This story is part of CNBC Make It Millennial money series, detailing how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
For Jen and Steve Chou, the best part of running their own business isn’t the $1 million gross annual income – it’s the ability to spend as much time as you like with their 13-year-old daughter. and a 12-year-old son. .
Fourteen years ago, Jen, 45, and Steve, 46, began their nine- to five-year-old retirement process.
Jen started Bumblebee Bed Sheets in 2007, which manufactures tailor-made handkerchiefs, aprons and towels. She co-founded it with Steve, who has also successfully documented Jen’s entrepreneurial journey on his blog, My wife quit her job. Since 2009, the blog has grown to showcase ebooks, podcasts, and live conferences.
The flexibility of being their own boss allows both parents time to be more involved in their children’s lives, including volunteering at school and taking them to language schools different.
Jen tells CNBC Make It. “Whether they like us involved in their lives or not, I try to tell them how lucky they are and how lucky they are to have us there for them.”
Both Jen and Steve say they grew up with hardworking parents who couldn’t spend as much time with them as they could have liked. And for Jen, the freedom to be her own boss has additional meaning.
“My mother passed away when I was quite young,” she said. “Now, I just want to take back that time and make sure I’m there to [my kids]. “
Run their own business
Jen started working on Bumblebee Linens while pregnant with her first child, giving up her job as a financial analyst that kept her in early morning meetings with the company’s Europe team until late at night with the team. in Asia.
She and Steve had been successful in selling off the excess handkerchiefs they bought as gifts for their wedding, so they realized that a similar e-commerce business would be a good way to create a new source of income. Initial investment is around $600 to order a few hundred handkerchiefs as well as a digital camera to take pictures of them.
“My initial business goal was $5,000 a month,” says Jen. “At the time, I said, ‘If I could help pay the bills, that would be great.'”
But Bumblebee Linens grew rapidly, and within five years expanded out of the couple’s garage into a warehouse with two employees. Bumblebee Linens currently has about $1 million in annual sales, of which Jen takes in half that figure.
Although both Jen and Steve work at Bumblebee Linens, they have no responsibilities. Jen runs the day-to-day operations of the company and is in charge of orders, packing, shipping and embroidery, while Steve handles all the marketing.
Jen Chou packs boxes for Bumblebee Bed Sheets.
Tejas Doshi
“The way we have it right now is really good,” Steve said. “We don’t step on each other’s feet. We all have full control of our own domain.”
In addition to his responsibilities at Bumblebee Linens, Steve has also spent the past 13 years on My Wife Quit Her Job, a job he started after answering countless questions from friends and colleagues about how he and Jen built e-commerce activities. Previously, he was the director of electrical engineering, but left this job in 2016 to focus full time on his blog.
The blog offers several courses on ecommerce branding, as well as hundreds of video tutorials and podcast episodes. Instead of charging for each course or for a monthly membership, Steve chooses to give customers lifetime access for a flat fee of $1,900.
He says his pricing equates to about six to eight months to reach his competitors, but he prefers to cash in first. He also argued that giving customers lifetime access really helped him build his subscriber base.
“I have a philosophy that if my students succeed, I will be more successful,” says Steve. “When they’re successful, I brag about them and that leads to more business.”
In addition to membership revenue, the blog earns income through annual live e-commerce, sponsorship, and promotional affiliate sales, with a combined annual revenue of approximately $1 million, half of that number Steve brought home.
What they spend in a month
Here are the couple’s monthly expenses as of November 2021:
- Retirement: $9,600 to one SEP IRA account
- Educating children: $5,400 for private school tuition and foreign language learning
- House: $3,650 for their mortgages and property taxes
- Insurrance: $2,800 for life, auto, home, dental and medical insurance
- Dish: $1,800 split between groceries ($600) and dining ($1,200)
- Optional: $1,050 for expenses including clothing, sporting events and charity donations
- Utilities: $600 for Wi-Fi, electricity and gas
- Gas: $300 for two cars, already paid off
- Registration: $205 for Kindle Unlimited, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix and credit card fees
Even though they bring in $1 million in gross annual income, Jen and Steve don’t feel particularly rich in Silicon Valley compared to friends and neighbors who have already had millions of dollars leaving the big companies. they.
However, the couple said they “do not even spend a fraction” of what they bring in and consider themselves relatively frugal relative to their income bracket.
If there’s something they really want, Jen says, they won’t hesitate to buy it, but the main thing they save for is the experience: Jen likes to go on long family vacations, while Steve likes to come in. sports events. Over the past few years, he’s made it to the NBA Finals every year the Golden State Warriors have made it.
The largest part of their monthly spending goes to their children’s education and foreign language courses. In addition to $4,500 a month for private school tuition for their children, they spend an additional $900 on Chinese lessons, tutoring, sports and math classes.
“We both have the philosophy that our biggest investment is our children,” says Jen. “We really want them to be fully developed.”
We both have the philosophy that our biggest investment is our children. We really want them to be fully developed.
Jen Chou
Co-Founder, Bumblebee Linens
Steve and Jen contribute about $9,600 per month to Simplified employee pensions (SEP), but currently holds any other investments. Steve says this is because they feel like “the market has a little bit effervesce“And they want to have the cash ready to act when the opportunity arises.
“In the past, looking at our greatest wealth creation, it actually happened during a recession, where we had an opportunity to buy something for a really good price,” he said. he said.
Find balance and keep their growth
Jen and Steve work about 20 hours per week at their business. Steve usually finishes work around 12:30 p.m., leaving time as a “full-time Uber driver” for his kids, he joked.
Jen spends her free time at her daughter’s school, where she volunteers with a student entrepreneurship program. “Having that flexibility has been incredibly rewarding for me,” says Jen. “I get to do something that I love and it’s also a really important part of my child’s education.”
Setting up separate hours allows Jen and Steve Chou to spend more time with their two children.
Tejas Doshi
Jen liked her flexibility so much that she purposely kept Bumblebee Linens from growing as fast as she said.
“When we were growing so fast, it caused a lot of headaches and to be honest, I didn’t want to do that job at all,” she said. “We’re going to have to have a bigger location, we’re going to have to hire more staff, we’re going to have to do more things that I’m not ready to do without affecting our lifestyle.”
Steve, on the other hand, has no problem with development. He currently has around 5,000 paid subscribers and is looking to grow his number every day.
Steve said, “When my wife quit her job, we sold digital products. “It’s much easier to develop and scale that because we don’t have anything physical to ship.”
Look forward
Steve and Jen don’t plan to leave Silicon Valley and their $2,100 monthly mortgage anytime soon, but they don’t see themselves staying there forever.
“We joked that we would move out of California as soon as the kids went to college because it would be so much cheaper to live out of state,” says Jen. “Staffs [at Bumblebee Linens] will be cheaper and the location will be cheaper in terms of our office rent. “
Steve admits that he thinks about going back to work “occasionally,” although he enjoys all the time he can spend with his children. When they went to college, he said he could find a way to fill his schedule again.
“There’s a part of me that misses working with other really smart engineers,” he said. “But it won’t be possible to find a job where I can work really flexible hours. Most likely what will happen when the kids go to college is that I might start a software company. own.”
For now, they are content to enjoy the success of themselves and their families.
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