MBA2309 Extended Interview with Steve Chou: How to Make 2+Million Dollars per Year Working Only 20 Hours per Week

You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I could start my day with my perfect breakfast. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit it finally is. This won't last forever, so go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Ba da ba ba ba. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. This episode is sponsored by Time Doctor Measure and improve productivity wherever your people work. With accurate and employee friendly time and activity tracking, you can your staff to work from the office, home or anywhere else with total peace of mind. Time Doctor gives you detailed in depth analytics for a real time view of you and your team so you can manage productivity, engagement and staff attrition in your business. So why wait? Go ahead and join over half a million happy customers and unlock the power of visibility, accountability and productivity with Time Doctor. We've been using Time Doctor in our own business for weeks now and I can't wait to share with you how it's going to be and why Dr. Is here to stay in our business. Start a free trial today. Visit Time Doctor's website over at www.timedoctor.com. again start a free trial at timedoctor.com to get started. Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Business lessons you can count on. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started my co founder back in 2014. Just a quick announcement before we jump into today's episode. Just in case you missed it, Episodes now will be published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays every single week. This gives you the opportunity to listen to every episode and give you a day in between to implement what you learned. And of course we have 2,300 business lessons in our archives for you to dig in. Just make sure you follow the show so you have access to our back catalog. Today's episode is a special extended interview episode with my buddy and highly successful entrepreneur Steve Chu. Steve Chu is the host of the popular podcast My Wife Quit Her Job as well as the highly successful blog and website mywifequit. Her job Dot com. And in today's episode, through our conversation together, he's going to share how you can earn $2 million plus a year working only 20 hours a week. Steve is a little bit of an expert on this through his own life experience. In fact, he just published a book called the Family First Entrepreneur and it's all about not ever having to choose between making money and spending time with your family. In our conversation together, we learn a little bit about Steve's story, how he became who he is today and how you too can be a Family first entrepreneur and spend more time enjoying life and not just worrying about the business. Super excited to share this conversation with you. Steve is an old friend, so it was a real open and honest conversation. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business as we're going to learn in today's conversation with Steve Chu. Several years ago, Steve's wife quit her job and that's where the name of his blog comes from in his podcast, My Wife quit her Job. She quit her job to spend more time raising a family, being more present for their kids. This means Steve needed to come up with a business that can support both of them. That business is Bumblebee Linens. These are wedding handkerchiefs. Super niche and a booming business. This is a seven figure e commerce store that him and his wife actually started working on. A few years later, they found themselves right where they started, consumed with work and not focused on their family. This was a wake up call for Steve and he was like, I gotta do something about this. So he created some rules, some systems in his business so that he can still continue to make money but still have plenty of time to spend with his family. This has been a passion for him for several years and that's why he wrote the book the Family First Entrepreneur. So we're going to jump into the conversation with Steve. We're going to learn a little bit about his background, how he got started and how is he doing this. How is he able to make money while not working crazy hours? Let's jump into the conversation with Steve Chu. Steve Chu, awesome to have you man. How's everything going?

What's up, Omar? So happy to be here.

I know you're an old time friend. We've known each other for years. I feel like you're one of those people like once we see each other again, it's like time hasn't passed. It's pretty cool. I remember we hung out in Fincon back in 2015. Remember that?

Yep. Of course.

That was A. Yeah, go ahead.

What's funny about you and Nicole is that you guys are goofy and silly. So I felt right at home. Like, I think you busted on me the first time we met, and I was like, okay, I like this guy.

Yes. Because I just feel like business is hard as it is. It's serious as it is. You don't have to make it harder by being too, too hard on yourself and serious and buttoned up. You know, I. I'm a big believer in humor. I was the youngest in my family growing up. I have two older sisters. So I used to use humor growing up to, like, break the tension. I used to make jokes to kind of like somebody who's in trouble or my dad's in a bad mood or something like that. You know, immigrant parents, of course dad's in a bad mood, so that's the default. But. But that's, that's a story for another day. But yeah. And I think that what makes our relationship interesting is because you're in a world that I really respect because, you know, you run a really successful E commerce business. You teach people how to run great E commerce businesses. I was an E commerce. I had an E commerce store. One of my first businesses in 2010. I had custom tailor clothing for men. And I got out of that business because I just hated that business model. I was just like, I don't want to deal with stock. I don't want to deal with, you know, inventory. But then I see people like you that make it work. Right. And I want to start off a little bit about E commerce and things like that. But before we get into all that, right. I'm going to talk about, like, the challenges of that. The. The common mistakes people see when it comes to growing that kind of business and balancing their life and all that kind of stuff. But I talked a little bit about my family growing up. I want to learn a little about where. Where did you grow up? Your parents are immigrants, right? They, they.

They are first generation. Yep.

And where, whereabouts from?

Yeah, so I grew up in Potomac, Maryland, and my parents actually, they have an interesting story. My dad actually left his entire family from mainland China to go to Taiwan by himself, and then he made it over to the U.S. my mom had a kushier life. She. She went to Taiwan University and came over here on like a research fellowship. But I was brought up always from the start to the finish to just go to a good college. You know how it is. No more. Yeah, go to a good college, find a good job, work there. For the rest of your life? Yep, essentially. And I never. To be honest with you, I never really thought about starting a business, but I. The hand was kind of forced upon me when my wife told me she wanted to quit to take care of our kids. And that was the start.

I love it. I love it. And so my parents, they immigrated from Egypt. They came to the States in the late 60s. Me and my sisters were born here. My mom actually came first, then my dad came after because he had to close some things off in Egypt. And it's. People don't realize this. Like, people think like immigrants. They come to, you know, the West, America, the uk, Whatever, Australia, and they think, like, you know, they just slip into society and everything's easy for them, and, you know, they just take all the benefits and, like, no, like, my. My parents, they came. They didn't recognize their degrees. Like, they're college graduates in Egypt, and they didn't recognize their degree in Egypt. They had to redo their education while making money, while getting, like. My mom is a. She was a graduate. She was a registered dietitian. She had to be an elevator operator, right. For her first few years so she could pay for her college so she can learn a new language. She doesn't know anybody. She doesn't. She has to figure everything out. Where do I get groceries, where to get a haircut, where do I, you know, get my driver's license? It's like, it's real survival, right? So if that's, you know, our parents are experiencing that. This is a commonality I have with people that grew up with, you know, their. Their first generation, Their. Their parents are. Are immigrants. Is that like, when your parents have done all that, then you come into the picture. You're born, you're. You're being raised by them. Like, you have no excuses. Like, what are you talking about? Get on the bus, go to school, and if you get me a baby, you're grounded. That's it. You know, like, and it's just. That's how it is. And that's the standard, and that's normal for us. Right? And then.

It absolutely is.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you go over Jimmy's house, and it's just like, wow, they have all this great stuff. Everything works. Oh, my God. They don't. They don't reuse their. Their Ziploc bags. They don't, you know, like, all that kind of stuff.

They use the dishwasher. Oh, my God.

I know. It's not a dish rack. So how. How much of that environment Growing up has helped you be resilient as an entrepreneur and how much of it is just who you are as a person?

I was actually, I just had a conversation with somebody about this because I believe that I, I, I don't want to say I suffered because I had it much easier than my parents, but my dad was always like, suck it up, just do it. So I studied for the SATs when I was in the fourth grade so I could get into this nerd camp. I think you had to get like a thousand in like the fifth grade in order to qualify. And then ever since, I've always been pushed to do stuff to get good grades. And part of the reason was because my brother was so damn smart. I think I blame it on him. He got like 1550 or something like that on his first try. And he went to Harvard, he went to Harvard Law and now he's a judge. And I just had to follow in these footsteps and it was really hard for me.

Right. And I, I definitely resonate with that. You know, learning the SATs in fourth grade, people don't realize, like, why, why would they do that to their son? What's going on here? And the best way for me to explain that is a great joke by Ronnie Chang, who's a great comedian. I'm a big fan of comedy. And he talks about America being like the NBA. Like, you made the league, right? And like your parents are like, you can't mess this up. Like, we brought you to the NBA. You got to train hard, you got to do everything. You can watch your diet, your nutrition. It can't be like going to the clubs, right? And, and that's exactly the mentality. Like, your parents are just like you. Like, I didn't come here and mess around, right? I leave my family and all my friends and my respect and my prestige and my job and my mother tongue language so that you can go ahead and skip school. Like, you know, like, it's a lot of people, they don't get it, but it's all about perspective. And, and I really do feel like I am really lucky. I feel so lucky. I grew up in that environment because I like not working hard sounds so weird to me. Like, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, if I sold my business today, I'd be like, what, what do I work on next? Not well. How am I going to relax and waste my time or, or waste my money? Like, it's just so there's something about that that just gets built in when you're Young that I feel very lucky. What was like your first entrepreneurial experience? Was it your, your wife quitting her job and you starting a business, or did you do something on the side when you were younger or what?

When I was younger, I used to sell throwing stars, if you want to go back that far. And then people would play around with it and throw them. And then I just collect them off the ground and then sell them again. But my first real thing that was making money was I used to do Craigslist, ebay, arbitrage. And at the time, I was just messing around. I knew a lot about computers because that's my background. So I would just go on Craigslist, find people who are moving out, buy all their computer equipment, strip it apart and sell them for pieces. And that ended up making me, you know, around 1500amonth at. At the height for doing very little work. Yeah.

And I love these examples because I did arbitrage as one of my first business ideas. I sold rare Air Jordans back when, before it was cool. This is like 2001, 2002, where I did, I would find somebody who's looking for a certain pair and then find them on. I'll do all the legwork and then sell to them and make the cut, make the difference. And I was like, this is easy money. So I didn't understand why everybody's not doing this. And I just realized, oh, because it's hard work and most people don't want to do this. Most people don't want to be on looking for shoes and trying to find and make margins and shipping it out and doing all this while having a job, you know. But I love these stories of side hustle because I think they're really important because they help you start to discover what kind of entrepreneur you want to be, what business you want to be into. Was there ever like a venture or a business or an idea that didn't pan out and you're just like, u turn, let's do something else.

You know, what's funny is I don't think I've ever had an outright failure where I had to stop. I think even with this E commerce store, what we first started doing didn't quite work out, but then we just pivoted and pivoted. And I don't go into anything unless I'm going to follow through on it for at least three years, three to five years. Usually I won't start something because maybe it's the way I was brought up, but my dad always taught me if you're going to do something, you got to give it some time. So anything I do, I'm committed to it for many years. And I think during that period of many years, if you stick at something and try new things, sooner or later you'll find something that works. I love it.

Okay, I'm going to roll up my metaphorical sleeves here because I want to kind of pull back the current on your life and your business. So your main business, you guys have an e commerce store that sells wedding supplies, correct?

Wedding handkerchiefs.

Very niche.

I love it. Yes. Very niche.

Okay, so two main businesses, right?

There's Bumblebee Linens, which sells handkerchiefs and linens. And then the. The other side is the content business, which is a completely different business where I teach others e commerce. I also run an annual event, YouTube channel, podcast, you name it, right? Two distinct businesses.

But Bumblebee started first, correct?

Correct. Bumblebee started first.

This episode is sponsored by Time Doctor. Measure and improve productivity wherever your people work. We've been using Time Doctor in our own company for about two months now, and we've been sharing the experience along the way on the podcast every single week. And this is our last installment. So the first thing I want to say is Time Doctor is here to stay in our business. When we started out, we told Time Doctor we're not sure how this is going to go. We're going to give it a go for three months, but I can tell you right now that we are absolutely sold. We're going to keep Time Doctor even though we're actually building a in person team here in Sydney as a part of our bigger remote team. But everybody's still going to use Time Doctor because we've learned a ton about how we work, how to be more efficient, how to best serve our customers when things are busy, how to make sure team members are not overworked. And there's work life balance, how to use real data in front of us to make decisions. For example, via the data, I now know how much time I'm spending on product and I need to spend a little bit more time in that department. We changed some of our customer service shifts around to serve a busier time, to lower our first response time. We even made some tough decisions and some key hires because of this data. And here's the bottom line. You can't make real solid decisions if you don't have the numbers to make those decisions with. And if you're not tracking how you're working, then you're just guessing and that's just the truth. And it kind of hurts because I know for years I was not doing that. But there's no reason to cry over spilled milk. So let's just make sure doing the right thing moving forward. And that's why I encourage you all to give Time Doctor a try. Even if you just get started by tracking your own time and then roll it out to your whole team. Join half a million happy customers, including me, and unlock the power of visibility, accountability and productivity with Time Doctor by starting a free trial today. Visit Time Doctor over@timedoctor.com to get started. And if you're wondering how Time Doctor got started, we're going to have one of the co founders, Liam Marin, on the show to learn about the Time Doctor story and how they built this amazing business. You've made it on time for the McDonald's breakfast menu. You think to yourself, finally, I could start my day with my perfect breakfast. But what if breakfast could be even more perfect with the hot honey sausage egg biscuit? It finally is. This won't last forever, so go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Ba da ba ba ba. Valentine's planning starts now. Get ahead of the game with 1-800-Flowers xoxo sale and save 20% on gifts for the ones you love. For 50 years, 1-800-Flowers has made Valentine's special by delivering millions of high quality roses with unmatched reliability. Right now, save 20% on premium bouquets, all backed by their seven day freshness guarantee. This Xoxo sale ends February 5th, so don't wait. Save 20% at 1-800-flowers.com sxm that's 1-800-flowers. Com sxm. So my question is that when you started Bumblebee, was it just like, I need to make a buck or were you like, I'm going to design the perfect business where my lifestyle and my happiness comes first and my family. And it's going to take me a few years. But this is like the road map or did you figure it out as you went about and started the business?

No, absolutely not. It was kind of created out of panic. So we live in the Silicon Valley, which is very expensive. You pretty much need two incomes and a, you know, in order to get a good house in a good school district. And when my wife told me she wanted to quit her job, she was making six figures at the time and I was fully on board with having her stay at home because when I grew up, because our parents work so hard, I didn't get to see him as much as I would have liked. I used to play club volleyball. We were talking about that before we started hitting record. And I would go travel to these tournaments and I played really well. And I'd look over on the sideline, and my parents weren't there a lot of times, whereas my friend's parents were. And so I was really on board with that. And so we just had to search for ways to replace that income. And we had a couple of ideas that didn't quite pan out. Like, we wanted to do this food prep place where people go and they pack their food and take it home. We also thought about opening a Kumans, which is like a study prep, which is mostly Asian clientele, I would say. And then we settle on the handkerchiefs, because we had this need when we first got married. And our goal in the beginning really was $60,000. Like, if we can make $5,000 a month, we'll be good. And we had a backup plan. In the worst case scenario, we would just live off of my income and, you know, tone down our lifestyle. Or worst case scenario, my wife would just go back to work.

Okay, so it was like, let's make a buck. And I, And I like the fact that you're being honest about this because a lot of. And another thing I want to extract from that story is a lot of the successful entrepreneurs that I know personally, they don't overthink things. They're just like, hey, this worked for me. I'm gonna try it. This is a need I have. I'm scratching my own itch. If it doesn't work out, I'll pivot. They don't spend six months, you know, creating a one page business plan or whatever you want to call it, you know, asking their friends and family, do you think this is a good idea? They don't, like, you know, play business on the Internet, on Twitter and on Facebook and kind of like, you know, try to crowdsource some. Some price points. You rolled up your sleeves and said, let's just get it going and see what happens. And I think that there's. That's a very missing element, especially in new entrepreneurs where they take action. You have to take action because you're not going to have all the information. And the only way you're going to get all the information is. Is to take action. What are some of the first lessons you learned when you took action, when you started that business?

Yeah, so here's how it all started. Well, my wife, when we were engaged to get married, she knew she was going to cry at the wedding. And we paid all this money for photography. She didn't want to be seen drying her tears of joy with ratty tissues. And we looked all over the place for hankies. We couldn't find any except for these factories in China. But the minimum order quantity was a lot, so we ended up ordering a couple hundred. We used maybe a handful of them and then just to get rid of them, we put them on ebay and they ended up selling like hotcakes. So to answer your question, you always want to validate what you're going to sell on a marketplace or something where there's already a built in audience before you commit to making that larger order.

I love it. And you didn't think about, hey, this is going to be a big business, let me fire up a website. Like you're just like, hey, I could sell it right here, minimal, viable, you know, solution here to put it on ebay. And a lot of people don't realize that that is step one where you just need to validate. And another problem a lot of people have is that they stay there. Like they just, just stay on ebay, they stay on Instagram and they don't take the next leap and say, okay, this got legs. How do I create this and make it my own brand, my own business? What was that journey like?

Yeah, so what ended up happening was ebay. We kind of hit our limit on ebay. Like things weren't growing and we had this goal of $5,000. And not only that, the ebay customers were kind of a pain. They would haggle with us, right? Hey, can you do it for like five bucks? And the customer service along those lines just ended up not being very convenient for us. And a lot of fortuitous things happen at the same time actually. So my brother in law, he had a job at Google working for the AdWords division. And he was like, hey, you should just put up your own site and I'll teach you how to run AdWords to yourself.

What year is this?

That's, this is 2007.

Okay, good.

Back when AdWords super cheap.

Yeah.

And then another thing happened when my buddy, he decided to start a photography business where he was selling his photos because I was at first really scared about putting on the website. This is before Shopify, before Amazon, everything. And he showed me that there were a bunch of free ways to put up a website. So he showed me how to do that. My brother in law showed me how to run AdWords all of a Sudden we had sales and a website.

Yeah. And you were shown and then you just did it. Like, you just. Yeah. Let me, you didn't, like, think about it like, okay, that's good. Now I know that. Let me just think about it while, like, you can't drag your fee in business. Like, that's the thing that I try to tell people all the time, is that the best product doesn't always win, the best marketing doesn't always win. But often the person that takes action constantly and is first, first to market, first to understanding, first to just get your brand out there, you win. It's just because time is not on your side. You need to kind of make sure you get ahead. Now let's fast forward. You, you now have multiple businesses. You have your, your e commerce business, Bumblebee. You rerun courses. You have a great YouTube channel. I see the plaque behind you. You've been successful with video and you became a personality and a brand. You got a great podcast as well. My wife quit her job. How did this evolve? And where are you right now in terms of like, work life balance? Did you work to the point right now where you're just like, I don't need to work as much because I have everything passive and kind of walk me through the stages of building that empire.

Yeah. So the reason my wife quit her job, got started actually, is because my friends, they used to make fun of me for selling hankies. It's not, it wasn't our first choice. Right. And it's kind of embarrassing from a guy's perspective. But once it started getting successful, my friends started asking me questions. And so I just documented all that stuff on the blog. And what ended up happening is none of them read it.

And.

But I attracted a bunch of random people who wanted to understand what, how we did it, how we started our e commerce store and everything. And that led to a training class, that led to a podcast, that led to a YouTube channel and the event. So that's how it got started.

Okay. And when it comes to making a million, 2 million a year and now you, like, I, I know you personally, so I've seen you in real life. You are somebody that goes to like, warrior games and you have free time and you go see your daughter's volleyball games. And like, I, I noticed that you, you're not working all the time. Like, you actually have a pretty good work life balance. How did that all happen? Because building a business is hard work. It's a lot of sacrifice. It's a lot of long Hours. How did. One, did you cut back the hours and start scaling and get out of that kind of cycle? But two, how did you get to the point where you didn't need to in terms of revenue?

Yeah. So I always had this philosophy, like, I don't like doing grunt work and if I can, I will always write software or find some way to automate it. I'm actually not really into employees either. I'm kind of anti employee. And this probably stems from the fact that I used to be an engineering director and I had all these reports and they were great at doing their job, but I found there was a lot of overhead in dealing with personalities, keeping people motivated. And there's always this like, hidden cost of actually managing people and people are unpredictable. Whereas a good old computer will do stuff without complaining forever. So my background is engineering, so I will code whatever we can to make things automated. And we just happen to be living in this great age right now of AI where you can actually have a computer handle most of your stuff. Just a couple of other principles that allow me to work less. I generally don't focus on things that require me to constantly be doing something. Let me just use an example here. I don't like social media and I have friends who are really good at social media. Person who's really good in Instagram, posts seven times a day. I have a friend who does Facebook really well, post 21 times a day. But when you stop, the traffic stops. So I prefer to do things where I do it once and the traffic comes for a long time. So I have blog posts that I've written 10 years ago that still generate traffic. I have videos that I've recorded three years ago that still generate views. Whatever I can do to leverage my time, I try to do.

I like that high leverage activity. And looking at what you do, you blog, you podcast, you have a YouTube channel, all these are evergreen pieces of content that people can find and search for. And this is all kind of backbone SEO. So I like that philosophy. When was the point where you're like, okay, I don't need to work 40 hours a week now I'm making enough. Was that a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand in sales? Like, what was it where he's just like, okay, I can now, you know, kick it back in a different gear?

Yeah, so I'm going to be upfront with you, Omar. Like, I got caught up in my ego. So when you're not used to making a large sum of money all at once, you tend to go crazy or at least I don't want to speak for anyone else. I went crazy. I was like, okay, we hit this goal. Let's raise it 30%. Let's raise it another 30%. And we kept moving the goalposts till at one point my wife just came up to me and said, hey, we make so much more than we spend and I don't want to do this anymore. I'm burnt out. It sucks, right? We had that conversation and I realized she was right because we started our businesses to spend more time with family and here we were, not even spending even a small fraction of what we were making. So what was the point? So I credit my wife for getting things under control and controlling my ego. And you can probably relate to this, right? I'm in a mastermind group with a whole bunch of really successful people, and when I hear that someone else is making millions of dollars, I want to make millions of dollars. And the way I combat that today is we don't have any revenue goals for the E commerce business or anything. We pay ourselves what we need to live comfortably and everything else is gravy. And the way I keep my mind going and we, we kind of alluded to this earlier, like we'd be bored if we didn't do anything.

Right.

Every year I focus on one thing and I go all out and I do it well and whatever happens, happens. So this year is my book launch. Last year was my YouTube channel and I hit 200k subs. Year before that it was TikTok. The year before that it was paid ads. That's how I operate today.

Cool. So I love everything you just said right now because I am going to challenge you a little bit on that because. Or maybe I'm not challenging you. Maybe first I'll ask this question. Is your goal to live a great lifestyle making enough money to meet your needs, or is your goal to be extraordinarily wealthy and build a business that's basically, you know, private jet money?

I, I, I would say this. I've taught a class with over 5, 000 people. Most people just want freedom to do what they want and spend time with who they want. That's always been my case. I'm not attracted to the private jet lifestyle or anything like that. You give me enough money. Here's the thing. I think anyone out there can just make a couple million dollars with very few employees and very few expenses if they want. If you want to start something really big like an Amazon or Facebook, I think then you need a lot of Employees and it gets a lot more stressed.

Yeah.

But I would say for most of the people that I've ever met or encountered through blogging or podcasting and whatnot, most people just want to make a good living and have freedom.

Yeah. Would you agree it has a lot to do with the business itself or the business model? The reason why I'm asking this question is because, you know, I run a software company, Webinar Ninja. I'm heavily in the SaaS world where it's like, it's very binary. It's like you either choose to build a software company that is a lifestyle business that makes sense, me and you keep it lean and basically no one even knows about you, or you build a business that like makes a dent in the universe. It's like all out Sprint where you're working 80 hours a week for three years, you make your investors happy, you exit, you never have to work again. Like these are usually the two paths and there's really very little. There's a few companies in the middle, the convert kits of the world, the base camps, the Wistias, but they're really the exception like that, that like they're not a really good example to, to look at. And actually it's quite dangerous to look at them because they have a lot, a lot of things going for them that is not typical. Would you agree? It depends on the business model. Would you agree with that kind of layout in terms of software? And what about content marketing, YouTube, channel creator businesses?

So I used to design hardware and software for a living at a Fortune 500 company. And I can tell you this. I think in the software space it's especially hard because software is so easily copied unless there's something algorithmic behind it. So you might have a lead at some point, but someone can just say hey, I want that feature to an engineer. And they'll have it. Unless you have something underneath it underlying that you know that you have to bolster your business. I'm also of the belief though, and I want to talk a little about E commerce in this case. I feel like everything in this world is pretty much a commodity. There are very few things that are novel or inventions. So the way you sell it has to do with everything. The emotions that you can evoke in your product are. Is everything. Have you heard of the company Dr. Squatch? Omar?

No.

They sell soap. Soap for men. But they're a multi million dollar company and they sell soap. But the way they sell it is very interesting. If you ever watch one of their commercials it's of, like, a guy and his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's like, stiffing him. Go, oh, my God, you smell so good. I want to take you right now. What they're selling really is sex.

Right.

And I don't know if you've read the book Cashvertising before.

Yeah.

But it states, yeah, the Life Force 8. If you can evoke one of the emotions of the Life Force 8, you can sell anything. And once you have someone and once you've established a brand and all a brand really is is repeated exposure to a name, people will become loyal to you and they'll use your service. Like, I know Webinar Ninja isn't the cheapest service around in that webinar space, but you guys have created a good name for yourself of trust, and that's why people will sign up for your Webinar Ninja over other tools.

Yeah. And I agree with you. Branding has a lot to do when you're in a commodity space where you have to differentiate when you have to have a usp. You know, we have, like, the survey that we ask people when. When people buy, and we ask them, like, why did you buy? And most people say things that have nothing to do with the software. Like, we align with their values. I really liked the fact that you have a community. I really like, you know that Nicole is pretty cool. Like, whatever. Things have nothing to do with software, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And the interesting thing is that it has to be something other than the software if you're going to. If you're going to be able to compete. And if I look at some of the businesses and the brands out there, whether it's E commerce, whether it's like Dollar Shave Club or whatever, that kind of blew up, it's because they have personality and it has a lot to do with that.

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My mom always tells me I don't have the face for social media. That's beside the point.

But YouTube, you're. You're good.

All right, so Tick tock was an experiment because I think of TikTok as one of the better kinds of social media. Do you consider YouTube social media?

No, I don't. I feel like it's. To me, it's the. It's an alternative to Netflix.

TikTok is similar because I have posts that I put on TikTok that a year later are still generating views. It's not like Instagram. It's not like Facebook.

The.

The life cycle is not as strong as YouTube, but it's still there. I'm just not a fan of things where you post it. It might go viral in two days and then that's it.

Twitter.

Twitter, yeah. So I actually paid someone to operate my Twitter and I didn't feel comfortable doing that for Instagram or Facebook because there's photos involved. But for Twitter, you can just tell someone, hey, here are all my blog posts, Here are my podcasts and whatnot, and just have them extract out nuggets in a spreadsheet that you can just quickly approve.

I like that.

I think social media is actually a good way to grow if you have no money at all. But. And certain industries, I think, lend itself to social media more. Like if you're selling apparel or jewelry in the E comm space, I think social media is probably your best bet because SEO and that sort of thing won't work as well.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in that. That if you're B2C, if you're going straight to consumer, social media is great. It's actually really good, especially if you have, like, what do they call, like, branded content or native content? Like, TikTok is big on native content where, like, you have an influencer, you know, demoing your product, your physical product. There's like this teeth whitening, toothpaste that's like all over the place now because all these people are using it. And it's very. It's very powerful. And it's interesting because B to B2B, the market I'm in, they're migrating off a lot of the paid ads and a lot of social media because the cost per acquisition is getting bonkers now. And they're looking for other ways or looking at like, you know, freemium. They're looking at, you know, kind of acquiring customers, even through sales calls and, and, you know, even webinars, things like that. So it's just interesting to see how each market. But you're right, I think it's also good to be on social media if you're a beginner, because it gives you reps, it gives you a chance, like, hey, I'm going to vlog every day. I'm going to put out a little message every day. I'm going to just produce content. Yeah. And my only thing is, is that, like, don't just stay there. A lot of people just stay on social media and they never build their brand outside of social media.

Here's what's interesting about your last statement. So, for our store, Bumblebee Linens, I actually started doing an analysis on all our channels, and I noticed that Facebook was the worst performing channel in terms of revenue per visitor. And the reason why is because a lot of our big customers are event and wedding planners who buy our stuff in bulk and they're finding us through Google, whereas those people don't really live on Facebook. So it pays to check. Right.

Yeah. Know your audience. That's true. And that's. And it's the opposite for us because our audience are mostly entrepreneurs, are in their second career, so they're maybe mid-30s and above. They've built a business. They want to be able to promote or market their business through content with webinars. And Facebook is the main game. Facebook is where they are, you know, and, and, and I don't want, like, for me, like, I. We've tried some mediums that are. Have a younger audience, whether it's, you know, ads on TikTok or otherwise. And like, I, I can't sell to these people. They're on money. Yeah, yeah. They're too young. But yeah, that's definitely, it's definitely good to know your demographic. So I want to get into your new book, the Family First Entrepreneur. I'm going to ask you a little bit about what that exactly means. But before, why did you decide to write a book? Because I've met and talked to many authors and everybody has a different why yeah. And I want to hear your why.

So I'll give you two answers. The first one is that I've always felt that most of the entrepreneurship advice that I see out there doesn't apply to me. It's from single dudes who have all the time in the world to do whatever they want. And I have kids, and I'm trying to juggle all these things. And, you know, I want to see a book from someone who has a family, who actually has family values other than just killing it, man, or driving these Ferraris and Lambos and that sort of thing. The other reason I wanted to write the book was because it was on my bucket list. And quite frankly, I want to take my kids to the bookstore, show them the book, and say, hey, your dad created this. You guys can do anything that you want. And the other reason is I've been blogging for over a decade now. I've had my YouTube channel, my podcast. My mom has never listened or read a single thing that I've ever done. But as soon as I told her that I was writing a book that was published by Harper Collins, she went nuts. And all of a sudden, she was like, hey, where can I get the book? Can I read it? I really want to read it. I'm like, all right. I finally hit the Asian nerve.

Yeah.

The respect of my mom.

Yes. That. That is worth writing the book right there, because we all have that scenario. I could tell you, my parents. My dad vaguely understands what I do. My mom has a better understanding because she's a little bit more tech savvy. But there is a difference. When you. You basically resonate with them in an area they understand, you know, and I. I think of Hassan Minhaj, who's a comedian. Yeah. He talks about, you know, his dad didn't get his respect until he was on the Daily show because he understands the Daily Show. It's like the news. They wear a suit, they're respectful. You're not, like, hawking tickets outside of the comedy Cellar, you know, And I. I think that was kind of. This is kind of your moment. Your. Your daily. Your Daily show moment. So tell us a little bit about what's your definition of a family first entrepreneur?

Yeah, a family first entrepreneur really is someone who prioritizes family or free time over just a pure drive for money. And scaling is. Is really, in a nutshell, what it is. And I've just come to. Have you ever heard of the four burners theory?

Yeah.

Yeah. So here's in case your listeners haven't Heard of it? Your life is defined by four burners. Family, business, sorry, family, work, friends, and health. And in order to do one thing well, you have to turn off at least one burner. If you want to do two things well, if you want to do it even better, you have to turn off two burners. And if you're Elon Musk, you turn off three. And like, work is your only burner. Basically. There's trade offs in life and you basically have to prioritize what you want. And family first entrepreneurs prioritize the family burner. And I'd probably say the health burner. Yeah.

And, and I like this analogy, and I like that you said this because it reminds me of a conversation that Joe Rogan had with Ryan Holiday. And he was, he was asking him, like, why are these great leaders, all these, like, amazing people, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Marcus Aurelius, why were these people like, their, their offspring is often, they're often horrible people. Right. Why are they such bad dads? And he's like, because they're busy. Like, they're just like, they're overworked. There's like their whole life is their mission. And therefore that is the price. Like, and I think why your book is so important is at least highlights. Do you want to pay that price? Whether your family is like the, you know, your wife or your, your partner and your children or even just your, your partner in life, if you don't have children, do you want to sacrifice those relationships at all costs? And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I feel like you probably felt compelled to write this book because you probably had a moment where you had to ask that question to yourself and tell me a little bit about that moment and what was kind of the wake up call for you to say, you know what, I need to reevaluate. Yeah.

I kind of alluded to this earlier, but we got on the Today show for our store and we were only on for 12 seconds. That's it. But that led to 7x the daily order volume for a period of about two weeks. And at the time, it was just my wife and I and this one other person. And, you know, publicly, you think it's cool you hit the Today show, you hit the jackpot, and you're getting 7x that your average order volume. But fulfilling those orders nearly broke us. And that was actually the period where my wife said she was burnt out as well. Meanwhile, I was planning other media experience, you know, other media opportunities. But we had that talk when she broke down. Crying, not tears of joy. This time wasn't the wedding. And she was like, I don't want to do this anymore.

Give me a hand.

And that's when I realized, right? And this is what most people don't realize. Omar Growing fast, no matter what you do, is always painful. It sucks. And I've interviewed so many people on my podcast. 450 people. And I remember this one dude who hit 2 million bucks in like six months. And the whole episode was like, you know, rah, rah. You know, how'd you do that? It was so cool. As soon as I hit the stop button, I was like, hey, how sucky was that? And he was like, dude, it was terrible. I was so burned out. I was so stressed out. You don't actually hear those stories. So slow and steady growth is almost always better than sudden, unexpected growth.

One of the things I tell myself, I try to remind other entrepreneurs is exactly what you're saying right now is to remind yourself, why? Why are you doing this? Like, the funny thing about your story that I find incredibly interesting is that your wife quit her job so that she can spend more time with the kids in the family. You then build a business and you find yourself right back where you were before. And you're like, oh, mission not accomplished, right? Like, we're off course here. And then you had that wake up call. And by the way, like, it's actually as bad as it was. It's actually a good problem to have. Like, okay, we learned through success that this is not something that we should be doing because it's hurting our family. What are the changes you made at that point where it's like, okay, how do we realign ourselves?

Yeah. So number one, no, no revenue goals. I think revenue goals are kind of dumb. Instead, you just have like a. A goal that's related to some sort of metric in your business, maybe. Because there's always ways to play around with revenue too. And once you hit certain goals, you know, you always just move the goal posts. The other thing that we do is really, we. Here's one thing that. That your listeners can take away. We focus a lot more on our existing customers. I find a lot of people don't do that. They spend all their money and time on new customer acquisition when it's a lot easier to just get someone to open up their wallets. Again, I think I mentioned earlier, or maybe I didn't mention yet, but we're in the wedding industry, and you would think that there's not a lot of Repeat business, Right? The divorce rate is high in the US but it's not high enough that people get married multiple times. So 12% of our business is repeat. Just 12, but it represents 36% of our revenues. And we already talked about a little bit. Like, I go through and I find our best customers, and I call them on the phone. Like, I pick up, like, this thing that you talk into. Most people can't relate to that. And I say, hey, do you happen to be. We noticed you purchased an abnormally large number of linens. Do you happen to be a planner, or do you have future needs? And if they say yes, I go, okay, here's a coupon code. Here's a dedicated rep. We'll make sure your order makes it to its destination. And from there, we have a customer for life. And by doing that, we have a solid foundation for business going forward. And we just keep doing this and keep attracting larger and larger customers every year.

I love this because one of the things I learned the hard way in my over 20 years of entrepreneurship is that hard work does not pay off. Now, hard work is important, but hard work alone is actually really detrimental. You have to work smarter. You have to work on the things that matter, right? If I spend 16 hours a day on things that really are like $10, $100, tasks that don't really bring in the money that. That doesn't really, you know, actually help our customers or grow the business, it's really a waste of time, and I just end up with a year of exhaustion, right? Versus eight hours or four hours of things that really move the needle. Like you just mentioned, that bring in ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars in revenue, and I just work smarter. I just work on the things that work. I double down on the things that work. And it took me a while to get to that point to realize, oh, I'm doing, like, 10 things. What are the top two things that are actually moving the needle? Those two things are actually making, like, 90% of all my revenue. Why am I doing all these eight things? Just delete them, right? And I think our immigrant parents kind of seeped in because, like, hey, that's 10% of, like, the whatever dollar amount that. Why are you gonna throw that away? Because it's costing me eight hours, you know, but you have to retrain yourself. And I think you. You feel me there.

Yeah, I do. I definitely do. I do have those where I'm like, I should be cutting this, but it's. It's a good amount of money. And it's not that much effort. I could, I could do this. But all these little things add up over time.

Totally. What now you got your book coming out and I want to just kind of step back a little bit. And what are the next 10 years for you look like? What's your focus? Like you, you kind of have an established business, you've kind of focused on a few things every year to, to build your businesses in different ways. What is this all for for you? What do you, what, what is your goal in life in terms of like how the business can help you enrich your life?

So the, the great thing about all of my businesses have been they've been, they've been all synergistic. So I'll start something like the, I had the store and then I started the blog. But the blog relies on the store. So I, I use the store as a labor leads to other things. Likewise my YouTube channel and the conference, they all kind of add value to that. I think that if you want to go out like five or 10 years, I think once my kids go to college, I might try my hand in the SAS game just because it's something that I have a background in and it's something I've always wanted to do. In the meantime, while my kids are here, my focus is going to be on them. But I'm like you, I'm always, I always need to be working on something. And what's great about already having these businesses is that I can use those businesses to fund whatever I want and not have to worry about the money or the risk. I think that's probably the biggest benefit. Love it.

I want to wrap up with a question that I like to ask a lot of our entrepreneurs that come on the show. We know a lot of the same people. Like our network is kind of intertwined. And I want to ask you the question. How much of your success is due to who you've known or who you've gotten to know over the years? How much you know versus like the knowledge that you've gained through studying and learning?

Yeah, I would say if I had to put a percentage on it, I would say 65% who you know and the rest based on knowledge. And here's how I think about it. Every person that you know is like a lottery ticket. And I, I can just think of so many different ways that I was lucky. Like, am I lucky that my brother in law worked on AdWords? Am I lucky that my buddy just happened to be putting together the website? Am I Lucky that a friend of mine just had me start selling on Amazon and grew my revenue. Well, each person that you meet, you don't know what's going to happen. Like, look at us here. I'm on your podcast now, and it was just luck that we, we met each other. And I did that by going to an event. And people are just so important. So it might not directly affect your business, but like I said, it's like lottery tickets. The more you got, the more chances for luck to happen.

I like the way you look at it because I do see, you know, the more people, you know, it's kind of like you're creating your own luck. Like Naval says. It's like if you, if you're doing a lot of things, you're trying new things, you're meeting people, kind of like kicking up dust. Like, you have more opportunities, you have more chances for things to work out. You know, you are into personal finance. So you went to fincon. We met at fincon, we talked to, we talked to each other, we got to know each other. You know, we stayed in touch. But there is effort on your part. You had to buy a ticket, you had to fly to North Carolina, you had to stay in touch with me over the years. You had to, you know, take whatever advice you got from your brother who works at Google, and then do something with it and implement, you know, so I, I, what I love about it, it's kind of like a magnifier. I feel like, I feel like it really amplifies your efforts when you meet people. And I found that the more you try your best to network, and when I say network, just make friends in the industry. Make friends, meet people, go to parties, go to events, go to conferences, go to retreats, go to masterminds, whatever it might be. And the more you do that, the more you realize that people actually want to help you. Like, people actually want to see you succeed. Almost like I don't want to say that it's totally selfless, but in my experience, it's mostly selfless. Mostly, Mostly. People see yourself, they see themselves in you, and they're kind of like, hey, let me help you out. Knowing that one day maybe you'll help them out or maybe not. But the point is, is that I think that if we make the effort, it always pays off, in my, in my opinion. And I can name like multiple stories when it's paid off big time, some in little ways. But this is a great example. We're having this conversation because we both made the effort to network. So, Steve, thanks so much for being on the show. I loved our conversation. I love having conversations with people that we I know and, and kind of gotten over the years because it's really easy and fluid. If you want to leave our audience who is working day and night on their business, trying to get to the point where you are, where you have that work life balance, what is one piece of advice you want to leave them with?

I would say try to automate as much as you can. Hire as a last resort. Take an effort to figure out what you're outsourcing if you do decide to outsource it. One of my philosophies is I always try to do everything myself in the beginning, get my hands dirty first. So for example, in YouTube I edited all my own videos and I realized I hated it. But I recorded myself editing them so that when I hired my editor, I just turned over those videos and we got up and running right away. So find ways to automate. Find an app or software that can do what you want if you can't get your own hands dirty and then outsource kind of like as the last option.

Love it. Steve, thanks so much for being on the show and I'll check you. Hopefully sooner than later.

Absolutely. I've been meaning to make it out to your parts actually. It's on my bucket list.

Come see us, man.

I'll be there. Yeah. Take care.

What an amazing conversation with Steve Chu. Steve is a no nonsense guy. I love the fact that when something's wrong in his business, something's wrong in his life, he takes action right away. But even better, he actually shares what he learns and what he's done through his blog, through his podcast so that we can avoid that mistake and learn as well. And if you want to continue learning on how to grow a seven figure business but not work your brains out and not enough time for your family. Pick up the Family First Entrepreneur by Steve Chu. You can order it right now on Amazon or wherever you buy books. But if you want to be really smart and get some bonuses, go to the familyfirstentrepreneur.com and you'll see some steps on how to order the book. And get $690 in bonuses from Steve, including a six weeks side hustle challenge. That's absolutely amazing. Go ahead and pick up the book the Family First Entrepreneur. You won't regret it. Thanks so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I love sharing these stories and these conversations I have with other entrepreneurs because it proves to everybody, including myself, that we all have our own journeys. We all have our struggles. We all have our challenges. We all make mistakes. We all stumble. But the ones that succeed are the ones that keep moving forward. That keep moving forward despite the failures and the challenges and the falling on your face. Because the only way to lose is to quit. So keep your head up, keep moving forward and learn from these entrepreneurs and their experiences. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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