353: Are Successful Entrepreneurs A Product Of Tiger Parenting?

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I’m doing a solo episode to talk about what is required to be successful in business at any level and how that ties into the way that I was brought up by two Asian tiger parents. Now overall, I think the message in this episode is important for everyone to hear because it’s the truth about making money in business or being good at anything for that matter.

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But before we begin, I want to thank Clavio for sponsoring this episode. Now, are you working around the clock to build a business that you’ve always imagined? And do you want to communicate with your fast growing list of customers in a personalized way, but in a way that gives you time to work on the rest of your business? Have you ever wondered how companies you admire, the ones that redefine their categories do it? Companies like Living Proof and Chubbies. Well, they do it by building relationships with their customers from the very beginning, while also evolving in real time as their customers needs change.

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These companies connect quickly with their customers, collect their information, and start creating personalized experiences and offers that inspire rapid purchase, often within minutes of uploading their customer data. Now, Klaviyo empowers you to own the most important thing for any business, the relationship between you and your customers, and the experiences you deliver from the first email to the last promotion. To learn more about how Klaviyo can help your business, visit klaviyo.com slash mywife and sign up for a free account.

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That’s KLAVIO.com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store. And I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce and e-commerce is their primary focus.

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Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart just at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price-well too, and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now finally, I want to mention a brand new podcast that I recently released with my partner Tony.

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And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs and e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all the things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Quarter, Job podcast. Today’s gonna be a more personal episode where I talk about my childhood and how I was raised. Now, as you know, I was brought up by a pair of tiger parents and it’s only recently that I’ve realized the true value of this crazy parenting style. Now, in this episode, you’ll learn three important life lessons on being successful in business that were instilled upon me through Asian parenting. Now, I always get crazy looks whenever I tell people that I started studying for the SATs in the fourth grade.

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or when I attended nerd camp in the seventh grade and completed geometry, algebra, and trigonometry in the span of three weeks. Man, Steve, you must have had the worst childhood ever. Did you even have any fun as a kid? Now, looking back, I’m proud to say that my parents did an incredible job of raising my brother and I, despite the perceptions from the outside. And here’s what most people don’t understand about the culture of Asian parenting. It teaches you the discipline to follow through. It teaches you the proper habits to get things done.

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and it teaches you that good things come with pain and sacrifice. So as a result of my upbringing, here are three life lessons that I’m instilling in my two kids to foster their growth. And yes, all these lessons actually apply to business as well. So lesson number one, you have to get used to the grind to be successful. Now, whenever parents tell me that all they want is for their kids to be happy, I always shake my head and kind of chuckle inside. So first off, kids don’t know what’s good for them.

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Now, if I would have let my kids do whatever made them happy, they’d be playing games on their iPads 24 seven. They’d be eating candy for dinner and getting sick. And they’d be skipping school and watching YouTube videos all day. Now, just because you are happy doing something doesn’t mean that it’s good for you. If you let kids do whatever makes them happy, they’ll never realize that much of life is about grinding away at unglamorous tasks. So they better get used to it. For every success story, there’s always a behind the scenes tale of crap work.

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and drudgery. So for example, mywifequitterjob.com is by most metrics a successful blog. I have a loyal audience of readers who consume my content, purchase my class and attend my annual e-commerce conference. And they also watch my YouTube videos and my TikTok, which I just launched. But behind the scenes, there’s a lot of grunt work that I have to deal with on a regular basis. So first off, I actually don’t like writing. I’ve never enjoyed doing it. And I have to force myself to publish an article every single week. That’s at least 3000 words.

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Now it’s gotten easier over the years with practice, but I still dread Sunday mornings when it’s time to write. So why do I write if I dislike doing it? Well, you can’t run a successful blog without great content and writing is just a means to an end. And overall, the benefits of running mywifequitterjob.com far outweigh my hatred of writing, so I basically force myself to do it. I also hate marketing and sales, especially when it comes to running monthly webinars. Deep down, I’m an engineer at heart and giving a sales pitch is like

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pulling teeth. It does not come naturally to me, but I force myself to do it for the benefit of my business. So right now I’m making my kids take supplemental math classes called Russian math, even though they don’t particularly like math, but forcing them to get better at a subject that they hate or dislike, I should say, teaches them two things. One, it’s important to be ahead of the pack. By supplementing their education, my kids are more advanced than their peers, and I want them to get used to this feeling because average doesn’t cut it.

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Two, they are learning that getting ahead in life requires work, even if it sucks. Would they have more fun playing computer games all day? Of course, but it’s not gonna benefit their future. Now, one thing that I’ve noticed with my kids is that they often dislike what they are not good at, but as they get better at an activity, they start to enjoy it more once they get over the suck. Now, I like to talk about the suck a lot because the grind totally applies to business.

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Over the years, I’ve spoken to thousands of people who want to change their lives with a small business, but they don’t want to do the dirty work. And every day I get questions from readers along the lines of, hey Steve, I’ve tried absolutely everything with my online store and the sales just aren’t coming in. What should I do? But when I take a look at their site, it’s horrible. They clearly didn’t do any research or put their best foot forward and they obviously didn’t try everything. And when I confront them with this evidence and provide suggestions on how they can improve,

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All I get are excuses. Hey Steve, I’m not good at marketing. It’s just not my cup of tea. Hey Steve, I’m a horrible writer. I just can’t write good copy. I’m terrible with tech and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. The best answer I’ve ever gotten was, I want to run an online business, but I’m not interested in learning anything about the web. By the way, these are real responses that I’ve gotten over the years. Well guess what? Running a successful business requires marketing, so you better get over it. It wasn’t my cup of tea either, but you just got to suck it up and learn through trial and error.

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The same goes with writing. If you run a blog but you can’t write, then you got problems. And if you run an online business without knowing anything about websites, you should probably quit now. You don’t have to be a guru, but at least learn the basics. So bottom line, to be successful, you’re have to learn and perform activities that you don’t particularly like. Do you think I enjoyed studying for the SATs while my friends were playing outside with an earshot? Hell no. To be successful, you must expect to suffer in how you react to the suck.

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will determine how far you go. All right, life lesson number two, to develop perseverance, you must be challenged. Every week, hundreds of readers email me to complain that they can’t get their business off the ground. But when I dig a little deeper, I often discover that they didn’t make an effort. Now it’s sad, but I often have people sign up for my course who don’t watch the videos, ask questions, or attend office hours, and expect to do well.

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It’s as if they are magically bequeathed with e-commerce knowledge by virtue of signing up for my class. Now the truth is that most people give up at the first sign of trouble. And this behavior is the result of bad habits established during childhood. When kids are not challenged at a young age, they develop a false sense of confidence that makes them cocky. And if they never get a chance to fail, they’ll panic at the first sign of adversity. And here’s a real life example from my own childhood. When I was a kid, school always came easy to me.

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As a result, I didn’t have to try very hard to get good grades, and my teachers used to shower me with praise and compliments. Basically, they treated me like some genius. And as a result, I became a cocky little nerd. In fact, my parents’ sense in my head was getting a little bit too big, so they sent me to an accelerated camp for geeks known as CTY or Center for Talented Youth. And it totally kicked my butt. All of a sudden, I was thrust into an environment where everyone was much smarter and I felt completely lost.

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I was presented with foreign concepts that I didn’t understand and I actually felt dumber than the other kids and I desperately wanted to go back to regular school where I was at the top of my class. And in the end, I did what any seventh grader would do. I panicked, gave up, and refused to go back. But my dad didn’t let that happen, obviously. Instead, he patiently walked me through all the problems that I couldn’t solve and then watched as I struggled. And even though I bitched and moaned about the difficulty level, he never told me the answer outright.

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Instead, he encouraged me to talk out loud and document my thought process. He gave me subtle hints when necessary to move me along. And over time, I learned that if I just stuck with a difficult problem long enough, that I’d eventually find a solution. Now, this is just a silly story about Nerd Camp, but struggling through small challenges like this as a kid taught me to be persistent in business. Now, our e-commerce store performed terribly during the first several months until I stumbled upon AdWords and learned how to use it effectively.

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My blog didn’t make a single cent until about the three-year mark, and it didn’t gain any traction at all until I learned how to do email marketing. So bottom line, if you persevere long enough, eventually you’ll find something that works, but you have to stick around long enough to reap the rewards. Now, just as a side, I always make fun of my Asian heritage, and here’s the true reason why Asian parents don’t over-complement their children. Now, if you’ve been on the internet long enough, you’ve probably come across funny memes of Asian parents who never compliment their children.

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And even though you might think that parenting this way is overly harsh, there’s actually a hidden lesson behind it. So first off, I actually hate giving false compliments, and don’t even get me started with participation trophies. If you’re gonna give your child a compliment, it should be for a real accomplishment. Otherwise, it just makes your kid overconfident, which leads to the afraid to fail syndrome described earlier. And it’s true, my parents rarely complimented me as a child. Incidentally, they rarely compliment me as an adult either, but that’s a different story altogether.

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When I brought home a report card full of A’s and a single B, they would ask me why I got a B. But here’s the thing, the lack of compliments set the bar high and forced me to aim for a greater goal. Straight A’s, that’s par for the course. What, you got a number two in the competition? Why did you lose? You got a 90 on the test? Isn’t this test out of 100? Now don’t get me wrong, whenever I did achieve a major goal through blood, sweat and tears, my parents dished out plenty of praise and it would feel amazing.

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So bottom line, if you pat yourself on the back for something that comes easy, you’ll never know what real accomplishment feels like. Failure builds perseverance, which leads to success. If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce

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and provide strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself. Now, first and foremost, protecting your IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Counsel provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees,

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website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult. And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now back to the show. All right, lesson number three, habits build discipline. Now when I was a brand new parent, I actually made the rookie mistake.

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of believing that incentives were the key to convincing my kids to work hard and make progress. So for example, I promised to buy my daughter a large stuffed animal if she learned a certain number of vocab words by the end of the summer. But even though she really wanted this toy, she quickly became overwhelmed by the monumental task of learning hundreds of new words all at once. And these aren’t really easy words either. These are literally SAT words. And she tried to cram all of her studying in just a couple of days, got frustrated and gave up. And as a result,

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I put her on a bite-sized schedule. Every day after camp, she would just try to learn 20 words per day, and it helped her through the process by explaining each word and giving her a short quiz at the end of the day. I also tried to make things a little bit fun by creating ridiculously memorable sentences with vocab words. Anyway, by the end of the summer, she learned almost 500 new words, and she was amazed by her progress. Now, the same goes with business success. If you don’t set aside time to work on your business regularly, then you’ll never make

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consistent progress. Most people actually start out with an unsustainable intensity and eventually burn themselves out. They spend so much time and energy launching a business that they don’t have anything left in the tank. So the key to being successful is actually consistency. And consistency is the result of creating healthy habits and routines. So here’s what I tell my kids. If you want to be good at anything, then you need to make practice a part of your regular schedule. And you have to tell yourself that you’re going to maintain this schedule

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Indefinitely. Even if you feel like giving up, you have to stick with it for at least a couple of years. I also remind them that they may not see results right away, but small incremental improvements over time will eventually lead to big visible gains. Patience, my child. So what are your thoughts here? I’m actually very curious. Whether or not you agree with my style of parenting is up to you, and I’m not saying that Asian parenting is the best way to raise a child, but I actually do believe that kids, and adults, incidentally,

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are just way too coddled today. Everyone wants quick wins. Everyone wants to enjoy life. Everyone wants to be happy all the time. But none of that can happen without pain. You can’t enjoy your wins unless there’s suffering that precedes it. So you have to prepare yourself to do what you don’t want to do. You have to be willing to learn what you don’t necessarily want to learn. Because everything sucks in the beginning. And your ability to endure the suckage is what will allow you to succeed in the long run.

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Now the truth hurts, but a wise Asian father once told me, if you beat something into your brain long enough, it will eventually sink in. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now when it comes to success in anything that you do, most of the time it’s going to suck. So just set your expectations appropriately and you’ll have the mental capacity to persevere and stick with it. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 353. And once again, I’m going to thank Postscript.

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which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clearview, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign.

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Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.