461: The Toxic Truth About Entrepreneurship – My Impromptu Speech At Books Inc | Family First Friday

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, where I teach you how to start a business or side hustle from the perspective of a father with two kids. Welcome to a new segment to the show, which I’m calling Family First Fridays in honor of my book, The Family First Entrepreneur. So last night I did my very first book signing at the Books Inc. in Palo Alto, and I had the best time ever. And one of the unexpected benefits of writing a book has been that friends who I haven’t seen or heard from for years have reached out to congratulate me.

00:28
And a bunch of them actually came to the signing last night. Anyway, I wasn’t actually planning on giving a speech at the bookstore last night, but I ended up giving a 15 minute impromptu talk, which I’m gonna share with you guys today. Enjoy. Hey, first off, thanks everyone for coming. I don’t know if we’re gonna do Q &A with this bunch here, because I got some people in the audience here that I’ve known for like 20 years, 25 years, 30 years.

00:57
So they know everything, yeah. Higher than that, but you’re right. We’re getting to that age now. First off, just so thank you so much for coming. This is my very first book signing. And it took three years to write this thing. I shouldn’t call it a thing, right? It took three years to write this masterpiece. And the reason why I wrote the book is because I read a lot of business books. And I just felt like all the business books that I’ve read don’t apply to me.

01:26
And especially in this area that we live in, Silicon Valley, right? Everyone’s all about venture-backed going public and that sort of thing. And what I’ve been reading in these business books is that you have to work 80 hours a week. You’ve to burn the midnight oil in order to succeed. And what ends up happening is that as an entrepreneur, you work so hard and you miss out on your family time. And then you’re going for this goal of going public or having that huge exit.

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which sometimes never comes. More often than not, it actually doesn’t come. And at that point, you’ve already sacrificed your family time. You’ve sacrificed what you want to be doing. For what? But it doesn’t have to be that way. So I wrote this book because those books don’t apply to me. I actually want to see my kids. I actually want to see my wife.

02:23
She didn’t even let me finish my…

02:30
So I wrote the book to show people that there’s a better way. If all you want to do is make, let’s say, a couple million dollars or just several hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can do it easily without working 80 hours a week. We run two businesses that make seven figures, and we work around 20 hours a week. It can be done. The only problem with this crowd here

02:58
I know there’s some overachievers in this crowd. And one thing that was a problem for me was ego. So if you’re not used to making money online or making money period, and when that money comes in, you kind of get this fever. So when we launched our handkerchief store, we ended up doing six figures in our first year in profit, which allowed my wife to quit. But then I was like, six figures? That’s awesome.

03:26
Our initial goal was actually only $60,000. And when we hit it with the year, I was like, oh my god. OK, let’s see how far we can take this. I don’t even like handkerchiefs. So I was like, OK, let’s try to double growth next year. And then we hit that goal. And so then we celebrate for a dinner or something like that. And then I’d move the goal. Let’s grow another 50 % the next year. And it got to this point where

03:53
I just kept moving the goalposts, and this is my fault really. I kept moving the goalposts, and we were just making way more than we spend. You guys all know me, I’m pretty cheap, right? Very frugal. I don’t spend any money at all. I don’t have any expensive hobbies. I don’t like cars. I don’t like anything. So here we were making all this money that we couldn’t even spend or didn’t want to spend, and we were working our butts off until at one point, Jen came up to me and she said, and she was in tears.

04:22
Not the happy kind. And she said, hey, I don’t want to do this anymore. Like, why are we doing this business? The reason why we started this business was so she could hang out with me all the time. Right?

04:40
So yeah, so we had this talk. And at that point, we stopped all the revenue goals, because money isn’t a good measure of anything, And we basically remembered why we started the businesses in the first place. And at that point, we focused more on the processes, the automations, that we could take her out of the business more, take myself out of the business, and just really make enough to be happy.

05:09
Here’s the thing, I run a podcast. It’s called the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. And at this point, I’ve interviewed over 460 entrepreneurs who are just killing it online. They’re all making seven, eight, even nine figures. And if you’ve ever listened to my podcast, it’s always like rah rah, we’re always congratulating the entrepreneur. But when I hit the stop button, that’s when the real conversations start. And I always ask them, so there’s this one dude who,

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who hit $2 million in six months. And in that episode, was like, oh man, that’s incredible. When we were recording, as soon as I hit stop, I was like, man, how sucky was that? He’s like, oh my god, it terrible. It the most stressful time of my life. Because when you grow really fast, that’s actually not fun. It’s not comfortable. And it sounds great. And what you don’t realize is that there’s actually a lot of successful people out there who actually are not happy with their personal lives.

06:06
They’re killing it in business, but they’re actually just not happy. I interviewed this billionaire, and he was great on the interview. And then when I hit stop, I was like, hey, so do you have any regrets for what you did? And he was like, yeah, I lost my family. I got a divorce, and I don’t really see my kids much anymore. And he’s like, that’s his biggest regret. And then I just kind of asked him, what would you do to change that? And he was like, I don’t need all this money.

06:34
I don’t need these private jets or anything like that. If I could have my family back, that’s what matters to me. And so I was like, why can I hit record again? Can you say that? But that’s the thing about the media. Recently, our family was on CNBC. I don’t know if you guys got a chance to see that. You just have to realize that the media is fake. There’s this one part where, I mean, it’s not entirely fake, but there’s this one part where,

07:04
the videographer wanted the kids to just run in the kitchen and go, oh, daddy, what’s for breakfast? Right? And I was like, oh, we made waffles. Oh, and there’s cereal for you. And then I poured milk and whatnot. You should see the mornings in our house. It’s like, get your butt out of bed. Put on your clothes. Go eat breakfast. And then they’re out the door. just whenever you see the news about any entrepreneur you see in the media, it’s

07:33
Probably not as good as it’s not reality basically is what I’m saying. So back to the book. So the book is actually divided into two parts. I am a firm believer that everyone here needs to have some sort of side hustle. Even if you love your job, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to have something on the side because that something on the side could potentially turn into something big. And it gives you options. You notice right now in the valley, mass layoffs. I think Facebook just announced their second layoff.

08:02
I think Google is having more layoffs, right? I have friends who are not happy with their situation, but they don’t have a choice, right? They have to stick it out at their jobs.

08:15
And so these side hustles, and I’ve met so many people like this, where you’re into something, right? Let’s say you’re into underwater photography. You start a YouTube channel or a blog about that. And you develop an audience, and that becomes a second income stream that could potentially be something big. Like when we started our store selling handkerchiefs, like, I mean, I was a little, you know, handkerchiefs, it’s not very masculine, right? But it was a side gig, and it turned into something big. It’s a seven figure business.

08:44
When I started MyWifeQuitterJob.com, it just a blog, just writing. I got inspired by this guy named Steve Povlina. He wrote this post called How to Make Your First Love Dollar. And in that post, he revealed that he was making $4,000 a day writing. And it’s just this random dude, right? I was like, OK, I got a stamp for education. I should be able to do that too. So I started writing. And I didn’t have anyone reading it for the longest time. It took three years before it made

09:14
six figures. But then once it started catching traction, it shot up. And this is just a side also that I just did on the side. I just set aside a portion of my schedule every single week. And Sunil knows this, right? Because we’d go to Russian Math, and we’d be in this coffee shop, and I would just write my blog post. He wanted to hang out and talk, but I was like, I just got to pump out this blog post. I just made it part of my routine to do something, and then it became something big. Three years ago, I started a YouTube channel.

09:44
Same thing, I just committed to doing one video a week. Just one video a week, and it took a while, no one was watching me. Who wants to watch a middle-aged Chinese dude, right? But within three years, that YouTube channel, just the ad revenue, supports the whole family and pays all the bills. Making the other businesses just kind of gravy now, right? You have to have something on the side just in case something happens. And everyone here is capable of this, and everyone here is actually brilliant. I know almost everyone here.

10:12
It can be done. just takes consistency. It’s really all it is. So the first part of the book is about figuring out what that side hustle is going to be. The advice that I always give, is to pursue something that you’re already into. Like, Yuji’s into electronics and games. Sorry, Yuji, I didn’t mean to call on you. So if he just started anything, piece of content, just documenting, like the guy buys a new piece of electronics every single

10:43
Every single week. But as someone who’s a friend of his, I want to know what he’s buying. I want to know about what he’s buying and what he thinks of all these pieces of electronics that he’s getting. So if he just documented it, I bet it would do well. It might take some time, but I bet it would do well. And who knows? It could be that side hustle that could make a lot of money. It could be the next big thing. So that’s the first part of the book. The second part of the book is about sustaining.

11:10
A lot of people start businesses and they get carried away with the money, like I did earlier when I told you guys. And what ends up happening is you feel like you need to do everything yourself. And you find that the more money you make, the harder you have to work. Those of you guys who know me know that I’m pretty lazy, actually. Right, Atsushi? Atsushi, yes. So the second part of the book really is about automation.

11:38
and putting systems into place so that you actually don’t have to spend all of your time doing it. And just to be clear, the businesses I’m talking about are smaller businesses. Like if you want to start like the next Amazon.com or the next Facebook, then you probably need to work really hard and get money and that sort of thing. We’re just talking about small businesses here. Because whenever I talk to someone who’s in business, almost all the people that I’ve ever interviewed didn’t start their business to start the next $100 million or a billion dollar company.

12:07
They just want to make enough money so they don’t have to worry about the money. So those are the types of business we’re talking about here. And we just happen to be living in this era right now of artificial intelligence, which is amazing. You can literally automate so many things with a computer. I’ve had writers on my staff to help me with the blog. I’m probably not going to use them anymore because of AI. And so if you haven’t experimented with ChatGPT, Mid Journey, or any of the AI tools,

12:37
You should do it.

12:40
So the second part of the book is about automation and really figuring out what you want to do with your time. You guys ever heard of the four burners theory? Anyone here? OK. The four burners theory states that your life is composed of four burners. Work, friends, family, and health. And the theory states that in order to do one thing well, you have to turn off at least one of those burners.

13:09
And if you want to do something really well, you have to turn off two of those burners. And if you’re like Elon Musk, you probably have three burners turned off and your work burners turned way up. Basically, the theory is about priorities. You have to figure out what your priorities are because you can’t do it all. Like if you try to run your business, maintain good health, be with your family and that sort of thing, it just really can’t be done. So you have to make a choice. And my choice has always been family.

13:40
And my wife’s too, right? Family, right? Just checking, just checking. And then we’re always all juggling things also. And the other thing, the other way I think about this is we’re all juggling all these balls in the air, but some of the balls are made out of glass, and some of them are made out of rubber. And so the glass ones are the ones that are precious. Like you don’t, never want to drop that family ball because it could shatter.

14:07
But the other things, you just need to figure out what the rubber ones are and what the glass ones are.

14:14
think that’s it. So I think you guys will really enjoy the book. By the way, if you do end up purchasing the book today, there are bonuses that come along with the book. So if you sign up, there’s a form which I’ll email out to you. But you’ll get access to a three-day workshop that I’m giving on how to get started in e-commerce if selling online is your thing. There’s also a two-day workshop in there that will teach you how to make money with blogging, YouTubing, and podcasting, which are the three things that I do.

14:45
And starting in June, I’m actually giving this six week, what I call family first business challenge, where I’ll be in there in a Facebook group, helping you guys figure out what your next title is gonna be. And so I’m trying to make it a no brainer for you guys to pick up the book. And I really do think that this is the way things are gonna be going forward. A lot of people making money on the side, just planting a bunch of seeds that could potentially grow.

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into a real business someday. Thank you, that’s all I got.