416: Bootstrapping A 2 Billion Dollar Company With Spencer Jan Of Solo Stove

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have my friend Spencer Jan on the show. And I got to say this right off the bat, Spencer is probably one of the most successful e-commerce entrepreneurs that I’ve had on the show that have been completely bootstrapped. He started Solo Stove with his brother, which had a $2 billion valuation with multiple eight figure exits. And in this episode, we’re going to learn how he did it.

00:27
But before we begin, want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store and it depends 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. 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.

00:55
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01:25
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01:54
So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S E R I P T dot I O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this one where I interviewed 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 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.

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Now onto the show.

02:31
Welcome to the My Wife, Quarter Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Spencer Jan on the show. Now, Spencer is the founder of Solo Stove, which is a company that he and his brother started and bootstrapped to a $2 billion valuation and multiple eight figure exits. Now Spencer and I, recently met at the e-commerce fuel conference in Norfolk and I’m really glad that we did. He’s got a crazy story and today we’re going to break down and dissect his path to success and

03:00
Just a quick warning to the listeners, the man is probably one of the most modest people that I’ve met. Let me give you an example. At Ecommerce Fuel, he gave an amazing keynote speech. And even though he claims to have never spoken publicly before, I called BS because it was such an amazing speech. Anyway, he’s probably gonna downplay a lot of his accomplishments. So take everything that he says with a grain of salt. He’s an amazing guy. And with that, welcome to the show, Spencer. How you doing? Good.

03:28
Good to be here, Steve. was thinking today too, that like, it feels like being on your podcast out of all of them is like the rite of passage sort of like, you you haven’t finished your journey unless you end up on your path. So I was excited. I was like, yeah, this is awesome. Cause we’ve listened, I say we, me and my brother, right, started our company, but I’ve listened to your podcast for years, like years. And

03:57
I think it’s less about you to be honest. It’s more about like the guts you have on, right? But your story was amazing too, because we started when 2008 blogging. What year did you start doing your blog? Blogging? 2009. Yeah. So we were in that kind of like looking for inspiration and education before you even started. So we saw you pop up because I remember showing, I was like, what a weird title, but it resonated with us because we knew kind of what you were getting at with that.

04:28
But we started like the days of Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income and him putting out his monthly earnings reports. Remember those? And those were so fascinating to just to see like somebody’s willing to share this stuff. So all of it was so super helpful through the years. So I guess I have to say thanks to you like first off because like, appreciate it. I mean, you know, it’s funny just to the listeners out there.

04:57
Spencer and I, were exchanging emails and then I noticed that your email was already in my inbox and I was so embarrassed. And then, cause you’re like, oh yeah, so you didn’t respond to my email, did you, Stephen? So from here on out, I’m never gonna forget your email ever Yeah, well I was even a little bit embarrassed because I was, you as you’re asking for my emails, I didn’t want to say like, well, I kind of reached out just not too long ago. Not sure if you saw that. So I didn’t.

05:23
I didn’t say it because I was like, oh, whatever. I’m sure he has a VA. Going through his emails, it fell through the cracks or whatever. Because I was like, oh, what’s interesting is as it kind of went on my journey, this is kind of leaping all around, but when the company eventually went public, that kind of freed me up to be able to talk a little bit openly about it. Up until then, I was like, couldn’t really talk much about it. Or I didn’t know where that line was of what I could and couldn’t say.

05:52
But now that there’s a lot of public information, it makes it easier to. And so that’s when I reached out to Andrew first and foremost, because my brother went on his podcast, like in 2014 as like this, I think the title was like, stealth entrepreneur, you know, and he was like working a day job and he didn’t don’t divulge a whole lot. And he was kind of like the secret, you know, I’m doing the side hustle thing. And so he went on that and I was like, oh, I need to kind of come full circle with Andrew. But then my my second thought was like, I reached out to

06:21
your podcast as well. But it fell through the cracks. That’s okay. We’re here. Well, here we are, Steve. That’s what matters. Yeah. So Spencer, I know that solo stove was not your first venture. I just curious how you got into e-commerce in the first place. Yeah. And that’s, yeah, I shared a lot about that at the ECF conference and it is something that a lot of people don’t know because it’s easy to just jump to the headline story and the big numbers that make it make it sound like

06:51
It was a straight shot to the finish line. But it was far from that. I started in 2008 blogging. Found this. What was the blog? The blog was called China Business Traveler. And you could probably find it go on the way back machine and it all had hyphens between it. So it was China hyphen business hyphen traveler. And I think I it. This is going to make me sound so bad. I spelled traveler like the British way because the other way was like taken. This is I had like two L’s or something. I was like

07:21
does it have one L or does it have two L’s? I eventually, and so I think I spelt it the way, I don’t even know if this is right, but to this day I’m like, I think I spelt traveler like wrong. But I did that for like a year through this course that it was a course, it was called SBI, it was called Site Build It. I know that company. Yes. Is that still around? It still is. I think it transitioned to something else called, I can’t remember what it transitioned to, where it is more e-commerce focused.

07:51
But site build, had a lot of blogs back in the day. Like a lot of people were using it and it was a legit kind of slow and steady learn SEO, you know, learn all the keyword research stuff. And so we started, I started blogging in Oh wait, thinking that was a way to kind of supplement my income and did it for a year. Didn’t make any money. I mean, we’re talking less than a hundred dollars of which most of it didn’t get paid out. Cause I had like one affiliate sale for like a plane ticket, but it wasn’t high enough to like reach the pay.

08:21
payout threshold. And so I never even got the money. But I figured blogging wasn’t for me because I hated writing eventually. And then I was working in China at the time for a sourcing company. And we were sourcing all sorts of products for other people, mostly larger companies, not e-commerce sellers. It wasn’t a big thing back in 08. And one of the projects was memory foam mattresses for a retail store in the Pacific Northwest.

08:52
It was called King’s mattress and oh wait hit and there they didn’t pay us for the containers that shipped to them and it just was a mess. And I had spent all this time figuring out how to make mattresses. And so I was like, Oh, I’ll just, I’ll just maybe sell these, uh, is, kind of the, the short story of it. And so I started selling memory foam mattresses to other expats that were living and working in Shanghai. So we’re talking like Americans, Europeans, guys from Canada and Australia.

09:22
And I would, so I use my blogging skills to create essentially a blog that had like a buy button and it wasn’t a real buy button. It was a form builder button or it was called for mail. And so you would click it and then it would go to a form and then they would fill out what they wanted to order. And then it would shoot me an email and that’s how I started. So I use my, I created what was a blog and then started selling these memory foam mattresses. Yeah. So that was my first foray into, into e-commerce, but then it,

09:51
It grew into a whole bunch of other brands. tried a ton of different things, started selling on Amazon, on eBay, doing all of that and kind of through the years, um, did a lot of different brands. I’d probably say 10 or 12 different brands with hundreds of skews. And so try it. crazy. And you were able to do this because of your background, you were living over there or yeah, because I was sourcing over there. had a partner for some of these brands. was, I partnered up.

10:19
The company I was working for eventually kind of earned some equity in that company and so kind of became partners with this guy who had the sourcing company and we were sourcing all sorts of different products. So I kind of got him on this, got him interested enough and saying like, look, I’m playing around with e-commerce. I think it’s like the way to go. We can go direct to the consumer. We don’t have to sell to these big guys anymore and kind of have this 80-20 rule like

10:48
one or two companies make up all your revenue and it’s always a scary position to be in. And so we started taking some of these things that we had access to, or we had found suppliers or we went out and found new suppliers and we started playing the Amazon game. Um, and I think back then, year was this by the way, Amazon was probably 2009. Yeah. 2009, it was so early. It was so easy. It was scary. Easy. We got introduced to selling on Amazon by another guy.

11:18
a friend of a friend and he basically said, I’ll teach you guys. And I think he charged us like $15,000, like me and my other business partner in China to teach us how to sell on Amazon. And we’re like, okay, that sounds like a lot, but so-and-so says you’re reputable and we did it. And he really just had a few phone calls with us telling us, what you got to do is look up keywords.

11:44
find a keyword and put it in your title, put it in your description, put it everywhere. And that was it. Like that was his whole spiel. I’m like, that’s it. But really back in those days, that’s all you had to do. It was like, if you had keywords in your titles, you just shoot up to the top. Was FBA even around back then? Yeah, it barely started. Okay, I take it back. I don’t know. I don’t know when FBA started. I can’t remember if we transitioned into FBA, but I have a feeling like it was already FBA.

12:12
If not, it was right around that time. But yeah, it was really early. There were no paid ads. There was no like, none of that stuff. was just straight, put your stuff up, take some pictures, and that was it. So out of all these, it sounded like you had a collection of brands. When did you decide to just double down on solo? Yeah, that was a long transition, right? Because we started solo playing with Solo like 2010.

12:42
And it was a difficult product to get manufactured. And so we kind of shelved it for a while, to be honest, as all these other brands that we were just selling on Amazon were just like killing it. And my mattress business was going well, like everything was going well. And so it was hard to know like, this, so we were really thinking like, as most people think, oh, if I can do it with one product, I’ll just rinse and repeat with 10 products and I’ll have 10 times the size of a business that I want. Right. And that’s what we did. And so we started having all these different brands, launching all these new products.

13:11
The majority of them all did really well. It was just a matter of how much you made on each one that kind of let some rise to the top and some were, you know, ones that you’re like, ah, it’s good. It makes money, but not tons. So it was a slow transition because it got to the point where there were so many brands. I had two partners, right? I had my partner who I was working with, who was working for in his company. He was a guy out of Washington. And so I was running the China side of it. And then my brother.

13:40
who wanted to get out of his day job, we started blogging together and I had started to sell mattresses online. I was like, we gotta sell stuff. And so I had most of my brands with my other partner in Washington and then my brother and I started this gardening brand of products and we started playing there. And we started to realize, like I started to realize, man, this is a lot of work. it just all started, because it was doing so well, it just turned into a lot of work. Like who knew, right?

14:08
It’s successful. just snowballs into this a lot of work. And I quickly found myself like kind of up to my eyeballs in it. All good problems to have, but it was like just too much, too much stress, too much work. I was just, I felt like I wasn’t giving each partner, you know, the right amount of time and the brands weren’t doing as well as I wanted to because it was hard to focus on one year. I was putting up fires and so I started to have to make like tough decisions and um,

14:35
you know, the eventual decision was to leave my partner in Washington who lived in Washington, and exit out of that company. I was a minority owner in that in that business. And so it felt different, right to be a minority owner, versus with my brother, we were co owner owners, we were 5050 with that company. And, and I had to make the decision I decided, while I tried to make it all work, it just wasn’t and I had to make a tough decision to leave.

15:03
that one partner, was the majority of the brands that were selling on Amazon. And so I was left with just two brands with me and my brother. We had, and we played with yet another brand, which is a funny story, but we had less brands. I cut ties with that. It was tough to do that. It was less about the money than it was the relationship that I had with this guy that I had worked with. My business partner was, we worked together for 12 years. Like, yeah, it was a long time and it was tough. remember actually

15:32
had that phone call in my car and I cried. Like I shed tears. was like, this is so like, why is this so hard? Like, why is this so difficult? I had nothing to do with the money. It had nothing to do with it was just partnerships and people that you work with that you, you know, build relationships. And then at certain points in time, you have to make tough decisions. And I found myself at that crossroad and had to do it. I just knew I had to do it. And so I cut ties with him. And I remember

16:02
Yeah, just telling my brother and I was like in tears and I was just like, I did it. finally did it. Like, let’s, let’s get to work on these two brands that we have. Um, yeah, let me, let me ask you this question. Uh, I know that you originally started this business, not necessarily to make money, but just for freedom. Yeah. Lifestyle. And presumably with all these brands that you were selling, you were probably pulling in decent amount of money. Right? I mean, would you say you, you hit seven figures in profit like net? Oh yeah. Quickly. Yeah.

16:32
Yeah, so that’s more than enough. And I mean, just, I can’t really, I don’t know you that well, but it doesn’t seem like you’re extravagant. I can’t see you driving a Lambo or anything like that. So why did you, wasn’t that enough? did you have this fever to want to make more money? Yeah, so it wasn’t that if you, you, anybody who, anybody knows who starts an e-commerce business that does well, like the money, when you talk about profits, yeah, it’s profits, but it’s not profits in my pocket that I can go buy stuff with, right?

17:02
You have to reinvest in the company and you have to go buy more inventory twice as much before you even need twice as much because you know, and you can see that things are going so well that you’re going to run out of inventory. And so all your money and all your profits after first uncle Sam takes his cut, which I think most budding entrepreneurs don’t realize that 40 % you got to set aside of your monthly profits so that you can pay the tax bill. And then you have to reinvest it all into new product. And, and, and not only that,

17:32
For me, the way I’ve always operated, right, as an entrepreneur, you’re always scared about something. Like while it’s going good, like in hindsight, yeah, I was like great for many years, but while you’re in it, you’re always like, is this like, how long is this really going to last? Do I got one year? Do I have two years? I see more and more people coming on board, selling more things. Like, you know who I didn’t like? I didn’t like the guy who started like podcasting about Amazon. What was his name?

17:58
There’s a ton of was like that early guy and he had great content. Amazing, amazing freedom or something like that. can’t Scott Volcker. That was his name. Oh, Scott. Yeah. Okay. Real nice guy. I don’t have nothing. I have nothing bad to say about him. I just didn’t like the idea that all the secrets were now out there. Like all this education because I was always fearful of like, well, everybody’s coming in now. Like I wasn’t out there telling everybody how to do this. I was like, why doesn’t everybody be quiet? You know, why doesn’t everybody just stay low?

18:28
lay low and we can all ride this as long as we can. And so it was a constant fear of like, this is going away while at the same time having to reinvest in the company to keep it afloat that you we didn’t get any money. Like I never got a lot of money in my pocket. And so it was just, you know, it realization that like, it’s going to be hard to actually pay myself something. We really got to get to big numbers to where I can actually take a six figure salary out of this thing. And maybe it wasn’t.

18:58
Maybe we didn’t maybe we’re really conservative. Think about it. We were coming out of oh, wait, our our source and company almost went under. We had went from like 20 some odd people down to like five because we had to lay them all off because it was oh, wait, it was financial crisis. It was like, don’t take any debt. Debt is bad. Like companies can go under in the blink of an eye. Let’s go really conservative. So all the money went back in. So it wasn’t that we like I wanted to make even more money. It was like, how in the world do I even get paid out of this thing?

19:28
I guess I gotta make it bigger.

19:32
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20:01
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20:30
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. Interesting. The reason why I’m asking all these questions is my wife and I, came to a similar situation at one point, but then we just said to ourselves, you can actually control your growth. It’s kind of, you know what mean? Like you can let those products maybe go out of stock or not.

20:58
place that large bet on inventory. But you know, it’s an ego thing also. And it’s, it’s also, I can’t, I can’t describe it in words, but like you want it to do well, and it’s doing well, and you want to take advantage of it while it lasts. So that’s why you’re investing a lot more. It becomes like, kind like this vicious cycle. Yeah, I think that’s what I would say. And that’s why like, even in my slide, it was like a snowball kind of chasing you down a hill is like,

21:24
I wanted to make a big snowball, but then it kind of starts eating you up. And then you’re like, well, what do I do? And, um, and that was a sense of like, that was a transition of like letting things go and focusing down on solo stove or just focusing with my brother and saying, like, I got to choose one path here because I did essentially what you and your wife did, right? You controlled growth and I did it by, kind of stepping away from one partner and a bunch of brands and then throttling it back down. Um, because we, know,

21:53
went from selling a whole lot and then now I’m with one partner, my brother, and we’re selling less. And so it did throttle it and we did find more balance over the years. I it kind of sounds, you know, short and easy, but this was over a span of like 10 years, right? So we did find good balance. And I think we kind of were seeking for the same thing that you and your wife for the same reasons you guys said, let’s control growth. We did. I did. I mean, I parted with a partner, left a ton of money on the table.

22:20
I didn’t ask for a multiple when I exited. We kind of just looked at book value and then even gave a discount on that because I was like, I’m not out to hurt you and I let them pay over many years the equity that I had in the company. So yeah, I I kind of throw the growth that way. Let’s talk about Solo Stove. Are you a product designer? So no. Well, I take that back, not by education or I don’t have a certificate.

22:49
But think I’m a pretty decent product designer. Like I think a lot of people don’t give them credit for ideas that they might have or creativity that’s within them when it comes to product. I mean, everybody uses something and is like, why in the world do they make it this way? Why? Like they should change it to be like this and it would be way better. Like we all have those experiences. And I think I just went with that. And I just, I think I’m more creative than I am.

23:18
good with numbers, like I like the creative side of things. And so I do like playing with the product. Maybe it’s my generation of like, I remember in your, in your speech, I think you opened with you’re an Asian that’s bad at math. It’s so true. And what was funny is I met a guy at ECF and we were talking, uh, his name’s, I think it’s Sujay and, and, uh, we were talking about our kids’ ages. And I was like, my daughter’s 15 and he’s like, Oh, so like,

23:47
He asked me how old I was and then he asked, and then we were talking about our kids’ ages. And he was like, so what year did you have your daughter? And I couldn’t do the math in my head. And he was like, are you kidding me? You take your age, her age, and mine is down. And I was like, yeah, I’m so bad at math that I’ve just come to accept it. And I just realized that it is just not, it’s not going to happen. And so I surround myself with people who are really good at math.

24:16
and like really analytical who can help me on that. Even my wife, I mean, my kids laugh at me because I can’t do simple math. Like percentages, I just am really bad with it. So for anybody out there who thinks they’re bad at math and can’t start a business, there’s definitely hope. yeah. So this, your solo stove or your first version of that product, it’s a pretty complicated piece of, complicated product to manufacture and design. Yeah. So did you just pick up a

24:45
CAD tool and learn how to use it and start designing? mean, paper and pencil for sure. And we were able to kind of draw things out and kind of from sourcing my experience in sourcing, you know, played a role because I had dealt with a lot of product development. And so I understood how things are made. And I understood how drawings are made and how to call things out on drawings and how to show a manufacturer that like this is the radius I want on this corner. Like I can’t do it in CAD, but I can tell them and I can sure write it on a piece of paper.

25:15
and then have them create CAD drawings or have somebody create CAD drawings off of my rough sketches, you know, my chicken scratches that I’ll just kind of move around or even using, you know, a simple app on your computer to kind of draw things out. So, yeah, it was a matter of sketching it out, drawing it out roughly, coming up with an idea of this is the size I want, this is how I want spacing in there and, you know, these are the radiuses I want. And then

25:44
drawing it out and then getting eventually a CAD drawing made to where we could say, yep, that’s kind of what we want to hear the tolerances that we can accept in these areas and then going to town on it. It was, it’s a difficult product to manufacture. Well, how long did it take you actually to, create that first product? would say it took us from the moment we started like playing with the idea to actually making it was probably close to two years because we shelved it for a while.

26:10
We started trying it. We went down the road, but remember we’re doing all these other products as well. had another partner and we were doing tons of other products and all of it was selling. And so there wasn’t this no like, was kind of take the path of least resistance and this, the solo stove path was a path of highest resistance. Like it was so difficult to make. you think about when you’re manufacturer and saying like, here’s a very difficult product. We got to spend a ton of tooling, right? We got to, we had a tool up. even requires specialized machinery to make.

26:39
and I’m only gonna purchase like $5,000 worth of this stuff. Like nobody wants to take a bet on you at that point, right? They’re like, well, yeah, if you’re gonna buy hundreds of thousands, then they’d probably do it. But we were so conservative and so small that we were like, it’s like most we can buy is like 5,000 bucks worth of this stuff. And so for that reason, it’s difficult to find a manufacturer who’s willing to dive in and do all of that.

27:07
know, development with you side by side to then have what like five grand and have their line run for half a day and then, you know, stop. you know, the tree, people don’t understand like the training that has to happen within a factory for, the workers who are actually, you know, working the machines. It’s a, takes a long time to train people up to tell them what to do and how to do it correctly. When you’re stamping products on a machine or doing deep draws,

27:36
You have to adjust tooling on the machine. And it’s this constant like, okay, set the tools. Now put a piece of metal in there and draw it down. And then it’s totally off and it’s totally bad. Then they have to adjust it. And these are huge tools that have to be lifted with like forklifts and chains. And it can take an entire day to dial in the tools on a machine and a lot of scrap and a lot of waste that has to happen as they’re punching these things down. I don’t know what good analogy for that is.

28:06
But it takes time to kind of dial things into where it can then start pumping things out really good. Well, how did you convince the manufacturer to do all that work just for a small? Yeah, it took. That’s why it took us so long, really, is the short of it. And then when we did find the right guy, we just hit it off. It’s like dating. That’s what I tell people when you’re sourcing and you’re finding a manufacturer like it’s like dating. You have to find people who like you for whatever reason. Like, I don’t know if it was this.

28:34
I don’t know if it was my personality. don’t know if it’s like, you know, this, this, the challenge of seeing if we can get this thing to work that he was interested in, like the dynamics that were going on in his business, in his head. I I’m not sure exactly why he wanted to do it. I think it was more so the challenge of like, this is difficult and this is challenging and I’ve never done something this hard. Um, and I think it’s a cool project and I want to see if I can do it. It was more like a, like a hobby or like a, you know, a challenge for him.

29:04
So we tackled it together and we just built a good rapport together doing this and turned out extremely well for him and extremely well for us. yeah, was extremely difficult. That’s why I say, man, I got lucky a lot of times because I met a lot of suppliers who were just like, nope, nope, nope, or I want to do it, but can’t do it. I don’t have the right machinery and I’m not willing to invest.

29:29
You know, so a lot of stars had to align for me to feel like I got lucky and found a good supplier. Like it really did just come down to luck. Were you in China during the production, like managing everything? At that time when we started Solo, my brother was here in the States, here in Texas where I’m at now. And I was on that side, really dialing in the supply chain and getting things going. Let me ask you that. Did you think that that was necessary for you to be over there?

29:58
this complicated product? mean, I guess if you’re asking, could somebody do it if they weren’t in China? Sure, I’m sure someone could. Is it easy? Absolutely not. Does it help that I was in China? Yes, absolutely. Does it help that I can speak Mandarin? Yes, absolutely. Did it help to have years and years of experience dealing with suppliers and finding suppliers and understanding how to build relationships with them? Yes. All of that played in.

30:27
us being able to kind of dial things. But you look at great companies like, I don’t know, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. mean, I’m sure there’s tons at ECF that were at ECF that never lived in China, don’t speak Mandarin and can still make amazing products. I think there’s, we all have like advantages that we can lean on to give us a leg up. Where I’m bad at math, right? I was good at sourcing products. And where somebody else is a whiz at math, can figure out that

30:56
you know, this is how much you need to save for taxes every month where I faltered in that. And one year I was like, we got stuck with like a $400,000 tax bill that I thought we were prepared for, but we barely saved up enough money for that and almost like dried out our company because I was like, yeah, just going by my gut feel of like what the numbers should be. And obviously I was horrible at that and horrible at planning with numbers. So I think we all have strengths that we can lean on and I think you should.

31:26
double down on what you’re good at and then solve for the parts that you’re not. So you have this product that you took two years to develop. So one, did you know that it was going to sell during those two years? And then two, how did you sell your first units? Yeah, I knew it would sell. I’m a strong believer that like anything can sell. There’s someone out there who will buy it. It’s just a matter of how many, right? And so I think I gained a lot of confidence with all the products that I had launched.

31:56
on Amazon and D2C that everything sold. There wasn’t anything that just like sat on the shelf and was a total dud. And so everything sold and I knew, especially in those days of Amazon, if you played in those days in Amazon, you knew everything sold. Like it was just a matter of how much. Actually, when I started everything sold also, and that was 2015, 2016. Yeah. So it was, it was, it really helped in that, in that, in that area of confidence.

32:26
made me believe like, yes, this will sell. I don’t know how much. And I think a lot of people get stuck on that in terms of like, is there, all the buzzwords of product market fit and like, you know, have you done your research? I was like, what kind of research would you do? Like ask people if they would buy it. Like I don’t even know what you would do to get something of like statistical significance at a small, like you’re just two guys. Like what are you going to do to figure out if this thing’s going to sell?

32:52
In my mind, the best thing to do is just go sell it. Don’t sink in too much money and then go try to sell it. And if it sells well, then just double down, right? Then order more product and then start developing it out. But if it fizzles and dies or you’re stuck with $5,000 worth of product that sells over the next five years, you can still get rid of it all and give it away for Christmas presents throughout the years. so it was never a big risk to me. But no, we did not know how much we could sell or how well it would sell.

33:22
right off the bat. we were, we surprised. How much money did you invest in product development to get like your first? Yeah, so we put in $15,000 to start that company. And that’s it. And so for first, that’s not a lot. It’s not a lot because a lot of it went to, you know, ordering the first product and some of it went to tooling and, and paying for software and paying for, you know, a shopping card and get like all of it together. It was like, we needed to make it work with all that money, all the

33:51
Freight like all the shipping and freight and all that stuff was kind of baked into the fact that like we had 15,000 bucks to work with and that’s it. And that’s that’s how we grew it. Okay, that’s much lower than I would have expected. Okay, wow, that’s amazing. Okay, so you’re you you get your product, you listen to Amazon, it sells like hotcakes. Walk me through the progression from there. Actually, yeah, like whittling down kind of like focus. Is that what you mean? Yeah, so from there,

34:20
You know, things continue to do really well. We started selling other products, gardening products. We had a gardening site. Was this an Amazon only product by the way? The stuff? Or were you selling DTC? Just the solo store? We had set up a website as well. Yeah. So all, so me and my brother were kind of big on websites, like our own DTC sites, like our own .com sites, because I had kind of gained that experience through selling mattresses.

34:46
And I realized early on that you can have your own site and you can have traffic to it because I understood how you can build traffic by blogging. Through blogging, I understood that traffic could be built. While I knew Amazon had traffic and that was a great way to basically print money, I also knew you could have your own site and you can also develop your own traffic. And so that wasn’t foreign to me. In fact, it was more attractive because you can be more creative.

35:14
when you’re driving traffic to your site. And so we had stuff on Amazon and that’s where the majority of sales came from, but we did have our own sites that we would set up because we knew like people would check us out. Like, is this a legit brand? What does their website look like? And so we had from the get-go, me and my brother were really strong in building our own sites. And some of the other products like gardening products just never took on our own.com as hard as we tried. And those did really well on Amazon. And we eventually started selling

35:43
This is so me and my brother are pretty clean cut dry guys. don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t do drugs. But we were thinking as we were selling these gardening products, we got to even out the seasonality of gardening. How do we even do that? And we started researching product and my brother stumbled upon these things called grow lights. And he was like, oh, people grow stuff indoors using these things called grow lights that mimic the sun. And I was like,

36:12
That’s ingenious. That’s so cool. And we’re like, that could even out the winter months. Like people could grow indoors. And so we were trying to even out our seasonality and we ended up like selling grow lights and starting a website called super led grow lights.com. And we brought in like thousands of dollars worth of these grow lights only to eventually find out that people don’t grow like tomato cherries and like cilantro indoors. And we were so naive to the fact.

36:39
that people were asking about what the heat signature is from the roadside. And we’re like, what is that? Why do they even care? Because cops in the days would use a heat gun and kind of see what houses are glowing from the street side to see who’s cooking stuff inside or who’s growing weed and marijuana in there. And so we were like, this is so weird. And so we eventually figured out that everybody was using it to grow weed.

37:07
And we were like, we gotta get out of this. And so we shut that down and we closed it up and we just sat on those grow lights in our garage. I don’t even know what we did with them. I think a lot of them we threw out. But that was another one that we started our own website and we’re selling on Amazon as well and all this stuff. But we started wheeling down because things started going really well on all fronts. The gardening stuff was doing well. Our solo stove was doing really well.

37:37
Oh, and we had started another brand called Fox Outfitters. And that was another camping me too. So you kind of see this, like, do see how like, things are just like, we’re just rinsing and repeating. And we’re kind of like, causing our own problems by doing this, right? We haven’t found out how to find that balance of just saying enough’s enough. Let’s just hold it steady. We’re just in this constant state of like, did you have employees during this time, by the way, or was it just you and my brother the whole time? Wow, crazy. Okay, so we had

38:04
Fox outfitters, had solo, we had at one time super LED grill lights and we had this other one called the garden cloche, which were these bell cover, these plastic bell seedling coverings that would act as like a mini greenhouse on seedlings. And they were all selling well, everything was doing well. Which again, found ourselves, I found myself in that same problem of like, we built something that we didn’t really want. It was like too good, everything was going too good.

38:32
And so we started to try to figure out what the next step was to kind of regain that lifestyle that we were in search of and the reason why we started these companies. And that led us to let’s sell and get rid of this stuff. Like let’s sell it all and just exit out of the company and see if we can’t start again. You know, we were trying to build that four hour work week lifestyle company and we were obviously doing okay, making money along the way, but…

39:01
having a hard time finding that that kind of autopilot mode where it’s a great company that’s going to last forever. And it’s just printing you money every day, you know, that smart passive income, right, that Pat Flynn is I was hanging, what was always the elusive goal of like, he’s figured it out. Why can’t we figure it out, right? ours always end up turning into something way more than we bargained for. And that’s took us to 2016. And we decided, okay, it’s too much. It’s more than we bargained for. We’re working way too much on this stuff. Let’s sell it and

39:31
That’s that’s so all of it. Yeah, we wanted to sell all of it and just start again. I don’t know what we were going to start or maybe it was, you know, if we could get enough money, maybe that would be enough is one of the thoughts. The other thought was like we can start again and build a better business that doesn’t turn into a snowball chasing us down the hill.

39:52
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

40:21
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

40:32
Let me ask you this question. Was it really hard time-wise because you didn’t have lot of employees? I mean, you didn’t have any employees? it eventually got hard. And I’ll tell you why it got hard is because we were still pretty protective of our time, right? We still were trying to live this lifestyle. We were trying to walk the walk and live a lifestyle that was balanced, that we had enough time for our family. We both have kids. So we both had small kids.

41:01
and you know, in the toddler age and you know, or we want to spend time with the family and with our wives and on ourselves, right is, you know, your physical health and your mental health and your spirituality and all these things that your hobbies like I wanted it all. And, and that meant that while I while I was walking the walk and enjoying this lifestyle, the hours that I was working, which was a, you know, your standard, I would say I wouldn’t say nine to five, it was probably more like, you know,

41:30
eight to six at most. Sure. We had to do more in those hours than ever before. And so it was really stressful, really compact, really like high pressure in those hours that we were working. And then we kind of turned it off and then tried to go do, you know, live our lives. And so it just was this built up pressure because we weren’t stretching out. I take that back. There were

41:56
times where we were working into the wee hours of the morning and it eventually got there, right? Where we were, we were working way more than we wanted to, you know, kids go to bed and then you flip open the laptop and keep going. were doing all our customer service. So that’s like a constant nag on you is like, you don’t want to let those tickets sit for more than they should. And so we’d hop back on, get through customer service. So then the next morning it would just let it pile back up again. And so yeah, it got really, it got really busy.

42:26
I guess my question for you is why didn’t you hire? Yeah. It’s so funny hearing other people say it like, duh. And even in my mind, I’m like, yeah, like that’s how like, that’s how, that’s how like novice of a business person I was, I guess, inserting a company in that, um, we didn’t, I mean, we did think to hire Steve, wasn’t a matter of like, we never thought about it. I thought about it, but I was always under this impression that we wanted to build this company that didn’t have anybody in it.

42:55
Because we didn’t like managing people were not great, right? People managers and you know, the dynamics of people is just difficult. We’re working from our homes and so it’s this big friction to like now we got to get an office and go in nine to five and be there to be with them. It’s like what about our lifestyle business? Our whole lifestyle business was flexibility so that if we needed to pop out in the middle of the day or if we wanted to go, you know, fishing from 10 in the morning till two.

43:23
we could knowing that we could make those hours up somewhere else. And so this thought of like going down that road was going against everything that we wanted to build. Like our ideal company was one that gave us our lifestyle, gave us enough money, and most importantly gave us that freedom and flexibility. And employees just was everything. It was like the, you know, it was everything against that, what we were trying to build. I can completely relate to everything that you’re saying. It’s just funny. Cause I know most people.

43:52
they tend to think that hiring employees is pretty glamorous. Right. That’s the opposite for me. Yeah, and me too. And we’re because even the complexities of it, right is like, I like the marketing, I like making product, I like I like e commerce, I like all the tactics and that stuff. Anything about okay, employees, one, I don’t even know how to do that. Because what do have to do? Do I have to like, how do I even do payroll now? And do I have to offer benefits? Like, and where will they sit? Like, do I have to buy them all their equipment? And then like, what who’s gonna even teach? Like, do I have to teach them? Like,

44:21
All of these thoughts, I think ran through our heads. And it just was a lot of friction for us to be like, that’s the right path. It doesn’t seem like it if it’s, if it feels like a lot, like a lot of friction, but in hindsight, right? Should we have hired earlier? think, yeah, I think we probably could have hired earlier. think we probably could have hired to a point where it was running smoothly and, you know, doing really well. And maybe we didn’t have to go down a path of selling it. I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s a lot of ways

44:51
Skinny Cat. And I think there’s a lot of curvy paths to the same destination. And the beauty of owning your own business is you get to choose your own adventure for better or for worse. And I think we chose the way we did it. And it did eventually lead to building out a team and growing as we figured out if we are to exit this thing, then there’s a clear path that we need to follow, which is a little bit counterintuitive to

45:20
what someone did you enjoy that path of selling? Yeah. Oh, no, I did not. mean, hi. Well, what I’ll you, it’s type two fun, right? It’s type two fun, where while you’re in it, it’s horrible. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s like self abuse, and you don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself. And then you get through the other side. And you’re like telling other people all the cool stories. And yeah, like I did this, I did that. And I think you kind of forget.

45:48
all the pain that you went through or your selective memory. And so when I’m talking to it’s like having kids, well, yeah, I dare I don’t dare go down that route. I’m not I did not give birth to my kids. My wife did that. And I would never say that it was that difficult. Yeah, I mean, I think the analogy holds in that, you know, you forget about some of the pain. But no, I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy it because we’re doing everything that we didn’t want to do that we tried not to do. But

46:16
I did it because it was a means to an end. It was means to the end. in 2016, we tried to sell the company. It had Fox Outfitters and it had Solo Stove. And Fox Outfitters was the majority of the revenue and profits. And Solo Stove was kind of the little brother that had a lot of potential. And that’s really the short story of it is we came out of it knowing that nobody really wanted our Amazon company.

46:45
Amazon brand that was doing millions of dollars and people were more interested in this little brand that we had built that has momentum on its dot com, its D2C. While we were still selling a lot on Amazon, there was glimmers of hope for this brand. There was glimmers of hope in the IP. There was glimmers of hope in product development and what it could turn into. And that’s what we ended up doubling down on and letting go of Fox.

47:12
We actually sold it to some guys in Houston who wanted to get their toe, you know, dip their toes into e-commerce. Um, and we sold it for pennies on the dollar. We just let go of the inventory. I know that’s amazing. That’s a tough decision right there. It was tough. It was a little bit sad to kind of do it that way. While we were selling it, I was honestly telling me and my brother had a conversation of saying like, the people would ask us, what are you going to do? Like, uh, if we, if we don’t buy this and, and I remember telling them, I was like,

47:41
I don’t care if you don’t buy it. It’s a great deal. It’s pennies on the dollar. I just want it off my books because I got to clear up my books and clear up my warehouse and all this stuff for, we’ve to get ready for the dance and the stuff’s in the way. And I said, I don’t care if you don’t buy it because in my heart of hearts, I could go turn this thing into a multimillion dollar business after I’m done and I have time. Like I know I could do that. And so it was this like feeling of, man, this is good for someone. This could be the difference of somebody working in their

48:10
day job hating life and finding freedom. This is a tool that could do that. I just hate to feel like I just toss it to the side. But the truth is, we didn’t have time to sell it the right way. We didn’t have time to try to go through diligence with someone on it. This is what it is. Do you take it or leave it? And if you want it, I’ll give it to you for pennies on the dollar and it’s yours. And that’s how we let go of the majority of our revenue and profits at that time.

48:37
and six in 2016 and then double down on solo stove. Wow, Spencer, I want to shift gears a little bit and I know you had an amazing exit. You probably don’t need to work another day in your life. What are your future plans? So and we were talking a bit about this before we hit the record button, but I’ve really loved diving into like content creation. I think it’s the creative side of me that needs an outlet and

49:03
So, you know, I registered my own company. got a, I got an office space that has a whole bunch of offices and a front room and, know, got a whiteboard and just started thinking about how can I give back and help others like find, find value and find freedom through entrepreneurship. And not that that’s the only way, but it’s the way I know. And it’s the experiences I have that I can give an offer. And so I’m trying to find a way to do that in scale and try to.

49:32
help others explore the path of entrepreneurship as a viable path to one, a career, and then two, a better lifestyle. And while it was a difficult road for me, I think it’s possible. I think it’s a very, think entrepreneurship is net positive, right? Jobs are created. The ripples effect of someone being able to start a company and.

49:57
provide for their family and for other families and what it does in society. think it’s a good thing. And so I’d like to continue to find ways to champion entrepreneurship. I started a YouTube channel that talks about entrepreneurship and e-commerce, but I’m starting to even transition. What’s channel called? It’s just Spencer Jan. So if you just look up my name, you’ll see my mug up there making funny faces as I try to win the thumbnail game.

50:24
but I’m trying to transition to actually just visiting more companies and not in venturing outside the realm of e-commerce. Like I want to go visit a donut shop and I want to go visit somebody who opened a flower shop or somebody who started a car wash because all of these are valid businesses. And I think the learnings that I have while they lend towards e-commerce companies, I think the fundamental principles still translate to other businesses. I feel like telling other people’s stories

50:54
Uh, in, those lights, whether it’s a, uh, a mobile dogwash station or yesterday I was at a skincare clinic of, uh, of a female entrepreneur who started this, this, this company that now has two clinics here in DFW and is making amazing money. want to tell more of those stories. So hopefully I kind of get to that point and hopefully it resonates with people and helps people explore that, um, that entrepreneurial bug or itch that, um, a lot of us have.

51:24
I was just thinking, just listening to your voice right now, I think you should do a podcast too, in addition to your YouTube. Yeah, that might be. think I, I’ve enjoyed being on podcasts and I enjoy talking with others. I think that’s what I get out of it. I’ve, I’ve kind of, I kind of am, am searching for that kind of fulfillment, right? Because chasing dollars and numbers really is a pretty empty thing to do. Um, and so I’ve realized that I gain a lot and I learn a lot and I enjoy.

51:52
talking with others and hearing their stories, um, meeting other people like yourself and all the people that we met at ECF. Like to me, that’s super rich and fulfilling. Um, and then being able to have, find opportunities to help those people and those listening, maybe, maybe I go down the road of podcasts and then I need to pick your brain and figure out how to set it all up. I’ll tell you what I have bought so much equipment.

52:16
that Amazon is about to ban me, because I buy it all and then I return most of it, because I’m like, oh no, I need a different mic. Oh no, that one didn’t work. So just this learning experience of how to set things up properly has been fun for me. Awesome. Well, hey Spencer, thanks a lot for coming on the show. If anyone has any questions for you or want to find out what you’re up to, where can they find you? Yeah, I’m not big on social. I try not to spend too much time on social media. I am on LinkedIn.

52:44
except for that TikTok channel. that has one post. I think I got to hire somebody to build that out. I am on LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can also just email me at hello spencerjan at gmail.com or you can find me on YouTube as well. Drop me a comment there. And I think my contact information is in there as well. So I’d to hear from any budding entrepreneurs and anybody who’s looking for a sounding board for crazy ideas, more than happy to kind of try to fit people in and.

53:13
and talk to as many people as possible. Cool. Well, Spencer, it’s been a pleasure. I’m glad I met you finally at ECF. Yeah. And I know you’re emailed by heart now. Thanks, Steve. It’s been fun. All right. Take care.

53:28
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now I can’t really express in words how much I admire what Spencer has accomplished and how candid he was in this interview. Go check out Solo Stove when you get a chance. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 416. And once again, I to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned code sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.

53:56
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 Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now we talk about how I these tools in my blog,

54:26
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.