Reclaiming Family Time from Your Ever-Ravenous Business

Reclaiming Family Time from Your Ever-Ravenous Business Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Hey, it's Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerce Fuel Podcast, the show dedicated to helping seven and eight figure brand owners build incredible businesses Today's guest, Sam Huebner, probably has done as good a job of that as anyone I've had the chance to come across. He has built an established eight-figure business along with his wife over the last number of years, but also he's done it in a way very intentionally where he's been able to not have to sacrifice meaningful time with his family and other things that are important to him and so we get into that. We talk about a lot in this discussion. This was a fun one. I always enjoy when I get to sit down with Sam and we talk about How he was able to escape being a prisoner of his business and the steps that they had to work through for that, how they're hiring in Mexico, how they hire in general, really focusing on character and culture. We talk about how he's differentiating against Asian direct competition, the benefits of hiring a business coach. We get into even core values of his family and my family. It was really fun. I think it was a really good blend of tactical stuff, but also talking about Things that deeply matter as well. So I hope you enjoy this one and we're gonna go ahead and start by hearing how he kicked it off and probably the hardest way you could imagine starting a business coming out of the corporate world right after this. Think about the last time you were facing a problem with your store, your business. It was probably today in the shower. How do I hire for this role, solve this problem with my paid campaigns? When instead of thinking, worrying, obsessing, zoning out during family dinners, you could just conjure up 10 super savvy experienced store owners to tell you exactly how they solve the problem. That's eCommerce Fuel, our community of 1,200 seven and eight figure owners, the most experienced group of eCommerce and DTC owners online. Our super active discussion forum lets you do exactly that. There's hundreds of people checking and commenting every day and questions that get posted often gets dozens of answers within 24 hours from deeply experienced operators. In fact, we're so confident this will be a game changer for your business that if you join, stay a member for a year and don't see a 10x ROI on your membership, Then we'll refund all of your membership fees for the first year plus $1,000 for the hassle. So come join us. You can learn more and apply at eCommerceFuel.com. Did you know that eCommerce stores are losing 10 to 15% of their revenue by not offering up sales? It's true, but you can get that money back instantly with the OneClick Upsell app. OneClick Upsell is already the number one upsell app for over 18,000 Shopify stores including Tushy, Dr. Squash, Buffy and Victoria Beckham and it's made hard-working entrepreneurs like you 670 million in extra upsell revenue. All it takes is a few clicks and you can add pre-purchase, post-purchase upsells and cross-sells to every product on your store. In fact, the average user boosts their total sales by 10 to 15% as soon as they set it up. It's super easy to get started. Install the app, launch your first upsell funnel and start making 10 to 15% more sales in less than 10 minutes. So if you like free money, go to OneClickUpsell.com after the episode to start your free 30-day trial. A lot of people come from banking into eCommerce, I found. It's kind of interesting. But I feel like you were on uber hard mode. You were in banking, which is notoriously difficult, long hours. You had twins. You and your wife had twins. And you were running Parker Baby as a side hustle, which is like, I can't imagine A, having kids while being in banking, but B, let alone trying to run a side business. So I'm just curious. I would love to hear a little bit about That experience from your perspective, because that sounds just absolutely bonkers to me. Sam Huebner: It was definitely a difficult time period in my life. I worked in investment banking for a boutique firm here in Denver for a couple of years. I would say it's not your typical experience in investment banking. We were trying to revive the M&A department at this boutique firm and the hours weren't crazy tough. I will say, prior to that, I got the CFA charter, which was incredibly difficult. I finish that up when my twins were born. That was maybe the most difficult time because studying for that exam with twins at home And just being exhausted all the time was very difficult. So I had hoped to use that to kind of amplify my career in finance. I think God had a very different plan for me because we had our twins. We started Parker Baby as a side hustle. The plan originally was for my wife to run it from home as she stayed home with the twins. But I really, really started to enjoy it a lot. For me, it was a lot more interesting to build something for myself than to be kind of hustling to build an M&A department for somebody else. And not only that, but it just took off and it was starting to require more time and you didn't really have to twist my arm to get me out of banking into eCommerce. And I've really enjoyed it a lot more than I enjoyed my brief career in finance. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah, what do you take away from banking? I have a few things that I kind of describe it as one of those things in life where I'm very glad I did, very glad that I got out of it when I did and had some really core takeaways from it. For you, what did that give you and build in you? Sam Huebner: Yeah, I think the biggest one as an operator now, I got to see a lot of small businesses and I unfortunately saw a lot of small businesses fail. And so you kind of see what is the common denominator in some of these businesses that fail. And I've been able to implement some of that and to avoid some of that as we've built Parker Baby, that's one thing. I think the other thing is just I've really benefited from a background in accounting. I mean, finance is very broad, but I would say accounting, my expertise and I wouldn't say expertise, that's maybe a little generous, but my background in accounting has really, really helped me as we have grown Parker Baby to understand The numbers and just even from just the very beginning, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs when they first start, they're so busy that they kind of push the numbers to the wayside. And I think that's really dangerous. And I've just always been hyper focused on our numbers since day one. That's really been helpful. And I do owe that to my finance background for sure. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah, what were some of the things seeing? I mean, you mentioned you kind of designed Parker Baby to avoid all the traps and pitfalls that some of the other companies you'd seen kind of fall into. What were some of those proactive design elements that you were trying to do to reinforce the company? Sam Huebner: I think one of the biggest ones I saw regularly was just hiring too fast. You see a lot of companies just go out and quickly hire. We saw a lot of small businesses. The main focus of this investment bank was to raise money for small businesses. And it always came down to people. It always came down to people. And so you could have the best product, the best idea, but if you don't have the right people to implement it, it just oftentimes would not work out. And so we've just been super intentional about who we hire, how we hire since the very beginning. And so that's, to me, it's been huge. It's really carried over into Parker Baby really well for us. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: I was watching your two videos across your portfolio. First, your video about the business you bought, tallswimtees.com. The copy on that is phenomenally funny, by the way. I don't know if you wrote that or someone else wrote that, but really on point. And then there was the other video with you and Kirsten about starting the business. You said the thing you were most proud about about Parker Baby was your team. And obviously, that's something that's been a huge emphasis for you. And it seemed like they're mostly in the US, which I also thought was interesting. What have you tried to really do? I mean, obviously not hiring too quickly, but what have you tried to obsess over on team? And particularly, what are you looking for in your team members? Because it seems like it's worked out. Something you came in with a lot of intentionality around. It seems like it's worked out really well for you. Sam Huebner: Yeah, we've always prioritized character and culture fit. That's always where we've started. I do believe that if you hire the right person who has a good character and is a good culture fit, that everything else kind of falls into place. And so we've had a lot of success focusing on that. More recently, we've started using personality testing, intermetrics testing, which I think has really helped us in the screening process to kind of Over time, we've kind of figured out which personality types fit well within our business and which ones don't. That's really helped us to screen in the hiring process. We just, we really take our time with hiring. I've been hiring for a position here over the last two months and I constantly find myself apologizing to candidates for how slow it is. Just saying, you know, we haven't forgotten about this. We're just, we're super intentional about this and I hope you can appreciate that. And I think the right people will appreciate that. The right candidates will appreciate the time and care that you put into the process. So it's just taking our time and focusing on culture and character. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: How do you character culture is one thing like you can kind of get a sense for what people value based on interviews and and also looking at what they've done in the past and character I feel like is a harder one, right? Like it's I had an experience over the last couple of years where I hired someone and didn't work out and then hired someone. And they were a great person. It just wasn't a good fit. But then I hired someone through our personal network that I had a long... I had visibility and insight into the reputation just through an extended network and it worked out phenomenally well. So do you do that? How do you suss out character? Because that's something that's... Yeah, you can't list on a resume, right? Or you can, but it's not going to mean much. So how do you do that? Sam Huebner: Yeah, it is tricky. I would say several people on our team were referrals from people already on our team. And I think those go a long way. If somebody on your team is willing to put their neck on the line for another person, I think it carries a lot of weight. We have several hires that have been referrals. My first hire was actually my sister. And so all the cautions about working with family that Everyone always talks about... I haven't experienced any of that with my sister. I know she's a high character individual. She's the closest thing I have to a partner in my business. And so that's really been awesome working with her. And I've known her for 35 years. So that helps a lot too. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Is this an older or younger sister? Sam Huebner: Younger sister. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. Okay. Sam Huebner: Yeah. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: I was wondering if it was going to be the same as an older sister, the one that was beating on you in eighth grade. Sam Huebner: Yeah, she's still beating on me anyways, but yeah, she's a couple years younger than me. She's always been the athlete in the family. But yeah, so those are two things. And then our interview process, we like to get multiple people involved in the process. And so one of the things that we've done is, you know, I'll do an interview with a candidate, but then I like to have somebody else on our team also do an interview. I find that people maybe are more honest about their prior experience or maybe more honest about their feelings towards their previous boss or previous company in general when it's not the, you know, the founder interviewing them. And so I think just getting more face time with candidates to be able to judge their character and getting the opinion of other people on our team. So that's been helpful as well. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. And in terms of your team makeup, it looked like it was primarily US, a lot of women on your team. How do you think about international talents that you hire? How do you think about agencies? What's the cocktail there that you have for your team? Sam Huebner: We do have a lot of women that work for us here domestically. Initially, it was a lot of part-time, I would say part-time moms, new moms, which has been good and bad. It's good in that we're able to offer a part-time remote flexible work schedule for working moms. It has been hard managing a lot of part-time team members. We've started to hire more full-time roles. That's helped a lot. Most of those roles here are here domestically. We have started hiring overseas. We have three full-time employees now in Mexico. We've seen a ton of success there. We continue to build our team. This new position we're hiring for here in the next month or so is also going to be based in Mexico. There's certain roles that we certainly prefer to hire here in the U.S. if we can. We're still all 100% remote, even though a bulk of our team is here in the U.S. As far as agencies go, man, we haven't had a ton of success with agencies. We haven't tried it in a couple of years. I've been so reluctant to try it because, and it's probably the fault of my own, but when I hire an agency, I tend to just like hand things over and then don't follow up and monitor performance like I would if it was someone internally. I don't know what that is there. I don't know if that's like a mental block or something. But I think if we're at someone internally and we have them under our systems, we are doing developmental plans and we're evaluating performance and establishing KPIs that it just gets a lot more attention. And maybe that's not fair to agencies, but we definitely prefer to hire internally. And so far it's worked out really well for us. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: That's cool. In Mexico, what types of roles are you hiring in Mexico? You mentioned those three right now. What are those three team members doing for you? Sam Huebner: So our first hire in Mexico was a virtual assistant and she has now evolved to be an operations specialist and really is kind of on the path towards being an operations manager. Just been super impressed with her. I think we hired her part-time a couple years ago and within like two weeks we moved her to full-time because she was just providing so much value and we didn't want her spending time on other projects for other companies and she really fit our culture and was just crushing it from day one. So that's one role. We had a supply chain coordinator that was also part-time. We recently moved him to full-time because we've just gotten between the 2 brands, between Parker Baby and Tall Slim, we've just gotten so busy on sourcing and logistics and optimizing our supply chain, reducing our costs. We've been impressed with him and wanted to get him more involved. And so we moved him to full-time. Our last one, we hired a marketing coordinator. About a year ago and really to help with a lot of stuff on social media, but kind of the same story as our operations specialist just since day one really overachieved and exceeded our expectations and is now Managing several channels for us, Target, a little bit on Amazon, Walmart and some other channels and has really evolved to be more of a marketing specialist role. So those are the three. I'm also currently in the process of hiring an executive assistant down in Mexico and have several solid candidates that are moving along in our extensive hiring process here. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Where are you finding the Mexican talent? Is it a lot of different places you could go? Have you found one place that is kind of your go-to and has had the most luck with? Sam Huebner: Yeah, we continue to find success on Indeed Mexico. We've tried LinkedIn, haven't had success there. We've had referrals that didn't work out, just didn't have the right skill set for these different roles that we've been hiring. But Indeed Mexico, we get a ton of leads and it's not super expensive. I think the hardest part is just setting up a process to screen through all the leads that you get so that you're not spending a ton of time evaluating applications and resumes and optimizing the process there. So we've had a lot of success on Indeed Mexico so far. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: It's obviously outsourcing. It's not anything new. People have been outsourcing for decades, if not longer. But I feel like the last five years, especially the last three, I'm starting to hear from a lot of people that are... I've talked to other people who have directors of supply chain in Mexico, for example. You're talking about someone doing marketing in Mexico, which oftentimes I think a lot of times people tend to keep their marketing outsourcing domestic, just because they've had a harder time outsourcing that, but it seems like that's working well for you. When you look at the fact that you're able to outsource these fairly mid to upper level roles to Mexico, and you look at the future of domestic work, What does that make you think about for the country, for the future, for the way business is going to pan out? Because I love America. I think we have a lot of really interesting and unique advantages. We have our fair share of problems too. In general, I'm optimistic about the country or at least the ethos here. I don't know if people are really prepared for what's going to accelerate here in the next 5 to 10 years in terms of labor, I think. Sam Huebner: Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree and I have the same I wouldn't even say it's concerns, but I have the same thoughts about it. In a perfect world, I would hire a team, I would say a local team even. If I could find all the talent I needed here locally and we could regularly or semi-regularly all get together and bounce ideas off each other and spend more time in person, that would be great. I just think you're right. We live in this world now where we have a global pool of talent that we can tap. For an eCommerce brand, I just don't think eCommerce is getting any easier. I think we're certainly feeling it. We're getting squeezed on margin in so many different areas. And so for us to be able to hire amazing talent at the global level and save some money and find awesome people, it's going to be essential for us moving forward. The hard thing is, and this is not unique to hiring overseas, but just unique to managing a remote team, is just how do you maintain and build culture when people are 100% remote? And that's something that We've done an okay job at it. We think we can do better. I think it just gets even more difficult when you have team members that are in a different country, different time zone, you have cultural barriers sometimes. So that's something that I think is going to be really difficult for a lot of companies moving forward and us included. I think you just have to be super intentional about it. And it's not as easy as it would be if everyone was in the same office and you were able to do team building on a regular basis and see each other face to face on a regular basis. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. One of our core values at eCommerce Fuel is autonomy, at least in terms among our team members and our expectations. And from a remote perspective, you have to have that. I hired someone a couple of years back and worked with them extensively. And great person, didn't end up working out. And near the end of that, we were doing a debrief. And I was like, what do you think would have helped with this working out more? He's like, If I could have just had an hour or two of your day at time, an hour or two of your time per day, I think this would have worked out. And my head just exploded and I was like, an hour or two of my time per day? And I think that is where that kind of core value came in. Just kind of try to assess for out front because if that's the expectation, you need people that are, you always want people that are independent, but especially in a remote team, it's just so crucial. Sam Huebner: Yeah, and it should be a part of your hiring process. If you're going to hire a remote team, you need to be able to screen for that. And we've made mistakes there. I think it's a hard thing to test for in the screening process. I think it's hard to truly gauge someone's level of autonomy in the hiring process. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah, I love the idea of The more I have hired, the more I have thought two things. One, like you said at the top, get a sense of character and not even aptitude is good, but character more than anything and reputation and culture fit. And then two, just get them in and start working as fast as possible. For future roles, you can't always do this, but anytime I can take a hey, Let's pay you on a contract basis for a month, 2 months, 3 months. That just seems like such a safer bet because you can actually see it in action. And that's really what you're looking for. Sam Huebner: Yeah, for sure. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. You mentioned fuel and margin squeeze and eCommerce is always getting harder. I feel like this year has been particularly acute in that regard. How What are the biggest challenges you're seeing and how are you differentiating? You've got, I think, lots of different pressures coming in. One of them is overseas market. You've got a lot of Chinese competitors are getting more sophisticated. They've got more direct pipelines into the US market and easier. What have been the challenges for you this year and how are you trying to differentiate in just an increasingly difficult world? Sam Huebner: Yeah, I think our biggest challenge is For our brand, this year has just been that foreign competition and we've just felt a lot of pressure on the pricing side. I'm proud to say that I don't think we've succumbed to that pricing pressure. I think if we're going to try and compete on price with this foreign competition, we're just not going to make it. We can't do it. We have U.S. income taxes to pay and we pay livable wages to our staff and our team and don't skimp on regulation and safety and testing and all these different areas where A foreign seller might be able to save a little bit of money. We just don't even entertain those. So we've just recognized that for us, to have a premium brand, we just need to continue to develop premium products. So I would say this year, more than any other year, we've really invested in new product development and design. We have a really aggressive product launch pipeline for next year that we're really excited about. It's been a work in progress. I mean, it's taken us a long time to get to this point. We've been fine-tuning our product launch process because it's one thing to develop awesome products. It's another thing to successfully launch them. And it's another thing to successfully launch one after another over the course of a year or over the course of several years. So this year we've been working on designing new products and awesome products and Products were proud of and also kind of fine tuning and standardizing our product launch process to kind of set us up next year to be in a better place as we launch new products because the baby space is tough. I think one of the areas to that we've experienced just some competition this year is just that. Trends are constantly changing in baby products and you have to stay on top of trends or you will just slowly die. And I think that, you know, fortunately for us, that is one of the benefits of being based here in the US. So just a better understanding of the consumer and then also to have a lot of working moms on our team who understand some of the frustrations and some of the issues with Raising newborns and being a new mom and they truly believe in our products and they are some of our best salespeople. But I think that really helps us also to stay on top of trends. We have not let our catalog go stale. And if we did, I think we would have died a long time ago. So we're leaning into new product design and development. We have so many things that we're excited about next year and so many products that we're excited about. Our team has done an outstanding job of of getting us to this point. And so I think that's going to be a huge differentiator for us in light of this, the foreign competition, which is for sure the biggest, the biggest hurdle that we've been dealing with this year. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Have you, how quickly have you seen that ramp up? I mean, obviously that's been around for, for, you know, a decade in varying degrees, probably more acutely the last five to four to five years, maybe even, have you seen that really accelerate the last 18 months? Sam Huebner: You know, maybe not as much as some other brands have. It's always been an issue for us. I mean, we've always been so Amazon heavy that we've been pressured on the pricing front for a very long time. We just haven't given in. And if anything, we've increased our prices over the past several years. I don't know that the likes of Timu have really affected us much more this year. I think Amazon If you look on Amazon in the baby product space even, it will look a lot like TMU platform, unfortunately. And in a way that's good for us because it gives us an opportunity to differentiate. And one of the ways we do that is on pricing, frankly. I mean, if you look at our products on Amazon, we're not competitively priced at all. In a lot of cases, we're 100% more expensive. Now, It might be a little bit different with baby products. I know it's a little bit different with baby products because one, they're highly giftable. And so if you're given a gift, you're not just going to go out. Well, maybe some people will. It's going to go out and buy the cheapest product. But two, if you're buying products for your own baby, do you want to take a gamble on a brand that you've never seen before and a product that's going to be worn or used by your baby on a daily basis? I think a lot of parents just aren't willing to save a little bit of money and risk that. I think our space might be a little unique in that way compared to other categories. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: How do you systematize the product development and launch process? You can systemize anything, of course. But on the simple to wildly complex side of things to automate and systematize, that seems more on the complex side because you got ideation, and then you have product development, and then you have sampling and testing, the trends that you mentioned, then you got the promotion. There's just Huge number of things you got to consider. So we could probably do an entire three podcast series episodes on that. But high level, how are you siloing that out? What are the roles? Walk me through because that sounds fascinating and hard but cool if you can pull it off, which sounds like you have. Sam Huebner: TBD. We'll see how next year goes. It's constantly evolving. And yes, you're so right. I mean, there are so many moving parts. I think we went into this whole process saying we're going to systemize this and we're going to have an established system in place that's never going to change. We're going to be able to use this on every product launch moving forward. That's not the case. Now, we have organized the process so that things flow smoothly, but it's like I think when we started going through this, we didn't quite realize how long it takes to get a product from ideation to being available for sale on your store. And so for us, it started with building out a template and click up and saying, you know, where are pain points? Where are we having confusion around who's responsible for what? We've done three product launches over the last two months, and they've kind of been testing grounds for this new process that we've developed. And there's so many different departments involved. And so we're trying to improve those. So we've been doing kind of, I call them post-mortem meetings on these product launches to say, like, what went well? What didn't go well? Where can we improve? Where was there confusion in communication and who's responsible for what? So just constantly trying to improve the process. And one of our core values is to make it better. And we've really been focusing on the product launch side of things and just how do we continue to make this process better. Now, you're right. It's super difficult to automate. There's so much of this that cannot be automated. And very little of it is automated. A lot of it involves It just requires human involvement, but it just continues to get better. And I think one of the things that has really helped us is to kind of give ownership to someone at a project manager level on our team and to say, historically, that had been me where I would just make sure everything is moving along. But as I've kind of tried to pull myself out of the business from a task standpoint and be more strategic and thinking, We've handed that over to somebody else to say, okay, you're kind of the air traffic controller here. And so you don't have to be involved in all these different processes, but we want you to be the first port of contact and to monitor all this and to make sure that this process is moving along through that process, which can take from 6 to 12 months. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Make sure ownership is established at each level. Yeah, we'll see. I think we're at the point where I'm feeling pretty confident moving into next year and our ability to launch products. I think we still have some things we need to clean up, but we've come a long way. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Hey, Andrew, here with a quick sidebar. I want to introduce you to Andy from HelloBatch.com where they sell super high-end CBD products and partner with a local farm out of Wisconsin. Really great, fun, friendly guy. I was hanging out with him recently at an awesome event. And here's what Andy had to say about his experience with eCommerce Fuel, our private vetted community for seven and eight figure store owners. Unknown Speaker: I think the coolest thing about ECF for me has been that the ways in which it's helpful has evolved. When I first joined, the most help and use I got was simply scrolling through the forums, reading about questions that I had that other people have already faced and kind of just absorbing knowledge in the forum. As I've aged as a member, I'd say going to the events and building relationships with other community members in person has been the most valuable thing. I've actually ended up working with a few of them and it's just such a great way To be like a filtering mechanism for awesome people to work with. For it to work in that way, you have to like go to these events, build the relationships, meet the people, but everyone is so great. I mean, it's just the best sense of camaraderie ever and I can truly say that I think I've made some lifelong friends at UCF just being here a year and a half. So, thank you, Andrew. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: After hearing literally hundreds of comments like this over the last decade our community has been around, it's easy to offer our 10x guarantee. If you don't get at least a 10x ROI on your membership in the first year in terms of increased revenue, saved time and saved money, we'll give you a full refund plus an extra $1,000. But many of our members report seeing massive value in just the first month or two when applying it to their seven or eight-figure business. You can learn more about the community and apply for membership at eCommerceFuel.com. Okay, back to the show. You gave a talk. Man, I can remember it was last year or the year before at ECF Live about how you've been able to build a business that The focus is on building something amazing, but also has time for your family. And it wasn't always that way. You were in a period where business was completely overwhelming and you had to make a really hard shift and you're able to make that. And that's something that I'm hugely passionate about. You know, kind of our tagline here is like, help eCommerce brand owners build incredible businesses and amazing lives. And I think a lot of times we get a lot of the striving for incredible business, right? At the sake of an amazing life, right? And relationships, impact, things that matter. Anyway, I'd love if you could give a Dive into that a little bit for people. What did life look like before you went through that process? And what were the key things that you implemented to get a little more sanity into your life? Sam Huebner: I would say, we were 6 or 7 years into our business and I was just feeling super burnt out. And I think that's really common amongst entrepreneurs. I just I think the hardest part for me is just unable to separate myself from the business. And so you might take a week-long vacation with the family, but mentally, you're just still connected to the business. And I just felt like I was a prisoner to my own business. And we had gotten into this to be kind of a lifestyle business. And I think that's It's pretty common in eCommerce that there's a lot of appealing parts to running your own eCommerce business. And one of them is the autonomy and the flexibility. And I just think so quickly, entrepreneurs are so quickly to forget about that. I also think entrepreneurs like myself are good at a lot of things. That's why we build businesses. That's why we start businesses. But saying no is generally not one of them. I had scope creep. It was very real to me and I just felt like I was a prisoner to my business. It was just so physically and mentally exhausting. And I think we had built a great brand and I was terrified about what it was going to take to continue building it and to get it to the next level. So that's where I was. And I've told you and certainly in my talk, I feel like the only way out was to sell the brand. And so we went through that whole process. Fortunately, it didn't work out because things are going well now. The biggest thing for me in that whole process was the sale of our business fell through three weeks before ECF Live 2022. And I was prepared to come to ECF Live and not be an eCommerce operator and just kind of show up and drink beer and hang out with people. But I showed up and I was like, man, I thought I was going to be checked out and I got to get back into this. And I'm terrified. And so I had a lot of just self-reflection at that point. And the biggest thing for me is I just kind of accepted that I needed help. I had people recommend coaching, business coaches for a long time, and I was so resistant to it. I think it's pretty common in entrepreneurs. I just had this, no, I'm going to do it myself. I don't need someone telling me how to do my job. That's why I'm an entrepreneur. That's why I run my own business. So I had to kind of humble myself and say, Man, I need help. And so I went down the business coach route. And I'd be happy to talk about that too. But once I recognized I need help, I went out, was searching for coaches. I interviewed 3. Two of them were referrals from ECF members. So I would say one of them was just a general business coach that kind of lacked experience in actually growing a business. The other one was a referral from ECF and had experience in eCommerce, growing, building, selling a brand, but didn't really align with my personal values in that he's like, Hey, we're going to continue just We're going to continue growing this. We're going to grind and then we're going to sell it in a few years. Based off of everything I just told you, I was not in a place where that was appealing to me. The third was a referral from an ECF member who, not an eCommerce person, but someone who just aligned with my personal values, which was just hugely important to me. And I think the coolest thing that I realized throughout this process with this business coach was just that he was going to focus on my personal goals first. And then we were going to kind of figure out how my business and my business goals would help to contribute towards those personal goals. So that was a huge sigh of relief for me. And I think on the first call he was like, I know what you're going through. I've seen it before. You don't have to just get rid of your business. What if I told you that there's a way you can continue to grow your business without being a prisoner to your own business? And I was just It was a huge decision for me but it was a turning point and I needed it and it's been awesome. I'm still working with him three years later and it's been a ton of value for me personally and obviously for the business as well. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: I can imagine the number of people who relate to that listening is extremely high. I've been there in my own business as well. So what did you actually tactically do To change that, after you started working with that coach, what did you do differently? Was it caring less in the business? Was it getting people in place? Was it systemization? Was it focus? I'm guessing it's kind of a combination of a lot of those and other things, but what actually changed? Sam Huebner: Yeah, it was certainly a lot of those. I think one of the things that I really enjoyed in the onboarding process with this business coach was what he calls an alignment day. And it's literally 6 hours on the phone with him. And what I loved is he included my wife in this. He said, I think you really should include your wife in this process. Not because she's not super involved in the business anymore, but She understands my personal goals better than anyone and I want her to be a part of that because a lot of these are, you know, a lot of the things we discussed in the alignment day involve family and marriage and all these personal goals and we started it, like I said, we started with those and then from there we kind of built out business goals to say how do we establish clarity around your personal goals so we can get there quicker by building your business. So the alignment day was huge. From a tactical standpoint, for me, I think I mentioned earlier just being slow to hire and how I had seen in a lot of small businesses in my banking experience, how they hired too quickly. I think that scarred me a little bit. I had a little PTSD and I was so slow to hire people. I was so reluctant to... I was so scared of making a bad hire that I was just, I'm just gonna do it myself. I'm just gonna do it myself. So a big part of it was just trusting and understanding that there are people out there that not only can they do some of the stuff you're already doing, but they can do it better. And I think you make one or two of those hires and you quickly realize it's like a cheat code. It feels like a cheat code. And if you can do that at scale, then you've made it. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: I use that same coach that you did. I think you recommended it to me for a while and that alignment day was really cool for the reason you mentioned Annie came in on that. We talked about that. But the thing that I thought was awesome was it was almost like an honesty mirror as well a little bit like we'd be talking through stuff and talk about my goals and then we talk about her goals and also some things that she, there were things that I had not seen just having and I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with. With my wife, we talked about a lot of things. But yeah, it was having a long discussion with a third party about where you want to go as a couple. Also, how much you're working, how much you are living up to the priorities currently. That was one of the things too. I think he was like, hey, what's important in your life? And then I said, here's what's important. And he'd ask Annie, like, oh, so how much time is he spending towards these things every week? And you could see her like kind of squirm and comfortable in her chair. She's like, do I throw him under the bus? Unknown Speaker: What do I do here? Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: But it was good because it was a real kind of eye opener to be like, okay, if we really want to line up with these things, we got to make some changes here. And also, I tend to be a very Type A person, I know what I want to do. If there's problems in my life that are... If life is not going the way I want it to go, my first task is, okay, how do I rearrange the universe in our life so that this problem goes away or how we get how we want? Let's say I'm wired. And Annie is very much, she's like one of those incredible people on the Arctic journey I was talking about earlier, right? Like she's just like, this isn't that bad. We can deal with it. I think hers is like, she has much more stamina and grit than I do. And I'm more like, let's just change the environment. Both have their pros and cons. But it was great because it was that whole process as well kind of brought out some things for her where she's less likely to be assertive and say, this is what I want, this is what I want to do. And having that third party come in and assess those things and have those surface, It was really cool. It also made me realize I need to do that more in a relationship. Sam Huebner: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I laugh because I know the coach and I've worked with him. He has a way of calling out from an accountability standpoint. Just things that I say or do. I think the biggest thing now, because my relationship with him has evolved over time, there's a ton of super tactical value up front. And now, I think one of the biggest values that I'm getting out of my relationship with my business coach is the accountability. A lot of it has to do with all the things you just said. Because it's one thing to say, well, yeah, I value my family and spending time with my kids. But then I know Gary, the business coach, he would say, well, what did you do with your children last week? Or how are you focusing on spending time? Or one thing he challenged me, it's like one of the first family vacations I went on, he said, don't bring your laptop. I was like, really? I bring my laptop with me everywhere. It's not that big. I can carry it. It's not like, what's the big deal? He's like, no, don't bring your laptop. One of your personal values is to spend Uninterrupted time with your family, your laptop's going to interrupt that. So the accountability component for me at this point, it just brings a ton of value to personally and professionally. And I'm due for another alignment day with him here soon and I'm excited to go through that process again to see how things have evolved and see where we've done well, where we haven't done well and get my wife back involved in that process as well. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: One thing for coaching as well that wasn't unlocked for me was probably one of the most valuable things that came out of my coaching experience was the permission. There's some things in our brain that we're like, I shouldn't do this or this is out of reach or this is unreasonable. When we're going to the alignment day, one of my goals was to get into better shape. He's like, well, have you ever hired like a personal trainer? In my mind, I was like, this is like soup. Like, what, are you crazy? You pay someone like $50, $60 an hour per time to work with? Unknown Speaker: Like this is insane. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: No, that seems very bougie. I'm not going to go do that. And he challenged me. He's like, why not? Like this is one of your goals. This will help you a ton. Anyway, short story, I did it. It's a story from another day, but it was And I feel like that's one of the things that is really valuable too is that you have these things, like you said, that you don't think you can or should pay for or invest in or things that you're doing that you think are sacred cows and having a third party come in, challenge you on those I think is just awesome. Sam Huebner: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: So what is, you know, on the backside of this a couple years later, it's, you know, mid-late 2024. And I remember talking to you about that. I think it was Norfolk when that happened, right? I remember talking to you about that last night, talking to you in the suite. When you look at your day-to-day now and your responsibilities now, What are you differently focused on? Maybe two things. What are the fewer things that you're focused on now that you really try to do? And then what does a day look like now versus what it used to look like? Sam Huebner: I owe this to my business coach and I apologize for continuing to go back to that. But he's really challenging me and continues to challenge me. On being more strategic and in mindset and time, I wasn't able to do that because I was so bogged down. I just scope creep really was crushing me. So now I'm just much more strategic in mindset. I my typical workday, it's evolved. I'd say like one of the things when I was really burned out that was just really terrifying to me was that if I wanted to take time off, I couldn't. I didn't have the one thing I like. I wanted to work 20 hours a week. But I would like to think that if I wanted to, I could. I'm now at a place where I can work 20 hours in a week if I want. I don't always do that. But a typical day for me, I am super involved in my kids' lives, my family life at home. I wake up and help get them out the door for school. I take them to school occasionally. Once they're out, I start working at 8 o'clock. And most days, I'm done working at 3.30 when they get home. And it allows me to Spend time with them, helping them with homework and coaching them in activities or sports and taking them to practices and all that stuff. And that's been super important to me. And one of my personal goals in my alignment day was to spend more uninterrupted time with each of my children individually. I just wasn't able to do that before I made this shift in mindset and focus in my business. And so I've been super intentional about spending time individually with each of my four children. As you know, and you have kids, it's not easy to do, especially if you're not intentional about it. For me, one of the most difficult things... This summer was really difficult because my kids were home all day. One of the most difficult things for me is my son coming with his baseball glove to my office door and saying, Dad, can we play catch? If that doesn't just tug on your heartstrings, I don't know what will. It's one of those things I have such a hard time saying no because I know that someday he's going to stop asking me. But four years ago, if he would have come and asked me that, I would have been pulling my hair out in the middle of a meeting or putting out a fire somewhere. And now I'm just in a much better place where I can email Andrew and say, hey, can we punt our podcast interview because I'm going to go play catch with my son. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: You're the only guest that's rescheduled five times, which is a record. But I understand why, man. And I think I can respect it. Sam Huebner: I'm just in a better place. I'll just say I'm in a better place. And the flexibility, this is what I always wanted in running my own business. It took a long time to get here, but I feel like I'm there. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. I mean, you can just see when he comes to your door, Dad, can I play catch? You can hear the homework music start to play a little bit in the background. You can see yourself saying no and he walks away sad and grows into a college kid who's disconnected from his father. And that's where it all spiraled out of control, the dysfunction. Sam Huebner: Yeah. At that breakout session I led at ECF Live, somebody asked a really good question. Somebody asked, you're in your prime earning years. How do you feel about maybe sacrificing those prime earning years to spend more time with your family? Totally serious about the question. I didn't really know what to say. Steve Chu was co-hosting this breakout session. He had a great response because he said, first of all, We're all entrepreneurs. We make money. That's what we do. I don't think we are in our prime earning years. And I was just frozen because I was shocked that somebody would say that. I think the real answer, reflecting upon that, what I wish I would have said is, I don't know that these are my prime earning years. I do know that I have 18 years with my kids in my house. I also know that statistics have shown that 90% of the time you spend with your child occurs in that 18 years. And so for me, I'm just not willing to sacrifice that for maybe earning a little bit of money. And I would say even further, and my business coach has totally changed my mindset on this, They're not mutually exclusive. I think you can do both. I don't think you have to sacrifice making more money or building your business or growing your brand for spending time with your family. I can think you can do both. And it's taken a long time to get there and a lot of help. But I just think oftentimes we think that's one or the other, but it doesn't have to be and nor should it be. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Well, you say 90% of the time you spend with your kids is while they're in the house. I would argue 99% of the time you build rapport and depth of relationship and trust and connection with your kids is probably pre-15. Right. Those 15 years when they're in the house. I mean, you can flip that question around just as easily. These are the prime connection and relational depth period of your life. You're sure you want to trade those for money. Sam Huebner: That's a great way to flip that, yeah. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: So as a dad, you mentioned you got 4 kids, I got 3 kids. And even if you're just trying to spend like an hour regularly with each kid, and then have time for your connection with your wife as well, that's hard. It takes a lot of intentionality. And you got an extra kid than I do to do it with. On a higher level, what are you thinking about as a dad? I believe you got your three oldest are girls, right? And then you have a youngest boy, right? Sam Huebner: Yep. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Apart from just spending time with them, what are you trying to intentionally teach them as a parent? The values, the things that are important to you, maybe some of the hard things you're trying to make them do to set them up. What are some of the things you're trying to be really intentional about as a parent to make your kids ready for life and be great people? Sam Huebner: We've recently adopted the family meeting protocol. That's been really fun. My youngest is six and he's not so interested in it, but my oldest are getting it. I'm trying not to put my family through EOS and traction, but it's kind of flirting with that line of being full-on implementation of EOS. But together we built five core values for our family. And so one of them is along the lines of perseverance, which you kind of talked about in challenging our kids. And some specific ways we do that, I think I've told you, we moved out to the country a few years ago and it's been challenging for all of us for a lot of reasons. But one of our motivations for doing that was just we found that our life when we were living closer to town, there were just a lot of conveniences. A lot of things were simple because of just where you were located. Being out here in the middle of nowhere has forced us to remove some of those conveniences. So that's one thing. And core values like we try to instill. Faith is a huge part of our family. One of the things that has really helped us is we've gotten super involved at our church with the community at church. And I'm a big believer in this third place concept that you have home and you have work and then you need a third place for community. And we've been incredibly blessed by our community at church and getting involved there. I spent a lot of time I'm personally serving on the school board there, on the church board as well, and giving of our time. We try to get our kids involved in that, whether it's going and helping out at events at church or even just being present at some of these events at church. I think that's been really awesome. Yeah, we have 5 core values. One of our other ones that I think is really cool is to trust that God will provide. And I think that for me, at the professional level, has been super important for me personally. There's been so many times in business when things get really tough and frustrating and to be able to just fall back and just trust that He will provide and he already has in so many ways. That's something we really try to instill in our children and they have it pretty easy, I think. I hope that my kids are challenged a little bit more. Things are so easy for my kids that we have to seek out ways to challenge my kids and you might relate to that. We've been so blessed financially from a health standpoint. Things are on easy mode in a lot of ways for our kids, so just seeking out ways to challenge our kids too. Like I mentioned, moving out to the country was certainly one of the ways that we've done that. It's a lot of fun. I love, I love it. And you know, my wife is a great partner in all of this and she brings something completely different to the table. We have a super tight knit family. I mean, one of the things moving out to the country is like we, you have to spend time with your siblings. I'm sorry if you don't get along with your siblings today, but there's nobody nearby to save you unless you want to go talk to the, to the chickens. But it's really, our family's gotten really close over the last couple of years. And so it's been a lot of fun. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: You're giving me an idea here for a new business for kids of entrepreneurs who maybe, yeah, have more conveniences and need a little toughening up to send them up on an Arctic expedition with some chaperoneship for three months to toughen them up here. My next gig. What are your five, if you're willing to share, your five family values? I think those are cool. So you don't have to actually get into all the weeds on it, but just at a high level, what are they? Sam Huebner: One is servant leadership. So we challenge our kids to not only serve others, but to lead others to serve. One is trust that God will provide. One is to keep moving. So we tell our kids, when things get tough and even when they're not, we just got to keep moving. You just can't remain stagnant. And once you start sitting still and dwelling on things, it's when things get even more difficult. One is to give generously. And so not just financially, but to give of our time. We go over them every family meeting and so I really have no excuse for not knowing the fifth one because I quiz my kids on it. I scored 80% which is actually not as good as my kids would do. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: I won't be on the podcast. Yeah, don't worry. Sam Huebner: Perfect. I won't allow him to listen to it. But yeah, it's been good. It's kind of like in your business. When we have an issue with an employee or something in our business and we are able to come back on our core values, fall back on our core values, it really resonates with them. And so I think it's the same with our kids because there are so many learning opportunities when you can look back at your kid and say, Like for an example, like if a kid doesn't do well on a test or something is frustrated or something. That's happening at school. To fall back on like, hey, God will provide. He already has. This seems like a big deal, but it's not. In the grand scheme of things, there's one thing that's most important. It's already been taken care of. And so let's not dwell on this. And then we fall back on another core value. Let's keep moving. Let's keep moving. We have another test next week. Okay, let's try to figure out how we can do better on that. I love being able to fall back on the core values as a family and to have that level accountability with each other as well. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: We have four core values in our family and I don't know if the kids would. I call them core values, but it's things that Amy and I talk to them about all the time. And three of them I stole from my managing director at my investment bank. Actually, I remember he was at dinner at his house. It was kind, honest, hardworking. And I was like, those are three really good ones. And they don't encompass everything, but they encompass most of it. And then once we had kids, the fourth that we added was brave. Because I feel like, as I tell our kids often, you can't have a great life without some bravery. You can't do exceptional things, have a good life, meet interesting people. You have to be brave at different points. And anyway, we'll talk about those with the kids a lot. And one thing we try to do too is give awards to all the kids. And we try to not make them like cheesy, cliche awards. But when we really see one of the kids embody one of those things, we'll get everyone together. We'll tell them what we saw, what we appreciate. And then we'll all like Try to really cheer for them. Not like golf clap cheer, but like really just get after it and you can see them just light up and trying to like reinforce those values. So yeah, that's been a lot of fun to do. Sam Huebner: I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna steal that. That's awesome. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Sam, so there's a bunch of things we didn't even talk about. Give a shout out if you will, of course, ParkerBaby.com is your main site for where you can get really high quality, awesome, beautiful products for babies and young kids and toddlers. Talk about the other ventures that you have, both from just so people know what you're up to and also if people potentially are potential customers, could be a good fit, they know where to go check it out. Sam Huebner: Yeah, sure. So one of the things that we're excited about that I should have mentioned earlier, but we recently launched parkerkids.com and kind of a sub-brand under Parker Baby. As you can imagine, it's difficult when you have a short customer lifecycle with baby products. People don't have babies forever. In an attempt to extend our customer lifecycle, we'll be starting to offer kids products that I think are awesome. And it goes along the lines with our baby products and that these are products that are inspired by our own kids. Our kids use them on a daily basis. So really excited about that. And then, yeah, we briefly talked about Tall Slim, a company that we acquired several years ago. It's actually Tall Slim Tees. We're rebranding to Tall Slim here soon to be able to start offering more products in the apparel space, specifically focused on tall, slim men. And it's been a lot of fun. We, just like Parker Baby, we have an aggressive product launch pipeline over the next year. And so a ton of exciting products there. Learned a ton of lessons there about apparel development that's super unique and different than anything I've ever done. But both projects are super exciting and Parker Baby is certainly the big one and where we spend the most of our time. Yeah, I mean, check us out. Parker Baby, Parker Kids, tallslim.com. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Love it. And just a quick little question on Tall Slim. That was something I believe you were a customer of when the opportunity came to buy it. How has that acquisition been? You hear a lot of times people buy stuff and I mean, you're an M&A, you know, a lot of times like... Sometimes it works. Probably more often than not, it's more complicated than people think. Has that been a good acquisition for you? How's it gone? And then also, what's been the alpha, being in a niche where you know and understand it deeply? Sam Huebner: Overall, the acquisition has been great. It was an off-market deal. The owner had reached out to customers, seeing if there's any interest in acquiring the company. He was He's a serial entrepreneur. He was moving on to something else. He'd done that for a long time. And he and his sister were running it. And by that, I mean, he was running it. His sister was running the warehouse. And so we acquired the company. It was kind of too good of an opportunity to pass up on something that I was passionate about as a customer, which certainly helped and motivated me. Because there wasn't a broker involved, I think we got a pretty good deal on it. There was a lot of low-hanging fruit. I think he just limited manpower running the business by himself. And we were able to take our whole team and and very quickly just clean up a few things operationally and be more intentional about marketing and now finally implementing a product development design process that i think is pretty streamlined so. Overall, it's been really good. I think I definitely... And I think it's really common, just this shiny object syndrome of entrepreneurs where I do... There are days I wonder what it would be like if we focused all our time on Parker Baby and we didn't have this smaller brand taking up even if it's just 10% of our time. So I will say that's been difficult. And there are times when we're wondering, is this worth it? In terms of the niche question, I'd say the biggest reason we continue to run Tall Slim is that we're super excited about the niche. I think there's not a lot of competition in the Tall Slim apparel space. The market's bigger than you think. And for us, it's just completely different than baby products where you have a customer for maybe 3 years while they're having children. A tall guy is going to be tall forever. And so it just opens up from a marketing standpoint and a customer acquisition standpoint. It opens up a whole new breadth of opportunities and it's very different than baby products. And for me, I mean, we have a lot of women and moms on our staff. I am not super excited about baby products anymore. There was a time when I was. I am super excited about all the stuff we're doing on the tall, slim apparel side. I'm wearing one of the shirts now. I wear it every day and I have for several years even before we acquired the company. I'm passionate about the products and I recognized a need there a long time ago as somebody who's tall and slim and can't pull a shirt off the rack at Target and put it on without looking like I'm swimming in a box. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. It's a lot of opportunities still there. I'm excited about that. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Well, it's something to... I don't have quite the height you do, but on the tall-ish side, my brother's 6'5". I think he's a customer. I'm not positive, but I think he's a customer and has been for a long time. And there's something about... You put on a shirt and the dimensions don't even have to be that much off, like an inch or half an inch on the width or the length. It can make a huge difference. And so I think too, is you just feel good. Like I have shirts that are in my closet. I don't have that many, but the ones that fit great and you put them on, it's not just like, Hey, it fits. It's like the rest of your day is just a little bit better because you feel good because you don't look like a sail on a ship. Right. Yeah. It's a big deal. So I think it's super cool. You bought that and it's fun to hear how excited you're about it too. Sam Huebner: Yeah. Yeah. It was a great point. I, I, my biggest thing has always been, I don't want to spend money on a shirt that doesn't fit me well. I don't want to spend money on a shirt that's going to sit in my closet because I don't like the way it looks. If I'm going to spend money, I want to buy stuff that I like, that fits me well and that I'll actually wear. So yeah, there's people out there like you and me and your brother and it's been a lot of fun connecting with those guys. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Yeah. Parker Kids, Parker Baby and Tall Slim Tees. Make sure to check them out. As we wrap up here, man, I just want to let you know, I've always admired how you get after it in business, but you're also so intentional about your family, about your About your faith, about doing both of those things well. I think that's, it's so cool and just, yeah, I really admire your values, your priorities, the way you're putting your time. And also having you in ECF, man, it's been such a pleasure to have you in the forums, at the events. Again, like you mentioned, I remember talking to you up at the end of the conference in Norfolk and when you were going through some stuff and with the business sale. And yeah, man, always love having you at events to get the time to spend together. So thanks for being a part of this and thanks for setting such an awesome example for Thanks for, yeah, building something amazing while not forgetting what's important. Sam Huebner: Yeah, I appreciate it, Andrew. I appreciate the opportunity and just unsolicited, I'll just say eCommerce Fuel has just totally changed the trajectory of my own business and so I really appreciate everything you've built at ECF and just thankful to be a part of it and the relationships I've made through ECF have just been amazing. So, Andrew, appreciate all that you're doing and thanks for having me on. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: That's going to do it for this week. A big thank you to One Click Upsell who offers incredible upsell software to get more from every single customer and increase your average order value on your site. To make more money from the customers you already have, check them out at eCommerceFuel.com forward slash upsell. And if you own a seven or eight figure store, you really should be a part of our private community and forums here at eCommerce Fuel where you can connect with over 1,200 store owners just like you. We're so confident it'll be a game changer that we offer a 10X ROI guarantee. If you don't see 10X your membership value in the first year, we'll refund you 100% of your membership fees plus toss in an extra $1,000 for the hassle. So you can learn more and apply at eCommerceFuel.com. Unknown Speaker: Thanks so much for listening. Andrew Youderian | e-Commerce Entrepreneur: Work hard, adventure often, and look forward to seeing you again next Friday.