From Venture-Backed Startups to Local Impact: The Journey of Entrepreneur Yang Han of Owners Club
In this episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast, host Shawn Buttner interviews entrepreneur Yang Han about his dramatic shift from a career in Silicon Valley venture‑backed startups to building and coaching profitable small businesses in Texas. Yang recounts his mid‑life crisis that prompted a move to a slower‑paced life, the founding of a pool‑cleaning company that quickly reached seven‑figure revenue, and the development of a coaching framework (the Owner’s Manual) that blends venture‑style rapid testing with small‑business pragmatism. He explains his personal philosophy of ikigai—aligning passion, market need, skill, and value—and how it drives his work. The conversation covers practical systems for scaling (programmatic testing, ROI‑focused experiments), the importance of community (being a “fountain” not a “drain”), and his “100‑interview” rule for deep industry learning. Yang also discusses his Girl Dad podcast, which explores how high‑performing parents balance family and business, and offers concrete advice for aspiring small‑business owners: adopt a proven operating system, find a coach who “eats their own dog‑food,” start with modest time commitments, and build supportive networks. The episode blends storytelling, actionable frameworks, and lifestyle design insights for entrepreneurs seeking meaningful, profitable work beyond the venture‑backed hype.
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We have a really exciting episode for you today on the Meaningful Revolution. Today's guest is a serial entrepreneur who has worked from Silicon Valley like ventures with tons of venture funding to small business where he's really found his meaningful rhythm and the quality of life that he wanted for himself and his family. So our guest Johan moved from Silicon Valley to Texas fairly recently to he talks about having a midlife crisis, but really trying to figure out how to live in a way that's more authentic to himself. And what I love about this conversation is it covers topics like serial entrepreneurship, about focusing more on solving practical problems versus these big abstract things, things you sometimes hear in Silicon Valley to really try to build a life more connected to your family and how you navigate that. We talk about systems, we talk about testing, we talk about his podcast, the Girl dad show, and we talk at the end with a really interesting idea of 100 interviews when you're trying to figure out if you want to get into a business or not. So with that, please enjoy this very engaging conversation with Young Han. See you on the side. Hey everyone, welcome to the Meaningful Revolution, the podcast where we interview people about their passions to inspire you into yours. Today's guest is a really amazing person who focuses on small business and small business ownership and he's really easy to talk to. I really do have loved the pre talk that we had here before the show. Let me introduce you to my friend, Yang Han. Hey Yang, how's it going? Welcome to the show.
Hey Sean, thanks so so much for having me excited to be here.
The topic of the day is small business ownership and I know you have a ton of experience and a lot to say about this topic, but I'm interested first, could you talk us through how you got into this track of serial entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley, your exit and all that?
Sure, yeah. I, Silicon Valley native, born and raised in the Bay Area, San Francisco area and lived there my entire life. And for lack of just time, I guess I'll shorten it to say that you had to get into tech and venture backed startups to survive. It's a very easy way of kind of summing up the last 40 years of silicon Valley. It got very fast paced over the last 40 years, right? As soon as they found silicon, they blew up from cherry orchards to the tech monolith that it is right now. But you had to adapt and not only to thrive, but just to survive because the rate of pay, the speed of things that got gentrified and grew was just so quick. And so I got into Tech and I've always been into entrepreneurship. Watching my dad grow up as an entrepreneur, he immigrated here and started a liquor store in Oakland and was a entrepreneur and built up his business businesses over time. And I got to see that. And so being able to see someone else do that was also really impactful for me because I knew that meant it was possible. And I was able to watch someone do something and build something and create value in the community and society in a very one on one impactful way. And I got to watch someone else do that, which made it very impactful and possible for me and my mindset. But that coupled with all the experiences of working for venture backed companies. Right. So being able to rapidly test so many different things in business, coupled with the fact that I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, I think steeped that inside of me. But I will say I had a midlife crisis about 30 years ago and instead of buying a motorcycle or a sports car or like jumping out of an airplane or getting, I don't know what else, what else, the typical midlife crisis, I packed up my family and moved to small town Texas. I've just been trying to opting in for a different kind of lifestyle. So a little bit of a slower life, more focused on balance and nature and just time, time and optimization for less of the disruption of the world and this ephemeral arbitrage of value that we're going to create through landscape, market shifts and all this crazy stuff that we talk about in Silicon Valley to just more like pragmatic ways of living and living a more balanced life. And moving here has been an unbelievable shift both in the lifestyle that I want and want to design for myself, but a huge awakening in who I am and what I want to be when I grow up. And it's really something funny that I like to say now at 43, is that I finally know what I want to do when I grow up. It took me 43 years to figure it out, but. But yeah, I'm feeling really good about now. The new journey that I'm on, it's really about building small businesses that I love and enjoy building that are not trying to change the world in a huge, disruptive, market shifting way, but meaningful in my local community. Right. And trying to change the impact and lives of the employees and team members that I employ here and the communities that I serve and then helping as many other small business owners that I can along the way. And that brings me the most joy.
Okay. What I'm picking up from this is. So you said venture backed businesses which we're talking about like venture capitalist comes in, throws a bunch of money or seeds money into a company and there's a lot of lofty. We're going to change the world by. If you saw the show Silicon Valley, they had the app Hot dog is the prime example of like cool technology. How is that going to. I know what a hot dog is. Why do I need an app to do this?
Yeah.
To a more community focus. Small business to me is the liquor store, the laundromat, the cobbler, the butcher, the things that you'd find on a like small town square.
Yeah.
So can you maybe share how that experience of having this lofty changed the world through robot barista to actually serving in a community and interfacing with a smaller group of people. How's that experience been for you?
Yeah, I think the biggest change is there's a very clean architrage of value exchange. I'll give you an example. I started a pool cleaning company here about 20 months ago. So we're nearing our two year mark. It's pretty exciting. And so about just under two years ago we started this pool cleaning company and I visited some friends in San Francisco and I was telling them about my pool cleaning business and they were a VC and they basically like, they listened to me for 10, 10 minutes and they're like, got it. Once you figure out like how the chemicals and all that stuff works, you're going to build a robot that'll sense it and so then you can sense it and then I'll display that data and you can use big data to disrupt the entire chemical industry for them. Like no, I'm just, there's dirty pools. We're just too clean. They're going to take money for it. And then I kept explaining the problem, but I don't get it. I'm like, oh, oh, now I got it. Because if you can replicate the motions that these techs are using to service this pool, you can build a robot that'll replicate those motions and then no, there's no disruption. There's just someone has a dirty pool, we're just going to clean it and then we're going to take money for it. And then we're just going to do it as many times as possible with as many people as possible. There's no disruption. There's nothing more. There's just, that's it. That's the exchange of, that's the exchange of value. Someone wants this service done and we're going to provide that service for money. And it's just a very clean arbitrage of value. And it's a very funny story, but it's the easiest way for me to explain the difference between working at a venture backed company that's looking for a hundred x or a thousand x return versus running a small business that just needs to suffice the owner, right? Hey, I just need to make money to live and then live my life the way I want to. Very different. And so that's like the simplest way. Obviously there's many other nuances to it, but I will say that's the biggest difference that I have found and why I'm so into building businesses now that I own and I what I consider hard businesses or small business because although my pool business is now well in its multiples of seven figures within two years, which is incredible and very grateful for that. But they can get really big. Small businesses can get very big and most big businesses started off as small businesses. And so not to say that the term small anecdote that it has to be the local nursery or the local burger shop or whatever that may be or the cobbler like you mentioned. But I just mean it to reference non funded, right. Not traditionally funded, personally financed, maybe bank financed or SBA financed. And you're really trying to be profitable as fast as possible. Where typically in venture backed companies you're trying to just get to scale. Right. You're trying to find that market share value as quickly as possible and trying to 100x this investment and the mindset is completely different. Nothing wrong with either a model or option. I just realized after my midlife crisis that it just didn't fit what I wanted in my life and I was low key, getting depressed over it and realizing that it wasn't filling my heart and I wanted to change it. Cause I wanted to be happy and did a lot of discovery work and just revisiting myself and did the read a lot of books and talked to a lot of people and yeah, I came to the conclusion that I had to try to change something instead of trying to like wait for something to happen to me. And so made the migration to Texas and that has helped me a lot because there's a lot more people building hard businesses in Texas than there are in California. At least it's easier for me to meet them. It was really good for me. Yeah.
So.
Oh, and I will say.
Oh, go ahead.
Sorry. Can I add one more funny story? Yeah, yeah, I because you mentioned this show Silicon Valley, I actually When I worked at company called Phil Coffee. It's a venture backed coffee shop. It's actually in the show Silicon Valley and that show, two years before it aired, the script was sent to me and I read that script and thought it was hilarious. And I was like, oh my God, this is the funniest thing ever. I'm the one who signed off on Phil's being in the show. Oh, cool. So isn't that cool? Yeah, I just wanted to mention that cause you brought it up. I thought it was a really funny story, but most people don't know that that was like something helped broker. So cool.
Yeah. I actually have a question after looking at your hit, just doing the research for this and the question is, as a marketing exec for philz, how much free coffee did you drink as an executive? As I have a feeling, at least for me, with enough time and coffee you can accomplish most anything.
Yeah, I drink. I used to drink a lot of coffee. Especially in my 20s and 30s. I worked at Starbucks, Phil's and then also cafe act. So I've spent a lot of time of my professional time at coffee chains and coffee companies. But I will say, Sean, I can't do it as like I used to, but back then I drank a lot of coffee. Yes. But now my. I'm. I don't know, I'm 40. So like I get like acid reflux if I have more than two cups. Like I can only cup today. So my love for coffee is still there. But now I try to like make that one cup just really good and just really delicious. Just I grind it right before I brew in the Chemex with the exact. I try to make it the best cup of coffee I can. Cause I can't really do more than one cup a day. Yeah. But back then I used to drink a lot.
Yeah. Okay. As someone that is, I'll be 41 this month and has a love for and have made of Chemexa coffee before the podcast. I'm sad to hear that. I'm starting to feel the wear and tear of it. So this is not encouraging for my coffee house.
But happy birthday by the way.
Awesome.
Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah, Fantastic.
Yeah. Okay. On the move from venture based businesses to small businesses, where do you feel like the meanings really come from? Has it been that slower pace of life? Has it been the impact in the community? Is it, you know, getting away from the crazy story of a company not being profitable for the first time, 15 years of its operation and needing to constantly do the hustle of Raising money versus if you're profitable sooner, you're a little bit more in control of your destiny because you don't need to reach out to banks or donors. Like, you just reinvest or are able to reap benefits. What really helps shift that feeling of meaning in your life?
Yeah, I think it was the sheer logic of it, right? The chances of being successful in the game.
You.
You have to have had an exit or some sort of large sum of money that would fall into your lap to. To create that. And that never happened for me, obviously. I have equity in all these companies. My. My cap table is like, awesome. My card logging is awesome, right? It has like, equity loans, but it's like kind of meaningless money. And there I. I like, if I'm really honest with myself, I'd almost say it's worthless. And I just. It's just like, silly, right? Where you're just like, oh, man, this is like, really bad. So then I had a really long meeting with my financial planner. I'm like, hey, what does this look like? To live in the San Francisco Bay area and still be able to retire without the fact that I wasn't able to get a really big moonshot company that I rose with. And yeah, I spent four hours with them. And like, my. I came downstairs and my life's to. What? He said he wants us to live a really crappy life for the next 25 years. And then. And then after that, he wants us to live another really crappy Life for another 25 years. And we better pray to God we don't live past 90 because there's no money left after that. Just. That's not what he said. I'm like, that's not what he said. But that's basically the lifestyle that we'll live. And I just started asking all my friends, like, like, is this normal? And they're like, yeah, that's how the world works. That's what, you know, that's what America is. And I'm like, oh, and everyone's doing this. And I'm like, I don't. I just. It just. I don't know, it just bothered me to my core. It literally just like, really bothered me. And I was like, this can't be it. Where we work and we save so much to have a retirement and then we retire to just make 4% off of retirement amount, hoping that the market doesn't crash like it did three times in the last 20 years. But it's just. It's. The whole thing seems asinine to Me, I'm like, this seems ridiculous. This is how the whole country works. And I was, I just grew up, I just became an adult and I started to realize that this is the reality of the world and I could either accept it or I could do something different. And part of that was also one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why I decided to uplift and move to a lower cost area to try to actually have more capital to deploy and invest versus just living this lifestyle. And that was the big shift and change. And then I just start. I'm an operator. So that's what I've done. I'm operations guy for all these startups. I just do all the roles until even at Phil, I ended up as the marketing executive. But I did four of the roles before I was the marketing ex. It was just the last role before I did there. And LinkedIn didn't have all the roles but that feature wasn't listed before. Yeah, you would have seen four different roles if you, if they still had that. But yeah, I don't know. I just started operationalizing it. So I started saving money by moving here and I started going, okay, let's try real estate. This seems like 90% of wealthy people are real estate investors. And I did that for about a year and I bought three investment homes and they're just a pain in the butt and I'm terrible at it. I'm not good at picking. Do you know how to manage it? I'm losing so much money on it, even to this day, it's like the most worst thing I have in my asset pool and I'm just not good at it. And so I defocused that a little bit and then I tried crypto. I got into that for six months and I, I still don't understand it. So I'm like, I don't. This is like terrible. I lost a ton of money doing that. That was dumb. And then I tried learning the stock market and I'm really bad at that as well. And although I did okay and to being an investor and like trying to be more of a long term investor, it's just, I don't know, just, it's not, it's just over time. You just need to do it over time. But even in the last three years as I've been doing more thoughtful stock investing, everything's been crashing and dipping and moving so much because it's been such a high velocity market right now. Because like once in a lifetime things keep happening like every year now. So it's not, it's just a hard time to be getting into this market I think. And, and then I, I started moving in towards a small business and so that's the next thing. So I just started operationalizing how to build wealth and I started, I landed on small business and all of a sudden everything clicked and I'm like, oh wow. All my skills building these venture backed companies are coming into focus as I build small businesses. Because the things that are good about venture backed companies is they really, they really prioritize Ford failing. So failing forward a lot, right? So you just fail fast and fail hard and that way you get to the end result fastest here. Just spray a lot of tests and get a lot of cash out there so you can try a bunch of things, what converts the best and then you can do that and then do that thing for a little bit until it grows. You can't do that in a small business per se. You don't have that outlay of cash, but you can do that over time. And so I use the same mentality and I would just basically test three or four things at a time very unemotionally and start the process of doing 20 tests in six months, three or five of them at one month increment. And then unemotionally I would just look back at it and go, which one had the lowest cost of acquisition for the highest return on investment? And I would just pick those three things. I would do that the next six months to a year and I would just make money. It was just like, I'm like, this is it, this is all I have to do. And I'm like this is amazing. And it just, I don't know, it just popped something in my brain where I'm like, this is crazy that this is not being educated to the masses. This is very common business practices at scale in Silicon Valley. And more people don't even know about this. And so long story short, I just like, I've just been like using this new knowledge and newfound knowledge and I landed on small businesses and it just felt right. Have you ever heard of the term ikigai? I've been really stuck on this Japanese term recently. You gotta look it up. It's pretty cool.
Is that the salary guy?
No, it's not. Ikigai means what is the world? What does the world want from you? What will people pay you for? What do you love doing? And what can you provide a lot of value in? And if you can find all four things, that's like the epitome of the life. Right. Like your life goal is doing. Being able to figure out your ikigai. I've just been like, I'm like, I feel like I'm very close to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. And I think I'm really close to figuring out my ikigai because I, I genuinely love doing this. I love building these businesses and it's really fun for me. And then if other business owners want me to help them, I love helping them. It's like super fun. And when you ask me the latter part of your question, I promise I'll get the actual answer to your question. It is that it's so much more fun for me to talk to a small business owner than a. No offense to the youngsters but than a 20 year old founder, right. That dropped out of college to disrupt the world. Right. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but me personally, it's really fun to talk to another 40 year old business owner that is like building a. Or even a 30 year old business owner. That's the age doesn't matter to me as much as like the fact that they're following their passion and their dream about. I love making flowers. Great. How much do you love it? I love it so much that I want to do it for a living. Awesome. So there's maybe two of those guys that we solve now. We need to figure out how to make money doing it. Make sure you're providing value to the world. Right. And so helping them figure out how to take their passion and turn it into a profitable business is so fun for me. It's so fun for me. And then being able to help like dog trainers and like forests and like architecture firms and PTs and like these commonly unlike sexy businesses and helping them turn them into seven figure, multiple seven figure businesses and seeing the change in the person and the impact they're making not only on them and their family, but also their employees and their community. I don't know how to explain it. It's. I just sleep better at night. I'm like literally part of my clients families, you know what I mean? They like love me. And I'm not like, I don't know, I'm not like, I'm not doing this for free. I'm getting paid for it. But it's so much more than the money now.
It's.
I'm like genuinely friends with them. I could see myself like being part of their lives and them being part of my lives for the rest of my Life. I'm part of their businesses, I'm part of their journey, I'm part of. I want them to succeed even beyond the fee, the check because it's permeated beyond that. And when you ask me what the major differences are and why I'm. What motivates me to do this and draws me to it, it's, that's the difference for me. It's. It's really satisfying. It fills my heart, gets me up at night, gets me up every morning thinking about the impact and yeah just the benefit that I can provide with all of the spectrum. The ikigai.
I love that. And I've been thinking about. So my dad's a carpenter and had this side business repairing, doing like home repairs and having been a software engineer for Apple and for Walmart. In that type of world there's not a lot of referring workout to where like he had his concrete guy, he had his window guy, he had oh electrician or that, that kind of networking that just made sense where everyone's benefiting. I don't haven't really felt that or didn't feel that when I was in tech here until everyone's in their head by themselves. A little bit of collaboration depending on where you worked. So I love that community aspect about what you're doing now.
Yeah.
And feeling that's really interesting.
Yeah. I know that wasn't a question, but I have a lot to say about that. I think you're talking about a really weird mindset shift that you have to make as a small business owner is that people aren't your competitors. Honestly, like you gotta get. I talk to a lot of business owners about this. A lot, small business owners. I'm like, why aren't you ask. Why don't you ask the dog boarding company down the street why they're doing so good and they're like, what do you mean they're my competitors? I'm like no. What is the worst they're gonna say is no. And like best case scenario they'll say yes. But I always have to tell this story. I'm like when I was at Starbucks and Phil's we had the same thing happen when we'd open a new location, blue bottle would go across the street or Starbucks would go across or we would open a store next to a Starbucks or blue bottle. Like if we were at Phil's is there's a psychological thing that happens with people. Right. Coke figured. I think it's Coke that figured this out. But if you have a vending machine A Coke vending, a Pepsi vending machine. There's, I don't know, you'll get like 500 bucks from it, right? But if you put a Coke and a Pepsi vending machine next to each other, both will make a thousand dollars. Because now people look at it and go, oh, do I want a Pepsi or not? To do I want Pepsi or Coke or not? So the choice of buying is no longer the question. It's a choice of which one do I want. And so the reality is that there's a product for everybody and there's, it's an abundant world. And I think that if small business owners can, it's very scary. But if you can get over that hump of like not sharing resources or not collaborating. And of course there's going to be a lot of small business owners that'll take advantage of that kindness and generosity in the beginning. But over time you will overcome and it will. The right people will find you, the right customers will find you, and the right partners will find you. And then even within your partner network, like you'll start, let's say you were doing carpentry, your dad was doing carpentry, there's gonna be carpenter partners that'll be like, hey, this client specializes in this, you should take this and then you'll give, hey, this client specializes in that. Or they're in your geo, you should take this. Like I guess my point being is yeah, it's really hard to think about it that way when you're a small business, but it's so important to build that sense of community because in the macro, the same it, it just mathematically and logically, if you look at like how much carpentry is happening in the geo, it's not to change that drastically. Like you really need to think about how to figure out your niche and your specialty within that frame. Not necessarily trying to harvest everything.
Definitely. And I think this is a great segue into what have you take, what did you take from your previous experience before the midlife crisis and this shift? And how do you apply working at a like venture backed company to small business in a way that's different from maybe how the mom and pop shops had been running before they had worked with you or you know, if it's a local candy shop that's been doing it for 30 years, how, what do you bring in and can help them either grow to get to profitability or not?
Yeah, yeah, I can give you the, the core mindset shift. So there's a half dozen things that we educate our coaching clients on. Right? So if you sign up to be coached by us, obviously you can join the community and we have a networking community that anybody can join. If you're a small business owner and you have all my systems and resources available to you immediately there, I literally, you can just download it, watch the videos and start running through it. I have three business owners that are not getting coached cause they can't afford it and they're self coaching themselves through the system and two of them are crushing it. They're literally killing it. It's amazing. But I, I, I also have a dozen clients that I coach, right? And so I coach them through the system. It just goes faster if you have me, lack of a better word, yell, yelling in your ear every week. I'm not a normal coach, so I'd pled you to call me a coach. I'm less of a coach and more of a drill sergeant. More of like a, I'm more of like a, hey, let's like, let's make. What are your goals? Is your goal to make half a million dollars working 30 hours a week? Is that what you really absolutely, personally want? Because that's the first thing I want to do with you. What are your personal goals for your business? How does your business work for you? And usually 99% of the time it's, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a year working 30 hours. That's usually what everyone says. That's literally what everyone says. So then your business needs to make what, half a million to $600,000 so you can have a cash flow EBITDA of $100,000 for you. Okay. And then if you want to work 30 hours a week, you need to have a staff and professionalize your business so you have staff that can run it with or without you to a certain degree. Obviously you're still involved at 30 hours a week, but you have the ability to walk away. So this is like 90% of businesses that approach me.
Right.
And it's great. Awesome. You don't get an opinion anymore once you agree with me on that until we hit those numbers. Because hitting those numbers is actually very straightforward. It's very straightforward. You just test things until you get programmatic. And you start testing things until you figure out what gets the best return on investment for sales, return on investment for marketing, return on investment for hiring and recruiting and managing return on investment for fiscal visibility. There's just five things that you have to manage in your business. And you just do what makes you the most Money for the cheapest amount of hours or input. And then once you finish those tests after six months, nine months, one year, depending on how fast you want to go, you just go back unemotionally and pick the ones that work the best until you get to $600,000 in revenue and you get exactly what you want. And then you can have an opinion. Then I don't. Then I can actually become your coach. Like, I'll be nicer, but then you tell me, oh, I really wanted that to say, I really wanted that color to be green, and I really wanted this to be that price. Or, okay, great, now we have cash flow. You have money. You got what you wanted. Now you can have an opinion. But you should really figure out what you personally want first. That's the number one thing I say to small business owners. Your personal goals are way more important than your professional goals. Because everyone that I talk to, every business client that I have that comes to me for coaching, says, I just want to make more money. I'm like, not good enough. Go hire a sales coach. Go hire a sales consultant or like a marketing agency. Why are you looking for. I'm not a salesperson. I'm an operations person. I'm going to help you build the systems to build, like, processes. Right? I'm not going to give you like this slick, like, oh, you say this in the first part and then you whip them with the second line and the zinger is this. And you hook them and you close a deal. Like, that's not me. I don't. I'm not a sales guy. Right? If that's what you're looking for, it's the wrong coach. If you're looking for pragmatic solutions that are replicable and manufacturable and repeatable by anybody in your organization, I'm the guy. But if you're just looking for, I don't know, these, whatever it is, just to make money, you got to find someone else for that. But the thing that I like to offer to people is figure out your personal goals. Get past the fact that you don't have enough money. I understand you need more money to. You're in scarcity mindset right now. But try to get past that and figure out, if you work in scarcity mindset, what does your business do for you? Because once you've identified that, you're already one step better than you were before, you've already won 50% of the game. Because now you're thinking about how your business works for you. Because I'm going to help you make more money. You're going to make more money if we start programmatically testing. It's just a matter of math. It's literally mathematical. It's going to happen. Then you're going to end up having a really. God, for lack of. This is what I call it. I don't, I don't know if it's okay to say, but I call it a really fancy job. This is what I. Because you're going to end up starting to make money and you're going to end up working like 90 hours a week and you're going to do the math and you're making 19 bucks an hour working 90 hours a week because you have a fancy job that you worked yourself into. Because now you solved the money thing, but you didn't build the proper systems. And so now you're just like burning the candle at both ends and you've just built yourself a fancy job. You're not a business owner. And so that's the second problem. That's why it's so important you identify your personal goals. And then the other mindset shift that I always talk to people about is get the emotions out of it. Focus on programmatic testing. Forward think, right, fail. Forward and forward think, meaning it's okay to fail. You just want the data. That's all you want. And if you only have $10,000 to play with over six months because you don't have that much liquidity, great, parse that out. $2,000 every single month. And then the last month test with $0. Do a test that doesn't cost anything. There's a lot of tests that you can do with no money. But now you're like, wait, but that's $10,000 that I wasted, is it? No, because you can look back at the six months and figure out what had the best return on investment. You'll find out one of those, outperform the others. And now you just fine tune that one, do six variations of that one for the next six months and eventually you eventually figure it out, is my point. You're going to figure out a methodology that works best for you and your brand to generate revenue.
Yeah, I love this because when I'm a high performance coach and I sometimes work with small businesses and the question I like to ask is, what's the lifestyle outcome? Because each business is going to have the money side, but it's also generating a lifestyle. And you don't want to be trapped in your business. Like it can be the worst thing in the world where you're working, like, you're working like, just not computer. 90, 90 hours a week and you never see your family and that's really taxing and sad. But yeah, I love that. Figure out your life first. Build the systems that'll get you to that lifestyle and then, like, test is how I paraphrase you.
Got it. That's it. Yep. Boom. You literally nailed it. Yep. That's literally all I do. And I think that if I did read your website and I do know that you're a performance coach, so I'm assuming you're much better at coaching people than I am. But I'm. I just am really good about calling. Calling bull. I just don't, like, don't work with me if you don't want to be held accountable because damned if you're going to make me a loser. Like, I'm not going to lose because of you.
Right?
Like, I will fly to you and literally drag your neck across the finish line once you agree what success looks like. Because I'm not going to lose. I just refuse to lose. So once we agree on what winning looks like, we're going to get there. I've been told I'm not a coach. I've been explicitly told that I'm not a coach. I would. You probably. Drill sergeant.
Drill sergeant. I love as a high performance coach, one of the things that I tell my clients is you're gonna get challenged. If I'm doing my job, it's not my job to placate you. It's my job to push you into the. And so I would actually say that you're probably a pretty darn good coach. If they're calling people out on their BS and be like, you're either doing the work here, so. So, yeah, don't discount yourself as your life coach. Step into that a bit more.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I'll own it a little bit more. I just, I've been told that coaches are more sympathetic and empathetic and they're really good at reading the person. And I'm more just like linear, logical. Hey, Here are the 12 things we said we're gonna do this month. It's black and white. Get it done or not.
The sweet spot is reading a person being empathetic but then telling them the truth that they can't get around. That's like, when I know I've done a good job, when someone gets mad at me for, hey, you want this, but you're doing this. And I understand why you're doing it, but that's on you.
That's work self actualized.
Yeah, I love it.
That's great.
Continuing the conversation on lifestyle. I know you have a podcast, Girl Dad.
Yeah, it's the Girl Dad Show. It's not well named. The show isn't really about being a girl dad. It's so funny. Yeah, but.
So part of your lifestyle choice for your businesses, I guess your career was to move to Texas, spend more time with your kids, as you said. And the application for the show. Could you talk a little bit about that show and that connection? Now you have space to do a show that interviews totally. Entrepreneurs about it.
Yeah, totally. It's like my pride and joy. Right. It's like my favorite part of my life is my show, and it cost me a lot of time and money to host it. This is not an easy thing to run a show. And kudos to you, Sean, for having this show and being able to produce it, maintain it, edit it, and get it distributed, because I don't think people realize how much work it is. I definitely underestimated the crap out of it. I was like, oh, how hard could it be? I'll just turn on the zoom and hit record. It's gonna be super easy. And it is not. It is not. Yeah. And so it's a lot more work than I ever could have imagined. But the genesis of it was that I really wanted to be an incredible father. I wanted to be. I didn't know what that meant, but I just knew that I wanted to do a really good job. I'm like, gosh, I really want to be the best that I can be at this. I don't know how to define that, but I know that I want to be in that direction of what does that look like? Then the second half of me was like, but I really like building businesses. And this is also a very frenetic and crazy life too, because this also causes a lot of time suck. Right. It's like a vacuum for time. Right. And you have two very highly unpredictable time vacuum, time vacuuming activities that are conflating against each other. And I'm like, oh, crap. I really love both of these things. I really want to do a good job. Both of these things. And I'm sitting here scratching my head, whiteboarding and trying to figure it out. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, why don't I just operationalize this? And so I just started interviewing people. I started asking. I asked seven of my most successful friends, like, hey, can I just ask You a few questions about how you became a politician or became a VC or became whatever and how you managed your family life. I just started interviewing them and got wildly different answers, wildly different perspectives and advice. And it was super helpful and it was super, super insightful and just really fun to hear all the different perspectives on time valuation, resource allocation, mindset values. It was really interesting. And I started sharing some of these stories with my friends. The responses were like, just so much. There was so much judgment, especially from the people that don't have kids. There was so much judgment. I would never think that way if I had kids or I would never die. And I was like, oh my God. This is really interesting that you guys are so interested in how these people live their lives and how they've created a family while they created success. Because almost everything comes with sacrifice because no one is like, magically this wonderful parent and also magically the CEO of a billion dollars. It just doesn't happen. They're sacrificing something to make that happen, right? And so you have to make these weird decisions to make extraordinary things happen. And people have a lot of judgment on that. And it. That was the impetus of it. So me, I learned a lot from doing those seven interviews. And then two, I had a bunch of my friends that I told about it that were like, dude, that's. They were like, so viscerally mortified by the answers that I'm like, oh, this is really good content. And then I got egged on. I'm like, oh, this would be really fun to do as a show because one, it would put me in front of more people that I would not normally have access to that I can ask these really weird questions to. It's awkward. Hey, can I talk to you about how you became so successful and, and how you justify not spending time with your kids? It's not a. It's not an easy question to ask and. But if you do it on a podcast, it's much easier to ask people to do that. And, and so that's the genesis of the show. And I use it as my way to learn how other people do it. And it feeds my brain and different perspectives and mindsets on how to do both well. And I will say that it is the best thing ever for me. My wife wants me to stop it and just hire a therapist. She's like, why can't you be like a normal person? Just hire a therapist. I. I love it. I absolutely love it. And it is, it's like total therapy for me, listening to these builders and these executives and these entrepreneurs and these leaders, titans of industry talk about how they became so successful in how they're managing their family life. It's just very fascinating for me. And I have no judgment. I have no judgment about it at all. Yeah, yeah.
What are a couple of things that you've taken from that experience and that show that you're like, oh, this is a good idea to implement?
Yeah. So there's two things that I've immediately implemented. I could talk right off the bat, and then there's a dozen things that I softly implemented. The two things that I implemented immediately was this concept of be a fountain, not a drain. And Pete Espinosa, former CEO of mortgage Cadence multibillion dollar company, is the CEO of this multi billion dollar company. I'm like, how did you do this? Why are you doing this? Isn't what wins enough? Cause you're already like super successful. Come to find out, he's just a beautiful man and he has two mentally challenged kids and he has a wife that is diagnosed with chronic illness. And he flat out told me, you just have to live for yourself and maybe your kids. I have to live for a lot of lives. And so enough is not enough. I need to think about all of these things. And he's so happy and grateful for it. He's not like upset about it. He's just, this is just what I have to do. And so it's just a. It's just a beautiful way of looking at life. And it gave me so much perspective for someone with so much hardship. And just the perspective on it was so like so refreshing and so hopeful and so positive and abundant. And I asked him how he got there and he said, you have to viscerally look out for this both in your personal life and your work life. You need to find people that fill the room up and don't suck the energy out of it. So be a fountain, not a drain, and then get rid of the people that are drains and not fountains in your life. So you yourself be a fountain for other people and immediately remove people that are not fountains in your life. Because your kids will grow up in that environment and you will naturally grow up in that environment. And so just be viscerally aware of fountains and drains. And so it has literally changed my life. I've completely. I filter my new friend groups on this concept. Are you abundant? Are you positive? Are you hopeful? Are you willing to try things? Are you supportive? Are you all of these things that you know that, that relate to Abundance and fountains. Right. And I try to avoid people that are not and the vast majority of people are not. So it's been very hard, but I'm trying to stick to it. And the second thing I've learned is I had a recent guest come on and he's building multiple businesses like me. He's probably five years ahead of me, but I just asked him, I'm like, how are you doing it? Because I'm struggling, like incorporating my family with the businesses. And you're doing so well. You have so many businesses that are so successful. And I constantly see your Facebook and you're traveling with your kids and living this glorious life and I just don't know how you're doing. It's just like an Instagram thing that I'm like, that I'm like super annoyed about, where I get to see all the beautiful stuff, but I don't see the pain. And he's just bring them. And I'm like, what do you mean bring them? And he's like, just bring them to like. I was like, you literally bring your kids to like the deli. And he's yeah. I'm like, what do they do? Make them ring. Make them be a cashier. Ring people up. There's like a nine year old ring. Like sandwiches at your deli. Yeah, absolutely. What are they going to learn in the third grade that they can't learn as a cashier at my deli? Yeah. I brought my 11 year old to a GC. He's also has a GC business. Yeah. I bring her to the GC meetings and we look at the blueprints together. She just sits there and watches me talk and whatever and she contributes what she wants. But what is she going to learn that she from this that she can't learn by being here with me? And I just bring her along and it literally changed my entire life. So I'm going to a pool conference in two weeks and I'm bringing my four year old with me. I'm taking her out of school and I'm going to bring her with me. I'm going to put a blue Ocean Pool service shirt on her and we're going to go meet with private equity folks, we're going to meet with investors, we're going to take meetings and she's just going to sit there. She's going to be just like, I don't know, she could play with me, she could play with crayons and do whatever, but she's going to be at every meeting and she's going to walk next to the floor with me and I'm going to show her what I do for a living and it'll be super fun. Right? And why not? It's a really interesting concept. I never thought about it that way because we're so programmed to just keep kids in school. But it's for what purpose? Like school was only in if you really break it down. Like school was only invented to TR because we had the industrial revolution. They needed to train us to work 9 to 5 so that we could be factory workers. But like, that's not no longer necessary. So we don't need that conditioning or training anymore. So what's the rel anyways? The whole thing is just made me like pry into this whole school system and now I'm like, I can't stop thinking about it. I'm like, do I start homeschooling my kids? Anyways, I don't want to get into a whole nother podcast here, but yeah, those are the two major things that I pulled from my podcast that I think are really impactful and meaningful to me.
I love both of those points because in like the high performance world, it's protect your energy. Right. Being around the fountains versus the drain. Like if you've ever been on a team and you've had the one guy or gal that has made that team worst experience possible, it doesn't matter if there's 10 other people that are doing amazing work that are upbeat, like, it can ruin that experience for you. So identifying totally. And then I see bring. Just bring them that phrase. Like just bring them. It's really like role modeling for your kids. Right. Are you role modeling that business is not a family thing or I think there's more opportunity versus Silicon Valley to bring the kids on, to contribute, to see how things work and role model what it is to be person in the community, to be a business person. Absolutely. And then that. I'm an engineer. I studied business in college because I'm like, that's the skill that'll transfer whether it's whatever, tech business or not.
Yeah.
I need to understand how a business runs. Can absolutely love. So.
Oh, that's good. I'm glad.
I think it's super.
I was hoping to. I was hoping to give you something super insightful and helpful because then my whole podcast would be useless if it wasn't at least something insightful that would.
Have been on me. Right. It's my job to. I think there's been a lot of great nuggets of wisdom here and I'm very thankful for that. With said if someone is thinking like maybe I want to try to own my business, small business or maybe I need to figure out how to get out of my business so that I can live life and not be miserable and be a fountain for my family. As you so beautifully said. What would be one or two things to get the ball rolling in your opinion?
Yeah, I'm a strong believer in getting a system or a coach. Obviously I have my own. So you can work with owners club and join the community, self coach yourself through a system or join any one of the amazing coaches out there. There's a ton of systems and coaches out there. There's obviously the standard, right? There's eos, that's like the oldest and tried and true operating system. There's ema, there's a ton of them and the owner's manual framework is mine. Right. That's my process and but yeah, I would totally get a system because you are going to basically cut the race in half by having someone that's already broken down the system, broken down the process into a systematic steps. Because there's nothing in business that hasn't really been discovered or solved. I think there's new products and new technologies but how you conduct business, there's really no innovation that hasn't been Harvard Business reviewed or some guru hasn't said like Gary Vee hasn't. Everyone has said it like everything's already been done and said. The trick is figuring out who to listen to and sticking with it and cause that way you can cut through the fat, stop wasting as much inefficiency and time by trying to figure it out yourself and just like pay, pay something or someone or some tool to just cut that down into a process. Because most of these systems are going to be better than just trying to figure it out on your own. Most. There. There are some pretty weird business systems out there too. So just be careful. I guess I shouldn't say that so openly because I have. One of the things about my. One of the things that I think all my clients always say to me is that what's. Because they've gone through a lot of business coaches, some of them have and they'll say I'm like, they're like why do you like me so much? And they're like, you're like the only business coach you've ever had that actually owns a business. And so. Oh, that's interesting. So you know what it's to have pissed off customers or a bad product or an employee that calls in sick or like, you also are dealing with this stuff with us. And so I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. Like, I'm not just coaching you through your business. I'm actually eating my own dog food. I'm actually like, I can show them my own system and dashboard. Right. I'm like, oh, here's how I solve that problem. I'll literally pull up my dashboard for one of my businesses, show them what I'm doing through it. And I think that's like a different mindset. Because when you think about some of these other coaches, I think that one of the things that may not be as good. So now I'm. Now I'm backpedaling on what I said. So, yeah, trying to find a good system, but make sure you validate that the system is good and the person is validated. But I would try to find a system because there's a lot of playbooks on how to build these things that are really good. Donald Miller just launched a new book that's really good as well, too, for small business. Yeah. And so I'm writing my own as well. So hopefully you'll check it out in January. Yeah. It's called the Owner's Manual Framework. So it's like my system process in a book.
I'd love to have you back on to talk about that after. Get my hands on that book. Cause I'm sure that'll be super helpful for my business, so.
Oh, that'd be awesome. Yeah.
Yeah, I'd love.
Yeah, I'd love for you to read it and tell me. I'll give you an advanced copy so you can give me feedback before I launch it, actually. Awesome.
Yeah, I'm down. Yeah.
I'm not a fancy. I'm not fancy. I'm not Donald Miller. I don't have a huge platform or anything. I would. I just. I'm literally, like, asking my friends to read it as I write it, because this. So, okay. Is this good? Like, so, yeah, I'm just gonna launch it on Amazon self publishing. So. Yeah.
Right on.
I'm just trying to get the system out to many people because, like, you asked me, like, what's it. What's one thing that you can do that I wish I did sooner is that just get a playbook. Cause that playbook will. Will speed up everything. It's like, it just makes everything go faster once you have a system.
Right on. So you mentioned validating the system. 1. Like, the person running it should dog food it. Right so they should be doing it and not just advising you how to do something that they're not actually implementing. Are there any other metrics for vetting a system or a coach that you would consider?
Yeah, I would consider talking to former clients and success stories. Ask if you can interview a current client or a former client. That's another way to validate and make sure that the system works and that coach is meaningful and good. And then. Yeah, I think the other thing too is this is not part. This is not part of the same answer, but it's a second answer to your question. Okay, cool. If you're interested in starting a small business, like, you don't have to go all in. Keep your day job and start small and slow. Go slow. So instead of doing five tests a month, just do two. I don't know, just spend one Saturday a week doing your business and try to build it up. Just go slower. As long as you have a programmatic mindset and you can think about things as tests and sequences, you can compartmentalize and time box your entire business growth into eight hours a week if you wanted to. Like, I'm building a business called PIP App right now with one hour a week. It is the hardest business in the freaking world. And it's only hard because I'm only giving myself one hour a week. And it is so challenging. But it like literally is strengthening my skills in time management and strengthening my skills in delegation, strategic thinking, deployment, all of this stuff. But I only give myself one hour a week to work on PIP App. And it is horrible. It's like the. It's so hard. It is so hard because by the time you 15 minutes, you get finally ready to like process and do something smart with it before I spend 15 minutes and you're like, wait, crap. So then that's 45. What am I gonna do with this? 45 minutes. Okay, I'm gonna spend anyways. You get what I'm going with this. Yeah, but it's possible is my point. And PIP App is not the working product. Now we have a prototype out and on the website, you to it. There's people that use it like it's an actual business. It actually works. And I was able to build that with one hour a week. Is it amazing? Absolutely not. It's not like super successful. I'm not like going to retire off of it. But it is possible to build a business in one hour a week, is my point.
I absolutely love that. And yeah, I think to add onto that too, if you're Interested in getting into particular business. Find the three to five people doing it in your town and just shadow them. Like that's a zero cost to you. Get to learn how it works. Most people will be cool, I think, as you said. Yeah, build those relationships.
And I have a thing called a hundred interviews, and it's also one of the three reasons I started my podcast. But whenever I try to do something new, I interview a hundred people in it. So, like, when I wanted to learn Crypto, I interviewed 100 crypto investors When I started real estate, I interviewed 100 real estate investors when I started. I've already. I'm almost done interviewing a hundred parents for my podcast, but I always have a thing called a hundred. Right? And so I'm in the process of trying to learn private equity. So I've interviewed now 19 people that work in private equity. So I still need to meet 81 people. But there's two reasons why I say interview a hundred people. One, it'll really make sure you want to work because you will get 90% no's, and that's okay. And you just got to keep working it until you get enough yeses. It'll start teaching you how to get over your inhibitions and starting to get your foot out and starting to get asked for people for help and really validates. Do you really want to learn this? Do you really want to know this knowledge? Because if you really do, you won't have any issues asking a thousand people to get a hundred people to say yes, because that's usually the percentage of yeses you'll get. And so that's the one reason I do that. And the second reason I do that is if you interview a hundred people, that's enough data for you to actually synthesize the pros and cons and do a SWOT analysis of the space. You'll get a wide enough perspective and understanding of that person's job, role, and function in industry that you can see the similarities. You can start pulling generic factoids and trends and analysis. You can start getting a sense of the industry. Oh, that was said 40 times. Oh, interesting. Okay. So the vast majority of them think that, oh, there's a fringe group of 20% that think this is actually bad. Oh, cool. Interesting. You could actually create some percentage analysis. And so I have this rule of a hundred for those reasons. And so if you do, at the end of a hundred, truly decide that you want to do this, you have a lot more data than even those a hundred people that you interviewed have. It's it's strange. It's a strange thing. It's very weird. People get really discouraged when I tell them to do that. But it's also what sounds like you don't really want to learn it, then that's what I say.
And if you're going to go into business, that ratio of 10% of the people you outreach will actually interact with you. That's such an important, important thing I've had to learn in my coaching business is it's a numbers game and it's a different way to learn that concept, which is fantastic. That young thank you so much for being on the Meaningful Revolution. In the show notes, we'll have how people can reach you at www.owners.club if you're interested in that. Where else can people follow up if they need to or want to follow?
So thegirldad.com if you want to check out my podcast. So as of right now, Owners Club, if you're a small business and you're interested in small business or you are a small business, the Girl Dad Show. If you want to just listen in on some interesting conversations on how successful people are navigating parenthood and hopefully in a few months, always on.com is just how to just follow me and stay up to date with me.
Awesome.
Cool.
We'll have that in the show notes. I probably will leave always han out until you launch it, so let me know. I will with that, everyone. I will see you on the next episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Sam.
