200: My Wife Is Back – Frequently Asked Questions On Making Money, Productivity And Life

My Wife Is Back - Frequently Asked Questions On Making Money, Productivity And Life

Every hundred episodes or so, I manage to convince my wife to put her introverted self aside and join me on the show. In this episode, she grills me about business, philosophies, productivity and life. Enjoy!

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What You’ll Learn

  • Why we don’t just start more ecommerce businesses
  • Where we see ecommerce going in the next 5 years
  • How we are able to stay productive
  • How we stay organized
  • Whether you need to be an extrovert to be successful
  • How we manage stress
  • My favorite business book of all time
  • What we do if we had to start all over
  • Our goals for the next 10 years

Other Resources And Books

Sponsors

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Klaviyo.com – Klaviyo is the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store. Created specifically for ecommerce, it is the best email marketing provider that I’ve used to date. Click here and try Klaviyo for FREE.
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Privy.com – Privy is my tool of choice when it comes to gathering email subscribers for my ecommerce store. They offer easy to use email capture, exit intent, and website targeting tools that turn more visitors into email subscribers and buyers. With both free and paid versions, Privy fits into any budget. Click here and get 15% OFF towards your account.
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Transcript

Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not in business. Now today is episode 200, yay. And every hundred episodes or so, I manage to wrangle my wife to overcome her introverted self and actually join me on the show. And in this episode, she’s going to be grilling me about business, philosophy, productivity, and life.

But before we begin, I want to give a quick shout out to Klaviyo who is a sponsor of the show. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they are the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store, and I depend on them for over 20% of my revenues. Now, Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for ecommerce, and here is why it is so powerful.

Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped 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 auto-responder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there is full revenue tracking on every single email.

Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used and you can try them for free at mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again that’s, mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

Now I also want to give a shout out to Privy who is also a sponsor of the show. And Privy is a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Privy is an email list growth platform and they manage all my email capture forms, and I actually use privy hand in hand with my email marketing provider. Now there are a bunch of companies out there that will manage your email capture forms, but I like privy because they specialize in ecommerce.

Right now I’m using privy to display a cool wheel of fortune pop-up. Basically, a user gives their email for a chance to win valuable prices in our store. And customers love the gamification aspect of this, and when I implemented this form, email signups increased by 131%. So bottom line, Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers, which I then feed to my email provider to close the sale. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.COM/Steve. Now onto the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit her Job Podcast. Today is episode 200. Can you believe it? I’ve been podcasting for almost four years now, and it’s now part of my routine. And in fact I don’t even remember what my life was like without my podcast. And over the years I’ve met over 180 new entrepreneurs, many of which I now call my friends, and whenever I travel there’s a good chance now that I know at least one person wherever I’m headed.

And here’s what’s funny about the podcast. I’ve been blogging way longer, like since 2009, but whenever I get approached at a conference or an event, people inevitably recognize me through the podcast and not through my writing. In fact, I was having a conversation at Traffic and Conversions last month when someone randomly came up to me and said, hey, I thought I recognize that voice and proceeded to introduce himself.

Anyway, for episode 200, I thought that I do something completely different and answer some of the most commonly asked questions about my life, my philosophy, and how I run my businesses and basically had my wife interview me this time. So I’m going to turn it over now to my wife. And what’s funny about this is she knows me inside and out, and she knows when I’m BSing. So let’s see how this goes.

Jennifer: Okay, let’s take it away. I will try not to contradict you when I don’t believe anything you’re saying.

Steve: Yeah. That’s the problem with having my wife on. She knows when I’m lying.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, I’m just watching you talk right now and I find it very funny because you’re way more animated talking into this microphone than you are talking to you normally.

Steve: Of course, of course. It’s the podcast. All right, let’s get on with it.

Jennifer: Okay. So now that you no longer work a day job, what has been curious for most people that have asked me is they were wondering what you do on an average day.

Steve: I Work 16 hour days while you are at the Bumblebee Linens office.

Jennifer: Whatever. I seem to recall that most of your day is spent watching Netflix.

Steve: No that was only when I was injured, not on a day to day basis. Okay so I, as you know, I wake up the kids at 7:00 AM while you’re still sleeping. And I get them up, I have breakfast with them, I make sure they eat and then I turned them over to you and I start working at around 8:00 AM I would say. And you drop off the kids at like 7:50. And then I go consistently, I lock myself in the room and I work consistently until about, I would say 12:30, sometimes 12:00. So that’s like a good four hour stint, and then I have lunch two or three times a week with you. And then afternoon I usually exercise and then I work again for maybe another couple of hours and then I pick up the kids at around 4:30. Sound accurate?

Jennifer: No, but that’s okay. I know everyone can — you can probably imagine my eye rolls at this moment about me sleeping in at 7:00. I’m up also, but I do let you wake them up though. That’s true. I’m curious, how do you achieve work-life balance?

Steve: Yeah, it’s actually really hard for me. You know, my wife knows me pretty well, I like to keep busy. And what I try to do now is I try not to over commit myself to anything. And so usually what I do is I leave certain blocks of my schedule for my kids, weekends are for the kids. Afternoons for the most part are for the kids. I try not to schedule anything in the afternoon. I try not to take any large project that will occupy an inordinate amount of time.

And so it’s like this really hard balance. I still haven’t figured it out yet, because right now I’m a little under-stimulated and a little bored sometimes from day to day. And so it’s just a matter of committing just enough to keep myself interested, but not too much that I sacrifice family time. It’s still a struggle right now. I haven’t figured it out yet.

Jennifer: But when you were working, how did you actually do it? So one of the nice things about you staying at home now, you have a better handle of what your work life balance is, but when you were actually working a full time job, how did you manage that?

Steve: I mean, you knew how it was when I was working, like I would work the entire day, we’d come home, we’d have dinner and we’d hang out for a little bit and then I’d work from after dinner until about 10:00, 10:30 and go to bed. And so, I mean, we didn’t have kids back then or we had one child who was young at the time and it wasn’t as bad. And yeah, I basically sacrificed the nights. These days I don’t work nights at all. I mainly either spend time with you, or read or watch TV.

Jennifer: Is there anything that you do to make yourself more productive? Is there a system that you use?

Steve: Okay, so you guys can’t see this, but I’m looking at my wife right now because this is what gets me into trouble. The way I’m able to stay productive is I prioritize everything very carefully. So whenever my wife asks me to do something, I always ask her to quantify like what this task is going to be and how it’s going to affect the bottom line. And she always gets mad at me for this because she’s like, hey, if I’m asking you to do something, you should do it. But here I am looking at my task list and all these things on my task list will actually generate revenue, whereas something that my wife might be asking for might be just something on her to do list, but might not necessarily impact revenue or business the same way.

And so usually some — oh I don’t want to say usually, but sometimes I’ll prioritize my wife’s task below all of mine, and that’s what gets me in trouble. But basically the way I remain productive is I have a list of tasks that I need to do. And the day before I usually just kind of prioritize what I’m going to do the next day, and I basically just try to accomplish one thing at most and anything more than one thing is just kind of like gravy. I don’t have lofty goals every day; I just want to make sure I make forward progress from day to day.

Jennifer: Sure.

Steve: And the other thing I do is I usually dedicate one full morning or one day of every week just to think about what I need to do next instead of actively doing something.

Jennifer: Okay. And then, you know me, I’m a total introvert. You’re a total extrovert. And what I would be interested in and other people have asked is, do you need to be an extrovert to be successful or to be like me and be very private?

Steve: So I’m surprised that you think I’m an extrovert. I’m actually what they call an ambivert I guess. Is that the right term? But basically I’m an extrovert when I need to be, but in certain cases I’d like to just be by myself just like you. I think it certainly helps to be extroverted when it comes to starting a business, especially in the marketing side. Like whenever I go to events, I actually enjoy meeting people and establishing rapport with people who listen to me or read my blog.

And I think it’s easier, but that’s not to say that you can’t do all these things as an introvert. An introvert I think is defined as you gain energy from being by yourself, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not good socially either. So I would say that introverts have just as good of a chance of creating a successful business, but you do have to put yourself out there and as long as you put yourself out there and are willing to meet your fans and be extroverted at times, I think you should be fine, which is what you are essentially, right? When we go to conferences together, you’re pretty extroverted, but then you need to recharge in the room and not talk to anyone for several hours.

Jennifer: I think one of the things that we always find a balance, we need to find more balance on sometimes is that I’m obviously a little more paranoid than say you are. I’m not as out there as you are. There are certain things that I want to keep private, such as like my kids names for example. But there’s other things I’m very, very open about, because I think for women in particular, they don’t want to say everything out loud.

Steve: Yeah. So for the listeners out there, it’s like this constant battle between my wife and I about what we share and what we do not. And so whenever I write a post, usually my wife will read it and she’ll say, nope, nope, I don’t think you can write that. I don’t think you can write that. And so it’s Kind of like this, it’s this battle that we have.

Jennifer: Yeah, there’s certain things that I’m — I’ve gotten better over the years I think, but there are certain things I still feel that we should keep private.

Steve: Sure. But this has nothing to do with any introversion.

Jennifer: I know, I know. I am sorry. I just got a little sidetracked a little bit. Okay what is one way that you manage stress?

Steve: Yeah, usually the way I manage stress is I go running, or I do some sort of exercise, like whenever I’m angry or stressed out, I’ll go lift weights. And incidentally, that’s why it was a struggle for me when I got injured and I couldn’t exercise, and that’s why I got a little bit more stressed out during that period if you guys listened to my episodes from last year. But outside of that, I’ll hang out with friends or exercise. That’s my main way of doing it. What about you? What do you do?

Jennifer: To manage stress?

Steve: Yeah.

Jennifer: I read. I know that you’re always trying to get me to do more exercise, but for me, I just need time, quiet time locked in my room, maybe some pro-milk tea. As for you, let’s see. Is there a possession that you cannot live without?

Steve: Like a material possession?

Jennifer: A material possession besides our kids obviously. They’re not material, they’re not material things.

Steve: Things about possession. Okay so if I’m looking through my list of gadgets, I assume you mean gadgets here. The number thing I can’t live without are my noise cancelling headphones. Whenever I have to write, whenever I have to do any thinking or anything creative, I put up my noise canceling headphones, which kind of drowns out all the background noise. I had the Bose QuietComfort 35 I think. And that allows me to be a lot more productive. Is that what you were looking for?

Jennifer: I think I was thinking more, not necessarily in terms of work, but just in general. Is there anything that you can’t do without?

Steve: In terms of computer programs? Adobe Photoshop, I don’t know.

Jennifer: Okay, okay sure. So next question, if you had to start over from scratch, how would you build a following?

Steve: Like if I were to start over My Wife Quit Her Job from scratch you mean?

Jennifer: Yes. Or actually let me rephrase. If you were had to restart our e-commerce business, not your blog, but the e-commerce business, how would you build a following?

Steve: How would I build a following with that? So, what’s funny about this is like our business, we kind of just accidentally stumbled upon it, right? I think if I were to start over again, I would probably choose something to sell that actually addresses a pain point. What we sell right now are just kind of nice to have items. They’re like vitamins. And so as a result, it makes it a little bit harder to market the products that we have to sell because they’re not like must have items. If I were to start over, I’d probably choose something different. Perhaps something that I’m interested in, and that I would be more interested in writing content about, or going on YouTube or producing videos or podcasts about. I probably wouldn’t be selling handkerchiefs again.

Jennifer: But do you think that you need to have a passion for that product?

Steve: I don’t think it’s necessary to have passion for a product, but I think it certainly helps. Right now we have this blog. I can’t write for it because I’m just not interested in doing crafts and whatever with our products. It’s not like I can go on YouTube because I feel like for wedding products…

Jennifer: Yeah a guy selling handkerchiefs.

Steve: A guy selling handkerchiefs isn’t going to do it, and there’s not much to podcast about it. And so there’s very limited things that I personally can do to promote our business outside of just running all the marketing, like the paid ads and that sort of thing.

Jennifer: Okay. So how would that differ I guess for your blog versus the e-commerce? So how would you go redo My Wife Quit Your Job?

Steve: Like if I had to start all over again?

Jennifer: You had to start over.

Steve: I think I would have probably started with a podcast. And the reason why I say this is because as I mentioned before, most people know me through the podcast and not through the blog. That being said, I think in order to be successful today with content marketing, I think you have to do more than one thing. You have to write and you have to podcast, or you have to write and be on YouTube.

These days what’s nice about writing is that if you can get it ranked in Google, that’s like an endless flow of traffic where you don’t have to do anything. A podcast is really good at making existing fans, stronger fans. And so the people who listen to your podcasts tend to be listeners for life, for example. And so you need some combination of the two these days to be successful. So one, to get leads, and then another medium to kind of strengthen the leads that you do have, and the fans that you do have.

Jennifer: That sounds relatively easy or you’re making it sound easier than it probably is. I know a lot of people have been asking if you already know how to do this, why don’t you start more businesses? Why don’t you start another, I guess another e-commerce business and why don’t you just make ours bigger?

Steve: So you’re asking why since I teach e-commerce, why not don’t just start a bunch of e-commerce businesses.

Jennifer: Sure.

Steve: Well one…

Jennifer: I already kind of know the answer to this, but…

Steve: You know the answer to this because whenever I try to grow Bumblebee Linens too quickly, you get stressed out and then you come home, kind of not in such a good mood. And so, I don’t know if the listeners know this, but my wife and I kind of agreed that we will grow Bumblebee at like this controlled rate, 10 to 20% growth every year. That’s very low stress when you’re achieving that sort of growth rate.

And so the question is why don’t we start another e-commerce store? And starting an e-commerce store is great when you need money quickly because you’re selling actual product and you’re getting money in return. Problem is, is that e-commerce requires a little bit more labor. So we have a warehouse, we have employees now. You don’t have to have that in this day and age with Amazon. But if I look at the businesses that I have, I have an ecommerce store or we have an e-commerce store, I have a blog, the podcast, and the conference. Those are completely different industries and I kind of like to diversify everything.

So I probably wouldn’t start another e-commerce store. I probably would not start another blog or a podcast, or another conference at this point. If I were to do another business, I would probably go into the tech space maybe a little bit more, either in software or SaaS or that sort of thing in order to just kind of diversify all my holdings.

Jennifer: Where do you see ecommerce going in the next five years?

Steve: Yeah, I think the way things are going right now with Amazon just taking over the world and providing this avenue for other people to sell products, I really think that going forward in the next five years, unless you have your own branded products, unless you’re doing private label, you’re going to slowly get pushed out because the problem is when you’re selling other people’s products, that means other people are selling those exact same products, and whenever you have two identical products or two identical sellers clashing on the same marketplace, that just leads to price erosion.

And so the only way that you’re going to be able to maintain your prices is by holding your own brand and establishing your own brand so people buy from you because of you and not necessarily because you have the best product. And of course if you have the best of both worlds, that’s the best way forward in the world of e-commerce. So yeah, going forward, I think you got to go private label.

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Jennifer: A lot of our friends that we know, they’re all interested in starting their own e-commerce business, but they have a hard time actually pulling the trigger. So I’m curious to find out what would you do, or what advice would you give to those over thinkers, and to get them to just do it?

Steve: Yeah. So here’s the thing. And for the listeners out there, most of my wife and I’s friends they’re mostly engineers, or they’re very analytical people. And I’ve discovered that in myself, over the years that the more analytical you are, and the more engineer like that you are, the less likely you’re actually willing to take a risk and start a business because you want all the numbers in front of you. You want like a definitive answer when you start something that it’s definitely going to make money. And that’s simply just not how business works.

And so I know for myself, like my wife, we probably wouldn’t have started our business if we weren’t kind of forced into that situation in a way. Like we knew that my wife wanted to quit her job to take care of the kids, and I knew that we needed two incomes in order to get a house in a good school district. And so that just kind of tipped our hands, and we took that risk.

And so my advice for people who are just too analytical and they need answers, you just got to fight that urge and just start small, invest a small amount of money that you don’t really care if you lose the money or not, and just dip your feet into the water and see how things goes. The thing is, once you get that first sale, that will give you enough confidence to keep going, but until you get that first sale, you’re always going to be squeamish about getting started.

Jennifer: Yeah. I think a lot of people are afraid to fail. I think that it’s okay to fail and it’s a learning experience, but I think I see a lot of people that will try something out. They’ll just put something out there and then they’ll just stop. It’s not hitting the right numbers that they want to say that it’s not hitting their targets that they analyzed. So…

Steve: Yeah, I mean that’s the other thing, if you’re going to go into business you have to think like — so whenever I start something new, I always think in the three to five year timeframe. Whereas most people think like six months to a year. If you look at the students in my class, most of those students in my class who have been with me for over a year are doing quite well. Whereas the ones who usually kind of fizzle out, they usually fizzle out like within six months, they give up.

You got to give yourself enough runway to be successful because most of the gains that you’re going to see from your business are going to be past one year. So for example, with our story, it took a year, but most of our big gains happened after that. We’ve been doing this for 10 years now. With the blog, I didn’t see any money for three years, and after three years though, the growth was exponential. So you just got to give things time to grow.

Jennifer: And what are your goals for the next 10 years?

Steve: That is a loaded question. I think my goals right now and my goals have changed over the years as our kids have grown. For example, our kids need a little bit more guidance now when it comes to their education. I wouldn’t call ourselves tiger parents per se, but academics are very important to us. And just to give you an example, like my daughter has required a little bit more help with her math homework lately. So I work with her on weekends in the mornings on her math homework. We have her sign up for some extracurricular math activities. Both of our kids are in sports. I had the pleasure of being an assistant coach for my daughter’s basketball team.

I want to make sure that I’m dedicating enough time so that we’re bringing up good citizens in our household. So that’s one of my main goals. The other goal for me of course is to make sure I’m still interested, whether that’d be starting another business or even going back to work. I thought of that at one time, just maintaining stimulus from my brain is very important. And of course maintaining a really good open relationship with my wife and make sure we are just a real happy family going on vacations and that sort of thing. So I don’t know if I have one singular goal, but it’s — I would say if I had to pick one goal is to make sure that my kids grow up to be good citizens.

Jennifer: What I heard from that was we need to go on vacation.

Steve: Yeah. But then here’s what’s funny about all this. My wife loves going on vacation, and for me at least vacations with the family, they tend to stress me out a little bit. Like we just went to Disney and I got really stressed out and like our kids occasionally they’ll misbehave and they’re not grateful for the vacations that we do have and we just get angry. Whereas this last thing where I went on this mencation [ph] with a bunch of other entrepreneurs, that was relaxing to me, just hanging out with a bunch of business guys where we’re just chatting about business or just relaxing. Those types of things tend to be more relaxing for me.

Jennifer: I’m looking at him and I’m just thinking to myself, oh gosh, he’s going to dig himself into a hole.

Steve: I mean I enjoy our vacations.

Jennifer: Yeah, I understand. Yeah. And so I guess we’re going to conclude this whole thing with every podcast or business podcast I listen to, the question I always hear is what is your favorite business book and why?

Steve: Yeah, so unlike my wife who only reads romance novels…

Jennifer: Oh I read other books stuff, but mainly romance yeah.

Steve: What else do you read besides romance novels?

Jennifer: Suspense.

Steve: Okay fine, suspense and romance novels, fiction.

Jennifer: Fiction, yeah definitely fiction.

Steve: I primarily read business books and programming books. And in fact, whenever I go on vacation, I usually take along a programming book or some sort of business book just to keep me occupied. The best book I think that I’ve read so far is Cialdini’s Psychology of Persuasion. I highly recommend that book. I’ve gotten so many takeaways, like all my sales funnels and everything kind of revolve around that book. So if you haven’t read that book yet, I highly recommend that you go pick it up.

Jennifer: What do you find most stressful about running a business?

Steve: The most stressful things that I find about running the business involve the people side of the equation.

Jennifer: All right, great. So, why don’t we start with on e-commerce side, and then also on your blog side, so we’ll do it separately.

Steve: So on the ecommerce side; it’s mainly managing people, right? Making sure employees are happy, making sure all the orders are going out the door and that sort of thing. And incidentally our experiences with employees with Bumblebee have made me realize that I don’t really want to run a business with a lot of employees. I know that’s the right way to scale, but the reason why I keep My Wife Quit Her Job really lean is because I don’t have any employees. I don’t have any desire to have a whole bunch of employees. I’d rather just have contractors here and there to help me with tasks that I might need to do on a regular basis, such as podcast editing and that sort of thing.

Jennifer: Yeah, I mean I just want to be clear. We’ve been very fortunate to have very great employees, but it is a little more stressful because if someone calls in sick and then we have to backfill or even hiring new employees has always been an issue. So one of the things that we’ve always talked about, why I don’t want to scale to ramp up, and I fully know that I’m holding the business back a little bit and why we agreed to not grow it so fast is because when you grow too fast, you do have to hire more. And we like having a small business. We like having the small family size business.

Steve: We don’t even spend that much money. So the money that we make is just more than enough. And I guess the only reason to just blow any business up at any point…

Jennifer: I think it’s ego, right?

Steve: Yeah, it’s ego, unless you want like a big sale which will set you for life. I don’t know. Yeah, I mean there’s trade offs for sure, but for the most part it would be ego.

Jennifer: Yeah. But I mean, do you think we would ever sell the business?

Steve: I mean, I never want to say never. I mean one day we might, but as long as there’s still interest in running it, there’s really no reason to do so unless we have something else we want to put that money into. Right now if you want to invest that money in something else, then yes, it might make sense. But for now we’re mostly in cash as is. We don’t even know where to invest our money right now. We’re waiting for like a downturn so we can invest that money. So totally it doesn’t make sense to add more cash to the mix.

Jennifer: Right, unless we want to spend more money on vacations. Well, vacations aren’t that expensive unless you want to buy a gigantic house. That’s the only thing that stresses me out.

Jennifer: I know, Steve has this huge thing against property tax. What do you find most rewarding about business, e-commerce, and also your My Wife?

Steve: I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I find My Wife Quit Her Job a lot more rewarding than our e-commerce business mainly because I get to interact with the people who consume my blog posts and my podcasts. I actually get to meet these people face to face at the Sellers Summit, which is my annual conference. With the e-commerce store, I don’t get a whole lot of gratitude I should say, or I mean we do have customers and they’re happy with our products but…

Jennifer: You have to admit it’s kind of cool when we see our products on our — Sorry, it’s kind of cool to see our products when it’s in a publication.

Steve: Sure.

Jennifer: And also we get some really nice testimonials.

Steve: Yeah. I’m just saying that I get more gratification out of running My Wife Quit than Bumblebee. I mean they’re both rewarding in that we’re able to have the freedom that we have. We’re recording this podcast at like 3:00 PM on a weekday, right? These are the luxuries that we have as a result of our businesses.

Jennifer: Speaking of Sellers Summit, one of the newest things that we’re doing at Sellers Summit is the mastermind group. What do you see the benefit of a mastermind? How many masterminds do you belong to?

Steve: Yeah. So at Sellers Summit we…

Jennifer: Maybe you should explain what a mastermind is.

Steve: Unfortunately all the tickets are sold out. I don’t know why…

Jennifer: I know but…

Steve: Yeah. The mastermind basically for the conference is where we bring a bunch of e-commerce entrepreneurs together. We actually screen for revenue so that everyone really knows what they’re doing and they’re high level entrepreneur. We put to them together in a room and then we go around and put each other in a hot seat, and we basically helped each other with our businesses.

And, I would say last year or the year before last, I was actually a member of five masterminds at one point. It got to be a lot. I was getting a whole lot out of them. And then once I got injured, I kind of just, I kind of quit most of those masterminds, and then now I’m just trying to get back into it. But the mastermind is a great way to advance your business because running any business is, it’s a really lonely process, and the best way to kind of improve any business is to just kind of share your experiences with other entrepreneurs.

Jennifer: Agreed. But don’t you think that — I would like to think or I feel like most of our changes in our businesses where we made a huge improvement happened after you attended a mastermind.

Steve: Yeah. Either a mastermind or a conference, right? I just came back from Traffic and Conversions, and Social Media Marketing World with a huge laundry list of items. I came back from the mencation with a list of items as well. And just the people I’ve met. The way I approach people is I ask them to be a guest on my podcast, and that’s what usually starts a conversation. That’s how we become friends because sometimes at a conference you only have a couple of minutes to chat with someone, but when you have someone in the podcast, you get their attention for a full hour and actually really establish a meaningful relationship that way. So yeah, that’s why I always advise that everyone go to conferences and for masterminds if they can.

Jennifer: Yeah. The conferences may be very intimidating for people such as myself. What would you recommend for a person that is an introvert like myself or who is afraid to put themselves out there?

Steve: Just go with a friend. Just make sure there’s one person there that you can hang out with the entire time and that should be good enough. I’m at the point now where I don’t really need to do that. Like I’ll just go by myself, like I was by myself for both of these conferences and it was fun.

Jennifer: And which conferences do you go to?

Steve: I usually go to Digital CoLab, which is a conference run by my business partner Toni, FinCon, which is run by my buddy PT, Traffic and Conversions, Social Media Marketing World, which is run by Mike Stelzner. This next year I might be going to speak at Stylecon, which everyone’s been laughing hysterically because I got no style, and I might also be speaking at the Agents of Change. I actually haven’t asked you for permission about that one yet, but I’ll bring it up after this recording stops.

Jennifer: Okay. I’m going to end this by asking if you have any questions for me.

Steve: I don’t have any questions for you, like off the top of my head, I think we’re good. Let’s end this before…

Jennifer: We end to fight.

Steve: Yeah. All right, take care.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give a round of applause for my wife. It’s actually really difficult for her to put herself out there, and I’m always appreciative when she comes on the show. For more information about this episode, go to my wifequiteherjob.com/episode200.

And once again, I want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use to turn visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture, exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it’s so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied to your e-commerce store. If you want to give you to try is free. So, head on over to Privy.com/Steve, once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.

I also want to thank Payability for sponsoring this episode. If you’re looking to take back control of your cash flow, and scale your Amazon business fast, then sign up for Payability and say goodbye to cash flow issues and stock outs. With daily payments, you can speed up your supply chain, buy inventory at optimal times and stay in the buy box. The more control you have over your cash flow, the more buying power you will have. Visit Go.payability.com/steve to get started, and cash in on a $200 credit just for being a listener of My Wife Quit Her Job. Once again that’s G-O.payability.com/Steve.

And finally, Klaviyo 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, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O, once again, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. I talk about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.Mywifequitherjob.com.

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