0:00 [Music] Welcome back everybody to an episode of the careful boys where we have a social media star really good-looking tall Asian guy as well financial guru man success damn rich and handsome Mr. Steve Chen in the building everybody come on welcome Mr. Thanks for having me. He's fit, too. He's Taiwanese specifically. No China jokes, Joe. Yeah. Yeah. Chill out with that, dude. I wasn't going to make any China jokes to hurt your homeland and your CCP pride, but then I'll do it anyway. All right. Okay. Good start. So, Steve, hey, thank you for coming out onto this channel. Again, we preempted you right before we started rolling, but like this is usually where um you know, people come to to die with their
0:55 coming here, right? Why do you start it off like that? Not you, Steve. Not you. Not you. Okay. After Tulsi came, she became director of national intelligence. Yeah. People Oh, that's true. That's true. That's Yeah. So, this is either their springboard. We launch people. That elephant's graveyard. Your springboard to even more. We launch people and then they never come back. But uh so Steve, like you do a bunch of I was actually talking to my cousin yesterday and I was like, "Hey, do you know this guy?" He's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I follow him." And he's like, "Yeah, he does uh a lot of like uh really easy to digest financial advice and content for like the generic people that like really are kind of naive and don't know a lot." Oh, you almost said dumbass financial IQ. So Joe likes to sabotage everything that we do on this channel. Uh and it's his channel. That's that's the ironic part. He sabotages,
1:46 not me. How did that How did that start? Oh, you sabotaged it in a different way. Still going. Um I I saw one of your clips talking about how you were a public school teacher that turned into a millionaire self a millionaire stuff. I' love to hear that transition, that story, like how this whole thing came to be for you. There's another person that was a teacher that became a multi-billionaire and his name is Epstein. That's true. Yeah, he's not wrong. But let's let's hear the Taiwanese version of it, please. Uh yeah, so I used to be a teacher. I taught in um I teaching or I used to teach in California and just growing up I was raised by uh immigrant Taiwanese mom and dad. They came here back in their 80s, you know, when can we get specific high like high school teacher? Yeah. I don't want to say. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, what about
2:36 what about subject? Like what subject? Sure. I taught math. Yeah. So, I taught middle school math. I taught primarily sixth, seven, and eighth grade. So, what is that? Like algebra, geometry, pre-alggebra type. A little bit of algebra, a little bit of geometry. Uh mostly a lot of uh pre-alggebra too. Yeah. So, pre-alggebra algebra. So, I taught for seven, eight years. Wow. In the public school system. Uh I taught for That must have been nightmare. Uh yeah. I mean, yeah, there's interesting stories of course. Uh, I taught SAT math, too. Wow. Uh, I did a lot of like tutoring after school and everything. So, I did like a lot of that for 17 years. Man, you could have saved me. Yeah, for real. Dang. You're the just a lot of teaching. Yeah, for sure. And I think just growing up, uh, my parents raised me. You know, we have like a lot of Asian parents. They were very frugal. Um my
3:27 mom and dad came here I think back in like ' 85 and they didn't really have much. So when they came here they just yeah they just didn't speak the language speak English or anything like that. My dad went to school. My mom was the one who worked all the time. She worked at uh where did she work at? Like a lot of restaurants. She was a waitress. She was a maid. She used to clean other people's houses. So when I was like five or six years old, I used to go with her after school from home to home and I would sit down in all these rich people's homes like just watching my mom work and she'd be like vacuuming, cooking food, you know, um folding their laundry and everything. I'd be sitting in the living room just doing my homework or like drawing or something like that. Wow. How were you so well behaved at that age? Uh I don't know. I just I just Yeah, I was like pretty introverted all my life. I'm so right now and yeah, I just uh just
4:20 saw my mom just work really hard. Uh something that I always tell a lot of my audience is like um my mom, she she's kind of like my hero, right? So, she was kind of like my role model growing up. So, every day she would work, we would uh you know, she'd be kind of like stressed out, super tired. It' be like 7 8 9:00 p.m. night time. We go back to the car and I remember my mom would just like just start crying sometimes. Damn. Yeah. So, she'd be like very just stressed out and she'd be like she wouldn't even drive. She'd just like sit there and I'd be like in the passenger seat and she would look at me and be like, "Oh, uh, so my name's my full name is Steven, right?" So, she'd be like, "Oh, so that's translated. It's uh, don't use your hands, use your head." But it rhymed though, so it was bars. Bars.
5:10 So, I that that stuck with me and I was like, "Oh, man." And like I she told me that she doesn't want me to kind of follow this path of her, you know, workings with her, you know, doing a lot of manual labor. So my mom and dad, they taught me growing up like you got to be super frugal. Uh you got to work really hard, you got to go to school, get your get good grades and everything. So I did that. I mean, I feel like a lot of our Asian parents taught us that same thing. Uh so I did the same thing. I got pretty good grades, went to school, got my uh took, you know, took my SATs, got my bachelor's degree, uh teaching credentials, master's degree in education. Where did you get your bachelor's in? Uh it was actually in science. In science? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, science and then I got my master's in education uh towards math. Cool. When you said that your uh your
6:01 dad was in school, what was he studying? He studied a couple different things. He studied accounting and computer science. So he was like going to university or something. I see. And then like did he end up doing any of those things like accounting or whatever? Yeah, he he's he's an accountant right now. He's a controller. Well, that's cool. Like she she was like doing the the whole hustle. It's like all right, team work, you know? Like I'll do the like I'll get I'll pay the bills and then like you're going to do the longterm. That that was their teamwork, right? Oh, wow. Dang. I would, you know, get the money first while my dad goes to school and then it would kind of shift over. Yeah, my parents tried that, but then um it didn't really work out. My dad ended up just running. But like that's tight though. So Joe's wondering if your dad ever ran
6:52 he did obviously [Music] because their plan worked out. That's good. How did you So how did you go from teaching to cuz usually teaching you stay like poor. How did you go about teaching and then bam millionaire? Like what was the journey there? That's true. So, uh when I first started teaching, I think I got paid around 50 52,000 a year, something like that. Uh be before tax. All right. And um I remember like, wow, when I first got my paycheck, I was like, oh, like I'm not actually getting that paid that much cuz after taxes and everything just cut off. I'm like, oh, I just I'm left with a couple thousand dollars. I'm living in California. And living in California, taxes, just living expenses is super high. So I came to this sudden like realization that yeah, there's no way I can live and retire
7:45 comfort. I punch it in numbers myself. I'm a math teacher, right? I'm a numbers guy. And I was like, oh, even if I save, I live very frugally until I'm like 60, 65 years old. There is absolutely no way. No way. What you call it? Uh tenure or seniority and all the union stuff. It's you still wouldn't make the enough I wouldn't well uh they do give us a raise every year so they uh we know we're after two years for the public school education system after two years of teaching then you're off probation then you're tenured you know yeah but then we get like um I want to say around a two to 5% increase on a annual basis something like that it depends on each year yeah for sure but that's just barely keeping off keeping up with inflation yeah Yeah. Yeah. So that that was pretty tough. But you know like
8:35 throughout my entire college years I was going to school and um you know like I saw my mom she went from being a waitress being a maid and then she started to uh start her own business with uh her restaurant business. So before she opened up her restaurant uh back in high school she would cook at home. So that's how the business started. Uh so she would make a lot of you know pentang like the uh what is it called the like bento boxes. Yeah that's right. So she would cook a lot of these bento boxes for other families and then uh a lot of people loved her cooking so word of mouth spread and she started cooking a whole bunch of uh food for all these different families every night. So I remember coming home every day as a high school kid, middle school kid. I
9:25 just see all these like bento boxes just like everywhere on the dining room table. All these stacks of bento boxes that she gets from, you know, her suppliers and everything. And then her and my dad would just be cooking away like just sweating and cooking. And I'd be like, "Oh my gosh." And you just see them stressed out, right, as there's more customers. And she they are they're Asian. So like whatever customers come their way, they have a hard time saying no. So they're just like, "Yeah, I'm going to cook for you. I'm going to cook for you." And I just remember like the house just smelling like like kungchai uh what is that called? Like anchoy or Oh yeah. hollow vegetable. Yeah. Yeah. Just a whole bunch of like bok choy like eggs and shrimp and everything. That's just what our house smelled like. So they they'd be doing that and after they would be done, my dad would then pack up all the bento boxes and then he would go
10:15 uh deliver them to family's homes or they would come over and then pick it up. Uh but then afterwards that's when we had our meal and we would then start to eat. Yeah. So that was kind of like the journey. Um but then you know just like seeing my parents go through all of that. Um I felt like I don't know. I think growing up I felt it would be a disservice of me if I didn't work hard myself be because I would see my mom every day. She would go uh she would wake up at like 5:00 a.m. 4:00 a.m. sometimes to pass out flyers and she would go to neighborhood to neighborhood to pass out flyers into like put in people's cars uh in front of people's like doorways and everything with the menu and everything. Uh sometimes she would tell me that just for at home cooking. Just for at home cooking. She was trying to do her own Yelp stuff. So we didn't have like social media back then, so she didn't
11:05 know how to advertise, so that was a way that she could get her leads. Yeah, it was it was it was pretty intense. And she would tell me that there would be times where neighbors would come out and just like start yelling at her like, "What are you doing on my doorstep?" And everything. She about this Chinese ████ It's It was It was scary. Yeah. And then she's like this little tiny little Asian lady just like trying to do her thing. And I don't know. It's just it was just really tough for her. But I mean, I think just observing my mom uh like this, my dad just working very hard when uh just when I grow up, I felt like I needed to do the same thing to put in the same work ethic. Do you have brothers and sisters? I have a little brother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, cuz I felt like I saw my parents work hard, too, but it didn't register in my brain that I needed to be grateful. You guys have this podcast where you have this podcast and you're I mean, I
11:56 remember you had your uh clothing brand and everything and like the work ethic I think uh ended up like rubbing off. Yeah. But as a kid, I never remember going like, "Oh, this is what my this is the life my parents are trying to set me up for. I should be like grateful and I should do well in school." I didn't I didn't it just I didn't see. And I'm now thinking back I'm like, "Oh ████ there's hell of times where my mom had like to work overtime cuz she wouldn't she would usually come home between 5:00 and 6:00, but then there was nights she's like I'm going to come home at 9:00 just have to work overtime for like the extra hours." And I'm like, "Oh, that just means more TV time for me." And I'm not thinking like, "Oh man, she works so hard. Maybe I should like run a hot bath for her." Or, you know, like I just never thought like that. Yeah. What made you like like what? Yeah. How old were you when you had
12:46 these like deep ass? I would just be like, "Man, you guys like to work too much. I'm out here with my GI Joes and s███." Like, I think it might be a IQ disparity. You guys need to chill out for a little bit. So much. I think it's down to IQ. I'm not like smart or anything. I mean, I I I back when I was in middle school, I saw my parents do all this. I of course I didn't I was like, "Oh my gosh, you guys are working so hard and I got to do this, too." I was playing like Starcraft and Diablo II and just clicking away in my room and everything, right? So, I think it's just when it came to when I was in college and I had to I got my first couple of jobs. I worked at like American Eagle, GNC, just a couple different places. Back then it was like what? $6.25 minimum wage. So getting that $6.25 and
13:38 then after taxes it's like four bucks something five bucks something. I'm like oh my gosh I'm spending an hour and have to like drive all the way there. I worked at Point Hills. I worked at American Eagle there. It's gone now. But RIP that whole mall's kind of gone. That's why I touched movies for the first time. Oh, cool. At American Eagle. No, no, we're watching. We're around the corner. We're watching them. So, so let's take it back. So, you're you're a numbers guy. You do math. You look at your 50 to 52K salary a year. Like, what sparked the the change? Cuz you still said you were working for like six to seven years or something like that as a teacher. That's right. So, what was the transition? What was either the the catalyst to being like, I'm going to do something different? Yeah. So, yeah, that's a good question. I think when I first started teaching at
14:28 American Eagle or I'm sorry, working at American Eagle and uh GNC and all these little different places, uh I was working at this art school one day and then I was a receptionist and a parent came over and it was asking me about like, "Oh, where do you go to school? What are you studying?" And I was like just a college kid. And then she's like, "Oh, uh my I have a I have three sons. Like, can you maybe tutor them in math and science?" I was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm a science major. I love math. So then I started tutoring and that was like my first client. And when I tutor I was like, "Oh man, like instead of making $6.25 an hour, I was making like 15 an hour." Sick. And I was like, "Oh, it's double." And I get to choose my times. And then it's like like it's just very flexible. I'm like, "Oh, this is actually kind of nice to just do my own thing rather than just being on a schedule that I have to, you know, whatever American what my American Eagle
15:18 manager had to like, you know, set me up for. So I think I went down this whole tutoring route. So I tutored the kids and then the parents were like, "Oh, like can I refer you to my friends and my other friends and family members?" So it just became this whole thing. I told all my other friends and family members about my whole tutoring service. And it just became like one student became two, then four, then eight, then you know like 12, 16, so on and so forth. I got to a point where I had too many students and I was like, "Okay, like I can't take anymore. I need to I need to do something. I got to like find more time or I got to increase my price. So then I was really scared at that time. I think I was like 20 something years old and I'm like okay I have to like tell the parents that I am charging more. It just felt kind of awkward for me. It was scary. It was really scary. So I was like okay what if I charge 25 you know
16:10 $10 more and all the parents were like yeah sure why not cuz it's nothing to pick up. She said 30. I know. And then I was like, okay. So, I just kind of tested a little bit and then just over time it became like $35 an hour and then60 and then 70 and then $80 an hour. 80 hours. I learned that um I learned a lot through my whole entrepreneurship, you know, through tutoring that, you know, it's like who do you choose as clients, right? Who are the best type of clients that you really want to work with? Um, I learned that working with people who want to haggle with you all the time. They're like, "Oh, how about $10, $15 an hour?" I'm like, "Oh, but I'm charging 60, 70, $80 an hour right now." And even when I say yes to that, I find that there's always problems with the parents. It's just like, you know,
17:02 just being transparent, like they're always calling me, texting me, like, "Oh, what's my son doing?" However, with my uh more higher paying clients, like 6070 70 $80 an hour, they're more respectful of my time. They're like, "Oh, you know, I canceled on you today. I just told you an hour ago. It's okay. I'm still going to pay you for your time." Uh cuz we understand we're entrepreneurs ourselves. So, I'm like, "Oh, I really appreciate you guys being very respectful and understanding that way." So, I learned to focus more on, you know, like, "Okay, what kind of clientele am I uh trying to attract?" And also making sure that now I have all these students, I have to make sure that I provide really good value and make sure that their test scores and their homework scores go up. Yeah. So during that whole time when you're raising your price, you're also seeing and showing a lot of success through these students, right? The these kids are like doing great and all their Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
17:53 Definitely. I always have a meeting uh before I take them on cuz I am a little bit I was very selective with who I chose. I don't just choose anyone. I'm like, "Okay, uh, parents and the and the kids have to like we have to meet at Starbucks or, you know, maybe at my house or whatever it is." And then I get a good sense of how the kid is. Uh, if I see that, um, you know, they're they can't really pay attention. They're kind of like fidgeting around and they're just they're kind of rude to their mom and they just kind of back talk, I'm like, "Okay, I don't want to." That's not a tutor problem. So, I'm like, "Okay, it's okay." But then that's a B problem. How would you tell them? How would you turn them down? How do you turn them away easy? True. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. How do you I would say it's 300 an hour. Oh, my rate just went up. You're just too smart for me. I would be I wouldn't tell them right away. I would just say, "Okay, let me
18:44 think about it. Let me look at my schedule and I'll let you know." And I would just kind of and then leave town. I moved. I would be like, "This ain't going to work out. You can't have two ADHD ████ in this room. I got to be the only one." Yeah, I was counting on your son to keep me in check. This one was going to be the chill one. So, the word was spreading around communities that like, hey, this guy tutored our kid and like helped them and like that family's friends, family, it would just go like that, huh? Yeah, that's right. Cuz that was huge back in the day. Word spread really fast. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then um you know even before like I was trying to I I kind of dialed the knob down when I was uh or dial the knob down when I was tutoring when I was going to when I was getting my master's degree and my teaching credentials. I was in this
19:34 program where I had to get both at the same time. And I also had to go to school uh like go to night classes, take online classes and go to a school in Anaheim to do my master uh student teaching. So, I would have to shadow a a teacher, a master teacher, and then, you know, do all that. So, I was like, "Okay, I don't have enough time in the day to like tutor as much." But then once I got my public school teaching job, I was like, "Okay, I got to start balancing things out." Um, and then that's when I started increasing my my my my tutoring outreach. But then at that time, uh, cuz I didn't have that many students as anymore because I kind of let them go. I had to kind of ramp up like how do I get more leads? So, at that time, I didn't really know social media that that well. I didn't know how to market myself. So, I did the same thing what my mom did. So, I would go I went to a copy place and then I printed
20:24 out all my business cards and it just literally said, "Want a really good tutor?" And then back is like my name and then like my phone number, just something like that, right? And then I printed out a whole bunch of like brochures like what I offered and everything. I would go to uh 168 Market and 99 like 99 Ranch. Yeah, I just like pass out flyers, put it in people's cars. I was kind of scared, too. And then I would also wear my shirt and tie and then slacks and my dress shoes every day cuz I wanted to pre present myself like, "Oh, I'm a teacher. I don't want to be wearing like basketball shorts or anything." So parents would come out of, you know, 168. I'll be oh hey, you know, uh, like I like, oh, do you want, uh, tutor? Does your, you know, child need tutoring? D. Oh, you're a hustler. I had a whole bunch of people just like walk away. Just like not talk to me and don't sell me nothing. Yeah. They were like
21:14 and or they would talk to me and they're just like, "No, no, no." Like, and they just like walk away. And I just would be passing out things and sometimes I would see security guards like uh in the corner cuz I don't think you're supposed to really. Yeah. They're soliciting. Uh and I would go back the next day or after two days and I just see all my business cards like on the ground and just like, you know, like tires going over. I just be really sad. I remember like it was just so hard for me cuz I didn't know how to get leads at that time, right? So, I was doing that. I was going house to house. I didn't know at that time that you weren't supposed to open people's mailboxes and put your uh put stuff inside. It was like a federal offense or something. Oh, you're not supposed to. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I I had people call me. So, I I would every day I would pass out these flyers and business cards and then I would go back to my car and just be like
22:04 like be praying like, "Oh my gosh, I hope I get like at least one call today." I got a call one time or like two times. I got a call. I'm like super excited. Picked up and then I just had this like person just start yelling at me and they were like, "You cannot put your business card or your flyer in my mailbox. This is offense. I'm going to call the police on you." D I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Like, I promise it won't happen again." But it was just a really tough time for me. I was just there were times where I was like I was just like I don't know like like crying in the car just like trying like I can't believe I like I'm just hoping praying that I get like a like a lead from someone. But when I did get leads I'd be like super excited. I'd be like I don't know. I would just be like I I'd be in bathroom just be like talking to myself like oh my gosh I got it. Like good job Steve you can do it. I'd be like telling like oh yeah this is what I offer. you know,
22:55 I can help your kid go from a B to an A minus at least as long as they do their homework here and I'm going to give this give them practice homework. And I think yeah, just doing all that, just seeing what my mom did with her business. I'm like, okay, I I got to do this, too. I got to I got to I got to Would you make more money as a tutor or as like a teacher? You're not getting paid $70 an hour as a teacher? No, absolutely not. I think I calculated it. It was around like 20 or something like that. Uh yeah, $20 an hour after everything. But you're doing that full time. So unless you like transition to tutoring fulltime, like 6, seven hours a day, right? That's true. Most kids are aren't available. Like you're probably But he's a math guy, so we're going to do the numbers on the next episode, y'all. Hey.
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