Rag to Riches: How I Built a Successful Business from Scratch

01/11/23 • 32 min

First Class Founders: Creators | Solopreneurs | Personal HoldCo

E13: I'm taking you on a personal journey of how I moved to the Bay Area 11 years ago with just one suitcase. I had no job and no place to live. So how did I bootstrap my business to where it is today?
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TOPICS:
First Side Hustle (2:46)
My first side hustle was in freelance writing. I wrote for a popular personal finance blog. I was paid $25 per article.
One Way Ticket to San Francisco (8:59)
I landed in San Francisco with just 1 suitcase. I slept on the floor in my friend's tiny apartment. My back hurt after 2 weeks. I had no choice.
Partying with Coolio (10:15)
I attended SXSW in Austin, Texas. Coolio was performing at one of the parties hosted by our company and he needed a place to stay so he stayed with us. It was out-of-this-world.
Crazy Bootcamp (12:06)
For 12 weeks straight, I studied from Mon-Sat, 8am-9pm. At the end of those 12 weeks, I was fluent in Javascript. I was seeing code in my sleep.
Working at Ripple (14:56)
Ripple hired me as an early employee in early 2014. I worked with some of the smartest people I've ever met. The technology was advanced for its time. I knew I was working on something that could be huge one day.
Crypto to Knives (17:01)
Blockchain Engineer to Online Knife Seller. My colleagues thought I was crazy. I worked tirelessly day in and day out and launched on October 9th, 2015 to crickets. Not a single sale for the first 3 days.
Celebrity French Bulldog (22:20)
We took home a French bulldog named Humphrey. His videos went viral. He quickly gained more than 100k followers on Instagram.
Launching Dog Boutique (22:56)
My wife quit her job and launched Spotted By Humphrey, a dog boutique selling playfully curated dog accessories and apparel with Humphrey as our Chief Marketing Officer.
Launching a 3PL (23:56)
Our colleagues kept asking us to help with their fulfillment. We started taking on clients. Before we knew it, we had paying clients for a company we hadn't even named.
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LINKS:
Episode 1
Episode 5
Spotted Humphrey IG
Spotted Humphrey TikTok

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First Class Founders is a show for indie hackers, bootstrapped founders, CEOs, solopreneurs, content creators, startup entrepreneurs, and SaaS startups covering topics like build in public, audience growth, product marketing, scaling up, side hustles, holding company, etc.
Past guests include Arvid Kahl, Tyler Denk, Noah Kagan, Clint Murphy, Jay Abraham, Andrew Gazdecki, Matt McGarry, Nick Huber, Khe Hy, and more.
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Previous Episode

How to Find, Nurture, and Grow Your Audience

E12: The creator economy has exploded. It's more important than ever to build an audience. I've built a simple 5 step framework to help you find, nurture, and grow your audience. By the end of this episode, you will know how to build your audience AND grow a loyal following through engaging content. I'll break down what type of content you need to post for which segment of your audience.
***
TOPICS:
Find Your Voice (1:31)
Find your own unique voice. You don't wanna be just another creator in a sea of content creators. This is not how you'll be able to build an engaging audience. Why should anyone listen to you? Do you have an important message for your audience?
Identify Communities (5:47)
Go where your audience is. Communities can be found anywhere from in-person meetups to online forums to Twitter groups. Identify and go where your future audience hangs out.
Deliver Value to Communities (7:01)
Add value to each community. Establish your authority in that community. Once you've established your reputation within that niche, you can start broadening your area of expertise.
Content Structure (14:09)
Your content should have an enticing hook, which is your beginning. Next, we have the main body of your content. Don't forget to keep your content interesting by using metaphors and telling stories. Humans are wired to remember stories. Finally, we have the end. This is where you summarize the main points of your content in an easily digestible way so that your audience can quickly sum up your content in a few words. You should also have a call to action for your audience.
Content Breadth vs. Depth (16:22)
A broad type of content is something that's relatable to more people. This increases your potential reach and variety. Showcase your creativity and knowledge with content that goes deep. As part of your content strategy, you need both broad content and specific content. Broad content for relatability across a wider audience, specific content for building authority within your current audience.
***
LINKS:
Episode 1 - How to Turn Your Passion Into a Business
Episode 2 - How to Achieve Success in the Face of Adversity

Next Episode

I / We / They Framework: 3 Simple Steps to Grow Your Business

E14: Today, I'm sharing a framework called the 'I / We / They' framework that I developed to help me gain clarity on what I need to work depending on the stage of my business. I wish that someone had taught me this framework 7 years ago when I first became an entrepreneur.
***
TOPICS:
I / We / They Framework (2:09)
There are 3 parts to this framework: Experimental, Operational, and Scaleable, corresponding to I, We, and They respectively.
Experimental Phase (2:26)
The Experimental phase of your business starts with yourself. This is where the "I" portion of this framework comes into play. It's characterized by building your audience and validating your ideas. During this phase, you're trying lots of new things. You're still exploring what might work and that's OK. This phase tends to have the greatest fear of failure and self-doubt as you'll have more questions than answers.
Operational Phase (6:12)
You need to create three primary systems: lead-generation, value-delivery, and overall operations. Build an all-star caliber team around you to help you with these 3 processes. Work with them carefully and refine these systems over time. Mentor your team and teach them everything you know about your business.
Scaleable Phase (15:03)
So your business is growing and you’re working with your team to build out processes and systematize your operations. Now, it’s time to empower your team. What motivates employees is the autonomy to make big decisions for the company. Ownership over creation. Ownership over decision-making. Ownership over action. The biggest growth levers in my own business happened when I let go of control and delegated the decision-making process to my team.
Strategies for Delegation (16:45)
Encourage your team to brainstorm solutions first. Then, give feedback on the decisions that your team makes. If you must come up with the plan yourself, get your team's buy-in so that they feel ownership over that decision. And lastly, trust your team to make the right calls, but it doesn't hurt to verify first. By doing this, you're eliminating your own decision-making bottleneck at the company and also empowering your employees. Elevate the key operators in your business to take the reins from you.
***
LINKS:
Episode 12 - How to Find, Nurture,

First Class Founders: Creators | Solopreneurs | Personal HoldCo - Rag to Riches: How I Built a Successful Business from Scratch

Transcript

What's going on everybody? Welcome to the First Class Founders podcast. The goal of this show is to equip you with powerful concepts and frameworks to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. My name is Yong-Soo Chung and I'm the Founder of Urban EDC, an e-commerce brand selling everyday carry gear, and GrowthJet, a Climate Neutral Certified third-party logistics company. For the past 7 years, I bootstrapped an 8-figure personal holding company and now, I'm ready to pull back the curtains and