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Democratizing Entrepreneurship Through Community Building with Jason Wong, Doe Beauty
31 August 202233 min

Democratizing Entrepreneurship Through Community Building

with Jason Wong, Doe Beauty
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Contents:

Through his 8 years of entrepreneurial experience, Jason Wong has come to realize that community building is one of the key drivers of the success of a business. Democratizing your approach to entrepreneurship helps your business stand out from the competition, ensures that your customers stay invested in your product, and allows you to give people what they really want.

Jason Wong has been an entrepreneur since the age of 16, and over the past 8 years, he has built a portfolio of 7-figure and 8-figure eCommerce brands in beauty, food and beverages, home decor, and apparel! Some of these include Doe BeautyWonghaus Ventures, and Saucehaus.

Democratizing entrepreneurship through community building

In the world of entrepreneurship, a paradigm shift is occurring. Rather than simply building businesses for customers, the trend is to build businesses with them, democratizing the approach to entrepreneurship.

This customer-centric approach allows entrepreneurs to deeply understand and fulfill their customers’ desires, enabling them to stand out even in the most saturated markets. By truly tuning in to what customers want, entrepreneurs can differentiate themselves from the competition and deliver unparalleled value.

When it comes to receiving negative reviews, it’s crucial to adopt a fresh perspective. Those who take the time to provide low rankings actually care about the company and want it to improve. Embracing negative comments as constructive criticism paves the way for growth and drives continuous improvement.

Moreover, establishing a community around the business fosters customer investment and loyalty. Offering incentives like early access, discounts, and referral programs enhances the sustainability of the community. Consistency is crucial in entrepreneurship, as it is a long-term endeavor with potential for rewarding outcomes beyond financial gains. Playing the long game and staying committed can lead to significant success.

Jason’s best advice for entrepreneurs:

“The people that actually join your Discord group, just like the people who give you one-star reviews, are the people who really give a crap about your company.” (05:53) 

Episode highlights:

  • Rather than building a business for your customers, build it with them. Democratizing your approach to entrepreneurship will allow you to really tune into what your customers want so that you can give it to them. This will help you stand out from your competition even in a very saturated market! (01:43)
  • Nobody enjoys getting bad reviews, but here’s a fresh perspective on them: the people who take the time to give you a low ranking are the ones who really care about your company because they want you to do better! Take all negative comments as constructive criticism! (5:53)
  • Creating a community makes people more invested in your business because they are incentivized by the fact that they are building a better product for themselves. Enhance the sustainability of your community by providing things like early access, discount codes, or programs where members can earn money for promoting your products.  (07:12)
  • Consistency is the key to being a successful entrepreneur. Every now and again you’ll hear about an entrepreneur who rises up and makes millions overnight, but they’re likely to fall just as quickly. Entrepreneurship is a long game, and if you play it right it can be incredibly rewarding in more than just the financial sense.  (23:44)
Connect with Jason:

Transcript

[00:00:35] A.J. Lawrence: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Beyond 8 Figures. Today, we have a really, really fun conversation. I do my best to try to never put qualifiers on the type of entrepreneurs I’m talking about, because one, I think they’re not helpful when we really try and think of the bigger picture of what an entrepreneur is.

[00:00:57] But second it’s just demeaning, but I am going to today. Our guest is an amazing young entrepreneur. Now, he is incredibly accomplished. He is doing some amazing things, but Jason Wong, he’s young. Now this is for me on the other side of 50 saying this, but still I am fascinated by the amount of energy and the type of work Jason is doing.

[00:01:24] Jason is the Founder of PugHaus and this founder and CEO of Doe Lashes. Now, what is so cool and we’ll kind of talk about in this conversation beyond sort of where he is on his journey and the way he kind of looks at these opportunities and all the types of advising and sitting on boards that he does. But what I find really about it, two things that are gonna kind of come through the conversation.

[00:01:51] A.J. Lawrence: One, are the way he builds the communities to then develop the products. He’s bringing in his avatar, his core type of customers and he and his team going out of their way to kind of create the environment that drives this audience to share what they’re looking for. Now, if you’re into product-led growth, yes. Getting close to your customer is like the number one thing you need to do. But it’s not very easy, believe me. Having sat on way too many customer interviews in my life and gotten mostly because of my skill level, very limited information.

[00:02:29] Listening to how Jason does this is fascinating. So they bring in their customer and then turn around and build the products they want. It kind of sounds like a duh, but in reality is it’s incredibly hard and incredibly difficult to do. So one there.

[00:02:45] But then two, the second part that I find fascinating and worth putting attention to is they go outta their way to invite their critics into their community so they can learn from them also. Now, he makes a point of, we’re not talking about trolls and we’re not talking about people who are just flagging away at them. He’s talking about people who have legitimate criticism of what they’re doing and why and how, because he believes that from learning from them, combining with their emphasis on their core customer base, they will be able to grow that much faster. So really, really interesting. Let’s go talk with Jason and let’s learn a lot about how to build a community around our products.

[00:03:28] Hello, Jason. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you being here.

[00:03:33] Jason Wong: Thanks for having me.

[00:03:34] A.J. Lawrence: Ah, no, this is gonna be cool. I was just telling the audience a little bit about your background and what you’ve been doing and how interesting I find Pughaus. Do you wanna maybe share where you see yourself as an entrepreneur these days?

[00:03:47] Jason Wong: It’s not easy question to answer because it’s something that I’m constantly searching for. But at the very basis, the reason why gone to entrepreneurship, well, actually two reasons. Number one, I needed money for college. So out of desperation, I realized I needed to create something and I just wasn’t that good at school. So that’s number one.

[00:04:06] And number two is after I got into this path, there became this desire to create solutions to problems that I see around the world. And so most notably the lash company that I made in recent years was a solution to my girlfriend at the time’s struggles with putting on her eyelashes. So I just became obsessed with product.

[00:04:26] And within the product, how do I create a solution that makes it unique? And also how do I market it to make it unique? And that’s really what I’ve been thinking about for the past few years. Like how do I create something that actually works?

[00:04:39] A.J. Lawrence: So in that exploration of building something that works, how do you think now that you’ve gone through a couple of different iterations and kind of built, how do you think your approach has changed?

[00:04:49] Jason Wong: My approach has changed a lot from when I started this eight years ago. Eight years ago, it was like whatever I wanna build and whatever I think people want. And now it’s a lot more. I wouldn’t even say democratized, but I built it with the community within our brand though. We have a private community of our customers where we do the product developments together.

[00:05:11] We do extensive surveying on our customers, figuring out what their pain points are. Why they like certain things and why they don’t, what kind of price points are they comfortable with? And so this entire process has been a lot more community driven compared to eight years ago where it’s like me, me, me, I think this will work, I think I’ll like this, I think I want to hop on this trend. And that’s really been the drastic shift.

[00:05:35] A.J. Lawrence: Pretty cool. Yeah. I think a lot of us kind of start with that. You built a company, I built multi-dialers, cuz I’m so much older, back in the day. Little boxes that allowed you to get free phone calls back in the thing and I would sell them to frat houses.

[00:05:53] But yeah, I think you did a little bit better out of it using that impetus and I like that approach you’re using now having built a community to now use it to help products and that. What do you think has kind of helped you the most in sort of that journey, that transition from building things for yourself to get to now building for community and building a more sustainable company?

[00:06:17] Jason Wong: What helped me the most is a lot of external factors, a lot of forces. And those forces are rising competition and the realization that I’m not that unique actually. There’s thousands of other people who have just the same idea that I have. And there’s thousands of new brands coming up here and every single day, and that I just cannot be doing the things that I used to do.

[00:06:43] Back in the day, there wasn’t a lot of competition. You can start a beauty brand up and there’s maybe a handful of other people going against you. But nowadays there’s hundreds and thousands because it’s more accessible for everyone now, right? Which is great.

[00:06:54] I love that people are learning to become entrepreneurs. They’re building their own brands, but it also forces the rest of us to really rethink the way that we approach building our business. And the reason why I shift it so much into building with a community is that this allow us to iterate faster. This allows us to understand what to build and how to build it.

[00:07:13] And this allows us to validate the market while we’re building a product rather than spending one or two years building this, launching it and realizing that no one really gives a crap. And that is all coming because of the pressure to become really unique, to stand out and be memorable.

[00:07:28] A.J. Lawrence: And that is an interesting thing because communities, even in this day and age, still the undersung hero in a lot of entrepreneurial journeys, the ability to bring interest in your efforts. When did this community sort of transition from oh, this is nice to have to this is the driver for our future product development?

[00:07:50] Jason Wong: Around two years ago. When I looked into our discord, we used the discord to match our members. We have dozens of channels. It’s became a little of an ecosystem. There is sub sustain weird cuz I don’t really use discord. I had a team member, a young kid who came onto our team and was like, we should do a discord channel. I’m like, sure, whatever. Do a discord channel.

[00:08:13] I didn’t check it for four or five months. And it’s like, when you go back to something that you left out in the sun and it just had its own ecosystem, literally people meeting up by themselves, people hosting virtual parties and I’m like, holy crap, people cared that much about my brand to do all that.

[00:08:33] And so I doubled down on it. I started inviting more of our customers and I became more active in participating. I handle all the Q&A’s, talking to our users for their feedback. And here’s the thing though, the people that actually join your discord group, just like the people who give you the one star reviews, are the people who really give a crap of your company.

[00:08:54] Like no one will do either of those things, unless they truly care about what your product is and how much hope they have for it. Once you realize that, they become the most valuable people that you have, they become your virtual board of advisors.

[00:09:08] A.J. Lawrence: It’s interesting because I kind of fell into the whole discord rabbit hole for lack of better term through a couple of crypto projects. So now I’m anonymous Dowworker number 555 on like 10 of them and it is, it’s a different world. All the games and the muds and all the changes. So when you saidmsomeone younger than you, I was like, oh my God, here I am going my mid-fifties. It is fun to kind of see that. So I like how you do it.

[00:09:37] Now, what are you thinking about, I mean, a lot of this is where the community takes you, but having been involved in a lot of communities to develop, what are you trying to do to maybe make that community more sustainable for the long term? What are some things you’re thinking about?

[00:09:51] Jason Wong: I think having very clear goals for them, just like how you have for your company and for your team. It’s the same principle that we have. We tell our community exactly what kind of company are we trying to be? Are they invested enough to keep joining just like, is our team member invested enough to keep staying around? And then we tell them what we would like to get outta them.

[00:10:12] We would like to work with them on product. We would like to work with them to improve our site experience. And we would like to have them as our source of on the ground researchers. And they’re like, heck yeah, I love doing that. No other brand has ever allowed us to participate. They just sent us emails, asking us to leave a review.

[00:10:28] Like no brands actually let us participate. And you know, in the beginning it was definitely very difficult to show them the cause of what we’re saying. And so as we develop products with them and we launched them and they see the products on our site and they say, holy crap, I remember when you came to us with a sketch of this product and we gave you the feedback and I’m seeing exactly where my feedback made improvement.

[00:10:51] They’re like, oh my God, I felt like I really built this product with you. Now, most of the readers’ thoughts are like, well, how they be incentivized for this? Well, there’s two things that they’re getting incentivized by. Number one is the intrinsic value of participating in the company’s growth that they truly care about. If you really care about a brand that you wear, you want to make sure that they’re building the better product for you. So selfishly, they are building a better product for themselves.

[00:11:14] Number two is they get access to a lot of our perks. They get early access to all the products that they develop. They get discount codes that never see the light of day. Most of the time, they get a lot of free stuff just to participate. And then we also give them a lot more programs to earn money by promoting our product that people just don’t get.

[00:11:32] So for them, like these are people who are in college, people who just like to do this as a hobby. It’s not a second job for them. We don’t yet put a 1099 on them, right?

[00:11:42] A.J. Lawrence: Well, that is interesting. Because you talked about how this community, as it grew and it became more involved and you realized it was kind of growing underneath the absence. You turned around and it’s changing your product development processes to be a little more formal. That’s my words into that, not yours. But you also referenced, and I think this could be interesting that they want to be involved with brands they believe in. How do you see this community also maybe changing how you position the brand or what you do as a company in a more sustainable or different? The factors are things like coming outta the community that are going beyond just the product development to drive where you’re taking it.

[00:12:27] Jason Wong: I think it strengthens our product ethos and our company ethos. I wouldn’t say like we came to this community and say, let’s try this company 180% around. We have a set of values that we set as company principles, things like sustainability, things like inclusivity.

[00:12:44] We want to create a brand that isn’t just so wasteful. We want to create a brand that’s inclusive of people that will love our lashes, regardless of who they are. We want to make that space for them. And early on, both of these things were quite difficult to do because we’re a bootstrapped company. Both of these things required substantial amount of money to achieve because it’s a broader set of things that we have to do.

[00:13:06] But having this discord community kept us accountable. There’s a constant conversation being open about these things that we do as a company or being questions were being set on the stage and say, have you done this? When are you gonna do this? And I actually love that. I don’t consider that as like a backlash.

[00:13:24] These are people who truly care about our company and want the best for us. And they said, if we’re gotta do advertise this, let’s see you do more of this and they kept us accountable. So I wouldn’t say like, they necessarily gave us new directions to do as a company, but they really made us narrow focus and straighten our core values.

[00:13:42] A.J. Lawrence: Okay. So you sort of you took what you already had, but sort of evolved deeper into this environment because of what. It is really interesting. Having done that, and I’m fascinated in your process, just because you have developed, you know, I’ve been playing around on the edges and looking at different things and just this act of community and the possibilities of it.

[00:14:04] Like I mentioned, I love some of the Dow concepts and the variances between community involvement, utility involvement, this, you’re not turning into a crypto yet, but it is this kind of cool thing where how do you bring community into it when everyone, you know, you hear all these brands talk community and the reality is they’re bombarding with ads and like, yeah, I like it. Well, that’s, that’s not community.

[00:14:31] Community is when people actually raise their hand and wanna create something or have you create something for them, not just buy what you’ve created. So that is really interesting. Your process of going through that. What’s a typical way for someone to maybe dive into Pughaus. Is it, they see the brand, they see the references to the community. How do they come to you?

[00:14:52] Jason Wong: We actually hand pick them. We looked at the people who were talking about us on social media, people who are raving, even people who might not even have the best feedback. We wanna welcome them in and listen to them. I have this chat with a friend of mine, Ben Jabbawy, who founded a company called Privy.

[00:15:11] I love Ben because he gave me a word of advice that truly stuck with me. He said the people who are leaving one and two star reviews on your site are people who truly give a crap about your company. They have such high hopes about your company and you ultimately let them down in some kind of way. That’s why they’re talking about you. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t even write a single review. You’re not even in their train of thoughts.

[00:15:32] And so when we look at how we build our community, we’re inviting all sorts of people. We’re inviting the people who were saying, Hey, I didn’t have a good experience. People who are saying I bought this and it didn’t live up to my standards. And all the way to the people who absolutely love what we’re building for them and we bring them together. And that is ultimately how we’re able to drive our development process within the company, by hearing all those of things.

[00:15:57] Because if you’re constantly listening to people who just only say good things about you, you’re living in a bubble. You’re creating a bubble for yourself and you know it too. Some people’s ego just wouldn’t let them take that hit, but you have to get that ego at the door and you have to listen to everyone because ultimately those people that are the loudest are the people who truly, truly care.

[00:16:16] A.J. Lawrence: You brought something up interesting yet in a sense, leaning into the pain, the fear, that letting your ego not absorb that process. How was that for you like to specifically bring in people who are saying negative things about you? The fear is, okay, they’re trolls, they’re whatever.

[00:16:36] You got this advice from someone, did you decide right away or did this kind come into as you were building the community to bring these people in?

[00:16:46] Jason Wong: I’ll tell you firsthand, it sucks. It hurts to hear it because it’s like, you have a kid and someone’s like, ah, your kid’s eyes, mm-hmm I don’t like it. Nose is too big. For you to hear it because it’s your creation and it’s something that you love so unconditionally, how could anyone else not like it? But I would say the baby reference is probably not the best example because those people probably don’t want the best for you. But for me, that’s how it felt.

[00:17:11] It literally felt like my child was being ridiculed online. But it wasn’t something that I did overnight. It was something that I, saw the reviews, I talked to those people, I realized that their source of their anger was just sometimes at that moment they’re not truly meaning to the extent of what they’re saying. But at the end of the day, they’re still disappointed.

[00:17:30] And so once we have that conversation, you start understanding people on like why they have those thoughts. And once you realize why they have those thoughts, you’re like, okay, they really, truly want something good. Let’s bring them in. It wasn’t like I’m going out and look at every single person who talked crap about us and be like, here’s an invite link, come join in.

[00:17:47] There has been meaningful conversations that we have with them first, obviously to know that they’re not just trolls, but also once you talk to these people and I sit in the customer support portal sometimes like once or twice a week, texting people, emailing people back, it makes you empathetic towards people’s problems.

[00:18:05] And you realize that these people are giving you their hard earned money and they have the right to be upset, and you wanna hear them out and you wanna make sure that you’re building a better product for them. If not, like I said, thousands of other options out there, and they’ll forget about you in an instant.

[00:18:20] A.J. Lawrence: Okay. So the obvious next question is what happens once they come into the community? Is it disparate or do you see a general response? What’s their kind of response and then what happens over time to these people?

[00:18:32] Jason Wong: So within our discord, it looks a little different than a crypto or NFT one. We have channels made to receive feedbacks, so people will go in and give their suggestions.

[00:18:44] And so there’s sort of a set of standards for how you give feedback now. Instead of just going online saying this product is absolute crap, you’re going in and being like, okay, people are giving pretty thoughtful and constructive feedback. Let me do that too. There’s also array of other channels where people can go see and introduce themself, see how others are talking about the brand, see our product development process.

[00:19:06] And it really warms them up to the idea of this is DOE. This is what we’re trying to do is to build our products with our community. And you know, it kind of calms down a little bit. It makes them realize that, hey, maybe if I truly like this product, I wanna participate in this set and form. So you’re getting a fair, angry person through the door seeing, oh crap. Okay. Here’s all this stuff about though. And I love seeing all these other people raving about it. I can see why they like it, and here’s where they give the feedback. And this is how they give feedback. Okay. I think I can do something like this too. And at the end of the day, we’re turning a lot of non-believers or people who previously didn’t have a good experience to give us a second try.

[00:19:42] And I’m not here to say that every single person who gives us a second try is going to give us a five star review and they absolutely love it. Some products just aren’t meant for some people. And some people just absolutely cannot use some certain products, no products ever perfect for someone. But what I can say is that at least we got a second chance and that’s a very least I can ask for, from a person who didn’t like us for the first time. It’s a second chance.

[00:20:04] A.J. Lawrence: That’s interesting. I just, you know, that kind of impact in that, I’m like already thinking and I know probably a lot of audience members of like their own efforts for community or their own, people giving it. It’s like, oh, doing that. Wow. What would be the impact thinking of? That’s a lot for the audience to kind of take in and say, well, maybe that’s worth experimenting in because too often, I think communities position, rah rah, not as much of a honest growth experience for the company.

[00:20:36] I asked you earlier like where were you going? Where were you hoping to build the community? Where do you hope to build your overall efforts? Where do you see this going? Where do you wanna go with this? With a holding company of all the above, where are you, cause you’re an entrepreneur. Dude, you’re making things happen. Where are you taking this?

[00:20:53] Jason Wong: Honestly, I look at all the stuff that I do, and I do things within the DDC space. So I have a number of consumer brands and I have a number of DDC tech that I invest and advice. And that’s really just my passion. At the very end of the day, these are the things that I love talking to people with.

[00:21:10] I love working with founders, very passionate founders who are building solutions that I truly believe are needed in the space. And so I look at Pughaus, my holdings company, as a sandbox for me to play in. But I also like to dabble in with other people’s brands because it allows you to get better perspective on how other parts are being built. It allows me to not get bored. I get bored very easily.

[00:21:34] My mom said, in Chinese there’s just those Confucius saying like three minute hotness and it means just like, I have to be doing something else with three minutes. I just cannot sit still, but I think that’s a very nice way to say ADHD.

[00:21:49] I’m just fascinated by so many things. So I started my company, my first company was a holding company and I’m like, you know kinda want to do stationary. So I went to do stationary that did fairly well in coloring books. It’s kinda weird, but fairly well in coloring books. And then I’m like, oh,ok, maybe I wanna dabble in home decor. So I did some stuff in home decor.

[00:22:13] So at the end of the day, I look at Pughaus as a way for me to have fun and experiment. I don’t wanna just be one single category for the rest of my life. Heck I wouldn’t say I wore makeup ever and still, but I was just so fascinated by this category and I knew that there was problems for me to solve. So I naturally went ahead and made a solution for it. So that’s really where I see Pughaus going.

[00:22:33] I think after I sell the company, it’s gonna be a place where I work with other founders and try to help them build their dream, whatever amount of things I learned in my process.

[00:22:43] A.J. Lawrence: No, I think it’s really kind of cool you using it that way because one of the overall successes, yes, it’s the dollar signs obviously as an entrepreneur, but it is this you’ve developed something that has, you know, the fact that you keep doing them has shown that you’re able to do something. As I always like to say, if you really wanna figure out if someone’s gonna do well, don’t really worry about the money. Really worry about how long they’ve been doing it.

[00:23:10] Because at some point, yes, there are some people who just grind away, but at some point, someone who’s able to keep creating, keep doing things, they’ll find that piece. And you keep doing it so that’s kind cool for other entrepreneurs who kinda go, okay, huh, alright. That’s interesting.

[00:23:27] Jason Wong: Consistency is really the key in an entrepreneurial journey. You’re gonna go out and see a bunch of people have these fancy news headline from Forbes, from Entrepreneur, saying how this person did X amount of dollars in X amount of days or built this and that. And then you never hear about them again. And like I would say, I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve been doing this since I was 16. So about like eight years now, eight, nine years.

[00:23:54] I’ve seen so many people come to this space as entrepreneurs and absolutely just never be seen again. But they made a lot of money at one point during that process and they just gone. Now, are they bad entrepreneur? I don’t think so. I will say I don’t look at it that way. I look at entrepreneurship as a pathway and it requires a lot of resiliency. You have to persist and there’s a constant grind. There might be years when you’re not making any money, but you’re building something that is growing in asset.

[00:24:22] I call it building your own house. I have a class I teach. I teach at Shopify, but I also teach my own class called Building Blocks. And the idea is that you’re building this business of yours kind of like block by block. You’re not gonna have a finished house for a very long time because you’re building it block by block, but you are increasing the value of whatever you’re building because the value of your company compounds as you do it longer. Time of the comp matters, but also how well you built it and the traction, all that good stuff brings a value to you.

[00:24:52] So yes, you might not be making as much as your nine to five job for the first two, three years. But if you do this well and you sell it, the value just compounds so much higher than a 9 to 5 job they use got. But it’s a risk. It’s a risk because 95% or around that statistic of this is a spell. So if that’s the risk you’re trying to take, then go for it because the upsides are enormous.

[00:25:13] But I also want everyone to understand that it’s painful. It sucks. You guys have to hear people saying that, Hey, actually, I don’t think your business works. And that just makes you question every single thing that you do. It’s like, is it worth it? Am I building the right product? Is it worth it for me to grind and have these blood, tears and sweats to do all this?

[00:25:34] There’s gotta be a lot of self doubt and there are many moments where you just wanna quit. But if you’re able to get through it and you’re able to have that consistency, I have so much respect for you.

[00:25:43] A.J. Lawrence: Yeah. It’s so funny you say that because I think the public knowledge, like you said, the Forbes articles and all that is all about either the hyper success or the hyper failure. Oh, we can all lose.

[00:25:55] What most people would, I find and I was, and definitely what I lived through when I started was that ongoing like, oh my God, it can blow up next week. It can keep falling apart. And then you get it to the next level. And it’s like, oh, but it can fall off this way, and then this way.

[00:26:12] It’s that constant dread that your beautiful baby is going to lose its arm or like you know. And I have kids now and I think I worried more, you know, differently. I was more worried about the overall existence of my children, but my companies just so much dread in those early stages of them.

[00:26:31] So yeah, I think you’re right. And it’s fascinating that you do kind of bring it a little broader. Well, okay. If you’re doing this, you’re working. What about you personally now? You’ve talked about going deeper into bringing the company, being able to then have other founders and help them go selling company and then doing this, what’s gonna be success for you personally?

[00:26:52] Jason Wong: I’ve never really put like a number to it. I don’t see success as having certain amount of zeros in your bank account. I like to think about it a lot longer. I wouldn’t say like by 26 years old or by 30 or by 35, I do this and I’m successful. I will say success is surviving within this path.

[00:27:12] The time that you spend in this path matters a lot more to me. And so, as long as I’m still on a track running, I will find that pretty success. But, and on a broader sense, when I look back at 80, 90 years old, however old I live, I wanna be able to look back and say that I made an impact. And maybe it’s an impact with my companies that I built to some way or form, maybe it’s an impact by inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs to say that they could also do it.

[00:27:39] Maybe it’s an impact of my philanthropy efforts because I built a company and have means to do so. I dunno what that is yet. All three of those things are contention on me making it out of this this entire path. But I’ll like to look back when I’m older and say that I made an impact and someone was inspired and some people’s lives changed in some way or form.

[00:28:00] A.J. Lawrence: Well, I’m positive that’s gonna happen because I mean, just the way you’re thinking about this process. As someone who’s been doing it for a long time, I wish when I was your age, instead of being a little bit wilder, I was a little bit more focused as you are here. So I think you’re gonna do some really interesting stuff. And I think you are gonna have the impact you’re hoping to explore to see. Where can people find you? Twitter, where?

[00:28:26] Jason Wong: I’m on Twitter. Look me up Jason Wong. My handle is @Eggroll. But you can also find me on my website, Pughaus.

[00:28:34] A.J. Lawrence: We’ll make sure we have that all on the show notes and then the socials. Jason, this was really cool and I really can’t wait to see some of the stuff you do because I like the way you’ve developed your company.

[00:28:47] And I think we’re gonna see more this style, this collaborative effort, because having been involved in communities, it’s not easy. So it takes an extra type of work that I don’t think many people think of before they start trying to develop. So the fact that you are already in it and developing and doing it is really interesting. So love to have you back down the road because I think it’s gonna be pretty cool what you do next.

[00:29:12] Jason Wong: Yeah. We always look back and go like that’s me when I was 24, that’s me when I was 27.

[00:29:17] A.J. Lawrence: Cool, thank you so much.

[00:29:20] Hi everyone. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation I just had with Jason. I was fascinated by what he had to share. In my research leading up to this about what he’s been doing in the communities they’ve been building to develop and then sell these products.

[00:29:36] I was fascinated by seeing what is kind of becoming the next evolution of community. I’ve seen community, coming back to the 80s with BBSs and yes, most of you are not gonna even know what those are, and how companies or how different people try and utilize community. What Jason’s doing and what I’m seeing in a few other places is this kind of symbiotic development, developing the community, developing the company, building around each other, andnit’s not easy at all to build community. So this kind of effort is really a lot of work on his part.

[00:30:14] Also how he kind of is looking at checking his ego to bring in people who are giving the negative ratings who are saying stuff that isn’t positive about his efforts to bring them in takes a lot. Anytime you check your ego and I think in improving your entrepreneurial efforts. Being able to consistently check your ego and work on lessening the impact of your ego on your efforts is something because the roaring ego comes in the weirdest place. And this is given my years of experience and realizing that there are some situations in my own efforts that were really negatively impacted purely on ego. This concept he has to practice ego checking, and I don’t think he has developed that as a concept, but the amount of effort he’s put into it kind of, I think, is going to help him long term. And it’s something I, many of us can learn.

[00:31:17] And then also I just, as someone with a few successful exits, I have bright, shiny object, or as someone of my team has basically said, squirrel, that’s what I do. Whenever something cool happens and I wanna just turn the whole company to do that. It is something many of us entrepreneurs have and Jason’s concept of the building blocks both for new entrepreneurs, but then also for his own sort of efforts, his own incubating concepts. That, I think is really interesting and worth exploring more. Yes, you may have different kind, because there are so many ways to build a company. And so many people saying, oh, do this. And this exploring his building blocks may be very interesting for many of us because of the way he sets it up. And he’s setting it up from a type of experience that I think a lot of you, from what I’ve been able to read about it, that a lot of you will find natural.

[00:32:09] As entrepreneurs who have constant ideas that you realize, oh, this is, I need to stick to my knitting, but oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I wanna do that. You need a little bit of an outlet. Explore what he’s doing in his building blocks, maybe check it out. I know he’s talking about for Shopify and other things, but just take that concept in larger and see if there’s something you can use on it. Maybe take his course.

[00:32:34] All right, everyone. I’ve been rambling. Please go check out Jason Wong @eggroll, we’ll have it in show notes, at Pughaus, Pug.haus. Really, really interesting in doing some really cool things. And hey, the products are cool too. I can’t buy them because I would just look like a little too old. But definitely stuff that, I think my kids are gonna really enjoy. All right, everyone, please, if you enjoy this episode, leave us a review, let us know what you think. If there’s something you would like us to work on, topic you would like to hear, leave us a review, and that would be great.

[00:33:09] And also please come to beyond8figures.com, sign up for our newsletter so that way whenever we have other cool entrepreneurs and you know, interesting things on the show, you’ll know ahead of time All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day. Bye bye.

[00:33:29] This episode of Beyond 8 Figures is over, but your journey as an entrepreneur continues. So if we can help you with anything, please just let us know. And if you liked this episode, please share it with someone who might learn from it. Until next time, keep growing and find the joy in your journey. This is A.J., and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bye bye.