Behind The Scenes of Our Copreneur Journey with Heather Fier [Part 1]

They look and they're like, I want to make millions of dollars. Like, it's like this vague, obscure thing. And really, to me, it was figuring out, like, monthly recurring revenue. What does it need to be to know all the things we want to do, the lifestyle we want to live is good. Once that was there and I could step back and go, oh, in the future, there will be enough.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear, and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy, and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. We're back again with my best friend, my wife of 13 years. But what, we've been together for 16. Something like that.

That's correct.

Is that. Is that correct? Okay, good. Who's counting?

I can confirm that it has been 16.

Okay, okay, okay. So I'm bringing this lovely lady back on the podcast because of the. All the demand and all the messages and all the smoke signals from everyone around the world said, bring Heather back. Bring Heather back. Right?

Oh, I bet I've been seeing the smoke signals outside. It's a little dangerous. Guys, we're in California. We can't have.

It's not wildfire season, so I think we're all right, but.

Okay, we'll be good.

We don't need to date this episode. All right, so this one, you know, we had an episode release with Heather, what, like, last week at the time of this recording, and it was great. We did have a lot of great feedback, and I want to showcase more of what Heather has done and actually who she is, because we didn't really go into your story or our story because we've been at this for 16 years as a couple, but also as copreneurs, entrepreneurs who basically are a couple that run the same business. But we also have been running other businesses as well. So we figured we would walk through what Heather has done and focus on what you've done in your experience, because she was doing Running some companies, growing stuff before I ever even got into doing my own thing in business. So you have been my muse and inspiration in many ways. It's true. And I still, you know, we're. We bounce ideas off of each other all the time in business. So, like in this episode, we'll dive into what you've been doing, how we got here together with an emphasis on you. And then also we'll talk about six ways that we have found our best to copreneur. And these are ways that we have navigated business and life as a couple and keep our sanity happily, you know, have a relationship as well that's loving with the family, albeit a crazy adventure along the way, which we'll talk about and how we've kept ease in our brains as best as possible. Hasn't always been easy, though. Definitely not, right?

No. That would be a lie that it's been easy. Easy.

No.

But we made it here, baby. We made it here.

We made it here. And we got many more years to go. Let's go back 16 years ago and I guess I'll just briefly say, yeah, like Heather and I knew each other back in middle school. Of all things, I thought she was pretty hot. And still think that she thought the same. Yes, you can.

Oh, yes, I will confirm that I love Joe's bowl cut.

I didn't have a bowl cut.

You're parted down the middle.

I did have some weird hair phases. Middle school is an awkward years.

Yeah, the bleach tips. It was late 90s, people.

I had glasses. I. Yeah, I drank a lot of Coca Cola at the time, so I was a little pudgy.

Yeah, he was cute though. I had good vibes about him. But then, you know, at the end of eighth grade, he left to a different high school and he didn't ever sign my yearbook.

Poof. It's true. She wanted me to sign her a yearbook. I didn't remember this until she told me and still haunts me with this. And I went on a road trip and wasn't even at the middle school graduation. Sorry. I was making memories, not writing them down, I guess. But I can write it after this if you want. Does it still count?

No. We were decades too late now.

Dang it. All right, so let's go back. So well, okay. Sixteen years ago, right before that, or so we. We remit. Because I was doing all sorts of things. I was in college. You were just graduating from UCLA in three years. This chick is so efficient. It's crazy. I was more like. Felt like 20 years, I think.

You did the six year track, honey.

It was something like that, yeah. And would I do it again? Yeah. So around that time I was looking for some extra work. I was starting to do some things online. Matt and I were working at his parents shutter company. And on the side we would do some blogging and we had a couple blogs. We were starting to make a little bit of cash. It was honestly around the same time you and I met and I wanted some extra side cash. And I had, I think I had like two other jobs actually. I was working at a construction company in an office too. And then like on the side you are, I would do these demos is what called them. How about we tell the world what demos are and what you were doing as a business?

Yes. We were not a demo company that tore down rooms. No, no, not that type of demo. We were demo people who you see at Costco. So we did work with Costco. Our company specifically worked with natural food and organic products. It was a company that was started when I was in early high school. My mom started it as like a side job for herself and it just sparked. I mean it was perfect timing. The natural food industry started booming. She got in with Sprouts, with Whole Foods, several chains that over those next, like the next decade got pretty huge. So in high school I started going and doing the demos myself. It was a great little high school side job. And then through college, I helped to expand the company up into la. It got pretty busy. I was like spending every weekend recruiting people, training people, driving all around la, which was not like the best way to spend your college years. I definitely could have had a little more fun in there, but, you know, was efficient with the business. And then once I graduated, I had intended to go back to grad school and got into grad school and deferred for a year. And then I came home to help my mom get systems in place because I was watching this business grow. And of course in my naive mind, my early 20s, I'm like in a year I should be able to like get the systems in place. This business will be cranking a ton of money out. I can just like maybe get a little profit, profit share with my mom and help her help me then go off to grad school. Well, fast forward decade plus later, I was there still running this business. We had expanded to national level. We had contracts all over the country with stores. It was pretty incredible. We had like thousands of events happening each month. But it was a business that like looking back, was Very small margins, a ton of work. Honestly, managing that many people is something that will probably always give me nightmares to think back on. It was so stressful. Way too many people to manage to go where. Back to where I'm at. Joe, he worked for me, so he.

Yeah, I was dating the boss.

Well, he, you know, eventually he. He did end up he snagged the boss, but it was. At first I trained him. I'm like, oh, this is a cute guy. I remember him from middle school. And then we started running together, training for marathons, and then everything else, you know, grew from there. He was very curious about how running a business worked, and he was very excited about entrepreneurship. So it was a really cool thing. As we started dating that. That was a very central aspect to what we discussed and what we were excited to kind of share with each other. Um, so, yeah, from the beginning, we were in the entrepreneur zone.

Yeah, being an entrepreneur couple, I think from the get go probably helped because we had kind of this shared vision of where at least, like, how we would want to work and how we'd want to structure our days. I was also getting influence from Matt's parents, you know, and they were entrepreneurs for a long time. And I learned a lot of how, like, that style business works. You know, that was brick and mortar factory, but also, like systems and operations and things like that. And then working with you and also just chatting with you and understanding what you do for work with your mom over there and that massive team that you built, I was like, oh, my God, okay, this is what you can do. I think in my mind, I want. I was like, I don't want to do a lot of the things that have razor thin margins or require a bunch of people in a factory to produce things. Like, I want to do something more scalable. That gives me a lot of leverage in lifestyle. And I believe you had the same kind of vision with that as well. So I know eventually your demo company with your mom transitioned into not being a demo company anymore. I mean, like, a lot of things, things happen with the market conditions. We don't need to go through all the details. Maybe that's a future episode. But point is, your. Your focus moved away from that to doing more of your own thing, which that transition from an established company of, you know, what was it, 15 years or something like that, the. The demo company to doing your own thing. And I believe you started off by writing a book, and that book has now, like, opened up this whole new thing that you're doing in business. Now, but it took a lot of years, of course, to develop a lot of stuff in between. But let's talk about that transition.

Sure. Yes. I was tired of trying to squeeze juice out of a potato. It felt like with that old business, I mean, truly, there was just nothing. Like you could only do so much. You could scale it more and more, but there wasn't profit. And then we hit. Just to explain what happened briefly, we hit the wall of an Amazon buyout. Amazon bought Whole Foods. They immediately shut down the whole program. That was our biggest, like, revenue source. We had other chains we were working with, but once that company made that big change, everything kind of folded up. Like literally the entire industry within like six months was completely gone and had gone from a seven figure business that was booming to like crickets. That was pretty intense in that transition, you know, I was like, well, what else am I going to do? What skillset do I have? What I was planning with those demos were like little mini events. Uh, I had had a lot of friends who realized I was good at organizing things and events. And so at some point in there, gosh, maybe 10 plus years ago now, friends had started asking me to help them with wedding planning. Like, it's a pretty big jump from like sampling foods in a grocery store to weddings, it seems. But the logistics and organization and whatnot is actually pretty similar. A lot of communication with vendors and different parties. So I had started like side hustling, moonlighting, planning weddings, coordinating weddings. And when things dried up in the main business, I was like, well, shoot, I do enjoy wedding planning and I do see that the wedding planning industry really does not respect people who are planning weddings on a budget. That was the big pain point. I noticed that most of my friends were planning weddings for under 15 grand. We planned a wedding for under 10 grand. And if you went and looked at like mainstream wedding industry stuff, like they literally tell you it is impossible to plan a wedding under 30 ish grand. So that kind of rubbed me the wrong way and inspired me to start writing, giving tips and ideas for how people can make that happen, make their dreams happen without going overboard on their finances. Wrote the whole book, planned an online expo at Joe's suggestion from some of the stuff that's been on this podcast. And with all that, it opened up connections that have now spurred on an entire new business. That's just super exciting.

Yeah, it's been so exciting to watch you do that too. Because something over the years, like, I feel like Heather was a big inspiration for me to understand business At a deeper level, especially on the strategic and systems level, like how that can scale into something big. Because I saw that with your demo company, but also realized, okay, there's other things I would do to structure it differently and a different business model. But the fact is, like, there's core things I learned from you and then from me, I would say you. You were introduced to a bunch of new people from the marketing community. These different conferences, masterminds and meetups that I would have locally or I would travel to, and some of those you would attend, or at least I would talk your ear off all day and night about what I learned and what you should try in your business. And I would get all excited and blah, blah, blah. But then you would combine that into. And that's like where the book came from. Yeah. And the online expo, that was not like it was a chilling time of our lives or your life either. Like, you were going through a bunch as a woman and as a couple. I don't know if you want to chat about some of those details because I feel like these are the bits that aren't talked about so much in business especially. We haven't really on this podcast much, but it's the real stuff. It's stuff I want to bring on more with. With women specifically starting a business or maybe like with a husband or a partner or maybe no partner, single.

So, yeah. So the timing of my prior company, the demo company, with my mom closing down, was pretty much dead alignment with when our foster daughter reunified, which was a really, really hard transition for us. She had been with us a year and a half. We loved her. At points we thought we were going to adoptions. Her family rallied and is so strong and showed up for her and she ended up reunifying, which is the goal of foster care. So we were very happy with that. But also, like, personally, it was a pretty emotional time. So I think. So starting to write the book was also kind of. I think cathartic might be the right word for me, that I just saw that I was pouring energy. I had just a ton of space and energy and creativity to pour into this project. And the book just like, poured out of me and was very healing that I was like, cool, I'm making an impact. I'm going to help people with this. Like, it was just kind of this positive thing for me to work on. At the same time, we had recently done our second round of IVF and. And had an embryo transfer finally take. And so at some point there, while I was Writing this book and finishing launching the book. I was finally pregnant, which was super exciting. And during that pregnancy I felt pretty pressured by myself to make something of this. Like the traction started happening with the book. I think I had like 20 or 25,000 people got on my email list really fast. Cuz I just gave the book away for free in Facebook groups. I was like, here, free information, I want to help you. Then had this huge email list and was like, well shoot, I got to monetize this, so what do I do? I created this online expo. During that time, it was like all hands on deck. Like I was learning how to do all these new skills, putting this together, having Joe help me, other friends, like whoever I could rally to, like get this done in time before this baby got here and launched the expo, launch some programs that I could monetize. Did that all during the pregnancy. And so it was pretty exciting and a little stressful. But like, mostly for me, I kind of get juiced off of that sort of excitement. So I was having a pretty good time with it.

I'd say it definitely gave you a timeline of when you had to get your shit done. Right. We are kind of weirdos in a way where we like to stack a lot on our plates. And this is why again, the reason why finding our own enough in business and life is a big theme of this podcast. And that's thanks to our, obviously our experiences combined. But at the same time, we do get it through. And I know you got a lot of thrill out of creating this book, publishing it, growing your email list, and also doing that online expo, because that was almost like your form of connecting with people in the industry, in this industry that you didn't really have any connections. And I know that lights both of us up is when we figure out the pieces, like we start connecting the dots. You already knew the problem that you were trying to solve in the wedding space, which is essentially helping people plan a wedding at a budget that's lower than what everyone says is possible, which is bs. And you've proven that many times. And then you got connected with all these people in that industry that have, like, some have become business partners, some have become affiliate partners, and all these other strategic partners that you now can leverage in so many different ways. And yeah, and you did that while pregnant, obviously still maintaining a relationship with our foster daughter as well, and so many other things mixed in there that we don't need to go into all the details. But tell us what that became. You know, your wedding hacker is what it was called, that's still the book title, if you want to go check it out at Amazon. The Wedding Hacker. I'll plug your stuff for you. You're welcome. And talk about what that morphed into and what you're doing now in business.

Yes. So one of the folks who joined me on the Wedding Hacker Expo, that was the name of the event, was Jamie Wolfer. And she was a youtuber who I saw and was impressed by and had a bit of a following at the time, maybe 20,000 subscribers. She shared a bunch of information that was really in alignment with what I was doing. And so I invited her to be a guest on the expo and speak and she was thrilled. We hit it off right away and slowly what we decided to do was start a podcast about working in the wedding industry with kind of business minded guidance. And then from there it became clear to me that she had just such charisma and was great on camera. Just so such a powerhouse in that way. But on the back end of running the business, there was some skill sets that I had that she didn't. And so it was just a really good match. Over about a year and a half period, we partnered up on promoting a course she had created. It turned into a membership community. We have our wedding planning course, we have a mastermind now for wedding planners. We do a bunch of affiliate marketing. We have some pretty substantial partnerships with some wedding industry brands now. Sponsorships, just, it's, it's grown in ways like I don't think either of us really anticipated. But it's awesome because unlike squeezing juice from a potato, this, this is a sponge, man. This business is great. Very, very good margins and really providing for both of our families. Both of us are moms and our priority is to not spend all of our time working. It's to create really great content, support our community, help these couples, but like make enough money to be happy and focused on our families. And so for me, this has been a transition of being really kind of a workaholic to learning to chill out and like lean into the best things in the business, the most financially lucrative or optimized for my time. And luckily I've had some heroes come in recently. I've had Dan Ryan helping me.

Oh snap, you got a shout out. Dan.

Yeah, he is a hero. And Tina, you know, you two know who you are and you are heroes at helping us optimize everything.

And Tina is coming on the podcast very soon and we'll try to get Dan as well. But you know, he's being dean.

Yeah, he's a hard get and get that guy's time. But yeah, they, they both have come in and helped us optimize even more. So I think the sky's the limit on this business. Truly. It's an industry that is huge and we're just a tiny fish in that industry still. But, you know, it's going well and it's really exciting. So I've loved that experience. Yeah. But for me, it was a somewhat painful experience. Moving from being a workaholic to chilling out. Strangely, like, people are always like, oh, that's going to be so easy. You don't have to work as much. It was really hard because I was so in the habit of go, go, go, feeling like I was valuable because of my amount of production. I guess, like, my output was very tied to how I felt about myself. So in the era where I had a newborn, I would be getting up at like 4am, nursing her while I'm on our website doing things like I was just doing too much and slowly burnt myself out there for a little bit when she was young and realized like, I cannot continue like this. And that was a painful transition, but a very, very good transition and growth for me.

So, yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah. I mean, there's. I think this is a good background of what you have done over the years. I've been waiting to. Waiting. You've been patiently waiting to come onto this podcast and talk about it. Because I know a lot of the folks listening, like some of the names you just mentioned, but also there's so many other friends, family, colleagues, business partners, partners, like, whatever. Like, there's a lot of folks that have been asking to have you on the podcast and so happy that we've gone into that because there's. There's a lot of lessons that you've taught me. I've taught you. We've done this thing together the whole time. So coprenuring. That's a term I learned when we. We spoke to my old entrepreneur class at University Cal State San Marco, Shout out cougars.

And my professor there, Ben Cherry, who's awesome. And I don't know if he's listening, but I might just share this with him because it's been a while. That's when we learned of the term copreneur. And I remember you and I, it was probably, I don't know, it feels like 10 years ago. I'm not probably was. We. We spoke to that entrepreneurship class about how we do that. And I feel like we've learned a lot more since that time because we were babies. We were novices in business then. At least the coprenuring thing. So this was a sneak peek into what? Well, I guess the history and and let's do a round two a second parter to this because we have. I know I kind of teased it in the front. I don't know if I'll cut that out potentially or I'll just say, hey, go to this next episode. I'll split it out. I'll try to release it quickly so you're not hanging on too much. But you'll learn six ways that we've been copreneuring that have been updated since the last time we Talked about this 10 years ago to a bunch of kids in a class essentially. So yeah, tune in very soon for that. And Heather, is there anything else you'd like to sign off with before we do that episode?

I don't really have anything else to say, but this is exciting to be here and hopefully some of this journey I've shared is helpful to those listening. I feel like, you know, to me it's just this is just the life that I've lived. It's nothing that exciting or unusual. But I do think being an entrepreneur is a bit unique and can feel very isolating at times, especially if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of entrepreneur friends. So I'm hoping that those of you listening who are maybe in that boat, you know, we can be friends. I'm your your friend on a podcast that also has gone through a lot of these challenges, transitions that are really hard or maybe feeling a bit isolated at moments, having other people who are just working that 9 to 5 like not understand what the heck all this entrepreneurship is.

Ha ha. So what's I want to. Okay, maybe there's one last question and this is something that will come up often and this was with your help suggestion is how did you find you're enough? And obviously is in progress but from being a workaholic, a go go go. Someone who's like uber efficient at everything and wanting to do everything at once. Not saying that went away, but now you have figured out how to tame that beast inside your mind. How have you figured out what enough is for you, for us, for the future as well. Knowing that this mind isn't going anywhere but you're. You've done some things to to change.

That's a great question. You should use that on all your podcast episodes. I wonder who thought of it.

But seriously, Chat GPT no, just kidding.

You did. I know, I know. It is. It is a work in progress. I think that's very true. But the. The biggest thing that was a shift for me from when we were younger and just going, going, going, and I didn't really have a North Star of where I was going towards. I think that was the big shift for me is to really figure out what am I trying to create for myself. What does an ideal day look like, what makes me feel good and what doesn't? And I had a lot of trouble with that because for a long time, that sense of, like, excitement slash anxiety slash, like, enthusiasm that comes with business and new ideas and wanting to pursue something that seems fun and thrilling, that felt good. But then it got to the point where I was like, no, this actually is kind of uncomfortable sometimes. This is, like, too much. I'm too juiced. I need downtime. And once I started realizing the balance I needed to find there of what activities each day kind of was the secret sauce that, for me felt like a great day. That was step one. Step two, I think, was figuring out in detail how much money we actually need to make. I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't do. They. They look and they're just like, I want to make millions of dollars. Like, it's like this vague, obscure thing. And really, to me, it was figuring out, like, monthly recurring revenue. What does it need to be to know all the things we want to do, the lifestyle we want to live is good. Like, we're covered. We're putting money away for future years. Like, everything is on a system. And once I figured that out and set that system up and there is maintenance to that system because it shifts and costs go up and things change, and so we have to keep checking in on it. But, like, once that was there and I could step back and go, oh, in the future, there will be enough there. I'm not having to have any sense of lack. There's. There's plenty being stacked up there. I have enough now to go do all the things that are important priorities to me. And now anything that's coming in above this is just upside. It's. It's awesome. Once I figured that out, it really took the strain off where I didn't feel like I had to be in, like, 10th gear. I don't even think there are 10 gears, but I would.

I would feel you driving, like, a semi truck or something.

Yeah, I. That's the gear I would be in, like, full, full throttle all the time. And then once I realized, like, oh, I can just kind of stay at a nice, even cadence that actually I feel good doing and I'm gonna hit those goals, it took all that anxiety away. It made it a lot easier, and then it was just more open space to, you know, enjoy life.

Go figure. We should enjoy life, huh? All right, well, these were great tips, and thank you. I learned a lot.

Thanks for having me.

You're very welcome. Let's do a round two. And you listening. You should keep a lookout for that round two episodes about the six ways that we ho preneur and how that might help you in your relationship and business could also be just a business partner relationship as well. But you'll see. You'll see what's coming up. We got some good stuff, so thank you, Heather. All right, all right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun, and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the hustle and Flowchart podcast, and I will see you next time.