376: My Super Simple Formula For Retiring Early (Within 3 Years) With Steve Chou

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. But today I’m doing a solo episode to talk about some of my philosophies on life and how to retire early. And it’s funny, some of my friends call me ChooFutious. And normally I don’t do these types of episodes, but I’ve been encouraged by some of the students in my course and my friends to sprinkle these types of episodes in every now and then. So without further ado, here is my formula for how to retire early.

00:29
within three years or less. 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. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy,

00:57
and you can try 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 Clayview, who is also a sponsor of the show. Now, are you working around the clock to build the business 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? And do you ever wonder how the companies you admire, the ones that redefine their categories do it? Companies like Living Proof and Chubbies.

01:24
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. 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 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. Now, to learn more about how Klaviyo can help you with your own growth,

01:53
visit claviyo.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 podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast, 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 onto the show.

02:29
Welcome to the My Wife Could Have Job podcast. Today I’m doing a solo episode and I’m going to talk about how to retire early within three years and enjoy your life before the age of 65 or whatever the retirement age is these days. Now growing up in a traditional Asian household, I was taught to follow this exact formula. Study hard, attend a top college, get a high paying job, and then work until age 65 and then finally retire and enjoy life. And to be clear,

02:58
there’s nothing wrong with this path. My parents worked full-time for 40 plus years and lived happy and fulfilling lives, and my mom is a world-renowned microbiologist who discovered a cure for a rare disease called glycogen storage disease. And meanwhile, my dad had a successful career as an electrical engineer until he retired in his 60s. Now working until age 65 was my end game until my senior year in college when I began interviewing for full-time jobs. Wait a sec.

03:26
You mean I gotta come to this office for eight to 10 hours per day, five days a week? What? I only get two weeks of vacation per year? And you know how college is, right? After four years of blissful freedom during my college years, I was suddenly forced to work eight to 10 hours a day for the next 44 years. No thanks. So this podcast is about how to retire early and how to enjoy life now, as opposed to waiting until you’re at the retirement age. And for those of you who are making decent money,

03:55
and just struggling to get by, this podcast also covers what I call the disease of more. Now more on that in just a little bit. So what does it mean to retire early? Well, if you look at the dictionary, the Webster’s official definition of retire is to leave one’s job and cease to work, typically upon reaching the normal age for leaving employment. Now everyone always has this rosy view of quitting their jobs, but the truth is, is that retirement sucks unless you know what makes you fulfilled.

04:24
So my friend Nellie A. Kalp, she made an extremely large sum of money selling her first company and thought that she was done. So she traveled the world living large until she realized that she was bored, unhappy, and couldn’t stand retired life anymore. And within six months of retirement, she decided to start another company. So in the end, retirement for Nellie was the excitement of starting a brand new business. And for most people, retirement is the freedom to do whatever makes you happy.

04:52
and not the Webster’s dictionary definition. All right, so first off, you don’t have to wait until you’re 65 to retire. And retiring early doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re leaving your day job either if you enjoy working. So for example, towards the latter half of my career as an engineering director, I actually considered myself retired because I loved my job. Every day I actually looked forward to going to the office because I enjoyed solving complex engineering problems and hanging around smart people. And the biggest myth,

05:22
of retirement is the belief that you have to suffer now so you can reap the benefits later. But why wait until you’re old and shriveled to enjoy your life? Why be happy at the end when you can be happy during the entire journey? Now, if you want to learn how to retire early, you must figure out how to spend time doing the things that you love while minimizing the activities that you hate. So here is my exact formula on how to retire early.

05:50
Now the first thing that you gotta do is you gotta keep your expenses low. So with our two seven figure businesses, my wife and I make way more money than we spend. And in theory, we could buy a gigantic house, get a Lambo, or go on extravaganza vacations, but we’ve purposely chosen to live beneath our means. And as it stands right now, we don’t have to worry about money at all. When you keep your expenses in check, your mind is at peace because you don’t have to worry about the basic necessities to survive.

06:18
And most people actually inflate their lifestyles as soon as they have a little bit of money in the bank. And whenever you upgrade your lifestyle, your expectations increase and you constantly need more money to maintain it. So here’s a perfect example. A friend of mine recently stretched himself thin to buy a gigantic house. And don’t get me wrong, this house is beautiful. But his water bill alone is $1,200 a month and his electricity bill is $1,500 a month. And then you factor in the huge mortgage payment.

06:46
and property tax bills, and my friend essentially bought himself a really nice prison because he now has to bust his butt to maintain his estate. So here’s my truth about money. Having more cash in the bank always equals more freedom, but spending more money rarely leads to more happiness. And if you look back on your fondest memories, did they cost a lot of money? So for example, I will never look back and think about how buying an expensive car changed my life.

07:17
But I will always remember the look on my daughter’s face when I taught her how to ride a bike for the first time. Every dollar in your bank account represents freedom. So while buying that expensive house with that huge mortgage, bring enough happiness to offset the potential loss of your freedom and peace of mind, the goal of keeping your expenses low is to get to the point where you can say that you’re done. You make more than what you spend so you can do whatever the heck you want and hang out with whoever you want.

07:46
and you gotta start planting your money seeds now. When you work a day job, you were trading time for money. So as a result, your earning potential is forever capped by the number of hours in a day. And in order to deposit more freedom coins into your bank account, you need to create an asset that makes you money while you sleep. Now there’s many different ways to create income-generating assets. Here’s a short list of the multiple streams of income that make me over two million per year. So I got bumblebeeliners.com.

08:14
I started selling handkerchiefs online in 2007 and today it is a seven-figure business. I also have mywifequitterjob.com. My blog and my podcast collectively generate over seven figures in profit every single year. And mywifequitterjob.com is my passion project and I run it for both fun and profit. I also have seller-summit.com, which is my annual e-commerce conference. Again, that’s another passion project that brings people together and makes me happy while generating six figures per year.

08:42
I also have my investments. I invest in small companies as an angel investor, as well as stocks and mutual funds. And then finally, I got my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel is an upcoming income source that is just starting to make decent money. By the way, if you haven’t subscribed already, please do so. It’s the My Wife Quit Her Job eCommerce channel. Now, if you’re struggling to find an income-generating asset to start, the easiest way to find business ideas is to look at how you spend your time. Do you enjoy playing tennis? Do you play a lot of computer games?

09:12
Are you a coffee connoisseur? The fact is, is that we are all major geeks in a certain area. And the key to retiring early is to leverage your own interests and turn them into income generating properties. So here’s the perfect example. My tennis coach actually lost a chunk of his students during COVID-19. And in California here, there’s wildfires all the time and he can’t give lessons when the air is bad outside.

09:39
So he created an online business selling virtual tennis coaching. And his YouTube channel is growing rapidly and he actually just launched his first successful digital product. Another friend of mine is proficient in Microsoft Excel, so he created an online course teaching others how to master spreadsheets. My cousin, he’s been on the podcast before, he loves running 100 mile races, so he created a custom massager for leg cramps. Now the fact is that we all possess knowledge in random areas of our lives.

10:07
that can lead to a course or a product. And if you can start a business in an area that you love, it actually no longer feels like work. So in case you haven’t explored mywifequitterjob.com lately, there’s actually a bunch of resources, free resources, that will teach you how to plant your first money seed. So if you want to sell physical products online, sign up for my free six day mini course over at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. If you want to start a blog or build an audience and make money from digital products, affiliate marketing and advertising,

10:37
then go over to profitableaudience.com slash free. If you want to sell on Amazon, you’ll find a free mini course on my website as well. There’s no excuses.

10:49
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 and provides 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.

11:18
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council 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, 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.

11:47
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show. Now if you plant your money seeds and consistently nurture your money generating assets, they will eventually blossom and grow. But at some point you may come down with a syndrome known as the disease of more. Now remember, learning how to retire early is about achieving financial freedom, not working harder.

12:17
for the sake of making more money than you can spend. So when Y Life and I started BumblebeeLens.com, it actually became successful in a relatively short period of time. Within a year, the business replaced my wife’s six-figure salary, and it quickly grew to a seven-figure business. And in fact, we actually met our financial objectives with our handkerchief business in year one, but we wanted more. So early on, my wife and I set aggressive sales goals to grow the business, and they were actually

12:46
quite stressful to achieve. I still remember one year, we were 50K short of our artificial holiday sales goal, so we put together a last minute blitz of email campaigns to make up for it. And while we hit our number, my wife and I had to work 12 hour days during the holidays to fulfill these orders because we were also short on staff. Another time we got featured on the NBC Today Show, which 7x’d our daily revenue, and we had to bust our butts to ship everything out, and it was not fun.

13:16
So the problem with setting goals is that they’re meaningless. You reach an artificial milestone, pat yourself on the back, and then you move the goalposts further away. So one thing no business owner will tell you is that growing fast sucks. You won’t have the infrastructure in place to handle the volume, and the growth will literally consume your life. So instead of setting meaningless goals and growing for the sake of growing, you should sit down and figure out how much you need to make to achieve financial freedom.

13:45
and then just work towards that number. Because retiring early is about understanding how much you need to make to be free and not let money dictate your decision making. So here’s what’s funny about this. Growing up, my parents taught me that paying your dues and suffering now always leads to success later in life. And for the most part, I agree with this philosophy. You have to pay it forward and work hard now to reap the rewards later. But I strongly disagree with the suffering part.

14:15
Early retirement does not have to be about sacrificing your happiness now to achieve a better future. Instead, I would say you should do the complete opposite. Think about what makes you happy right now and just work it into your schedule. Take a step back to understand your needs and your wants and design them into your life. So for example, even though running my two seven figure businesses can suck sometimes, I always structure my week to include several of what I call perfect days.

14:46
So here’s what makes me happy. And while you’re listening to this, you should think about what makes you happy. Having lunch with my wife, going on walks with the entire family around the neighborhood, playing ultimate frisbee, playing tennis, participating in my kids’ volleyball and tennis practices, and basketball also, and playing computer games with my friends. So designing your perfect day is about working in what you love to do into your daily routine.

15:15
And then when you can string multiple perfect days together is my definition of how to retire early. So here’s what I discovered about my personality. As long as I schedule any of the activities that I just mentioned into my day, I feel great despite the daily grind of running my businesses. And my perfect days make the journey enjoyable and I’m not suffering along the way. So stop telling yourself that you’ll be happy when you get to the end and instead structure your life

15:44
so you’re happy the whole way there. Now, the other secret about how to retire early is finding meaning in what you do. So personally, I never plan to retire in the traditional sense of the term. Instead, I intend to run mywifequitterjob.com until I can no longer type or produce videos or record podcasts. And in my mind, I’m actually already retired because I enjoy my work. As a former electrical engineer who worked with computers all day, I never thought that I’d enjoy teaching, but I actually love it.

16:14
Whenever a student tells me that they quit their jobs as a result of my teachings, it actually leaves a really warm feeling in my heart. So retiring early, it’s not about quitting. It’s about finding activities that you love to do that don’t feel like work, even though it might technically be considered work. All right, so here’s how to retire early instead of waiting till you’re 65. In order to figure out how to retire early, you first have to understand your monetary and psychological needs. How much money do you need to survive come?

16:45
How do you want to spend your days? And who do you want to be hanging around? So make a list of activities that make up your perfect day, and then make a list of things you hate to do. And once you know what you want, you should study the lives of the people that you want to emulate. So for example, my friends Polly and Ed started two multi-million dollar companies in Boku and Tiny Prince while still spending plenty of time with their kids. And in fact, Polly and Ed were my role models who I tried to copy.

17:13
when I first started Bumblebee Linens. And you should definitely check out their podcast episodes. They were episode 15 and six respectively. You’ll notice that they were early on in my podcast because they were one of the inspirations for this podcast. And then you want to plant your money seeds by starting a business that takes advantage of your interests and knowledge. And then make sure you incorporate a couple of perfect days into your week and just enjoy the journey. Hope you enjoy that episode and let me know what you think.

17:42
Do you agree or disagree with my philosophy? And is Chufucious just full of it? Let me know by dropping me an email at steve at mywifequitterjob.com because I’d love to hear your thoughts. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 376. 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.

18:10
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. I also want to thank Postscript, 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 dv. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv.

18:38
Now if I talk about how I use these tools in my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifecoderjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.