My Husband Quit His 9-5 Job

Unknown Speaker 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast, Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.

Unknown Speaker 0:13
So guys, my husband quit his job and today’s his last day working as of this recording. So how do you feel right now I’m not gonna lie. That’s pretty great. And I’m excited to see where our future goes. Hey, guys, my name is Sharon and I’m Sean are from good sweet homes. And if you guys are new to this channel, welcome. I’m all about teaching you how to build passive income, become financially free and design your best life. So we’ve had massive changes this year, especially with Sean leaving his job recently. So we’re actually just discussing our feelings. And I thought, you know, why not make a video out of this right now. Now as a quick recap, I actually have been laid off in mid June of this year, and I essentially decided to retire from the nine to five. If you guys haven’t seen that video, make sure to check it out on my channel. Now Sean was also feeling a certain type of way about his job. So let’s kind of go over your timeline and your feelings around it. So as a brief overview, I left a full time engineering role about three years ago in Atlanta into this current position around late 2019. I’ve been working as a hard money lender for the past two and a half plus years. And it was a really lucrative position, I got to meet a lot of new friends from it. However, starting in June of this year, I got to see Sharon working from home every single day. And she seems like she’s having a really great time able to focus on all of her site activity. Whereas for me, I felt bogged down by this nine to five job that didn’t enable me to do other things that I want to do. Like he mentioned, he actually took on a real estate related role recently, right? So it’s been two and a half years. And initially, right, it was good because you built a brand around real estate, and then you’re kind of like moving all those lead to that position. So essentially, you could close those leads get commissions for it. What made you kind of not happy with the job, though? Yeah, so after some amount of time, I realized that the lending business is actually kind of difficult. It’s just that after a while, I felt like doing loans all the time wasn’t really for me with loans is just like any other sales job, you’re only as good as your last commission. So if I really, really good month in January, sales performed in February right now, you can just chill for the rest of the year. So it’s a nonstop grind. And often being really tired, I wasn’t able to appreciate vacations anymore, right? We were on our honeymoon. And people were still trying to call me asking me about stats about their loans. Sometimes Josh are dealing with some pretty irrational people, because everyone thinks her deal is really, really important. But sometimes the way they act to other people is not the best if they yell at you on the phone, or you have a lot of complaints is not really good vibe to be in. And the worst thing is after you’re done closing on the loan, you still have to worry about servicing. And until some of our clients, they may not have been in the best financial position, and they stopped paying on the loan. So now it’s my job to then hound them for money. I didn’t have to experience either. I just felt like it wasn’t good use of retirement. And that’s why I want to transition to something else. Now with the real estate market, things have definitely been kind of on a downturn. And I think that has affected the lending business a lot. And I think that played a big role into your decision to leave your job. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. So December of last year, I’ve already noticed that things were going to change the market was really, really hot. And we knew that inflation was really high. So the Fed was gonna increase interest rates and knew that once this bubble burst even start to slow down, but a lot of investors out there were still really optimistic about their loans, right. So they want to go for the highest dollar amount, they wanted the best loans. But then when interest rates increased, all of this prices went down. So they started losing money on the real estate deals from our loans became more expensive. But two things happened at once one deals were less profitable, so less people were getting loans and a to our loans are more expensive, so people wouldn’t want to go with it. So what happened was we ended up doing less volume, again, less profitability, more headache, more hounding on real estate investors not good place to be now I remember at one point, so you’re just like laying in bed, we’re gonna go sleep, and you just sprung that noose on me that you’re like, I’m gonna leave my job. And I think I think we got into a little argument there because I felt like it was like a big deal that you just sprung on me. And I think that with those decisions, you always want to talk to your partner and like, discuss the strategy behind it and everything like that, because that’s a big change, especially when, you know, I had just been laid off now, like, you’re gonna leave your job, especially during this time, where, you know, it’s kind of like a recession right now. So I remember that news is definitely shocking. And I think as we start talking about it more, and then we recently had like a strategy session around like documenting our expenses or income, like reviewing all that stuff again, and like our plan moving forward with our real estate and our personal brand. I was, you know, a lot more on board. I think that like over time, I realized, hey, like, this is the step we needed to do. I just remember that point. It was definitely like a part where I was like, wait, you just sprung this on me right before I’m gonna sleep. I’m like a warrior. So you know, I was definitely gonna, like say something about that. Yeah. So you always want to make sure that your spouse is on board with these big lifetime decisions. You know, when she got laid off, it wasn’t really her choice, but it was her choice not to go find another job. Again, we’re very fortunate that we’re at a point where we don’t need the income from another job because we do have enough in real estate we do have side businesses and I felt the same way for myself to like this job with real estate lending was on the downturn, it was gonna be hard to perform and all the customers we were dealing with not really getting reaction right so we were not having good time there. Whereas with our other ventures, we were way more successful. We were selling way more we were doing really well with a real estate overall. So I figured let’s go that direction. Anyways, we can do better with our focus on that but

Unknown Speaker 5:00
Staying in a job that we don’t enjoy. Okay, so what was the process like these last few days when you’re like, should I quit? And then you actually quit? Right? Well, because I remember I was like, Is this actually happening right now? Because it was we’re at the State Fair, and just like suddenly was prompted, just tell me about that. Yeah. So it all kind of started back in June. Actually, in June, the real estate market took a really sharp turn. And as a lender, I had to call all my clients and increase the pricing of their loan. That was a terrible weekend. I tell everyone that your loan is at a higher rate, y’all cussed me out, I lost some clients and and going forward, which is really hard to continue doing more business and commissions got Caja time as well. So again, that’s a very bad taste in my mouth. Again, I understand businesses business, but over those next few months, I just couldn’t find it even harder to then promote more loans, because I knew that these loans route me the best for people at the moment, people might lose more money, actually, because you’re taking on higher interest loans on properties are going down in price. So then eventually, a few days ago, we were at the State Fair, and I got a text from my boss. So you say Hey, can you promote your social media platform? Because you do have 1.7 million Twitter followers, we could very easily just blast it out there and get more views. But again, heart wasn’t in it. I said, You know what, maybe now’s the time to just call it quits. And this happened while we were walking around the state fairs like having fun. And then I was like it was happening. I started worrying because I was like, what she tried to let him go, right? Because she was like, why aren’t you performing essentially, is what the vibe was. And we were kind of thinking that and the car ride. We’re like, I think we’re prepping for this moment. So then we went home, and they’re already worked on our list of questions and answers I figured we would talk about and then during the call, you know, I let her know, hey, this, I was feeling maybe I wanted to like separate from the company as an official employee, and they just do a referral based business. And she was actually really shocked that she thought, Hey, I just wanted you to promote more on your social media platforms that you’re really good. You have a lovely resume. And once you go after I kept on talking to her about it, she said, Okay, it’s fine. Actually, we’re about to let go of a lot of people, but maybe by you quitting, you might save someone’s job. I said, Yeah, then for sure I want to leave is no need to put in my two weeks just cut me when you cut everyone else too. And so yeah, by doing that, not only did I was able to leave, but I was able to save someone’s job who actually needed the money. Yeah. And I think that’s another important thing to note, because I feel like people get laid off left and right, right. So you want to have back a passive income side hustles different things that are making money for you passively so that anything that happens, you’re safe, you’re okay. When we like actually documented the expenses, like more of it is actually going to the business like we’re not spending out my personally. But I think like we more than cover everything, like with our passive income, that I think we spent a long time building everything up, I think we’re fortunate that we got to this position. So also, after being laid off, I realized that my life wasn’t different at all. And I think it’s the same now like that you quit your job, because we just don’t spend that much money. I’ve actually been spending my time just like checking off my life goals, the whole hydroponics. If you guys haven’t seen that, go check out the video around life after retirement. Yeah, I’ve just been checking off different things and kind of working on like things like fishing and other things, buying books around how to do these things. And I’m excited to tackle each part of that list. So ultimately, I think that like leaving our nine to five actually doesn’t impact our lives at all. And that’s something I learned after being laid off. And that now we have a lot less stress and more time just working on the things that we care about. Do you have any thoughts on how couples should approach this if like one person wanted to pursue entrepreneurship, and maybe I don’t know, the other person might not be as on board, you know, I want to say comes from a sense of profitability, like you need to be secure. First, when I first left my engineering job, I just started social media, right, I just start my podcast, it’s just so my YouTube, but it wasn’t super profitable yet. And I had a lot of debt on my hard money loans were on my flip. So that was probably not the best time to quit, because I start to make those payments right now is very different, because we don’t have any outstanding debt. That’s crazy, right? They’re all covered from cash flow from rental properties. And we do have other streams of income from our social media brands. So we’re really profitable. So quitting is really just cutting off a small leg that we already have versus Okay, that’s our main source of income trying to shoot for the moon. So if you do want to leave your job, have a plan set out, ideally, have your business already start to be running before you quit, doesn’t make your spouse more comfortable for you. I would agree with that. I think that you know, some people are a little more I guess, like risk takers. And I think we’re a little bit more risk averse. So we like to, you know, make sure that we are getting cash flow and everything like that from our ventures. But I also think that it’s fine. If you are more of a risk taker, I think it just comes down to maybe going over the finances with your partner and then reading a strategy like, Okay, if I don’t reach profitability, by this time, maybe I’ll consider taking another job or something like that. I think that yeah, we’re in a good position where there’s a lot of potential with our business right now that we could even blow things up even more. So that’s why I’m pretty confident in ourselves. I think you were pretty confident in us as well. Also, I want to say that throughout the whole process, I think we’ve been all very professional, there’s no bad blood, but if I ever wanted to I could go back and work at that company again. Yeah, but I think that our goals is to essentially retire from the nine to five right now he’s doing more referral base now for that companies and you know, people still request hard money loans from you, you’re able to send off those lead get a small commission from the company. How do you like that kind of transition? It’s going to be better I think, because instead of me having to talk to clients be on the phone

Unknown Speaker 10:00
support them throughout their whole journey. I just send them to the company and they closed and I get a small fee right? Nothing compared to what I was getting before but still something though I think it’s a good balance. So I think to me, right, I have retired from the nine to five Do you feel like you’re retired from the nine to five just happened today? So not yet. Like I was still answering emails up until this morning. I mean, we a couple of days of having nothing and quiet peace before I realize okay, but do you feel like it’s retirement? Or is it becoming a full time entrepreneur for you? It’s hard to say the word retirement right? Because we don’t just like chill and play golf all day. We do like to work on things that are interesting to us. So I wouldn’t say retire but we don’t have to work on things that we don’t care for. And if there’s any issues we don’t have to like rely on a higher power doesn’t rely on our bosses or whatever, to make approvals we just do them. Yeah, I was just wondering that because I think someone asked me that yesterday. It’s like you’re not really retired right? You’re still working on your stuff. And I think for me the definition is we have that financial freedom because like our income more than covers our expenses and we’re still growing our net worth and I think that we just want to focus on doing things that are cool to us in a sense I do feel retired because you know, I don’t have alarms anymore. I don’t even know sometimes like what day of the week it is because weekends feel like weekdays now it’s like the same thing. So I’m trying to treat my life like that of like let’s like enjoy, but also work on the things that matter. That’s where we differ I think I’m going to still have an alarm because I want to make sure I get up and appropriate time like I don’t want to be waking up at 2pm Every day okay, I don’t do that. Okay, but yeah, I hope you think that I am support or decision because I think that is just like as a person I’m more of a worrier and more like calculated with the money all the time but I think that’s a big lesson for me too. Like when you already have enough you don’t need to like be so worried all the time right because our expenses mainly are just like wait you know the people we’ve hired the tools we use and then like renovations when we get new real estate it’s not even like we spend a lot of money personally and then we have a good like a decent amount of passive income for example that has exceeded my six figure salary right when I was working a job so I think it’s like a big question of like, what is enough and I think that kind of leads into my next question of Have you changed since being with me and like have your money goals changed specifically I want to say yes, but not in like a bad way everything do like for a lot of young men out there one of the reasons why they want so much money is to be able to attract you know their future wife right? It’s funny because we even post on her Instagram like hey, what’s the reason why you want into real estate investing? Some people will say I want to be able to attract women you know, it is I think a magnet right? Like by putting real estate investor attracted you but in a different way that way not because of the money but because I’m doing something interesting. Yeah. So I mean, again, back when I was younger, like I didn’t have you I didn’t have someone there so it was like my validation to become great was to make a lot of money. But now let’s like we only need money for sake of money, right? We have everything we need. We have the cash flows to live our lives we want to live and that was more of a like I say we’re keeping score, right just getting more score and cool, but it doesn’t actually change our lives anyway. Because we have nice houses right? We have whatever we need to know like specific cash amount goal or something like that. It’s hard to say because I feel secure. Yeah, I don’t worry about long term. We have enough cash reserves to handle anything. Our properties cash flow for us. Yeah, I know what were you What are you? Well, I think that for me, I’d never had a specific network all I did want cash flow for that financial freedom. And back in the day, when I had quit my job travel the world for two years while building passive income. I was just like, Wouldn’t having six figures in passive income be nice, maybe 10k A month cash flow to me that was like amazing. I never thought that was even possible for a while. And then I’ve like now more than surpassed that, which is kind of insane. To me. An interesting thing is when you’re around breeders in this niche, I feel like a lot of them keep chasing more and more and they start comparing with each other. And they’re like, oh, you know, I’m not doing that well anymore. I need to keep going higher. And I think that’s something we have to be very cautious about. Because I mean, the way we live we’re still the same person and the way we spend it’s always been the same we don’t really do any huge lifestyle upgrades or anything like that. I think we’re just happy being around each other anytime doing the things we love. Like my goals on my list are very simple. So I think that like we’re both now on the same page of like, we just want to be happy we just want to enjoy ourselves and work on cool things. I think when you first met me you had a lot of insane like money goals. And I was like I’m not this type of person. But we did attract each other because we had interest in like building financial freedom. I think we’ve helped each other a lot in our different goals and we’ve like influenced each other a lot because I think that we’ve reached greater heights because we’ve combined larger strengths. I would say that you know, I brought the online business side a little bit more and you brought more of that real estate side and I also think that you’re really good at you know, handling things and just like public speaking you’re really good at it, like deep diving and fixing things. So you’ve diving and fixing things maybe Yeah, and I think also big picture ideas big picture. Okay, and also the creative parts I guess I think like we brought our like to experiences and build something really great that has helped a lot of people so I’m really excited to see where everything goes. We actually started good sweet homes as you guys saw in the intro like I normally intro as digital nomad class.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
So we decided to start a joint brand around real estate education, so called good sweet homes, if you guys haven’t checked it out already, we’re really building out a lot of the resources there. You know, we’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out the struggles of our audience and figuring out what products we can create to solve each of their problems. So that’s what we’re going to be working on. I think in the upcoming months, years, you have any thoughts on what your goals are with everything? Yeah. So I mean, like you were mentioning earlier, a lot people in our niche that are going to struggle to be at each other and get more and more money every month. I think for us, what’s more interesting is creating a system that just works. Once you put it out there it works. And then we can go off and do whatever you want. I don’t really care about the actual winner we get in as long as the system is working properly. And like you said, we are building out more interesting things to help more people because again, we realize that there’s only certain people who are good for this, but then there are other people who want something. So we’re out here thinking of what they want and helping to solve their problem. And by the way, if you guys didn’t know, grocery Holmes is named this way, because it’s a combination of our two Chinese names like oh, there’s your Chinese name. There’s my Chinese day. Oh, can we rearrange those together? And then boom, because the homes Canada? Yes. Sweet is like basically my initials like with my Chinese name, verta to English, I guess. And then yours had your Chinese characters was basically kind of like a homing. Good. So we just switched around. So it’s good, sweet home. But yeah, I think our main goal is to work on cool things like build out these cool systems and like help people on this journey that we struggled with in the past. So I’m very happy that we’re kind of on the right journey, because my whole thing was build passive income become financially free. I think now we’re on that design your best life Park, we’re trying to help people on those different stages. So it’s really exciting to see where we’re going. I think that we’ve had a lot of big changes this year, we got married and we moved to Dallas, we have left our jobs. So I can’t wait to see what 2023 has or has in store. So now that we both don’t have full time jobs to commit to what are we doing? Yeah, so I mean, like we mentioned, we’re building out good sweet homes or doing different things, but we’re also going to enjoy so I think we’re going to travel more, I’m going to do more of my life goal things it’s just been a lot more stress free because sometimes you bring your stress to me and then it becomes like a whole thing. So now I think that it’s going to be a lot smoother. I don’t think that you should ever compromise your mental health, right? You want to make sure that you’re okay with the things that you’re doing. You cut the things that are negative energy in your life. So I’m glad that you know you’re in a good place now and you’re happy and we have a lot of exciting things coming up for us. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai