0:00 so those aren't friends of yours right not friends okay cuz I was like this looks so fuing close dog they copy my copy they copy my slogans the copy the way I everything at first glance you think it's another one of Jeremy's videos put them on blast what are their names say are you talking about lunar [Music] Hearts what we were discussing is that Jeremy mentioned he's feeling burnout in his company entrepreneurs have to do but like you've been doing it so long and you've been doing so much what could possibly push you to that burnout now um um um with in terms of burnout I would say that it was like just like this is this is my first company that I've uh built on my own with like co-founders that are like my friends you know what I'm saying so first one damn
0:51 dude you guys were far yeah well technically what I realized is like my quote unquote fail was what's that what happened you'll see when you watch it oh I'd say my failures were in the music industry cuz each artist was like a startup so like I but it was it wasn't me at the driver's seat so I'd say burnout comes from just like building things inefficiently like not letting like not knowing when to let things go when to hire people hiring the wrong people and that's kind of been a lot of hiccups but additionally there's so many I picked consumer product goods on Prestige Mode like the hardest version of it like I I had no idea that was just me being naive and I think me being naive also was an advantage because then I was able to like I was I was blind to certain things I was breaking the rules in which other people weren't but at the same time I also didn't understand the
1:41 rules and because of that like like let me describe it this way if you want to sell this little fidget toy we're shipping it from this warehouse and we're Global overnight this I have to go through multiple middlemen in every single state I have to do the process over and over and over again and literally distributors you live and die by them if they don't want to deler deliver to the store or if they don't want to pay attention to your brand you're just screwed so it's just and there's like only a couple in every single state so it's like that's why they all get Kickbacks that's why there's all these corruption that's all I mean they're the it was built off you got to suck them so hard yes and they're used to getting their balls drained and he's not very good at sucking I'm greated sucking at this point don't lie is that is that your goal then to get it to a point or you can sell it to a major distributor yeah
2:32 well so so Distributors can't necessarily buy Brands you'd have to sell it to like a like another brand like a bicardi or something yeah yeah like a bicardi a diio diio does cigos 1942 when you really look at like it's like uh when you really look at the landscape distribution and kind of like the alcohol industry there's just like three or four major major players that run the industry so at first I was like you know I had like billion dollar company and then I really got into it and understood it understood it and I was like I just want to get one win under my belt want to make sure that the investors that came in like my friends and family people that have done that they get something in return I don't care I if I walk away with something I'll be happy but um other than that I'm also like I've realized what I'm passionate about is community building and marketing I don't care about the drink industry so that's where again
3:23 that's the four-year part where I'm like I don't care about Distributors and retail stores and this the circle jerk of like what you have to do to get your brand on the Shelf so that's kind of been a struggle how do you uh what part of the community building and marketing do you like I led the content in the beginning it was just cool to see when things would react and then people would like you know you're you're driving them to stores and products and they're helping you build the brand but then and then also I just kind of liked like you know just the people that that I would meet along the way like this whole podcast came from the drink like the the the UTI podcast originally was a drinking show I don't know if he ever yeah yeah yeah it was a drinking show and then our Li yeah the liver our livers were just literally dying cuz it was first YouTube and then it started into like podcast and adding more people and guests and and then when we were
4:13 like okay let's try he was like we should try a guest format or sorry like a host format and then that that took off and we were like okay this is probably more sustainable for our bodies um but less for the brand but more for our our health yeah so I think that every the thing that I enjoy most is all the people that I've got to meet along the way I'm sitting I mean genuinely I was watched your guys' stuff constantly so it's kind of crazy that now I'm on the JK films podcast that's awesome thank you dude you should be proud of yourself man not everyone hits a eight fig like sales Mark no one does yeah like on their first run but you know what's crazy everyone's like oh like where's your Lambo it's like everything is back in the bit this thing is so like that's well we know I mean come on dude no one really exits with a substantial amount that's their resum and then you keep going and then you'll have other guys funding you based on
5:04 that and and here's the other thing so my friend who sells supplements Santa Cruz medicinals the guy's telling you about electrolytes or or or also like a like his hangover Supplement Super bonai the margins are so much crazier it's like you can be profitable from day one if you build it smart I didn't we were selling out these stores and we were negative money that's how bad our margin like obviously we've greatly improved but I'm like that was stupid you know so it's like a lot of those things I would never I would never build a business that depends on anybody telling me what to do from here on out so I mean unless you went through it though you just don't know 100% 100% I don't know any entrepreneur that actually like made any moves that didn't get burned out like every single person that's trying to start a business for work life balance they're ████ dumb like it never goes anywhere everyone that goes in with this
5:54 part-time mentality it never goes anywhere ever I don't know anyone that's ever made successful doing a half ass job well I want to ask you guys you guys did so many business at once like it was and made hella mistakes bro yeah yeah yeah but I'm saying at one point where you like like like let's try to like cut something out it was always content gy the matcha company like did you just drop your your brand as well yeah feels really nice actually I also closed my my bartending brand my bar tool brand so not content our chemistry is still going and everything you know what's crazy like I feel like when you are entrepreneurial and then you are kind of like a Workhorse you get guilty for not pushing hard right so everyone I that I've known later on like people know they're burnt out but they'll just keep
6:46 going for the sake of going because they're guilt driven exactly when I dropped that video I got at least 20 other people in the fitness and other entrepreneurial places telling me I'm shutting down next year dude that's TI I'm definitely going to do that that's awesome their families are like no you caused the fitness blackout there's a lot of people that wait but I want to know how many like like what was your thought proc how many years was it that was like five five years or six year seven years of building that to for you to finally be like all right I'm shutting it down what were the markers we built it for this is our 11th year oh wow so we started in 2013 and then um when I was when we were building it JK was also at its Max Capac capacity we're doing like four channels so that's probably I I would say probably 20 between 2014 and 201 like 17ish was
7:37 probably like the most burnout I've ever felt really yeah it was like it was Hardcore it was like I wake up at 6:00 drive to the gym we go to our LA office I do whatever stuff that I have to do I don't get home until maybe 11 or 12 rinse and repeat 7 days a week cuz we're also filming on Saturdays we would have new content Channel ideas never say no we just yes yes yes yes yes that was like from 2014 to 19th yeah we just keep packing on my schedule and I counted one one time uh I think me personally I was in 300 videos a month across the board like Vlogs JK news bargate as the fields JK films I was like holy ████ where am I ever going to live for myself and and I I didn't really uh get a chance to so wait when did you when did you have the kid in 2017 so it was getting to that point was when my wife was like hey you need to slow down or else we're not going to
8:27 have any family time so we started to slowly like like my wife left uh JK news and we slowly started to peel away and shut things down but the crazy part is after we shut down about half of the things we did I still had a full-time job and so I would look back and go holy ████ the amount of ████ that I was doing is ████ it was ████ insane do you ever think that if you like focused on one thing harder that it would have so now that's what I learned I learned it's like qu quality over quantity and then Mastery over novelty cuz before it would be like what's fun 20 things are fun fun fun fun fun fun fun funck that's ADHD and you suck at everything right cuz everything's novelty based but it's fun fun fun fun fun fun fun versus ████
9:17 here's one thing I'm going to be Japanese about it and I make dumplings for the rest of my life you know and you get ████ good at that one thing I also think you have a little Amnesia because the reason why we did that is because none of it was making enough money so that's why we had to do all those things for different streams of income but then it got to the point where we weren't letting go but also we it wasn't making enough money but instead of going like how do we make this make money we go let's sell this to pay for this and then sell this to pay for this that's how you get stucked into that first is let's let's make this or just let's just let this go cuz it's not making any ████ money and then move on to the next project yep y exactly try something else that like now you learned wait so so what's the oh sorry what's the what's the the big Focus now like what do you care about most right now so
10:07 now it's like really focusing on the family time aspect of things cuz like you only have your kid for a short amount of time before they hate your guts like they're in junior high so now I'm really trying to have enough time where like we can spend all the time that we have like both as me and my wife as a couple and then also our family Dynamic and then also being able to share that with our extended family like cousins uncles and aunts and stuff so being way more available like before I would see my mom maybe like once every 2 years you know like I I don't even have time like we would I'm like that right now yeah we would shoot just through birthdays birthdays like what's a birthday like no one celebrated birthdays like birthday is just another workday Thanksgiving is another workday oh you know what Thanksgiving what we should do we should make it a potluck and then we Vlog it like everything was another theme for another theme for another kill me man yeah yeah yeah it was like everything was like that oh Christmas oh why don't we do white elephant so we can Vlog it and do on JK party it was like everything was another
10:58 thing so it never never slowed down for like that's a great idea we should stops our families we should Vlog all the holidays D but then you're so used to it that your tolerance does get higher so you don't know your how burnt out you really are and it was fun and it was fun too so it it wasn't it was hard to see the burnout yeah until you take a minute to go oh ████ yeah man I feel it Full Throttle though yeah were your friends not annoyed that you guys were vlogging everything and everyone was benefiting cuz they were doing it too everyone was doing it yeah my friends like don't like it cuz I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel but it's sometimes like if I go on a trip with them I'm like I'm going to Vlog this they're like she's doing she's doing it again but I think all our whole community did it and we all saw the benefits from it everyone was getting paid people be like hey Samsung
11:49 just hit me up to ████ shoot this Vlog and they're going to give me 20 G's so everyone's like let's ████ Vlog everything old baby shower he's having a baby you know it's like let's just monetize everything he's having a baby like monetize everything so it was like there's for sure the benefits and there's for sure the incentives to keep going but then it's not until later where you realize oh ████ like Financial Health is one slice of Health mental health you know spiritual health like all you're like you got to kind of create this balance and and they're not all friends anymore can we are we allowed to talk about that or should we save it for our episode tomorrow yeah we weren't even business it until we it was 2019 is until it 2026 I think really 26 really you guys were business M till then I I would say the reason why that
12:41 that we probably worked the way that we did is because it was to sustain a lifestyle and we wanted to create content so everything was like he's he said it was like he he puts it as we were poning our our other business with another business so we would find all these other ways of Mak Revenue instead of just focusing on let's say maybe we wanted to make a film and just focusing on that everything was let's build this channel cuz then we need to ████ fund this Channel and then well we want to take a company trip so we need to do this and then so everything was just based on lifestyle and how do we fund the lifestyle and how do we fund certain content that like blows money but it just makes us happy like we at toward the end like we were like we made a joke about doing a show at the Trump Tower and we ████
13:32 blew like 20K like and then because we were in that mentality still and you can't even see it's the TR can't even see it we could have done it at the circus circus but just just for a couple of episodes and we went back and we were like this is the stupidest ████ business model in the whole entire world and he started cleaning up barbell we started cleaning up other stuff and we're like okay I kind of like business cuz then we don't have to work so hard and we could balance our funds better but the same mistake twice the whole Ponzi schem thing with like cuz with barbell same thing gym oh no you set up the apparel to pay for the gym oh no apparel is ████ hard because people buy a t-shirt they wear it for 6 months oh supplements they'll buy it every 30 days oh no there ████ supply chain issues oh Jim's doing really good it's pay for over here you know so it's like so now what I learned being able to step back is just try to focus on one thing and get really good at the one thing but
14:23 how do you guys not like in that process of you know all the followers and your network nobody was busy business minded that said hey guys let me come in and like help you guys no I think we're all so stubborn too to be honest so I think it'll be like if someone did hey I could be your Bishop's person whatever oh you ████ gay you're whack I'm not going to listen to your ████ ████ square ass ████ look at this look at this ████ in a suit trying to tell me what to do you don't know ████ you know it's it's hard but you had no close friends that were like uh do you guys know like Andy NN yeah like that guy's like an entrepreneur legend in the Asian Community like you you wouldn't take tips from someone like him he's cool we didn't know him back then oh got it are you currently at a place where you think you might make a pretty big move with nectar yes because of your burnout no well well not not like me like leaving or anything like that I'm I'm stuck I'm
15:14 stuck to this thing so I just had to suffer but um but we are in a place where we're we're raising money right now so that will allow me I'm like focused on how do I bring in the right people to take things off my plate so that I can focus on what I enjoy and we have a very clear blueprint of how we get this thing to 10 million in Revenue by the end of next year awes and then at that point you can start to really at that point it's like you've proven it out and then you can either scale and then sell at that point or there's people that'll come knocking what's your favorite part of the business um I'd say marketing so if you if you could you would hire out all positions but then you would hold on to the marketing part or just or just like the overall like brand Vision like like just coming up with like Market ideas or kind of like where you take the brand things like that so ideas strategy I don't like
16:05 the execution anymore like I'm literally like no yeah right now right now if I don't press send on an email a text or a social media post or I'm not com like I'm writing all the copy like or I'm like figuring out how to make our instacart page like I have to do it all and I'm just like that was my poor that was on me for not building it properly and uh no one does though yeah I mean unless you already walking in as an employee it's not a it's never it's never a well oil oil machine like I don't know anybody that has a company that's like has every single Personnel perfect yeah that's true what do you think of uh I feel like I don't know if this is like a sensitive question recently I started seeing things pop up that looked almost dead on like it was you and it wasn't you oh yeah they're cop and I felt really ████ weird about it do they try to look like him
16:55 too no They're copying his whole marketing exact is thing yeah yeah yeah they they even look like they look like that like the even the angle of the table at they they copy everything I so every Asian every Asian alcohol company and every alcohol company is copying my exact blueprint wow yeah yeah but what they don't but I know a lot of things that they don't of where they're at now if they're copying me they don't know how it ends in in what but I know oh you're going to get them well no I just know that I just know that there's a lot more you have to do that they're not doing that they're not aware of cuz they're getting whatever the quick views they don't know like the I can't really say much cuz I'm going to let them so those aren't friends of yours right not friends okay cuz I was like this looks so ████ close they copy my copy they copy my slogans they copy the way I everything but you know they look like
17:45 you know in Fast and Furious when they go up against a team that looks just like them it looks like that it looks like them like it's a ████ they they cast some people that look like it's like it's like the t-u version Oh my god there was another asan drink company that started a podcast too like shortly after like the four like we were like taken off and it was just funny watching like what they were trying to talk about and it was like going from like vit having like a mental breakdown live on camera to like so at JP Morgan like uh this one time lunch was really bad and then like was like watching him talk about that just putting him out exactly I don't give a ████ pull up what's up did they have did they have a a girl a tattooed guy all that like basically that's hilarious yeah you you could you could just tell it's really Shameless bro yeah yeah it's so weird
18:35 and it's can't replicate me and me can't you can't no but it was kind of annoying cuz people would like let's just say they go live like people would be like wow like or we go live they'll be like you guys are copying them like oh no like what and they'll be like where's this person I'm like they're not even a part of us like it they just think you guys are the same group yeah racist first glance you think it's another one of videos because even it opens up with the same like improvisational like casual no ████ way dude dud I I I I see them all because people send them to me and I just put them on blast what are their names find them say all say it if you just Google Asian hard celer they all come up and it's just even the bra is it over the influence yeah above the influence yeah what you they're ████ whack yeah it's super it's super corny
19:26 it's Super Why the Asians got a copy like why can't they just make ████ original what the ████ that's what Asians are hella good at China and Japan I feel like they're not good at like coming up with the idea but they're good at making it better than you but those guys are from here are you talking about lunar hard Seltzer they're Asian-American lunar n they're they're one they don't copy as much anymore there's some others out there that they don't copy as much that's so funny I like honestly nectar's all over this ████ that's tight well they're not they're they're also not all hard seltzers I'll put it up there there other there other categories what kind of drink is it people will find it people will find it I hate biters man if you know I hate I hate biters but it's like you you can't do nothing about it it happen I'm sure dancers groups coping you guys like everything like yeah it just means you did something right you have the model dude yeah but it is but
20:17 where it does get annoying is when it starts to affect business like some other distributor will be like oh well they like they will carry their their brand over mine and I'm like all right now you're stepping into my business and I I let you do your but now you're trying to step into my bu and that's going to create problem so then I understand why Jeff Bezos is a Cutthroat ████ yeah you have to be yeah so burnout yeah um it happens dude hey you never know what you're made of until you hit the burnout well I'm curious for for you guys the rest of you at the table like what are like some big burnout moments in episode three go ahead Joe episode three and find out in episode three we talk about burn out some more
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