432: The Curse That All Successful Entrepreneurs Have With Mike Jackness

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have my friend Mike Jackness back on the show for like the fifth or sixth time. And most of you know who he is already, but in this episode, we recorded this before Mike and I spoke at the Helium 10 event sale in Skull in Las Vegas. And the topic in a nutshell is can successful people live balanced lives? Or do you need to go all in in order to be successful?

00:27
Now Mike and I are polar opposites in terms of personality here, so it’s an interesting debate. But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce, and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce, and you can segment your audience just like email.

00:54
It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store, and I depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores, and here’s why it’s so powerful.

01:21
Klaviyo can track every single customer who’s shopping in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used, and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcasts that I released with my partner Tony

01:51
And unlike this one, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience Podcast covers all 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 on to the show.

02:16
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I got Mike Jackness. We’re hanging out at his home in Vegas, prepping our talk for Sellin’ Scale, the Helium 10 event. And I thought we’d give you guys a little preview about what we’re talking about, even though this episode is going to take place after we actually give the actual talk. since most of you guys cannot attend the conference, I thought we’d give you a little preview. And what we’re talking about, the title of the talk is The Brutal Truth About Success in Business. And can you have it all, basically?

02:46
So let’s give an intro, Mike. Who are you, Mike? You’ve been on the episode, you’ve been on the show like multiple times, but just in case people don’t know who you are. My name is Mike Jackness. I would consider you to be a friend, but you might not think the same. We’ve hung out quite a bit between e-commerce field events and Selvish Summit and just other things in e-commerce. And yeah, I’ve always enjoyed you and your family and look forward to hanging out whenever you come to Vegas or pass cross.

03:17
When I was first talking to the organizer of this conference, I was discussing just, I’m kind of sick of talking about the same old thing. When you go speak at these conferences, you and I speak at a lot of events and it’s kind of the same stuff where you’re you’re talking about building a listing for Amazon or inventory logistics or PPC advertising. the thing that I was talking to her about, she’s like, what would you go see at these events and what is it that intrigued you? I’m like, look, honestly,

03:47
You don’t have to sound egotistical in any way because I don’t feel like I know everything by any stretch of the imagination, but allow the same basic to intermediate stuff as covered. And when you’re running a business for seven years in this space, it’s hard to find the real gold nuggets that are going to really make a difference. And I was like, why don’t we talk about something that is outside all the basics, the things that people never talk about, the actual struggles that entrepreneurs go through because there’s a lot of, think,

04:15
the population that thinks of being an entrepreneur is glamorous and it comes with all these benefits. And it does in a lot of ways. I certainly wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are a lot of struggles that come along with being an entrepreneur as well. And we start talking about that. And I don’t know exactly how the conversation led to it, but the Ford-Burner theory came up. when she, excuse me, when she agreed to do that topic, I thought to ask you to come to do it with me, because you’re the one that actually introduced me to it in the first place. And it’s…

04:45
been instrumental in kind of changing the trajectory of my life. So it’s funny about this is she asked me to talk initially and I thought I was gonna do a singular talk and then you emailed me and say, hey, you wanna do this talk? And I was like, I don’t wanna do two talks. And so we’ll see how interesting it is actually. We haven’t actually gone on stage yet. I think it’s gonna be difficult. It’s what I hope will happen if it changes even just like one person’s life or their perception of something or helps somebody.

05:14
in any way, then I think it’ll be worth it versus trying to cater to the whole room. Like I typically do want to talk, you stress a lot about, again, trying to make sure the tactics or the material is beneficial to everybody. You everyone that will be in that room will be coming to it with a different perspective and a different part of their journey in life. some people approach entrepreneurship way different. You and I are actually quite different, which is interesting. We’re like opposite. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that

05:43
Having that kind co-talk with the two different perspectives is good. But there’s some particular struggles with being an entrepreneur. It’s a lonely island at the top. Everyone comes to you to answer every question, but you don’t have that same resource. And one of the things that’s been helpful for me is I’ve worked on meeting people like you and being a mastermind, making sure that I am surrounded by those people.

06:13
first getting started, you’re not gonna have any of that. It’s impossible. You’re just trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and keep the wheels on the bus. And so it’s taken me many years to develop those friendships. And then even when you know people, it’s years and years before you really feel comfortable confiding in them and talking about the things that really matter. I think there’s other things that kinda come along with it as well. I think that, we talked about this a bit, it’s gonna be in our talk, that society kinda

06:44
helps shine a light on this problem or magnify the problem even more because if you’re working hard, you’re deemed to be successful. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re making money. Those things come with this badge of success. But it can be just as toxic as other bad diseases that we have in society from alcoholism to drug addiction to gambling or other things that normally people would never group.

07:10
entrepreneurs are working hard in that same group. I think, least from my perspective, the thing that’s been hard for me to learn is that it can be equally as toxic. Yeah. So the public knows Mike as seven figure entrepreneur, host of the Econ Group podcast. You’ve had successful exits in the past. I thought I’d just ask you about some of the stuff that we’ve discussed together in private that we don’t really share publicly. I’ll share my story after you share yours, but

07:39
And for the people that don’t know you that well, like you are like an all or nothing type of guy. am. am. Like when you do something, it’s pedal to the metal and you don’t do anything else. And I sometimes look at you and I’m like, man, like I could not do that. It looks miserable actually. Well, it is. And that’s the problem, you know, but I think, um, you know, you’re because it’s an addictive type of personality or thing that comes along with it. You know, it kind of builds on itself and makes you want to do more of it. It’s kind of the environment that I grew up in.

08:09
And when we talked about the Fort Burner theory, like I always kind of knew that it was hurting my life in other ways, but I didn’t really fully understand it or have the aha moment. We were having a conversation one day. was… Maybe we should define what the Fort Burner theory is. Yeah, let’s do that. So you want to do No, go for it. for it. Well, I’ll set up what the hell it kind of came to be then. So mean, you and me and Scott Volker and Greg Mercer were doing a five minute pitch and we…

08:37
we’re getting ready to do the finale and we were just kind of sitting around drinking a couple of beers, talking about life and you brought up the four burner theory and just kind of, know, non-strollingly casually we’re talking about this thing of like the ideas that there’s four burners in life. You have your work burner, which is kind of the first one we always talk about since it’s an entrepreneurial podcast. You have your health, you have your family and your friends. And those are kind of the four burners in life. Obviously there’s other like anecdotal things that happen, but like these are the four main.

09:05
And it’s really a solid thing. you think about it, it’s hard to even come up with a fifth burner or other thing if you think about it. Like almost everything falls in those four categories. And the theory basically is that it has to equal 100%. So the burners, whatever total, has to equal 100%. And entrepreneurs tend to start to crank up that work burner, which means you crank up the work burner 10 degrees. You have to take 10 degrees off of the other ones in some capacity.

09:34
everybody will start to degrade one of the burners first. Everyone’s different, right? So for me, it’s health. It’s always health is the first one because it affects me and only me. And I tend to think about other people before myself and will continue to fuel the friends or family burner and degrade my health first. That makes me sound terrible because I degrade the friends, which means that I think about myself first before my friends.

10:02
I mean, I don’t know that that makes you terrible in any way. mean, in a lot of ways, you know, just talking to other people. mean, think that thinking about yourself first is important. You know, you can think about yourself to a point where you’re yourself first to where it’s selfish and you’re just a bad person. But I’ve known you for a long time. That’s the furthest way that I would define you as. Right. I mean, think that thinking about yourself is important. And oftentimes one doesn’t think about themselves enough or put themselves first, especially

10:31
like a busy mother or something like that where like you’re constantly thinking about your kids first and They come last I see this a lot, know It’s it amazes me like just to see what parents especially moms in particular can can do you know? where they come up with this bandwidth to do all this stuff And so at some point it’s important to think about yourself You got to think about your health and you got to think about your well-being because if you don’t then you know at some point You’re just not going to be here and you’re not doing any of those people that you care about a favor

11:01
if you’re sick or dead. I think it’s important to talk about the second part of that theory, which is in order to be successful in any discipline, you got to turn off at least one burner. And if you want to be super successful, you turn off two. And if you want to be like Elon Musk, you turn off three, basically. I mean, there is some credibility to this, no doubt. This is something I’ve thought a lot about certainly since we’ve discussed this theory and just in general, because there was a time in my life

11:31
where I I come from background, like I know I’m not gonna be the smartest person in the room. I didn’t go to college. I barely even really made it of high school. It was very much like I’m going to win because I’m going to work harder than you. It was kind of my theory, right? It’s just like I’m gonna be more intense, I’m gonna work harder. And again, because I think society kind of looks at that as success. And certainly that was the household that I grew up in, entrepreneur type household.

11:59
that was kind of ingrained. so I was able to be quote unquote more successful, at least my day job and all the things that I did, than people that were way smarter than me. And so I think that there is something to that. Like I do think, if you’re in an early stage of a startup or you’re doing certain types of businesses, you have to devote that kind of energy into it to be successful. I think it’s hard to imagine some of the things that I’ve done, some of the things that became ultimately very successful.

12:29
becoming successful in any other way. But you have to also be aware that you can’t fly that close to the sun and work that hard for unlimited amounts of time. At some point it catches up with you. You can only ignore your health for so long before you’re sick or you’re fat or you’re out of shape or whatever. You can only ignore your family for so long before your wife wants a divorce or your kids don’t even know who you are anymore. You can only ignore your friends so long

12:59
and tell them you’re not going to come over for dinner or go to a game or a concert for so long before they stop calling you. I mean, at some point this stuff adds up. And any short amount of time for a month or two, you’ll barely notice the bump on the road. Your friends will still call you. Your family will still love you. But you do this for a decade and eventually there’s going to be repercussions. And so there are repercussions in Eli’s life. I he has a reputation of…

13:28
you not being around, you know, and yeah, you know, first kids are doing work while the kids are there. So, you know, I enjoy driving his cars and I probably will get his internet at some point and probably his solar panels. And I appreciate the contributions that he’s made to the world. But at some point, you know, I think that there’s there’s repercussions to that. Oh, absolutely. And here’s the thing, at least that I got caught up in is you hear all these people in the media like killing it.

13:58
And there’s this perception that if you do something well and fast, then you’re like amazing. And I thought I’d just use my own example here with the CNBC thing. I know a lot of you guys listening saw my CNBC special. And what’s funny about that is we filmed that special right after one of the most stressful points in our business. It was 2020. Our revenue wasn’t even that good because we sell wedding stuff. No one was getting married.

14:27
hotels and airlines are our second actual biggest customer. No one was flying, no one was staying in hotels. And then CNBC wanted us to do the special and they wanted to use the 2020 numbers because it was 2021. And we’re like, that’s like our worst year ever. Not to mention our most stressful year. Like Jen and I were like, oh my God, know, we lost like 60 % of our business overnight. It was in March, March 23rd or something crazy like that. And what was also funny about filming that was there’s this one scene.

14:56
where we’re all sitting around the breakfast table and then like my kids have waffles and like, and then we call them down. They kind of marched down all happy and have breakfast. I mean, that was like totally staged. I mean, you could tell it was staged, but this is really staged because in the mornings, like I’m yelling at them, like get, get up, get down, make your own breakfast and then get out of there, get ready. And I’m just constantly yelling at them until they get out the door. But anyways, my point is, that.

15:21
A lot of these stories that you hear online about like even entrepreneurs killing it, whatever, there’s always another story. There’s this other story of someone who was in my mastermind group hit like $10 million by scaling. And then if you read the article, it was amazing, but they suffered so much profit in order to hit that point. And he was like, it wasn’t reflecting the article, but when we were talking about in the mastermind, he was like, that was the most stressful period. I will never do that again. We ended up only making like $90,000 out of that.

15:49
But we hit that number because I wanted to hit the $10 million mark, right? And it’s all ego. Yeah. mean, my partner, Dave, that I do the podcast with has this saying of revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. Pretty similar thought process. I mean, it’s hard to run a business. It’s hard to make money. It’s hard to have a very profitable business. It’s hard to do it. It’s even more difficult in the field that we’ve chosen.

16:17
as time goes by because there’s more and more people getting into it. There is margin erosion from every angle. This is just a typical life cycle. I’ve seen this story before. I’m in my mid-40s. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years. I’ve been in multiple businesses and in different niches and things. And I’ve seen this life cycle play out. And it’s something that I’m pretty hyper aware of. The first time around, you don’t realize that, again, because I just didn’t really

16:46
kind of go to college and think about or read about these market cycles and understand me. I know what’s there, but like it just wasn’t really as obvious to me as- You don’t learn that stuff in college, by the way. I figured you learned something there. I don’t know. You don’t learn anything in college, except you make a lot of friends. I do think I learned how to bridge the becoming an adult, which I think is also important. But yeah, anyway, I I think that it’s, and I don’t want to-

17:14
sound ridiculous, but it’s actually easy to put up numbers in the space that we’re in. You can just lose money and overspend on ads. can pull any lever you want and start, you can be a seven figure seller, can be an eight figure seller. What’s hard is being a six figure profit business or seven figure profit business, this is where the real challenge and nuance in running a business comes in. And it’s difficult because things are moving all over the place at all times.

17:43
You’re running your business kind of where the puck is, like the whole Green Gwiche thing and like not where the puck necessarily is going, because you don’t know what the unknowns are of where the puck is going. But like you talk about COVID, like how do you anticipate something like that? You can’t just plan for sales being lower. You have to have the proper amount of inventory based on the previous facts that you had. You have to do it based on what shipping rates were at that time and what Amazon’s fees are at that time or what your 3PL’s fees were or what your cost of goods were or what the terrorists were at that time, all these different things.

18:13
A lot of things in e-commerce have a three, six, or even 12-month kind of lag because you’re buying inventory and making decisions way far in advance. And a lot of time, the decisions that you made under a really solid basis of facts at the time turn out to be improper decisions by time the inventory is actually sold. And so there’s just a lot of challenges that kind of creep into that. I think it’s important to not chase these revenue numbers just to say, hey, I’m a seven-figure seller or eight-figure seller.

18:42
It’s easy for me to say that now. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I certainly went through those same thought processes. that too, actually. I think it’s easier to get sucked into. It’s interesting because a lot of the communities that we aspire to be a part of, something like you have a class in the community, we have one ourselves. The way that we met each other was through a mutual community e-commerce field. These all have these target numbers you have to hit to be a part of, right? Like e-commerce field is a seven figure seller thing.

19:12
You want to hit it to be in these communities and then feel like you belong and not like that you’re an imposter syndrome business or whatever. There’s just a lot of moving parts of this. I it’s kind of is away from the Fort Burner theory conversation, but important nonetheless. And so the thing that I’ve really thought about a lot lately is doing things for me and living the life that I want to live and not just looking to hit the ego strings that are

19:41
I’ve never really been a big ego type person, it’s never been a part of my thing, but it’s also very difficult, almost impossible in society to completely avoid. Because you’re still around people, you’re still around peers and you still want to feel like you belong there, even if you aren’t necessarily bragging about your numbers, you still want to feel like you belong in the room. And it’s difficult to deal with Being in a mastermind group is especially challenging, especially if you’re in one where everyone’s just killing it all around you, And you’re like, hey, why am not?

20:09
Why am I not achieving those same numbers? And then you start going a little nuts. What’s happened to me? I mean, it is difficult.

20:23
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20:53
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21:21
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21:34
Luckily, I learned some of these lessons earlier on. I certainly in my past life, doing some of affiliate marketing stuff where people are making tons of money, there’s always someone that’s going to make more than you, right? And I’ve been fortunate enough to be around people that have introduced me to things to read that have really helped with this. One was a study that’s really fascinating about, you know, there’s a certain point where all you worry about is money, right? Like if you’re not making enough money, like all you’re worried about is money. You’re just trying to pay your…

22:02
electric bill, your gas bill, your car payment, your mortgage payment, medical bills, put food on the table, whatever it is. But once you’re above that certain number, in different areas it’s a different number, but somewhere between $80,000 and let’s just say $150,000, depending on geographically where you are in the United States or other parts of the world, every dollar past that has a very quick diminishing return in terms of happiness. Because now you’re no longer worried about money, you’re worried about

22:30
like keeping up with the Joneses type stuff, right? mean, like, and it just becomes, it can become very toxic. And so, and no matter what, no matter who, unless you’re Elon Musk, there’s literally one person in the world that is the richest person. Everybody else is like, but he lives like a pauper. He does. And actually a lot of these guys do like, I mean, Warren Buffett’s similar. Yeah.

22:53
I think Elon, I’ve read some stuff recently where he like saw a stuff and he’s like living in like a tiny house or something. is, that’s correct. Yeah, I read that really interesting. Like actually at the SpaceX facility, because he like basically lives on property. And so, I mean, the thing that I’ve really come to realize is that, you know, we’ve just become minimalist. And so like we’ve downsized our home, we’ve downsized, like when I travel, I travel with just the backpack. My wife and I traveled in a…

23:20
in a van around the country for a couple of years. I find that actually by having less things, I’m just happier. But I think it’s difficult to read a lot of the stuff in a book. think you have to experience a lot of these things yourself. when I first, I grew up relatively poor. I don’t want to make it ridiculous. I there’s people that had it way worse than I did, but utilities got turned off.

23:49
several times as a kid, know, my parents are always struggling to kind of deal with things. It was always like right on the edge. And there were times where things were better because they mean they were entrepreneurs as well. So there was like good years and bad years. But we didn’t take lavish vacations or have things, right? It was just kind of, we had just enough. And so like, I think it’s human nature when you first run into money to want to go spend it and go do these things that you think are going to be the things that are going to make the difference and making you happy.

24:19
But the reality is it doesn’t. I you can go on a $2,000 vacation and have just as much joy and happiness as a $20,000 vacation. Or you can just go camping. Or you can just go camping, which I also have done quite a bit of, and that’s free. But again, I think you have to experience these different things. mean, again, what ends up happening is like, the difference between the $2,000 and $20,000 vacation is not 10 times better.

24:48
1.6 times better or whatever. There’s diminishing returns on the dollars you get on your return for what you’re spending. And so, you know, we manage to spend a lot less money by like, I don’t wear any jewelry. I don’t have any, I have an Apple watch, which rarely gets used. I have a wedding ring and that’s like basically it. My wife and I share one car. You know, we don’t have a lot of expensive things laying around and we don’t have multiple homes and all the things that get people in trouble.

25:18
And again, you’re just showing off. You don’t need seven cars in the driveway. You don’t need 10 vacation homes. I found that, because we actually did buy some rental properties at one point, which we’ve gotten rid of, because I’ve tried to shed stuff. It’s just way easier and more convenient to just go Airbnb when you want to go on vacation. I mean, here’s always been my philosophy in life. I avoid lifestyle creep wherever possible. Like, I don’t fly first class, even though I could.

25:45
Actually, I didn’t tell you this, my wife actually booked me on First Class back from FinCon. Just experience it, just experience it. It actually was nothing, it was domestic First Class, it was nothing. In fact, it was definitely not worth the points. But anyway, my point is like, I lose sleep at night when I think that in a catastrophe, how am I gonna make ends meet and that sort of thing. So every less dollar that I spend actually makes me sleep better at 100%. Yeah, everyone has like their little thing, it’s funny you mentioned First Class.

26:13
haven’t flown and coached on a flight that’s more than three hours in a long time. But one of the things that we get as e-commerce entrepreneurs is like buckets of airline miles. miles, that’s great. Yeah. So we just flew to Europe in first class for three of us and lay flat awesome seats. I don’t know, there’s interesting things in life that bring me outsized joy. And that actually is one of them. Of flying? Flying in first class. really is just like a disproportional.

26:42
I would never pay for it with cash, but with the points, it’s a disproportional enjoyment for me. There’s two components of it. Number one, I don’t sit still very well. know that’s just familiar to me. It’s very difficult. I have a legitimately very difficult time sitting just on an airplane crunched in in a coach seat. It’s just a physical thing. It’s very, very difficult for me.

27:09
And as you said, like the domestic first class, like I don’t want to downplay it because it’s better. I’d rather be in that seat than in a coach seat and feeling more cramped. But the next level up, like the experience stuff, I love. Like there’s been some things that I bought with points. My favorite one is Singapore Airlines. They have these like suites on the plane where like you have your own And it’s amazing.

27:31
And so like that thing, that type of thing for me, like that’s an experience more than just… Well, as long as it’s not the norm. It’s not the norm. It’s like I’m using miles and it’s certainly not the norm. Like, I mean, it’s, I try to make it the norm when I fly to Asia once a year, but like I’m not paying $30,000 or whatever the hell that seat is in cash. I just have the points, right? I mean, and you could argue that those are worth money too. And, you know, could fly in business or in premium economy and, and, have more points for future, you know, but…

28:00
The thing that I’ve realized, about your limos is they become actually worth less money over time. They’re slowly making them worth less. And again, for me, I look forward to the flight than the actual being at the I’m not downplaying first guy. For me, that was just the first example that came to my head. But I’ll give you another example. All of our friends right now are remodeling their house and their kitchens. Jen’s like, hey, we should remodel actually. You don’t even cook. Right?

28:26
And then I talked to my kids, hey, are you happy with the house? Oh, hey, we’re really happy with the house. Like we had memories in this house and whatever. So anyway, I just try not, like even my equipment actually isn’t that great for everything that I do. I just tend not to upgrade things. It’s just, I don’t want to get used to luxury. Cause then that elevates the amount of money I have to spend every single I, again, just feel fortunate to have learned some of these lessons earlier in life. I mean, in the affiliate industry that I was in,

28:56
If people were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, in some cases a million dollars a month. And I have this story this one time where this guy drove a Ferrari or a Lamborghini into a pool, like just to show that they could like, it was like Brewster’s millions. Like it was like literally living in the, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this movie. I did, yeah, yeah. He’s gotta spend. He’s gotta spend the money. was like literally like that’s how these guys work. Like everything that we did. And some of it was neat just to be around, cause like I got to go to some.

29:23
events or parties like I got a trip to the Super Bowl one year on them and you’re just being around it. It’s like it’s kind of neat just seeing like how people party at that level and just being a fly on the wall almost but also like disgusting to me in so many ways because it’s just like it’s just gross excessiveness. know, it’s like it just at some point, you know, I remember like walking out of the I mean, I was really drunk this this one particular night at the Super Bowl party shocking. Yeah, I know shocking.

29:51
And I’m like, I gotta go, buddy. he’s like, we have a, I forgot the number, but it was like some six figure minimum spend we have to make at this bar. And it was like 20 of us. I’m like, this blew my mind. I’m like, what? like, yeah, it’s like each bottle of champagne’s like, you know, five, $6,000. come in with like sparklers and stuff and J.Lo’s there. And I was just like, what is happening right now? And like, this is like how, again, people wanna be seen there. And you know, this was before social media at the time and I have it once. But like, it’s a very slippery slope to like.

30:21
you’re around these people, you wanna show off to them, and the excess never ends. There is literally no upper limit to it. You’ll never be happy. And so at some point if you can just be happy with what you got and live a life way below your means, you’ll probably be happier. I think the secret to that is making new friends.

30:47
who are the same level as you. Because I always do stuff that my friends do. If I hang out with people who eat like crap, I eat like crap. If I’m hanging around someone motivated like you, every time you tell me what you’re working on, I’m like, oh crap, I gotta go back and do this now too. Because it’s motivating. It’s who you hang out with. There’s a saying about the sum of the 10 people, closest people you hang out with or whatever that is. And I do think that there’s a lot to that. I have some friends who are lazy that make me kind of lazy when I’m hanging out with them and some that are

31:17
But then there’s days where I’m like, you thinking about that lazy friend, know, quote unquote lazy friend who isn’t working as many hours or whatever. He’s just way happier. You know, it’s just you see the, a wide variety of it. And so I don’t know, like I think that, you know, there’s like anything in life, there isn’t any one exact right answer or any, and there’s a different, you know, set of things for different circumstances in your life and things going on and, know, whatever. But in general, I’m…

31:45
much happier with less and trying to like not show off. It’s why I just like stop posting on social media. You know, don’t, people don’t need to see and know about everything that I’m doing. Every meal that I’m eating, every vacation I go on, every thing I go do. Cause like the tenants, when you do that, like then you want to do more of it. Cause like there’s a dopamine hit when you get likes or comments or whatever. Right. And so like just trying to avoid the things that do that. There’s also a really good book that I read called the psychology of money that talks about a lot of the stuff in there that I really wish that somebody would hand to me.

32:15
10 years earlier, when I read the book, a mutual friend actually gave me the book and I was reading through it just thinking, man, these are all the things I learned the hard way. But a lot of people never learn a lot of these lessons, which is, again, because it’s in your day-to-day life, the tendency is to want to, especially someone competitive like me, to one up somebody and show off. But I think the reason, ultimately, even though we are very different, we talked about in business, you and I are very similar in that neither one of us is a show off type of person.

32:44
We’re never bragging about how much money we’ve made or trying to go do the most ridiculous thing. We’re just happy hanging out and doing stuff or whatever. I think that that’s probably the thing that we actually have in common that makes us friends. Can we circle back to the four burners? Why did you find that conversation so profound? I’ve always wanted to know. Yeah, I think that I was struggling in a lot of things in my life at that moment. I wasn’t super healthy.

33:12
My relationship with my wife wasn’t as strong as I’d like it to be. I was really stressed out and just never, again, just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It’s just one of these things you go through life and go, every day you wake up and you just kind of do the same thing. It’s like you’re the hamster on the wheel. Just living life the way that you, the only way that you know how. And certainly had lived that way for a long time. But again, knew that there were some, some extrinsic issues that were happening.

33:42
And when you mentioned it, I was just like, I was about to use the F-bomb there. was like, heck, you’re right. And this is obvious, like that I have cranked this work burner to an extreme and it’s affected these other three areas. And I need to consciously go do something about this. And I did. mean, there was some pretty, you can’t make massive changes like overnight.

34:09
that are things that you’ve laid your life out in this manner that’s taken years to get to. You can’t just snap your fingers and the next day have everything be different. But when I went home, I was like, this is what I need to do over the next six, 12, 18, 24 months to make some big changes. And I did. And happier that I’ve been in a very long time because of lot of this. I I still work. Business is still very important to me. I do find stress in work, but I also find time to make sure that

34:39
We go on vacations, I spend time with my wife, that I am taking better care of myself, that I spend time with my friends and have a more rounded life. And I found that my business actually benefits more than anything from those set of circumstances than just working longer. Because like, yeah, you can be sitting at the computer, quote unquote, working. It doesn’t mean you’re super productive. Right. That’s true. Fourteen hours a day.

35:09
I set up systems and things to make my time leverage way better and make every hour that I work as productive as it can be. And I found through that that I need fewer hours total. Okay, now you got me curious. What are these systems? Well, mean, just hiring the right people, putting in SOPs.

35:33
I just want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every single year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business.

36:02
entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets always sell out fast, and in fact, we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over $250,000 or $1 million per year, we are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

36:30
Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. For more information, go to sellersummit.com. Once again, that’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com, or just Google it. Now back to the show.

36:47
I think it’s things like hiring the right people, having systems. I do everything that I can on a daily basis to only be working on things that only I can work on. That’s probably the biggest thing. I’ve really tried… You can’t do this for everything, but I’ve tried to stop doing… As a friend, I’m not answering customer support emails. That’s probably a good thing. It is a good thing. That’s another whole story. You probably know the background to some of these.

37:16
That’s just a for instance, right? And so, you know, I try to hire people, put them in place, let them have the autonomy to just do the job. You know, there’s a lot of things in your business, the task has to get done. It might literally have a thousand different ways to get to the same outcome. Only one of those is the way that you would have done it. The other 999 are just as acceptable. Let them just go do one of those other ways. Or maybe they’ll only do it.

37:45
80 or 90 % as good as you. It’s still better than you trying to do everything. But here’s the thing, there’s a lot of things that people will do that’ll be 150 % better than you or 200 % better than you because their expertise is better. They might be a better graphic designer, a better accountant, or a better number cruncher or whatever it might be. And so you can put people in place that actually will do a better job than you in a lot of aspects of your business. You just gotta learn to let go. And so a lot of it was learning to let go and letting people just do their thing.

38:16
And so it’s helped quite a bit. And we just were recording this on the eve basically of me coming back from a three week trip where I barely touched my work. I never charged my laptop. I brought my laptop with me. I was gonna not bring it just as a point of not bringing it. At the last second I brought it because my CPA was like, need you to sign these tax forms while you’re gone. He couldn’t get them done before we left because there were…

38:46
business we own mutually. were some hiccups. He’s like, you’re going to have to sign these while you’re gone. And so I brought the laptop actually mostly just for that. But I was like, you know what? I’m not going to charge this damn thing. I’m going to only have one charge. And I came back and it was still like 50 something percent. I barely touched the laptop. I had a 150 minute internet package on the cruise, a 10 day cruise, and that was it. The last cruise we went on, I had unlimited minutes.

39:16
you’re working like in every, you know, between like every opportunity between meals or on sea days or whatever, I just let it go. You know, I just mean, again, it’s not that it’s not important to me. It’s important to me to make sure that I recharge my battery so it’s actually, you know, it’s healthier for the business. So those are things that I’ve done since that conversation to, you know, it’s been four years. Has it been that long now? Yeah, I guess it has. Three, four years.

39:44
You always forget that I I think things are wildly different in my life since that conversation. And again, it didn’t happen overnight, but I came back, I’m like, know what, first of we got to sell at least one thing, get something off our plate. And now I’m really going to take it to the extreme. I’ve been thinking even more about it. Over and above the four burner theory, just some of the other things that you’ll read about, like the one thing or essentialism or just getting involved in too much crap is…

40:12
know, a site is another problem besides just working too much as being involved in too many things. You do a bunch of things okay, never doing anything as good as it can be. I know you got a pretty big team. Like for me, it’s always been a struggle because I don’t actually want a team. I find that humans in the long run tend to be unreliable. And so I resort to computers, which is why I like to code all these little things. There’s a lot to be said for doing that as well, right? mean, like any…

40:41
Anything that makes it more efficient, hell of a people about doing that. I’ve been forced into hiring people because of just the scope. Like I said, I got too many things. Yeah, you got a lot of things. That’s When I came back after that conversation, like how am I going to solve this problem? There’s no piece of software that was going to solve the situation that I was in. Yeah.

41:04
Yeah, it’s funny because you got all these things going on. I’ve always only had like a couple things, although it’s kind of gotten a little bit out of control lately because we were just talking about this. Yeah. And so I got to cut back. I tend not to have shiny object syndrome, but whenever I take something on, I plan on sticking with it for at least three to five years and I make sure there’s room in my schedule for that. But I also like to look at my calendar and say, oh, I got nothing for the next couple of days. So it’s been a struggle in that respect.

41:34
There’s other things that I’ve learned about where like just having nothing in your calendar is super healthy. know, just deep, deep work is a great book about this where you’re just having time to sit down with a notebook with nobody around, quiet time, scheduled planning time. Like that’s the thing that like, these are the things that I’m going to work on moving forward. You know, this is now separate from the four burner theory, but just other things where you know, life hack type stuff where, you know, I really come to realize like,

42:02
my life and the business kind of runs me, I don’t run it because there’s so much going on. And so like, I’m just going from meeting to meeting to meeting. And even though, again, I’m not over cranking the work burner, and I feel like I’m working efficiently, like I’ve never really had the time to think and do the things I think that have made me the most successful in the past. like usually, the things that I’ve had a couple of really, what I would consider to be very successful businesses, and those all were born in a moment.

42:32
or in moments of having lots of time to think about it. You’re sitting down, you’re tinkering with an idea, doing lots of research, playing out what you wanna do. It’s just you in a room kind of tinker and then you kind of realize you have something. And I haven’t had time to do any of that type of work or thinking for years, like literally years. It’s just because again, there’s just so much going on and I’m going to work every day and…

43:00
checking the boxes and removing the needle and we’re progressing and things are going well, but I think that we could have outsized returns if I can reduce the number of things and have more time to think about how to innovate more and how to really hit the next big success. I never read that book that you’re talking about, but those are my Fridays essentially. I actually don’t do anything except think and just have lunch with my wife. It’s actually my favorite day of the week.

43:31
I’ve been doing that becoming that for us as well. We’ve been, and I have been talking about kind of like having a three-day weekend moving forward. I’m going to try, we tried a little bit before we went on this trip and I didn’t block off the next few Fridays. I’ve been gone for a while. I just feel like I need to catch up. But the way that my schedule works, Monday through Thursday are my busiest days because of our Filipino team. Like that’s where we have most of our employees. Right. And so my Friday is their Saturday.

44:01
And so there’s really nothing that really scheduled. And a lot of the other means that gets stuck on my Friday or just like a random podcast recording or this time or the other. And so I think what I’m gonna do intentionally starting mid delayed October again through the rest of the year is just block off Friday. It doesn’t mean that I won’t work or do anything. just, you know, the opportunity to go out and have lunch or like we went and got like foot massages one day and got dumplings and just kind of like, know, but like.

44:29
In those moments, I’m thinking about things that actually, on the surface, again, this is where society is kind of weird. It’s like, you’re being lazy, took the day off or whatever. But actually, it might be the most productive thing for you. It might be the best thing for you and your business. Again, one of the hard lessons for me to really realize is that there’s a saying, busy is the new stoop, but think that was a Warren Buffett quote as well, which is- Oh, is that right? Okay.

44:58
I like that quote. Or maybe that’s Bill Gates. It’s someone at that level. you’re just sitting there being busy. It’s like the new stupid. you’re just sitting there. Are you really, again, are you really being productive? It’s impossible. The answer is no. There’s no human being that can be 100 % productive in front of a computer for 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Like you might be sitting there and being busy and, you know.

45:24
And so these are just the other things that’ll be fun to do a follow-up, maybe the next talk of two years from now. We’ll some of these things and see how these progress. But the four burner theory really helped because again, now I feel like we’re more focused on our health. We’ve been eating better. COVID really kind of screwed up some of the exercise. I was playing a lot of tennis before COVID. You and I both were playing a lot. And that screwed some of that up. certainly spent more time with my wife, spent more time going on vacation.

45:53
having a proper vacation, spending more time with friends. I feel like we have a very well-rounded life now. I turn off the computer at six or seven o’clock at night, and that’s it. And it’s a little bit later because of time change with the Philippines. So I tend to start a little bit later in the morning and work till six or seven because that’s there five or six o’clock at night, sorry, seven to 10 o’clock in the morning, so I apologize. But then, you know, I…

46:22
turn off my computer, turn off my phone for the most part, and then we’re out at friends doing things, at dinner doing things, and not just sitting at home working more at night. Like having a second, I used to joke back in the days when we owned Color, we had like two shifts. We would like work all darn day at the office, come home and eat dinner. We didn’t really go out and do much of anything, but friends or anything, because we were working so much, have dinner and then like start with the China team and the Philippines team and work a second job.

46:50
basically at night in the same business. like, again, it led to burnout and a lot of other things. And so it’s it’s not sustainable. know, it just, and maybe again, if you’re just starting and you know, or you are like, there’s lot of people listening to podcasts and maybe are looking for a side hustle right now. You know, they’re working a full-time job. They’re looking to be like your wife and eventually quit the job. Yeah. For those periods of time, you might have to really crank up the work burner and sacrifice those other things in the short term because you still have a full-time job commitment and you’re trying to start a business that’s going to…

47:18
eventually supplement your income and allow you to leave that, if you’re in that situation, yeah, you’re probably going have to go through that for a while. But I think the danger is to continue that for a long period of time or not being on the same page as the other people in your life about it. Because oftentimes it might be something that’s a goal or a desire for you and you don’t think about all the repercussions of the people, how it’s going to affect everyone around you. My wife is certainly not the entrepreneur that I am.

47:46
You know, like she works in the business and does a great job and we have a great relationship. But like, I can’t project and make her want to work 12, 16 hours a day for money or for a business, right? I mean, so you gotta make sure that, you know, everyone around you understands the repercussions as well. And if you got kids, they’re certainly never gonna understand it. Yeah, definitely. I mean, that’s been my biggest problem. I have an ego and I have all these successful friends. Whenever I talk to them, I want to do more.

48:16
And then I just got to remember like, don’t even, like I’m so cheap that I don’t even spend like half the money that I make. So I just have to sit back and remember why I did all this stuff in the first place. And then usually my wife helps me dial it down. But you’re right for a while, my ambitions, I was placing on Jen and she was miserable. Right. So. And your wife, you your spouse or whatever will, you know, I think that’s a part of, you’re in love with somebody and you care for them.

48:44
And so there’s a lot of things that you do in marriage or in a long-term relationship that you may not want to do, right? I mean, it’s just to make the other person happy. And you can do some of these things some of the time. Like you might go see a movie that you don’t like or go to a concert or something or whatever, endure short amounts of things. like a business is like another level. if the other person really isn’t fully committed and that’s something that’s more your ambition and your goal.

49:15
they can really hurt your relationship, which certainly was something that took me a long time to kind of figure out. Yeah, so I just want to end this episode just by saying, like, if you go into business, just make sure going into it that you know what you want to get out of it. And anything more is just gravy, but you should just stick to your core and not let things get out of hand. It’s going to be hard to do that, I think, at a practical level.

49:41
But if you just keep in mind what your original goal was, it makes things a hell of a lot easier. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now I’m trying to track down the replay of our sell and scale talk, if it even exists, but I hope you found our conversation useful. For more information about this episode, go to mywebquaterjob.com slash episode 432. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.

50:11
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is 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-U-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog,

50:41
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free 16 mini course. Just type in your email and ascended the course right away. Thanks for listening.