224: Fireside Chat With Andrew Youderian On Business, Happiness And Wealth – Part 1

Fireside Chat With Andrew Youderian On Business, Happiness And Wealth - Part 1

Recently, Andrew Youderian and I took an epic 5 day camping trip in the wilderness of Montana. There was very little internet so we decided to record a few podcasts along the way.

This episode is part 1 of a 3 part series where we discuss the other side of entrepreneurship and our views on balancing happiness, wealth and the keys to success.

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What You’ll Learn

  • Our views on the balance between business success, life and happiness
  • How we invest our money
  • What’s your magic “number”

Other Resources And Books

Sponsors

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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 dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today is a completely different type of episode. My buddy Andrew Youderian of Ecommerce Fuel and I went on this epic five day camping trip in Montana. There was no internet so we decided to record some podcast about business, happiness, and life. Now, I also gained some good jabs in this episode, so please enjoy the banter.

But before we begin, I want to give a quick shout out to Privy who is a sponsor of the show. Privy is the tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Now, what does Privy do? Well, Privy is an email list growth platform and they manage all of my email capture forms. And in fact, I use Privy hand in hand with my email marketing provider.

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 prizes in our store. And customers love the gamification aspect of this, and when I implemented this form email sign ups 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.

I also want to give a shout out to Klaviyo who is also a sponsor of the show. Now, I’m always blessed to have Klaviyo as a sponsor because they are my email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store, and I depend on them for over 30% of my revenues. Now, if you want to achieve similar results as I have in email marketing, I encourage all of you to attend Klaviyo’s upcoming conference on September 13 through the 14th in Boston.

This event is the largest in-person gathering ever for the Klaviyo community. With two days and over 30 practical sessions, it is a no fluff, no BS e-commerce marketing conference. Get your ticket at Klaviyo.com/Boston. Once again that’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com/Boston, now on to 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 My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. I am here with Andrew Youderian on an epic camping trip in Bozeman, Montana with no internet access. I’m not used to be disconnected from the rest of the world for this long. Apparently you do it all the time Andrew, but I’m just not used to it. And in fact, I keep finding myself checking my phone for bars, but there are no bars. And then finally after checking for maybe 20 times I finally became resolved to the fact that I’m stuck with you today for the next three days.

Andrew: It’s one of the benefits of living in Montana is they’ve taken out a lot of the cell phone service. They’ve really [inaudible 00:02:51] to reduce stress, increase quality of life, it’s really helpful. That’s why Montanans are so generally happy.

Steve: What’s terrible about this is I can’t piss you off because if I do, you’re just going to leave me in the middle of nowhere and I’ll have no recourse.

Andrew: Oh, there’s a reason I didn’t give you a specific instrument.

Steve: Oh, speaking of which we’re in — we’re camping in my dream van, which my wife will not let me get.

Andrew: Just come on, you would love it.

Steve: It’s called the Volkswagen Westfalia. It’s pretty sweet. It’s a camper van. It’s got beds, it’s got a stove. It’s got a fridge.

Andrew: Let’s clarify, it has two beds. It’s important.

Steve: No, I thought we’re going to sleep in the same bed.

Andrew: No unfortunately not.

Steve: We’re not going to sleep in the same bed?

Andrew: No, I’m sorry.

Steve: Uh man. Okay.

Andrew: Yeah, you’ve been really loving hard for that. But yeah, answer is still no.

Steve: So we’re sitting here in the middle of nowhere without any internet access. And so the only thing we can do is like talking stuff, right. And so we’ve been talking about a bunch of different topics today. We went whitewater rafting today.

Andrew: Yeah, maybe like a quick little.

Steve: Yeah, why don’t you do a quick little recap?

Andrew: A quick recap, you came into town. I knew this is — you want to do this, I want to hang out with you. So you came into town. We’re on a three night trip starting in Bozeman going through Yellowstone Park, looping back up kind of through a big pass and Red Lodge in the back. So, three days on the road and have adventure, mostly adventure, but also a little bit of we talk of course like our business a lot. And yeah, so we just figured, we both always wanted to do a few episodes from the road to talk about kind of just we’ve been doing a lot on the adventure side, but also a lot on the business and just kind of lifestyle.

Steve: I’m actually kind of surprised you asked me on this trip, right? I didn’t know we were at that level.

Andrew: I asked like three other people and none of them could come.

Steve: Okay yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, you were number four though.

Steve: That makes more sense. So, one thing that I noticed when I got off at Bozeman — so I live in the Bay Area, probably one of the most expensive place in the US to live I would say.

Andrew: One of, apart from New York where I mean, one of the two most expensive places to live.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah. So a big city and then I walk into Bozeman, and here’s what’s funny. I was actually stuck on the tarmac of my plane for 20 minutes because the airport didn’t have enough gates.

Andrew: [inaudible 00:04:55] place. We got a lot of construction going on.

Steve: It’s got like six gates or something like that.

Andrew: About eight, we got eight come on.

Steve: Actually, I was happy to get a real jet this time instead of a prop plane. Anyways, one thing that we started talking about earlier was we started talking about success. I don’t know about you, Andrew but I compare myself to a lot of people. And every time I do so, it just makes me kind of depressed.

Andrew: Yeah, I think its human nature, right?

Steve: It is. And that’s why I like to hang out with you. It makes me feel better.

Andrew: You’ve been rehearsing on that.

Steve: I wrote that one down in my notes actually. So, one question that I posed to Andrew earlier today, which is kind of interesting was, would you rather make $100,000 and live where people make half as much like 50K, or would you rather make 500k which would be five times as much where everyone else makes a million bucks and I have my answer. Actually, what’s interesting about this question is that Andrew kind of lives in the first category, and I kind of live in the second category which is in Silicon Valley. I do pretty well with my businesses, but I am by no means I would say one of the wealthier people where I live for sure.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s tough because they did studies about this, I think. And I mean, overwhelmingly, I think people chose to have less absolute wealth but make more than their neighbors. I think if you look at what people on average report, that’s what they say.

Steve: But what’s your answer?

Andrew: What would be my answer?

Steve: Yeah.

Andrew: I would like to say from a purely a character driven approach, I would like to say I would like to have more absolute wealth, but I think I’d like to say I wouldn’t compare myself to other people and I try not to do that. But I think at the end of the day if I was brutally honest with myself, I would be less happy like for example, you live in Silicon Valley. I’ve intentionally chosen, and Amy and I, and our family chose not to live in some of those really expensive places partially for just because you don’t want to spend the money, but also partially because I think it’s really important. I think it’s great to hang out with smart, interesting people that you can do that in a lot of places other than places that are crazy expensive.

And yes, we’ve personally made that choice not to live in some of those places. And I wish I — I’m kind of rambling. I think what I’m getting at is I wish I could say I would just look at the raw income and say I want the 500k when everyone else is making a million, but I think it would be hard to not let that impact my happiness in a negative way.

Steve: See, I asked Andrew a simple question, which was just one word. I just want a one word answer and he went off for like five minutes.

Andrew: I really wanted to explain myself. I feel guilty for my answer as well really.

Steve: So I would actually rather make 500k where everyone else makes a million because I know that I can probably get out at any time and live like a king.

Andrew: Mm-mm.

Steve: So you’re imposing right now and I’ve been trying to get Andrew to move over to California.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Steve: But you’ve experienced sticker shock right?

Andrew: Sticker shock is part of it, but yeah a big part of it yeah.

Steve: But I mean the weather here in California is a lot better than Bozeman for I would say at least half the year, right?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Would you say so?

Andrew: Mm-hmm. I mean I think California has undisputedly the best year round weather in the country.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, the question is whether it’s worth the money or not, and you already you had the sticker shock. And for me, it’s easy to leave California because everywhere else is cheaper.

Andrew: True. But this is also predicated on the fact that you are going to actually leave California. I would say, and I hope maybe I’m wrong here, correct me if I’m wrong, but I would say my happiness on a day to day basis of not feeling like all my friends are driving Teslas and I’m driving a 2008 Subaru Outback, which I do. That I think on a day to day basis, it’s easier for me again, I try not to compare myself, it’s easier for me, there’s less of a temptation to compare myself to other people when most of my friends are not outrageously wealthy, working at Facebook and doing things I couldn’t afford to do.

Steve: Actually, this reminds me of a story. So Andrew actually visited me in my house in the Bay Area. And I don’t know if you’ve seen his Volkswagen Westfalia, but it’s — at the time I — it looks much better now. But at the time, it was not easy on the eyes.

Andrew: Oh, don’t go there [overlapping 00:09:10] man.

Steve: And then dents all over.

Andrew: How about the tent, the little tarp for you sleeping on the ground. I can get that out, man.

Steve: So Andrew rolls up into my neighborhood. I mean, it’s just a nice neighborhood but there’s all these nice cars. And he rolls up in this Westfalia with tiny tires.

Andrew: Your butler wouldn’t even get in — your butler would not even get into it.

Steve: And then my wife — like I want one of these Westfalias. Don’t get me wrong. But my wife comes out. She’s like; this is the car that you want?

Andrew: You make her sound like way less sweet than she actually is.

Steve: Do you mind if Andrew parks at not in front of our house but maybe like in the backyard or something? So I [inaudible 00:09:47].

Andrew: I’m sorry for reducing the property values in your neighborhood for the time I was there. I apologize.

Steve: Yes, it is weather tax. So, I was trying to — so I’ve been trying to get Andrew to move to California. But you’d be a lot happier in California, won’t you?

Andrew: No, in some instances, in terms of the weather, yeah I love warm sunny weather, absolutely love it yeah. But I also think there’s creative ways you can do things like for example there’s some — again our family has thought about a lot of time, we’re actually moving to Tucson this spring, excuse me this fall to spend the school year there and then to try to come back to Bozeman in the summertime, because we have a really great community we love in Montana but we also really hate the winters.

And I mean moving to California is one option but another option is going to somewhere else. And Tucson, I feel like Tucson is a place that is a little undiscovered with a lot of cool things that isn’t on the radar quite yet. And the cost of living is much, much more reasonable. And so you can kind of we can kind of be able to arbitrage the weather, get the weather we want at a lower cost and still have some cool extra benefits like meals and spend time in a couple of different places. So it’s not just — so there’s other just kind of a third option. You don’t have to just pick the one.

Steve: One thing I actually don’t like about living in the Bay Area is that for one, everyone makes a ton of money. But they also work really hard too. I mention this on my podcast all the time, in order to live where we live and get a decent house, pretty much both need to work in order to get a good house in a good school district. And so, when it comes to work, life balance in a lot of cases, a lot of times nanny raises the child, or people are just really happy about getting their three or four weeks of vacation. They’re making a ton of money and got this nice house, but they’re working all the time.

I have a friend who basically works all day at work, comes back at six, has dinner with the family, but then he logs in and works again at night, and then usually ends up working one day at the weekend. And so the question is, is that really the lifestyle that you want? Is it worth it even though you’re making a ton of money?

Andrew: I guess if a lot of people really started asking yourself like the why question three or four times, why are you working so hard? Well, trying to provide for my family. And why do you want to do that? Well, because I want them to do well but I am also working hard to spend time with them. Where if you potentially went to live somewhere else and cut your cost of living by 50%, 60, 70% you can work a ton less and spend way more time with your family or build better relationships which ultimately is like if you look at what makes people happy and from a research and scientific standpoint, it’s relationships, hands down, that make people happiest.

Another thing we were talking about today which was interesting on the road just kind of driving over the din of the second most quiet vehicle in the world as we were shouting at each other, I asked you would you sell your business, and if you would like what multiple would — because you’ve said, I’ve asked you before and you’re like, there is no way I’m going to sell for 3X which is like the average e-commerce store multiple. Well, what about 5X, what about 6X? And I was trying to find your…

Steve: I started hesitating at 6X.

ANDREW: You did, 6X is the point you hesitated. And anyway we got into it and tried to figure that price point out. But you started coming up with a bunch of non financial reasons you wouldn’t sell which I thought were interesting.

Steve: Oh yeah. Like if I sold my business, I’d probably get depressed because I’d have nothing to do. As it stands right now actually, I feel like I’m not working enough. So my schedule right now looks like this. I wake up in the morning; I start working probably around eight, and sometimes a little earlier. And I quit around between noon to 1:00, and after that I pretty much work out and exercise, pick up the kids. And I don’t actually get a whole lot of social interaction either because most of my friends are working. But yeah, to answer that question I just did what you did. I just went on this long winded thing.

Andrew: It feels great, it was awesome.

Steve: Not only I could sell it, I got nothing else to do and it makes me happy right now.

Andrew: It does surprise me, a little tangent here, like in Bozeman I feel like there’s a great group of entrepreneurs I can hang out with. Really, really great people that are running their own businesses and that we can take time off in the middle of the week and go floating if we want to, or have a regular breakfast or get together. A lot of my friends are entrepreneurs and you surprise me, a lot of your friends….

Steve: Well, I’m Asian, so they’re either engineers, doctors, or lawyers.

Andrew: I love your friends. Yeah, I love friends. You don’t have very many entrepreneurial friends, especially bootstrap entrepreneurs.

Steve: Yeah, actually, I have a lot of entrepreneurial friends. But they’re all the traditional VC backed companies.

Andrew: Right yeah. But essentially, you’re talking some of the other things I thought were interesting on the why you wouldn’t sell your business. You talked about the value of some of the ancillary benefits like a network. Like you mentioned, you can drop into most cities in the US, be able to reach out to people, connect with people, hit up your list, which is really cool. But not all businesses you can do that. But all businesses have some fringe things and for you like that’s a pretty cool thing to be able to do.

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It is actually, I mentioned this before but I use my podcast as just a way to meet people. And if I were to sell that man, I’d be lonely I think.

Andrew: Super and very social outlet is the podcast.

Steve: My primary social outlet — I mean I hang out with my wife a lot, but it’s mainly my kids right now. And I like going to conferences and so I try to hit like six conferences a year. But yeah it’s – you know what 6X might not even be enough, I don’t know.

Andrew: Really.

Steve: Yeah because what would I do with the money. So we can kind of diverge into this other topic like what do you do with your money, right?

Andrew: When you sell a business?

Steve: Yeah, so let’s say I sold it for like 6 million, what am I going to do with 6 million?

Andrew: You’re going to either do one of two things, put in index funds and just super boring Vanguard index funds or you’re going to wait for a huge market crash forever which we’ve both been doing and which has not materialized and feel like an idiot.

Steve: That’s true. Yeah actually Andrew we need someone who’s less risk averse to talk to us. Andrew and I we’ve been both waiting for the crash for a long time.

Andrew: You’re right, everyone else just gotten filthy rich while we lost like a third of our money too.

Steve: Well, let’s say you just got 6 million, what would you do with it seriously right now?

Andrew: $6 million?

Steve: Yeah.

Andrew: I would just put it in the bank and index funds and just live off of it, and still probably do what I’m doing because I really enjoy it. But get to a point where…

Steve: But you can’t do what you’re doing. You just sold it.

Andrew: What’s that?

Steve: You just sold your business.

Andrew: Oh, yeah. Okay. Good point. It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? I don’t know, I would probably do something; I’ll take a little – for the first time I’d take probably 18 months off and travel.

Steve: 18 months off.

Andrew: And travel significantly with my family and spend a lot of time with my kids teaching them and stuff. They’re kind of in that school age right now and I think it’d be a lot of fun. And then from there, I would probably start doing something that was business related, potentially nonprofit related that I enjoyed that my skills could be useful in and thought could have a really potentially positive impact on the world.

Steve: For me, I have a lot of problems seeing my bank account get reduced from month to month. I think that would really bug me.

Andrew: I feel like — but the thing is, I feel I can vary. I think most people myself especially included, can very easily if I was lucky to ever enough have a $6 million dollar excellent, I think I could very easily live off the interest of $6 million. And that goes back to the kind of where you live right?

Steve: That’s true.

Andrew: In the Bay Area that’s going to be tricky.

Steve: I’m pretty sure I spend a lot more a year than you do. We were just talking about this like summer camp for my kids right now in California. It’s $500 a week per kid.

Andrew: Yeah, we should segue into something else which is interesting is the way we kind of raise our children, all the differences. You have — I tease you a lot about Russian math, you have your children, you are — I love teaching my kids things. I love teaching them more about kind of the world and geography and kind of in organic manner. If I see something, I’ll try to explain it to them. Anytime I try not to talk down to them, anytime a hard word pops up, I’ll try to explain it to them. So, education is very important to me. But I think you’re much more intentional.

Steve: So the way you put it makes your way sound so much better. It sounded really good.

Andrew: What, if my kids aren’t going to have like stress disorders 160.

Steve: Okay, where I live it’s an arms race. If you’re not in Russian math, you’re behind because all the other kids are doing Russian math.

Andrew: Another reason not to live in the Bay Area.

Steve: So, this is how I grew up in case you guys don’t know. So, I grew up studying for the SAT starting in fourth grade so that I could take them in sixth grade to qualify for nerd camp.

Andrew: This is crazy.

Steve: But nerd camp was awesome, I grew a lot during nerd camp. So, just to give you an idea how it’s structured, I took this math class at nerd camp. Its three weeks long, but you finished three subjects in three weeks. So, I finished algebra one, algebra two and geometry in three weeks and I passed all of them.

Andrew: What grade were you in?

Steve: I was in seventh grade.

Andrew: Seventh grade. Okay. Do you — so two, you think about education, you went to Stanford, a phenomenal school. You were talking earlier, though, you were saying that a lot of times the education you don’t feel like in Stanford is as good which I probably disagree with, but having obviously being much less qualified to make that comment than you. But you think that sometimes it’s not as good based on the fact that some of the teachers are researching a lot more, and kind of made the comment that you believe that the primary or at least a lot of times, the biggest, one of if not the biggest benefits of an Ivy League school is the network.

Steve: Yep. Well, the network and the resources, I should say.

Andrew: Networking and resources, but you could do what you’re doing now, which obviously, like you’ve had a job that you could have gone to, you get less satisfaction out of what you do now, but you could do what you’re doing now without the Ivy League degree. And I guess I’m thinking what I’m driving at here is some of the externalities if you really push people. I’ve seen people who have gone to Ivy League schools. Now, there’s a lot of benefits there. But also, if you raise kids from the age of like eight to try to get them into an Ivy League school, there’s a ton of pressure that you can put on their system that I would argue maybe isn’t necessarily healthy relative to the benefits there again.

Steve: I don’t know if they need to go to an Ivy League school, but I wanted so that regular school is easy for them. And they feel really confident. I think confidence is really important for a kid. Like if they walk in the classroom and they already know all the stuff, then that’s going to kind of boost their ego a little bit. I think a lot of times it’s just all about confidence, right? Even starting a business, it’s about confidence.

Andrew: That’s true. I mean, there’s many elements but that’s one of them. It’s having the courage to do it.

Steve: Well, now that’s just getting started. But knowing that what you’re doing will eventually lead somewhere and not giving up too early.

Andrew: But nobody knows. I think most people that started a business, myself included, you never know. I mean, a lot of times people I’m guessing ask you like, hey Steve, I’m thinking about doing this, is it going to work? And you have no idea. You can spend a month researching something and you still, you can maybe get closer to having maybe a I think this is 70% likely to work versus 20%, but you still have no idea. And so you go through and really push through it for at a minimum six months but more likely a lot of times years.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, I think it just depends on the person’s personality, right? This is why VCs invest in the person and not necessarily the business, right? If you have the right personality — and we’re not talking about trying to start like a multimillion, like $100 million business here, we’re just talking about like a six or seven figure lifestyle business. And a lot of that a lot of times when you’re talking about that threshold, personality matters a lot more necessarily in the business idea.

Andrew: I’ll give you that. That’s true. As long as you don’t have a horrific business model, if you have one that’s quasi reasonable, the work ethic, hustle, and commitment of the person is more important. Yeah, I’ll give you that.

Steve: Yeah. And you have to have the courage that what you’re doing is kind of on the right track so that eventually it’ll start making money.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s true.

Steve: I don’t know. So I want my kids to be confident. Like, honestly, if my daughter right now was not in Russian math, I think – yeah because math just does not come naturally for her. Yeah, if she wasn’t taking that, she’d probably be really discouraged about math.

Andrew: Yeah. But it’s funny, you can get beginning back to the comparison thing you made the comment, you really want your kids to do really well. And even just assuming, I think your daughter is much smarter than this, but for the sake of argument, if she was in the middle of the pack, like just say, if anyone is middle of pack in Silicon Valley, you go anywhere else in the country, and you’re probably going to be top EDS, 90th percentile. It kind of goes back to some story I heard somewhere, I was mentioning this earlier, where this family moved, they worked their whole life, this couple worked their tails off to get to Park Avenue.

They bought the cheapest place on Park Avenue and they were both really discontent because they had the cheapest place on Park Avenue and felt like the other people didn’t respect them. It’s not that they hadn’t done well in their life, it’s that they had self selected into a small sample pool of people who were outrageously successful, and by comparison, they felt awful, right.

Steve: I actually have a good friend that bought a house in the neighborhood just like that. It was a step above what he could really afford comfortably. And now he feels like he’s just spending money just to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, and he’s always complaining about that to me.

Andrew: Why doesn’t he stop?

Steve: There’s other pressures too like that house is close to his wife’s family and stuff. But he feels like he constantly has to work really hard now, just so that he can afford this mortgage on the house.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s brutal.

Steve: It is brutal. It’s a nice house though.

Andrew: So you got back to how living in California it sets you at a high baseline so you can afford to live anywhere else. But do you think you’ll actually ever live anywhere else, like do you think you’ll take advantage of that parachute that you kind of created as a reason for living in California?

Steve: I probably won’t because my wife requires temperatures between 65 and 76 all year round.

Andrew: Jen, we can just build you a wonderful little like wing of the house that is like a cigar like humidifier but much warmer that just is perfect for that.

Steve: Actually you got a pretty solution to that, a pretty good solution to that, right?

Andrew: For the temperature?

Steve: For the temperature or for the weather.

Andrew: What do you mean?

Steve: In that you’re like kind of like a nomad in a way, right?

Andrew: Yeah, I guess so, yeah.

Steve: It’s almost like you’re a bird. You go west for the winter.

Andrew: We call that snow birding here.

Steve: Yeah, exactly. But that might have to stop once your kids get older.

Andrew: No, I don’t think so. I mean, we’re going to — I don’t think so because I think there’s some great benefits from public school or formalized education. But I also think there’s a lot of benefits for instruction from a parent who really cares about your kids, and this is not say that you don’t care about your kids. But it’s just having one on one instruction with your kids is hard to beat, and seeing the world and experiencing the world in more of a traveling sense and more of just kind of a hands on approach. So, I’d love to — I mean, I think once you get to high school that’s harder, but through middle school I think you can easily do. So we’ll see. I’m probably eating my words, eating crow here in about two months.

Steve: We’ll see. We got totally different like educational philosophies just based on how we grew up, right?

Andrew: Yeah, we do. So since we’re going to do like three or four of these, maybe we should wrap this one up. But do we hit any more other either the big three topics that we talked about on the road today, maybe we should cover before we wrap up.

Steve: Man, I can’t think of any more. Let’s just cut this one here.

Andrew: Cool. So tomorrow…

Steve: If we’re still friends tomorrow, there’ll be another episode.

Andrew: It seems like you just slandered me. I’m hitchhiking home.

Steve: Oh, by the way, that was interesting. That was the first time that I’ve seen anyone hitchhike before.

Andrew: You have never hitchhiked before?

Steve: Never. In fact, I’m like why are you sticking up your thumb man here like the fonz.

Andrew: That’s how you hitchhike. So we did a little, a self guided whitewater rafting today. And it was just us in advance. We didn’t have a shuttle driver. So, I hitchhiked back to get the car. Yeah, that’s how you — you put out your thumb like this to hitchhike.

Steve: No, no.

Andrew: How would you have hitchhiked, like jumped up and down, and waved your hands?

Steve: Well, I tried to fly down this dude and you were like, don’t do that.

Andrew: Well you were going to try to go to the [inaudible 00:27:08] if you could ride with them. It just looks like, yes, serial killer.

Steve: No, I was smiley, like I looked pretty…

Andrew: But all serial killers are smiley man, even people in super creepy uncomfortable situations.

Steve: Actually you looked a little bit more creepy in your sunglasses on, you had a life vest on.

Andrew: So two reasons why I did not have my sunglasses on because it’s important when you’re hitchhiking to make eye contact with people. Yeah sunglasses – well…

Steve: You were wearing your shades, weren’t you?

Andrew: No I wasn’t, I potentially took them off. I had this — secondly the reason I had a life jacket on was so people knew I was a rafter and a boater so that they would — hopefully if other boaters or campers were coming by, they’d be like, oh hey, there’s one of our crew. We can help them out. So, they know I’m not hitchhiking to try to go. If they see the life jacket, it’s a signal that hey, he just needs a ride 10 miles, five miles up the road.

Steve: Interesting.

Andrew: It was very intentional.

Steve: It was.

Andrew: I was subliminally signaling to people on the road.

Steve: Were you smiling? I couldn’t tell on your face.

Andrew: Oh, a huge grin.

Steve: Huge grin okay.

Andrew: As huge as I could make it without being creepy.

Steve: I thought they’d probably just pick me up because I stand out here, not that many Asians here in Bozeman. Like look at the Chinese boy, let’s go pick him up.

Andrew: Oh my goodness, you make it sound like we’re like a bastion of white power off here. You said there were a bunch of people who were Asian there on your flight?

Steve: Actually there were. I thought I was on the wrong flight in fact; a quarter of my plane was just…

Andrew: [Overlapping 00:28:23].

Steve: They must all be going to Yellowstone. They were all going to Yellowstone.

Andrew: Awesome.

Steve: All right, let’s end it right here.

Andrew: Everyone we will be back tomorrow.

Steve: Perfect.

Andrew: Good day one.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode. We actually recorded three episodes total, and we’re releasing them in an alternating fashion on our podcasts. So, what that means is that the next edition will actually be on the Ecommerce Fuel podcast, and then episode three will be right back here at My Wife Quit Her Job. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode224.

And once again I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Next month Klaviyo is holding a two day conference for 400 e-commerce marketers and store owners with an awesome lineup of speakers. They’ve got experts coming in from Shopify, BigCommerce, Google, Octane, Recharge, Smile.IO, Swell, and other top e-commerce agencies plus panels with successful Klaviyo customers and a keynote address by Ezra Firestone. So, you can find out more at Klaviyo.com/Boston. Once again that’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com/Boston.

Now, I also 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 primer that is closely tied to your e-commerce store. If you want to give it a try, it is free. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve, once again that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.

Now, I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you’re interested in starting your own ecommerce 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 you the course right away, thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where we are 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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