393: Best Dad Advice: 10 Life and Business Lessons from Dad

0:00:00 Here’s an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle Show Greatest Hits Collection.
0:00:06 What’s up?
0:00:07 What’s up?
0:00:08 Nick Loper here.
0:00:09 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show because your life is your lecture.
0:00:12 Just a quick solo episode of 40 today.
0:00:14 In honor of Father’s Day, I wanted to share some of the best advice I’ve received from
0:00:19 my own dad over the years and how we can all work to apply it in life and in business.
0:00:25 For the sake of background, dad is a chemical engineer.
0:00:28 He’s not an entrepreneur in the traditional sense in that he spent decades really of his
0:00:33 career at one company but still had lots of entrepreneurial experiences and I think insights
0:00:39 along the way.
0:00:40 I know I’ve shared some of these in bits and pieces over the years but wanted to run through
0:00:43 my top 10 bits of fatherly advice here on the show today.
0:00:47 The funny thing is that almost all of these were very literal conversations which now
0:00:52 30 years later I’ve extrapolated to have a broader meaning that may or may not have
0:00:56 been attended at the time and as I think about the kind of advice I want to be passing
0:01:01 along to my own kids, I think these kinds of concrete illustrations might be a really
0:01:07 effective way to do it, especially if they turn out to be the chronic overanalyzing types
0:01:11 like me.
0:01:12 Ready?
0:01:13 Let’s do it.
0:01:17 Lesson number one is it’s not a piano.
0:01:20 This is something dad would say as we were working on home improvement projects when
0:01:24 I was a kid.
0:01:25 And what he meant by that was it doesn’t have to be 100% perfect.
0:01:30 Which isn’t to say he didn’t care about quality, he absolutely did, just that sometimes it’s
0:01:35 better to finish the job than stress over every last detail.
0:01:39 Perfectionism is definitely something I still struggle with so I try to keep this one in
0:01:42 mind and apply it to my work today.
0:01:45 In startup speak, this isn’t anything new, this is the MVP, the minimum viable product.
0:01:50 Read Hoffman of LinkedIn put it this way.
0:01:53 If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’re launched too late.
0:01:58 If you’re waiting to launch your service, your website, your YouTube channel, your
0:02:02 podcast until it’s perfect, you’re probably never going to get it out there.
0:02:06 The first versions of most of my projects were pretty awful looking to the point where
0:02:11 I literally was kind of embarrassed to share them, which is why that read Hoffman quote
0:02:15 rings so true.
0:02:17 But they were functional, they did the job.
0:02:19 Remember, it’s not a piano and for most things in life, good enough is good enough.
0:02:24 Lesson number two is you can figure it out.
0:02:27 I mentioned that dad was an engineer, a career path that neither my brother nor I followed,
0:02:33 but some of that still managed to rub off.
0:02:36 Particularly he would encourage us to be curious about how stuff worked and he was really
0:02:40 methodical in a lot of processes and chores around the house and he made sure to let us
0:02:45 know whenever we were stuck that we could figure it out.
0:02:49 And honestly, this was a little annoying for kids who just want the answer, but he was
0:02:53 big into the Socratic method or basically teaching you by asking increasingly more difficult
0:02:59 questions and letting you find out the answer on your own.
0:03:02 Everything is learnable.
0:03:03 The answers are out there.
0:03:04 They might not always be easy to find, but you can figure it out.
0:03:08 In fact, one of my new favorite newsletters is Ebiz Facts by Nile Dordy, EbizFacts.com
0:03:16 if you want to check it out.
0:03:17 And in one of his recent editions, he highlighted this.
0:03:20 He wrote about an email that he’d received that said, “Hey, I want to start an online
0:03:23 business, but I heard that PayPal doesn’t work in some countries.
0:03:26 Do you know if it works in South Africa?”
0:03:29 And Nile’s first thought is, “I don’t know if this is going to work out for you, man.”
0:03:33 Because instead of googling that question yourself and finding the answer in 10 or 20
0:03:38 seconds, you emailed a complete stranger on the internet and hoped for a response.
0:03:42 He was like, “Don’t be like this guy.”
0:03:45 Instead, cultivate the skill of figuring things out.
0:03:48 And he called that the number one skill for making money online.
0:03:52 So be resourceful.
0:03:53 Be curious.
0:03:54 There’s a reason that a lot of the episodes here focus on, quote, “reverse engineering
0:03:59 successful businesses.”
0:04:00 I think that’s dad rubbing off.
0:04:02 We’re trying to deconstruct the processes that works for other entrepreneurs because
0:04:07 I believe if we can take something complicated and building a business unquestionably is
0:04:12 complicated, but if we can break it down into simpler steps, then we’re far more likely
0:04:17 to move forward.
0:04:19 Lesson number three is sharpen your pencil.
0:04:22 And again, this was very literal advice as in, “Look, I will help you with your homework,
0:04:27 but sharpen your pencil.
0:04:28 You can’t do good work with a dull pencil.”
0:04:31 Now interpreted a little more broadly, this was dad’s way of saying, “The tools you
0:04:35 work with matter.
0:04:36 Respect them and respect your work.
0:04:38 Don’t make things harder than they have to be.
0:04:40 In your business, you can do a tools audit, a pencil audit, if you will.
0:04:44 Are their products and software that you’re using today, are those the best fit for the
0:04:49 job or do you have some dull pencils in there?”
0:04:52 Now, I found this lots of times over the years from trying to build functional websites with
0:04:57 GoDaddy’s website tonight software I think it was called back in the day instead of bucking
0:05:02 up and learning WordPress like I should have.
0:05:04 This could be setting up automations in Zapier, run more efficiently.
0:05:09 This could be bringing on additional team members.
0:05:11 This could be optimizing your top performing content, but sharpen that pencil and recognize
0:05:16 it’s an ongoing process.
0:05:18 It’s likely to get dull again.
0:05:19 That’s when you use it.
0:05:20 And why a pencil over a pen?
0:05:22 Well, because it’s okay to make mistakes in a race.
0:05:25 The number four is to do work you’re excited about.
0:05:28 After college, I took a job with Ford that moved me from Washington State to Washington,
0:05:34 DC.
0:05:35 And I took the gig for a couple of reasons.
0:05:38 Number one, I was excited about the adventure and the opportunity to “be a grown-up and
0:05:43 get a place of my own and check out another part of the country.”
0:05:46 And number two, I didn’t have any other offers.
0:05:50 I’d applied to a bunch of other jobs in Seattle, but hey, nobody hired me.
0:05:54 Your dad’s credit at that time, he questioned the move.
0:05:58 He’s like, “You don’t really care about cars.
0:06:00 Why don’t you want to go work at a car company?
0:06:01 You’re going to spend a big chunk of your waking hours at work, so doesn’t it make sense
0:06:06 to do work you’re excited about that you care about?
0:06:09 That has stuck with me.”
0:06:11 And in all the side projects that have found success, especially compared to the ones that
0:06:16 have flopped, there was some level of interest or excitement that kept me going.
0:06:20 And of course, I became more interested in the car business as I was in it day in and
0:06:25 day out, because as I’ve also learned, passion tends to follow doing the work rather than
0:06:30 the other way around.
0:06:32 But this is an important one.
0:06:34 And if you’re not excited about your day job, a lot of people aren’t.
0:06:38 Let me task you with this.
0:06:39 Find a way to be excited about your other 16 hours a day.
0:06:43 Lesson number five is if you’re not falling, you’re not getting any better.
0:06:47 This lesson comes from the often foggy and often soggy ski slopes of Snoqualmie Pass.
0:06:54 After each spectacular yard sale, wipe out, dad would encourage us say, “You know what
0:07:00 they say, if you’re not falling, you’re not getting any better.
0:07:03 This is the call to do the work that challenges you knowing you might fail.”
0:07:08 And yes, you could probably stay on the green circle runs, the bunny slope, and never crash.
0:07:12 But look, there’s this whole rest of the mountain to explore.
0:07:16 The other thing dad likes to say as it relates to personal injuries is, “It’ll grow back.”
0:07:21 And that’s his way of saying, “Time heals all wounds.”
0:07:24 With each crash on the mountain or with each failure comes a learning moment, like, “Well,
0:07:29 that didn’t work.
0:07:30 I’ll try a different approach next time.”
0:07:32 And I know I will continue to fall because the challenge of trying new things is part
0:07:36 of what makes business fun.
0:07:38 Now, I’ve got five more fatherly nuggets that I want to share.
0:07:41 But before we do that, I thought I’d ask the man himself.
0:07:45 What kind of advice his dad passed on to him.
0:07:48 So it was the summer after graduating high school, and I had made a fair amount of money
0:07:52 that summer mowing lawns.
0:07:54 So my dad says, “I want you to buy 100 shares of British Petroleum, now BP.
0:08:00 It’s a great opportunity to grow your hard-earned money.”
0:08:02 “Okay,” I say.
0:08:03 So he helped me make the purchase at $6 a share.
0:08:06 Less than a year goes by, and I’m at the UW trying to succeed in school and meet a girl
0:08:12 while living in a fraternity house.
0:08:14 All the cool guys had really awesome stereos, which seemed to correlate with having girlfriends.
0:08:20 So I’ve been religiously watching the price of my BP shares climb to $12 a share.
0:08:26 And I really wanted a stereo to impress the girls.
0:08:29 So I sold this dock and spent $619.75 on a new stereo.
0:08:37 When my dad found out about it, he was really pissed and told me it was the dumbest thing
0:08:41 he’d ever seen me do.
0:08:43 Gosh, and he was so right.
0:08:46 By 1980, BP was selling for $22 a share.
0:08:50 The stereo, I don’t even know where that is today.
0:08:53 A few years later, when he told me to buy some Texaco, I followed his advice again.
0:08:58 And before I sold it to provide a down payment on a house, I called and made sure he was
0:09:03 okay with it.
0:09:04 “Absolutely,” he said, “perfect, perfect use of the money.”
0:09:08 So my dad was not too big on fatherly advice, but his favorite was probably, “If you don’t
0:09:12 have time to do it right, when will you find time to do it over again?”
0:09:16 That’s been very tough advice to follow and a lifelong learning process for me.
0:09:21 I’m more of a ready shoot aim kind of guy and have had to do many, many things over
0:09:26 again in my life.
0:09:27 I love that.
0:09:28 If you don’t have time to do it right, well, when are you going to have time to do it over
0:09:31 again?
0:09:32 And apparently grandpa was big into the oil stocks.
0:09:35 Now, as for that stereo, maybe it was a better investment than dad’s given himself credit
0:09:40 for.
0:09:41 Well, he and mom have been married for over 40 years now.
0:09:45 Lesson number six is you’re really only racing against yourself.
0:09:48 So I was on the swim team for several years growing up and early on, it was discouraging
0:09:54 to be getting like these random pink and green ribbons for a fifth or sixth place finish in
0:10:01 a six lane pool.
0:10:02 But dad’s advice was ignore the other races.
0:10:06 You’re really only racing against yourself.
0:10:08 If you can beat your time from before, from the last time you swam that race, you’re getting
0:10:13 better.
0:10:14 That is a win, no matter what happens in the other lanes.
0:10:17 And since I was not an Olympic hopeful by any means, that was really helpful for me and
0:10:22 something that I applied in the pool and in lots of other areas.
0:10:26 We’ve talked about this on the show before, the concept of the 1% infinity, the slight
0:10:31 edge or the compound effect, this idea of getting a little bit better every day and how
0:10:37 developing that habit over time really leads to exponential improvement, exponential gains
0:10:43 as they start to stack up.
0:10:45 But to race against yourself, you do need to have a baseline, a starting point, which
0:10:49 goes back to the piano thing and not letting perfection stand in the way of getting started.
0:10:55 Lesson number seven is until you try and sell it, you’ll never know.
0:10:59 I remember getting all excited, my friends and I, about certain baseball cards that we
0:11:04 collected and we would look up the prices in the Beckett magazine price guide and some
0:11:09 of them would say they’re worth $10, $20, sometimes even more.
0:11:13 And I remember dad kind of bringing us down a peg, like, guys, their piece is a cardboard.
0:11:18 Look, if you find a buyer willing to pay that much, that’s when you know it’s actually
0:11:22 worth that much, which we didn’t love hearing at the time, but it was a good dose of truth,
0:11:26 a little truth bomb from dad.
0:11:28 Now, in terms of your side hustle, this is the one about validating your idea with real
0:11:34 customers.
0:11:35 Ask someone to buy.
0:11:36 That’s the only real validation.
0:11:39 Is this paint job worth $2,000?
0:11:41 Is this photography gig worth $2,000?
0:11:44 Is this online course worth $2,000?
0:11:46 Until you find a buyer, all you got is an idea.
0:11:50 Let’s take a break here to pay the bills.
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0:14:06 Lesson number eight is your eyes will adjust.
0:14:09 Again, another very literal piece of advice from when we’re camping at night.
0:14:14 “Hey, I’m going to run and get the flashlight.”
0:14:16 And dad would always say, “Ah, you don’t need the flashlight.
0:14:19 Your eyes will adjust.
0:14:21 Come on.
0:14:22 You know, let’s have some fun.”
0:14:23 After playing with fire and pocket knives, flashlights were pretty high on the list of
0:14:27 cool stuff about camping, but now it was always, “Your eyes will adjust.”
0:14:32 And he was right.
0:14:33 If you give it time, you can actually see pretty well in the dark.
0:14:36 And this was one that I definitely carried with me because the first time I went camping
0:14:40 with my wife, I pulled the exact same line on her, “Hey, you don’t need a flashlight.
0:14:44 Your eyes will adjust.”
0:14:45 And she looked at me like I was crazy.
0:14:48 But to vastly overanalyze this one, I interpreted as a call to be happy with what you got and
0:14:54 make do with what you have.
0:14:56 You probably don’t need the next shiny thing.
0:14:59 Give it time.
0:15:00 Your eyes will adjust.
0:15:01 And not adjusting or, on the other hand, always grabbing from the flashlight.
0:15:06 That can be dangerous.
0:15:07 That can be expensive.
0:15:08 It can be taking the easy way out.
0:15:10 Maybe you’ve heard the theory of hedonic adaptation, which, to summarize, is a luxury once experienced
0:15:17 becomes a necessity.
0:15:19 We become accustomed to certain things and it’s hard to go back the other way.
0:15:24 And what was once a luxury is now your new normal.
0:15:27 And that leads to chasing the next level, the bigger house, the fancier car.
0:15:32 Maybe your eyes will adjust is a call to avoid lifestyle creep, a call to avoid buying stuff
0:15:38 because you can afford it, like $600 stereos.
0:15:43 It sounds like the wrath of grandpa really put a scar on this guy.
0:15:46 He’s been very frugal with my entire life growing up.
0:15:49 So maybe the stereo episode saved him a lot of money down the road.
0:15:53 But a call to avoid buying the stuff just because you can afford it without questioning
0:15:57 whether or not you really need it or really want it.
0:16:01 Lesson number nine is rip off that bandaid or more accurately rip out that tooth.
0:16:06 The story behind this one is Dad is sick of me constantly playing with a loose tooth,
0:16:11 the wiggly tooth.
0:16:12 So he takes me out on the deck, grabs his needle nose pliers and proceeds to extract
0:16:17 the tooth by force.
0:16:19 And in his defense, it must have been just hanging on by a thread because I did not feel
0:16:23 a thing.
0:16:24 But this is the take action lesson.
0:16:27 This is the call to do the thing you’ve been putting off.
0:16:30 The obstacle is the way, right?
0:16:32 It’s probably not as scary as you’re making it out to be.
0:16:35 So you might as well get it over with.
0:16:38 I’ve had to rip out that proverbial tooth several times over the years from knocking
0:16:42 on my first door, cold calling, posting help wanted ads for positions in my business to
0:16:48 hitting record on that first podcast.
0:16:50 If there’s a wiggly tooth in your life that’s driving you and driving everyone else around
0:16:54 you crazy, maybe it’s time to grab those pliers.
0:16:58 And lesson number 10 is it’s only money.
0:17:01 I remember another time when we were camping and pulling out of the campground in Oregon,
0:17:05 and backs our minivan into another car that’s parked behind us.
0:17:10 And he is frustrated with this mistake, this obviously being in the days before backup
0:17:15 sensors, and the repair is going to cost him a few hundred dollars.
0:17:20 Still, instead of letting this episode ruin the day, ruin the camping trip, he took the
0:17:25 attitude, deep breath, it’s only money, he can’t take it with you.
0:17:30 And that stuck with me.
0:17:31 Money isn’t a finite resource like time.
0:17:34 You can always make more.
0:17:35 And that was a good perspective to see because I was always very money-motivated as a kid
0:17:40 and I’m a teenager at this time, and it still seemed like this scarce, hard to get thing.
0:17:46 And in some ways, it still feels that way.
0:17:48 But this was a good illustration of money not being the end goal.
0:17:53 It’s only money was a dismissal of something that is obviously still a really important
0:17:58 thing, but at the same time, not the most important thing.
0:18:02 Does that make sense?
0:18:03 Now I didn’t grow up alone, and it’s interesting how two people exposed to the same environment
0:18:09 can have different reactions, different memories.
0:18:11 So when I ran these lessons past my brother, he remembered several of them too, which is
0:18:16 awesome.
0:18:17 And then he added these as well.
0:18:19 Hey, this is Nick’s brother, Chris.
0:18:21 I write at nwtutoring.com and becomingbetter.org.
0:18:25 When Nick asked me if there were any bits of fatherly advice from our dad that stood out
0:18:29 to me, a couple things came to mind.
0:18:32 One is, you shouldn’t have to wait to be told what to do, anticipate what others need.
0:18:38 Dad said this to me when I was helping him rebuild the deck at our house.
0:18:43 Dad was doing all the complicated work and I was his inept assistant.
0:18:46 I did what I was told, but I wasn’t being observant enough to predict what dad needed,
0:18:51 and I wasn’t taking initiative.
0:18:53 Being a 15 year old, it had never occurred to me to do more than I was asked to do.
0:18:58 This advice wound up helping me a great deal in every job I’ve ever had, whether I was
0:19:02 a server in a restaurant or doing marketing and web design for a tutoring company.
0:19:07 And this also applies to side hustling.
0:19:10 Entrepreneurs don’t wait for customers to tell them what they want, they anticipate
0:19:13 the needs that people have and identify pain points and create solutions.
0:19:18 However, the most important things dad has ever taught me weren’t expressed with words
0:19:23 at all, he leads by example, which is the single most powerful thing parents can do to
0:19:28 influence their children.
0:19:29 For instance, if we went to someone’s house for dinner, dad would always do the dishes.
0:19:35 He never told me this was the right thing to do, he just did it.
0:19:38 And then I was at a dinner party in college, and I found myself automatically getting up
0:19:42 to do the dishes, and I realized I was becoming my father.
0:19:46 The power of leading by example extends far beyond parenting.
0:19:49 It’s essential for influencers and leaders of all kinds.
0:19:52 In sales, they teach you to buy your own product.
0:19:55 And if you’re in the business of giving advice, you’d better be following your own advice.
0:20:00 As Oliver Goldsmith said, “You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your
0:20:04 lips.”
0:20:05 That anticipation point is a really powerful one.
0:20:09 And when I will readily admit I’ve got plenty of room for improvement on, and Chris’ second
0:20:13 point about leading by example, well, that brings me back to where we started the show,
0:20:18 with your life is your lecture.
0:20:21 And I’m incredibly grateful to have had such amazing teachers, both mom and dad, in this
0:20:26 journey.
0:20:27 And I know our little guys are paying attention, so it’s something I’m reminded of every time
0:20:31 they repeat something that we say.
0:20:33 If you liked this episode, please go tell a friend, go call your dad.
0:20:37 If you have any dad-isms from your own household you want to share, you can do that in the
0:20:41 comments for this episode at SideHustleNation.com/dad.
0:20:45 Or hit me up @annloper on Twitter or Instagram.
0:20:48 That is it for me.
0:20:49 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:20:51 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen, and I’ll catch you in the
0:20:54 next edition of the SideHustle Show.
0:20:57 Hustle on.
0:20:58 Do you know what kind of stuff, what kind of stuff do you know?
0:21:18 I know like, 45.
0:21:19 What else?
0:21:20 68.
0:21:21 Just numbers?
0:21:22 Uh huh.
0:21:23 Um, I know numbers and math.
0:21:24 I don’t know what math, but I do know a lot of numbers.
0:21:26 Yeah.
0:21:27 And letters.
0:21:28 What’s the biggest number that you know?
0:21:32 7.
0:21:33 I mean 10.
0:21:34 That’s the biggest number I know.
0:21:40 Did you just say like, 68?
0:21:42 Oh yeah.
0:21:43 And 25.
0:21:44 And 25.
0:21:45 Uh, what else do you know?
0:21:49 I know 6 plus 8.
0:21:53 Sure.
0:21:54 I know something not number related, like riding your bike, or being nice to brother.
0:22:00 Don’t know much of that, but I can do tricks on my bike, lots of stunts on my bike.
0:22:06 Yeah.
0:22:07 What happens when you get hurt?
0:22:08 I just get up back up, get back up and keep riding.
0:22:15 That’s what I usually do.
0:22:16 Try for a moment, somebody comes and help me, and then I get back up and keep riding.
0:22:21 Yeah.
0:22:22 That’s what I usually do.
0:22:24 What’s the best stuff to read about?
0:22:27 Kind of sure.
0:22:29 Who’s the smartest person that you know?
0:22:31 I don’t know anybody that’s smart.
0:22:35 Nobody?
0:22:36 Mm-hmm.
0:22:37 Are you super smart?
0:22:38 I’m not super smart, but I am medium, just medium.
0:22:43 Well, you’re learning more all the time, right?
0:22:46 I know.
0:22:47 What’s the best way to make a new friend?
0:22:49 I used to be like, come up to them and ask them if they want to play with me.
0:22:54 Okay.
0:22:55 See if they want to or not?
0:22:57 Yeah.
0:22:58 If they don’t want to, I don’t make a new friend with them.
0:23:01 What does daddy do for work?
0:23:04 Recording call, type.
0:23:08 Recording calls and typing?
0:23:09 That’s pretty accurate, actually.
0:23:10 Do you want to be done with this?
0:23:13 I’m out.
0:23:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]