Latest / Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors / From Professional Poker to Poop Stools and Fire Pumps

Transcript

From Professional Poker to Poop Stools and Fire Pumps · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barbie.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer, digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a Brown educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Every episode, we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Equal Parts informative and titillating.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Our first question to our guest is What was your first paying job?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: My first job was when I was 16, and there was a restaurant down the street called Floodruckers.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a chain restaurant that had very good burgers, but that's that was the first job I ever had right when I turned 16.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my twin brother both got hired at the same time.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a fun thing to be in be out there working at that age.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us what do you do now?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am the CEO of my new company that's called Firefighter Pool Pump.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: And now tell us a journey on how you got here.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've had many jobs since I was 16 till now.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the one that kind of sticks out is in 2010, I created a company called Step and Go, which is an identical product to another company called Squatty Potty out of Utah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you heard of a Squatty Potty before.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, saying yes, and the other saying no.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's a poop stool that helps you go to the bathroom better.
• 2:33
  unknown: Okay.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yep.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And this product was on featured on Shark Tank, and it's I think the top five best-selling product on Shark Tank to date.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of came up at the same time with our companies.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Squatty Potty was around since 2009, and I created my company in 2010.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And after a bunch of lawsuits and just being in business in 2022, I exited and I sold it to them.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was 12 years.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Learned how to operate a business.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I started it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I got the funding.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I this is just a kid that never had a college degree or never went to college, kind of a thing.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to learn things as I go along.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the opportunity, I think maybe it was a little easier back then than now.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure how the job force is now and how the markets are, but I don't think it's as easy.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: The opportunities are not as easy to come by now.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But so I got lucky then with 2010 being the rise of Amazon at the same time.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I got in early with Amazon with my product, and I was able to become a vendor with Amazon, which is about 5% of businesses do, where Amazon buys your product like by the pallets and truckload, and they sell it for you.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of lucky breaks, and after I exited in 2022, I I just didn't know what to do because I didn't want to work for anybody, and I just got a boatload of money at the same time at once because I sold the business.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I started playing some more poker, which I am very good at, and backgammon, which I'm very good at.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And but that didn't really satisfy me when it was just a dead end for me.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Palisades fires happened in 2024, I think.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or five is it 24 or 25?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: 2025.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: A good friend of mine was telling me that he's wondering if there's anything he could do with all his pool water in his pool to help fight the fires or for amber suppression because he's got this whole body of water and doesn't know how to use it or utilize it if there's a fire coming through.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I did we did some researching and found out that we could make a pump called a firefighter pool pump now, where it's a machine, it's an independent, gas-powered, operated machine where it draws water from your pool and sprays it onto the vegetation and your home and surrounding areas.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You could fight fires or fire suppression, let's just say.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you could kind of hopefully try to save your home if poop happens.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing as the squatty potty or the stepping go was back in 2010.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, I think you kind of need to get a new product out there if you want to become an entrepreneur or start a business.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The product, I think one of the check marks is it's gotta be new to the public because the competition.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, I don't think I could be an entrepreneur selling a toothbrush or toothpaste because there's so many different brands out there and the space is very congested.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of the key things to becoming an entrepreneur or being successful in business is to find a kind of a new product that people need that kind of solves the problem.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was lucky enough to do that twice.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: What anything particular happened as a teenager, early teen, early adult that made you say, I just don't want to work for anybody, I want to be an entrepreneur.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've had jobs from multiple different restaurants to UPS to just anything that, you know, delivery.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I found out that early, and I think everybody probably has the same inclination that we don't want to work for somebody.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: We want the freedom of working for ourselves or, you know, just that freedom led me to play poker also for a living for about eight years.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was a professional poker player just because I saw the freedom of not having a boss as something really close to my heart.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I'm just not just making poker as an example.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very hard way to make an easy living.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And being a being an entrepreneur, also, I don't I'm not working for anybody, but I figure sometimes I work harder than I would if I had a nine to five or something like that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is that your favorite thing about what you're doing now?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the freedom is definitely the number one reason why I became entrepreneur.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't even like to label myself as an entrepreneur.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that I see an opportunity and I kind of run with it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just yeah, so I think the freedom really and my experience from the past led me to start another business because I've done it before and I've stumbled a bunch and I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm still making mistakes.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to keep appointments now and I'm late all the time.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you guys know.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: We do.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize for that, but yeah, it's just that's the freedom I get.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the freedom is too much, and I forget about things that I'm have to be responsible for.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: What surprised you most about being an entrepreneur?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I could do it, because the lack of experience, no formal education, people going to college to be doctors or lawyers, they have to first study for it, then they go in the field, maybe they do some internships or whatever, and then slowly and gradually get to where they want to be.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And even tougher, probably with being an entrepreneur or starting a business, is like, okay, did you go to Harvard Law School?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Did you did you fail every semester in high school?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's, I don't know.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: That that whole thing was like, it was kind of surprising that I could do it.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once you put your mind to it and you kind of get in there and fall and get back up.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's that was the fun part, and that's the that's why I hold it special that I have the opportunity to do this now.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: What's the worst part about your job?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: The same.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: No experience, no formal education, falling all the time, not knowing what to do.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's probably the yin and yang about it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So what's good is what's bad.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some days you get up and you're like, how am I gonna ever make it?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And some other days it's like you wake up, you think that you're a shark on the shark tank, walking with your head high and stuff like that.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think God, I know God has a lot to do with this.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just trust in his plan and you succeed good.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you don't succeed, and I guess success is a funny word because if you try, you will succeed.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the business fails or something happens, you're still successful in the sense that you tried and you went move forward with it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think is a special skill that an entrepreneur needs to have in order to be successful or try?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Good question.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think resilience and never giving up for sure.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't give up.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Bad days are gonna come and you're just gonna have to deal with it.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: But for me personally, I think money management is very big where I still don't know how to manage money.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And like I have no idea what taxes are.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've been through seven or eight different tax people, and I just don't understand that part of it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just putting my head down, trying to get leads, sales, operational.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: The business has to be in good just operating a day-to-day, teaching employees and all sorts of stuff I know what to do with, but the money kind of seems like a byproduct to me.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not something that I would concentrate all my efforts into managing.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I have some sense, for example, if I I don't go around and spending like, let's just say if I make 10 grand this month or 20 grand this month, I don't go around spending the same on advertising the next month.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have some sort of an idea.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I bring in 10,000, I might put 20% in advertising because I need some for inventory and some for living expenses.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, I'm not good at money management.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just kind of play by the hip kind of guy, and we'll see what happens next month, kind of kind of thing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, what's a hard lesson that you learned along the way?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get sued.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because it costs money.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And also, if you're successful in this in America, you're gonna get sued.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: My first lawsuit was because my website was not made for, I don't know what it's called, but it's the little button at the little widget at the bottom that that tells you if you're handicapped, blind, or deaf, you could use that.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, your website was not ADA compliant.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The client's not even like a real real person.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a tester, a blind person who does this for a living, goes from side to side and sees if it's compliance or not.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that, okay, like right there, just something that I had no idea that ever even existed.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And at first, you get the letter and you throw it away because you're like, oh, I don't think this is real.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then two months down the line, you get the same letter, but now you pay attention to it because it's got some big numbers on the end of it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then you call a lawyer and they'll give you some other big numbers.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, this this year, the casting director of Shark Tank called, and he won, he picked the firefighter pool pump as a handful of other companies to be on the season 18.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, and I've gone through a video submission, background submission, all that good stuff.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the month, when I didn't receive a call and speaking to somebody who's been on Shark Tank, I got to find out that there's a big liability with the firefighter pool pump.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody's trying to save their home and happens to lose it or lose their lives, hopefully not, but if something like that happens, they could just sue Shark Tank and say, shoot sue the show saying, I saw this product on Shark Tank and I lost my house.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to be something that to prevent that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the liability factor, I guess the producers didn't want to deal with because were you on Shark Tank with your first invention that you had?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, yeah, that's a good question.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did submit a video application back then.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: You could submit video applications.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's only done when you're picked, and I was picked this season to be to move forward.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But back then we did, and I did get a call back from the same person, and they said that the topic was risque because we're talking about pooping, and it was prime time on ABC, I think.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a bummer to know that at least they looked at it.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then the squatty body got in the next season, and I think what happened was that Howard Stern kind of, because he tried the squatty body and he liked it, and he started talking about it on his show.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he was, I think, working with NBC at the time, and he kind of got him in and kind of broke some barriers.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we did very well with Squatty Potty being on, being the number two product out there, no pun intended.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: When they got on and they were fully prepared because they knew in advance what it was going to air, and the the viewership is I don't know how many people, six million, four million, whatever it was at the height of it of the show, they kind of fully stocked up.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: But on the first night, we're all we're all sold out on Amazon and like all the online stores, and for months on end, we were just as soon as we get inventory, we were sold out.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we did very well piggybacking off their of their spot spotlight, so to speak.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Have you had ideas that you came up with, but you didn't bring them to market?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did actually.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And because there were a lot of, I don't know if they were kind of stupid, because a lot of ideas are kind of you kind of get to them and you talk to your friends.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even with this step and go, this quaddy potty idea, when I went to find investors back early, and I said, Hey, look, this is a little step, and you step on it and it helps you go, they'll laugh at you, right?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: They go, What do you mean?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a problem pooping, or what are you talking about?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you even come up with this stuff, right?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I had some ideas like that.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had a really bad idea about having cameras in LA where it your seat belts are all censored when you buy new cars.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not wearing your seatbelt, passing a fast light or a popular light, it gives you a ticket.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not clicked.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a bad idea because I don't want to pay the government or the state any money.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to hurt my fellow citizens.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think 15 years ago I went to Alcatraz in San Francisco, and they had it's a museum where you could kind of walk through it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I had an idea of what I guess AI does now and Google does now, where if you go to a zoo and you take a picture of the, say you see a gorilla and you take a picture of that, it's like a QR code kind of a thing.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You take a picture of it, or you scan it, and it'll tell you all about the gorilla and his habitat and all that stuff, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But right now it's that's normal.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's that that happens normally.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: You do that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But back then, there was nothing like that.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I would go to a museum and there's you could see it on the board with writing and the Mona Lisa.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: You had nothing to listen to.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, and again, there's nothing new under the sun.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking I had that idea, and there's nobody who was out there doing it, but who knows?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're all entrepreneurs at hard when we see things and we go, oh, I could make this better or brighter or shinier, constantly trying to think of how to improve our lives.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I did it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: What how did you pay your living expenses and get the money to start the company when you were making step and go?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a good question.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was playing professional poker for a living for eight years.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in the casino business also from 2000 to 2008.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 21 to almost 30, I was doing a lot of stuff with the casinos.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you go broke a lot when you're gambling for a living.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: You make a bunch of money, but then you're you have a fast life and you go out to clubs and girls and who knows and whatever.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I got broke a lot of times, and it wasn't a good living.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see myself doing this for the rest of my life.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of said, I gotta do something.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when the opportunity came, when I saw this product that could really change people's way of pooping in a healthier way, I just went out and asked a bunch of the poker players for investments.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have I make a lot of good friends in my time gambling.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of my friends that do gamble, they are winning players or they have money.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I've went around and asked for investments and I got it, and that's how that became the company.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: As well as the firefighter pool pump, I was playing in a lot of backgammon, and most of my investors, I have a handful, and they're all backgamming players.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're all old, retired, rich.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they just saw the idea, they had they saw my resume, and they know me for a little bit, so they kind of trust me.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they said, okay, here's some money, go spend it.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that was fun.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: What makes a good professional poker player?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Discipline is one.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Patience is the second, the two that come to my mind.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Patience and discipline, the ability to take losing and keep walking, resilience.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: You just it's a very hard way to make a living by poker.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you have to be good at some math, your memory's gotta be good, psychology is a big thing, right?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, all of that, yeah, you gotta be pretty, pretty smart also.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not saying that I am, but most of the friends that I have that are successful are very smart people, and they could be entrepreneurs if they tried.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And most and some of them are really they are, you know what I'm saying?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: They are entrepreneurs.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very, yeah, it's a it's the skill set.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have a you need to have a good head over your shoulders to become a professional poker player.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, if you have a good head over shoulders, why would you ever want to play poker for a living?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: What is the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've ever witnessed?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ever witnessed?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Off the top of my head, I don't know, I've been to a party in the Hollywood Hills where there was a giraffe and people jumping off the pool naked and stuff like that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: They say weirdest things, so I'm just thinking of a party with a giraffe.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty weird.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a guy named Dan Bazari, and he's a poker player, he's an entrepreneur as well.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he used to have as a philanthropist, got all the money, and he threw a big party in Hollywood, and it was a wild night.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember half the things I did or people did because probably there was some drinking involved, but that was pretty wild.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Being very young, and I was working with Larry Flint at his Hustler casino, and I flew on his private jet with him and his bodyguard and his wife to Vegas, and that I did the Vegas thing with him.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think he bought Hustler strip bar there when I went with him.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I just a lot of the things I don't really remember.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I choose not to.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there's some wild memories.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Being young and growing up and being around some money in in casinos, there's a lot of money being thrown around, let's just say.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when you make easy money, you spend it just as quickly because you don't earn it.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's basically what happened.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the casino business for about eight years, not necessarily just gambling and playing poker.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the opposite side of the coin also as taking in bets for the casino.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I ran with Larry Flint's casino for four years, threw big parties for him at his house, at the Beverly Hilton and all other venues.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was he was pretty cool to work with.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: What is some advice that you can give to somebody if they're thinking of not wanting to live, not wanting to work Monday through Friday, going to be an entrepreneur?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: They have an idea.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Give us a roadmap of what one person does.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't want to sound cliche, but I didn't work too hard, but just don't give up.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'll just keep at it and just make sure that you're having fun also with it.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: If the fun runs out and it becomes a grind, what's the use of doing it?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: If what's the difference between a nine to five or something you just don't like doing?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just to get up, to be to have enthusiasm, to have fun, and just to pursue something that you like.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I don't I don't want to box anything like being an entrepreneur or working nine to five.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you want to do when life is short, and just try to have fun with it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when looking at experience and other people's lives, I don't think nine to five is a fun thing to do.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of X that out of my life, and plus I had some nine to five jobs that I didn't have a good experience in, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Being late and working for somebody, getting written up.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like going to high school again.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to do that.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, be it I'm an entrepreneur, but I sleep till noon and play background three hours a day still.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a special kind of an entrepreneur.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if your audience will get anything out of me, but I I don't work too hard.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't say It's that I'm not that guy that will tell you that it was a lot of sleepless nights and hard work because that's bullshit.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's me.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just being truthful.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: I have a follow-up question that because you gave us the nice don't give up.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: But somebody comes to you and says, I have an idea.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: What is step one, step two, step three?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: When somebody has an idea, what is the first thing they do?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to somebody, like you just said.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Go to somebody else that you respect, or your peers, or your brother, or sister, your mom or dad, and talk to them about the idea and see, get input.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And based on the landscape of today, I think AI does a lot in kind of going back and forth with you.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of may even if you don't want to talk to a human being, you could just spit out to AI, say, you know what, I have an idea for a solar power flashlight that works or some something stupid like that.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And talk to the AI and he'll spit back or she'll spit spit spit back, whatever, some questions.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's a good point, bad point.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: AI is very, it's helped me tremendously with my business right now.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think maybe even I would say talking to AI would be the primary thing to do first, seeing what the drawbacks are of your idea, if he he thinks it's gonna work or not.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think AI helps tremendously for my business.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just giving you an example, today, I did some coding for my website where I would just go to my website, take a screenshot of what my problem was, saying that, for instance, today was I was getting a lot of bots filling out my forms online for an HOA request demo.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So my website has a page where if you want to request a free demo, you fill out a little sheet with your name and number and everything else.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now all I was getting back this morning was just fake names, fake numbers.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that is.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some bots are doing that.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: But all I did was take a screenshot of my email and show AI said this that is bots constantly spamming my form.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it gave me a code.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Says, okay, go to your back end of website, put this code in this box, and now there's I put the code in there, and now right after somebody fills out the form, there's a little box, as you've seen before, saying, Are you a human or are you not a robot?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that stuff back then used to, I used to have a computer program or whoever to do that stuff for me.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now I was able to do it myself, and I have no technical background at all.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've done everything from my website development, writing a 40-page operational manual for my product, legal advice.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every I have my chat GPDs on my right screen right now with just a bunch of stuff.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: International shipping setup, compliance watch, my social media is all about.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's helping me tremendously.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say if you want to become an entrepreneur, learn how to kind of work with AI.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not as hard as anybody thinks.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just kind of talk to it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and how do you know where to source your your prototypes, your molds?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do you know where to source all that?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: With my first career with Step and Go, I sourced out a mold.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was a plastic injection mold in China for 14 grand, and it came back bad, right?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went to somebody else and they kind of took my money.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know before, but through trial and error, you you get to kind of see what works and what doesn't work.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would for now, let's just say I use a website called Alibaba.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Does a lot of outsourcing to different countries, and depending on what you're outsourcing, if it's let's just say clothing or plastic mold injections, or even what I'm doing now with engines, it just depends on what you're sourcing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find out who you're working with.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you could do your due diligence.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would say you cross-reference companies if you want to, if a company seems like they're the right fit, ask them for some clients of theirs that are American if you're outsourcing your product internationally, and then you'll call the American client and ask them about the company and how long it's been, since they have the relationship, if they're good and reputable or not.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's it's almost how do you know to buy the right toothbrush on Amazon?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: You see the reviews and how many reviews they have.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that you kind of have to do your due diligence also with anything that you're doing internationally, because not everybody's flying to China or India to see a factory.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: What keeps you going when the work gets tough?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Video games.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just I don't when the work gets tough, I I don't really put just I don't I don't like stress.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very happy for my day to day.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes when it's tough and I don't feel like working, I don't.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Take your rest, enjoy this life, and you probably deal with the problems.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Probably I would say 80% of the time people worry the stuff that they worry about never even comes to fruition.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: My mom used to always tell me you take after your dad, you never worry about anything.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And well, that's probably the secret to life.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You just I think worrying is like the devil, really.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: You just it just is I don't see it as something that's helpful at all.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if things get tough, I try to work and get through with it.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: If not, I just wait till the next day, wait three or four days to like tackle it because that every day that I not tackle it, I kind of think about it and go, okay, now I'm gonna go kick its ass.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I have four things on my desk right now, and I'm not, I don't even care about them.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe in a couple of days I look back and go, okay, now I feel like I gotta talk to Amazon.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I put my product on there.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: After about three months of back and forth, you get your spurts of drive.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you wake up with a backache or you're lazy.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't force things.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So as we close, where can our listeners find you?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Find your products, find you on Instagram, your website, everywhere.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the plug.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Firefighterpoolpump.com.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Firefighter Pool Pump is my website.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram is the same, Twitter's the same, Facebook's the same, Instagram.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: You could see me demoing out this product to a lot of clients.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's probably a better way to look at the product because it gives you the visual effects of what this product actually does.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say you want to seek out this product, probably look to Instagram first, which is firefighterfoopump.com.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's it.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on Amazon probably as soon as next week.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just got the I just got the store set up and trying to get into Lowe's and Home Depot.com and all that kind of stuff.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: But been in business for two years, and I know things, things are slow, they move at a slow pace sometimes.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a home run all the time.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: With my old step and go, I was in probably about 18 brick and mortar stores where Squatty Potty was selling to Bed Bath and Beyond and Target.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was in Ross and DD's and Gabe's, right?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was the off-retailer.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they were the name brand, and I was a competitor for much cheaper.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: It took a long time to get to where I was with Stephen Go.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And after 12 years, I exited it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I know from that experience that even if things are tough now, it's my second year in, or even the third or the fourth or fifth.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep at it and something might happen, or you just grow organically, or you get a luppy break one way or another.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: But today, I'm lucky enough not to be burning money anymore.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: We are self-sustained and being a business in 2026, small businesses are very hard.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And partly the reason why I sold my business in 2022 was because of COVID.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of small businesses unfortunately went down.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Give you an example of I was shipping around two 40-foot containers a month from China to America.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And a container would cost anywhere between a 40-foot container.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like the big trucks, they have this big container in the back.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's filled with your product that comes from overseas.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that used to cost for international shipping around$1,800, maybe when it's Christmas or the holidays, upwards of three grand or four grand.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: But during COVID, when everything was shut down and there were minimal ship sailing, every container cost$18,000,$18,000,000,$19,000 per container.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you're shipping two a month.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you're spending about$40,000 on shipping alone.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the shipping, not the cost of the product and everything else.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it became very hard and then to be in business one way or another.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Other restaurants were closed.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there was it was very tough for a lot of people.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of small businesses went down.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I was lucky enough to be acquired, let's just say, right after COVID, where I was kind of tired of the business, was sued a bunch of times, and just kind of wanted the windfall of money, right?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I've done this for 12 years.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: My investors are happy, just exiting.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't say it was my entrepreneurship that helped me build a business from zero and exit for a million.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, I got a lucky break sometimes and I just kept going after 12 years.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy about it.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you everybody for staying tuned and listening to another episode of Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: With that, we want to thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for this week's confession.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got a workplace confession of your own, we're all ears.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Hit us up at our email address.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 32:20
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• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.