Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Become a Second Act Entrepreneur with Eric Brown

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How to Become a Second Act Entrepreneur with Eric Brown · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  End of the day, what worked and apply then, which is providing value to the customer is as
• 0:08
  true today as it ever was.
• 0:10
  So if you're just writing content to write content, you just get lost.
• 0:16
  Sure.
• 0:16
  But if you're providing value to the customer, and it could be as simple as having the phone
• 0:22
  number in the right place.
• 0:23
  I mean, there's a lot of little things, but I think I think the bottom line is is you you
• 0:28
  have to provide value.
• 0:29
  I agree.
• 0:33
  10, ignition, liftoff.
• 0:38
  Ending Small Business failure.
• 0:41
  Welcome to the Small Biz chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
• 0:46
  Emerson.
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  Volinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:51
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
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  Now Here's the small Biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Emerson.
• 1:01
  Hi, everybody.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson.
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  Small Biz lady.
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  Is number one small business expert, and I'm so excited to welcome you to another episode of
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  the small business chat podcast We have an amazing show for you tonight.
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  The small best chat podcast is a peer to peer interview show.
• 1:21
  We're really focused on getting you information to take your business to the next level, which
• 1:26
  is why we bring in several guests so that you can learn from multiple different angles.
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  The mission of the small bizchett podcast is to end small business failure.
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  And we've been doing it for a lot of years, and we're not gonna stop.
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  So now at this time, let me introduce my guest.
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  His name is Eric Brown.
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  He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned urban housing developer.
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  In 2000, he founded Urbane Apartments and developed over 16,000 Market rate apartments on
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  a national scale.
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  He's recognized as a vanguard in the family housing industry for his innovative social
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  media marketing strategies Eric recently stepped away from his company of 30 years to
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  create new side hustles within his new business called Urbane Farm, and his new company is a
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  purveyor of a 100 unique hot sauce brands, fish sauces, salsas, barbecue sauce, rubs, gourmet
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  salts, beef jerky, and a whole bunch of other stuff And so I he's recently released his first
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  book called 2nd act entrepreneur, and I'm so excited to have him here because I had an
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  opportunity to read an early draft of this book.
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  And I was and as long as I've known him, I really learned a whole lot from his book.
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  So, Eric, thank you so much for being here with me.
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  Thank you, Melinda.
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  I really, really appreciate being on.
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  Alright.
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  So let's start with the beginning.
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  Like, how did you become an entrepreneur?
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  And what made you think it was time for you to give your sage advice to others?
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  Well, growing up, my father and my uncle just always had a lot of of their own businesses.
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  They never really worked for companies in, you know, 45 years ago, the word entrepreneur
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  wasn't quite as prevalent as it is today.
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  And so I just decided to start my own business really right out of high school.
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  I mean, so was your 1st business the apartment buildings right out of high school?
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  No.
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  I had a construction business then.
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  Okay.
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  A little kind of crazy side story.
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  My wife, her parents were more of where her father worked in the factory and they were
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  pretty critical of me in the beginning of not having a real job.
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  Oh, well, you know, that whole son-in-law is not good enough business.
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  I think they're plenty of that to go around.
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  But once you started your business, your 1st business, what do you think was one of, like,
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  the most important early lessons that you learned running your first business.
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  Yeah.
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  So running out of money and making mistakes.
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  I've always believed that As business owners, we can afford to make mistakes, frankly, in
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  direct correlations to how much capital we have.
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  So if you have $10,000 of capital, you can probably make even maybe a 10 or $15,000
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  mistake, but you certainly can't make a $100,000 mistake.
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  Because you can dig holes really fast.
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  That's the truth Amen and amen.
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  I mean, I think cash is king for a reason.
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  So you've gotta be real careful with, you know, what your runway is to make mistakes.
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  Now after 30 years, in the, you know, a housing industry, you've decided to switch gears and
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  become product based, you know, online retailers.
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  So so How did you sort of, like, make the decision to do your second act?
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  Right?
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  Sure.
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  So post 60 I started thinking about life a little bit differently.
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  You know, there were a lot of books I wanted to read.
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  There were a lot of things I wanted to do.
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  And so one of our partners nephew actually wanted to get in the property management
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  business.
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  So We had been talking about it for 18 months to 2 years.
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  And this last July, that actually came to fruition.
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  So I was able to step away from day to day operations and hand it off to almost an in
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  house kind of person.
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  So that's worked out pretty well.
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  But, you know, one of the things that's that's interesting, I think sometimes we all we start
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  doing something.
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  And 10 years or 20 years or 30 years later, we're like, were still doing it.
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  And one thing I always when I look back at my journals over the years, I always wanted to I
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  wanted days to feel like a Saturday.
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  And I get like that can't always happen, but My wife sent to me one day, and this was about
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  year 8 or 9 or 10, something like that, into the property management business.
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  She said, how long are you gonna coil at that because we weren't really making any money.
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  We were struggling.
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  We had everything we had invested in things.
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  When you're a real estate developer, you don't really ever have any money per se.
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  You know, you're rolling it all the time and you're you're you you get funding from
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  investors.
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  And then she went on to say something to the effect of when you're living your dream.
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  And I said, my dream.
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  I'm not living my dream.
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  It was just there.
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  And while it was very good to us, it it was just there, and one thing led to another.
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  You know, 25 years go by.
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  So one thing that's always fascinated me is the hot sauce business.
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  And so that's what, you know, we ended up doing, here in the last 9 months.
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  Interesting.
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  So you spent 25 years building a business.
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  You've been wildly successful.
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  I mean, let me say.
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  I mean, you you build a $10,000,000 business.
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  Right?
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  It wasn't some little business.
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  I mean, you built a pretty significant business.
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  16,000 Market Rate Apartments is no no small thing to sneeze at.
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  Right?
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  But you said it was just there.
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  You know, like, I wasn't going.
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  I I guess.
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  You heard it's something that was just kinda something to do.
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  So what you're saying is actually a double edged sword.
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  When I say it was just there, the opportunities to do it were, the investors came easy.
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  It wasn't really hard, per se.
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  And then when you're taking investments from other people that you know and some that you
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  don't know, you are pretty vested, right, if you can't just go, oh, I don't wanna do this
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  anymore.
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  And so the more successful you are, the more people who want to best with you.
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  So therefore, the more deals you wanna go do, and one thing leads to another, and then you're
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  like, Wow.
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  I and it wasn't that I didn't like what I was doing per se, but there's a difference between,
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  you know, doing what you're doing and being passionate about something.
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  Sure.
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  I I can agree with that.
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  So the last 9 months, you've built this hot sauce business.
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  And what I find really interesting is you you already you know, indicated that you're over
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  60.
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  And I thought one of the things that I thought was really interesting as I was looking up some
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  research that say the fastest growing segment of people starting businesses in the US right
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  now are actually people 55 plus.
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  And I thought that that was really interesting, but if you look at some more statistics, in
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  fact, the average small business owner in America is forty nine years old.
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  And has 4 employees.
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  And I think I'm not sure if people know that.
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  I think everyone thinks entrepreneurs are like these young people that wanted to drop out of
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  college, like start these fintech businesses for some 10 x multiple of their EBITDA.
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  Right?
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  You know what I mean?
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  Like, I I think there's a perception that that's who entrepreneurs are.
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  When, in fact, entrepreneurs are you, entrepreneurs, you know, and there's
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  advantages, right, to being a 50 plus you know, or 60 plus entrepreneur.
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  And and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about sort of, like, the advantages
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  of being a 55 plus entrepreneur but also some of the things that you need to think about when
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  you're that age and starting a brand new venture.
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  Yeah.
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  So so I think part of that has to do with you know, the baby boomers were were one of the
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  largest group of generation.
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  And so many of us are becoming I like to use Chip Conley's label of modern elders.
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  So what are the advantages?
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  The advantages are you have a lot of life experience.
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  Many times you've either run a division for your employer or maybe even ran the company And
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  and so you have a lot of business experiences.
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  We also have an enormous amount of relationships that you've created.
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  You know, so for me, one of those were 2008 when when the economy slowed down,
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  we
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  were doing a lot of marketing work as well.
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  And, we were in the hot sauce business then, and and we had a small company within a hot
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  sauce business, but we were producing our own.
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  And I bet this group from from New York who he started to procure different hot sauces.
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  So I don't know if he would have remembered me, but I I actually reached out to him when I
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  started this new venture now, and and he did remember me.
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  And we were able to get a wholesale account set up to to get these 150 to 200 brands of hot
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  sauce.
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  Well, if I wouldn't have had those connections and sometimes you don't even know if as I said,
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  you don't even know if they're gonna remember you, but sometimes they do.
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  And and in that case, it worked out well.
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  The other side of all that coin is you don't necessarily want to lose ground.
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  Right?
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  So when you're younger, it might be okay to bet the farm.
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  And I've done that a couple times myself, but you don't necessarily wanna do that as you age,
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  So, yeah, I think it's a great time to because, certainly, I didn't wanna stop working.
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  I mean, I've always been a hard worker and put in lots of hours.
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  I just wanted to I wanted to be able to spend part of my time working and part of my time
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  reading, writing, studying, hiking, that kind of stuff.
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  Let's get to that.
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  So tell me about your book.
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  The second act entrepreneur, how did you write in it?
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  And, you know, what do you wanna teach people?
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  You know, I guess what I really wanted to have takeaway was I talk a lot about what did not go
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  right.
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  And, you know, over a long career, I don't think I was any different than anyone else.
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  There's a lot of things that go sideways.
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  And, you know, the whole adage of.
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  It isn't necessarily what happens to you.
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  It's how you react to it.
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  And, you know, that whole thing about capital and money and extending your runway, you know,
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  more than once, I made some mistakes that had 50s behind them.
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  And so you don't dig out of that in a quarter or or a few months.
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  Sometimes it takes a few years.
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  So there's a big ebb and flow, and you, you know, and you talk about all that stuff in
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  becoming your own boss, you know, and this whole thing about financing a start up business
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  on credit cards is a bunch of hooey.
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  I mean, I guess some people do that, but it's it's not a very good idea.
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  Well, I think some people do it because they just don't have a lot of access to capital any
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  other way.
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  And I certainly know a lot of minority entrepreneurs are for to do that.
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  And and and frankly, I did it too.
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  I had 1 small SBA loan, micro loan in the beginning, and the rest literally was my credit
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  cards.
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  And that was 23 years ago, but I also had a home that I could put up as collateral for that
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  loan.
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  Right?
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  So I think it's about how you position yourself financially before you go to start a loan, but
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  you you and I both know Eric Banks do not loan money to start our businesses.
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  They only wanna to you until you've been in business at least 2 years.
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  So I think there's a lot of people that have done the bootstrap thing because they just
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  didn't have the opportunity But what I wanna do right now is go to commercial.
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  And when we come back, I wanna hear more about Irvin Farm, and I wanna try to sweet talk you
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  and to send to me a basket of those hot sauces you got.
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  Because we like to test hot sauces around here.
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  So You are watching the small biz shot podcast, and we will be right back.
• 14:18
  Are you ready to become a boss?
• 14:20
  Hi.
• 14:21
  I'm Melinda Emerson's small biz lady.
• 14:23
  Click the button below and take my free boss quiz.
• 14:27
  This assessment will help you learn your entrepreneur type and find the right business
• 14:31
  model for you.
• 14:32
  Get this information about the number one asset in your business.
• 14:36
  Yeah.
• 14:36
  That's you.
• 14:38
  Welcome back to the small business chat podcast.
• 14:40
  I'm here with serial entrepreneur, Eric Brown, and he's talking to us about how to become a
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  second act entrepreneur.
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  Alright, Eric.
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  I wanna talk more about your second ag.
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  Tell me about this.
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  Would you say a 150, 200 hot sauces?
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  I mean, How are you selling them?
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  Do you have a website?
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  Are you selling them on Amazon?
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  Like, how are you marketing this new business?
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  And are you finding that you know, being an ecommerce business is a lot better than being,
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  you know, an actual retailer, you know, dealing with customers every day.
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  Sure.
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  So Actually, both of my daughters, my one daughter is 40.
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  The other one is is 35, but they're both business small business owners, and they live
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  in Midstate Ohio.
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  It's a small rural community, but my one daughter has it's a gift store, but it's like a
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  resale shop.
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  So she rents out a 10 by 10 space, which is a pretty it's a pretty interesting platform for
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  someone to economically get into business.
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  So I just got a little space from her, and started setting things up, but but I also tried
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  to pick products that I was gonna sell that have a certain sort of underground following
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  that can actually bring more business into her store.
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  So a lot of the thought process around it was was for that reason.
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  So are you selling online at all or just through our store?
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  We are.
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  Yeah.
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  We're so we're so part of what you get when you're into space is she's got a Shopify store
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  and you're able to put your product up there.
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  And and then I ended up helping her do some marketing work.
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  So it's, you know, kind of a a family a family thing.
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  And people don't know this, but how you became famous and how I even met you was because you
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  were a pioneer in using social media in the housing industry.
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  And, gosh, I don't remember how many years ago it was.
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  I actually profiled you in my column in the New York times.
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  Because you were doing some things that were very unique and you were revolutionizing your
• 16:49
  industry.
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  And people were holding you up as as a national model to follow.
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  And that's how we first met, and you've just continued to grow and Ebb and flow.
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  I mean, gosh, I don't even remember how many years I've known you, Eric, but you always are
• 17:02
  doing something cool.
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  So with that, I actually wanted to ask you you know, after 25 years or so in business, what
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  cyclical trends have you noticed?
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  You know, I think at the end of the day, and we've certainly seen lots and lots of changes
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  in social media.
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  You know, there was a time when we could when we first started blogging back in, like, 2004
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  or something like 2005, It was amazing.
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  I mean, we could write an article and this thing called web traffic went up, and then it
• 17:36
  didn't take too long to figure out.
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  There was more renters coming through the door.
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  And then with many cases, when marketers get involved, they kind of They have a tendency to
• 17:48
  mock up the field.
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  Right?
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  So, you know, suddenly everyone became a content creator, and it got kinda messy.
• 17:58
  But at the end of the day, what worked in a and applied then, which is providing value to the
• 18:05
  customer is as true today as it ever was.
• 18:09
  So if you're just writing content to write content, you just get lost.
• 18:14
  Sure.
• 18:15
  But if you're providing value to the customer, and it could be as simple as having the phone
• 18:20
  number in the right place.
• 18:21
  I mean, there's a lot of little things, but I think I think the bottom line is is you you
• 18:26
  have to provide value.
• 18:28
  I agree.
• 18:28
  I agree.
• 18:29
  And on that note, last question, what is the best business advice you've ever received?
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  You you've not you never make money paying interest.
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  And and what I mean by that isn't necessarily, you know, there's good debt and there's
• 18:44
  certainly bad debt, but for things like as I progress through my career, things like buying
• 18:51
  equipment and always try to do that out of cash versus versus getting a loan.
• 18:57
  It's pretty easy to get loans, and then it's kinda hard to make the payments.
• 19:03
  I think that's a mic drop right there.
• 19:05
  Thank you so much, Eric Brown.
• 19:08
  You know, I always learn something every time I talk to you What is your favorite podcast?
• 19:16
  My favorite podcast is it's called the Sedona Method.
• 19:21
  It's a spiritual podcast and that's my favorite.
• 19:25
  I love it.
• 19:25
  I actually have that book, the Sedona Method, so I know about that.
• 19:29
  What is your favorite business app?
• 19:31
  Shopify.
• 19:33
  Good stuff.
• 19:34
  What is your favorite old school marketing tip?
• 19:37
  Word-of-mouth.
• 19:38
  Word-of-mouth referrals.
• 19:39
  Love it.
• 19:40
  Love it.
• 19:40
  Eric, what's your favorite business book?
• 19:43
  Thinking grow rich.
• 19:44
  That's a good one, Oldie, but goody.
• 19:46
  Love it.
• 19:47
  Thank you guys so much for being here.
• 19:49
  Thank you again to my guest.
• 19:51
  If you're working on your digital pivot, Be sure to check out Small Buslady University
• 19:55
  where you can sign up for my latest course, social media selling.
• 19:59
  You can get everything you need to finally start developing and making the money that you
• 20:04
  deserve online.
• 20:05
  So go ahead and reserve your spot today at smallbizladyuniversity.com.
• 20:11
  You know, the mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
• 20:15
  And I thank you for allowing me to inform your small business journey once again.
• 20:20
  And I'll leave you with this.
• 20:21
  You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
• 20:25
  Take care, everybody.
• 20:28
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 20:33
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 20:39
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcast and join us next Wednesday.