a friend or family member. You can share any episode through your favorite podcast playing app. While you're in that app, Please make sure that you're subscribed to this show and please leave us a review.
54:02There have been some fantastic reviews recently about a disagreement that Joe and I had on a recent episode. Thank you to everyone who left those reviews. And please, if you haven't done so, share your thoughts, leave us a review, let us know and let the world know what you think of this show. Thank you again. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything Podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode. Thank you.
From the publisher
#445: We sit down with Steve Chou, an accomplished entrepreneur who, alongside his wife, built two businesses that each bring in seven figures – and gives them the freedom to spend more time with their kids.
We delve into the challenges he faced in the early stages of his business and how he overcame these obstacles.
Additionally, Steve opens up about the personal and emotional aspects of running a business. He candidly discusses the fears, doubts, and sacrifices he and others have encountered during this transformational journey, emphasizing the importance of resilience and avoiding the comparison trap.
Whether you're contemplating leaving your job to start your own venture or simply seeking inspiration from a seasoned entrepreneur, this episode with Steve Chou is a must-listen.
For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode445
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