My mother-in-law's side hustle made $1M selling pillows?!?

so how do you create a multi million dollar business starting with only ten thousand dollars without having much of a plan without doing a lot of research without even knowing how to use shopify or basically you had to learn the internet from scratch well we have talked about this a little bit on this podcast but i finally wanted to do an episode with a very special person my mother law so about five years ago my mother law's sat me down she goes sam i have this idea for a business i wanna start this pillow company can you teach me how to do it i gave the most generic advice ever on how to do it not expecting her to do anything turns out she listened and she googled and found actually significantly better advice and she built a company that is now making millions a year in revenue she started it in her early fifties and it's killing it and after years of just kinda quietly chugging along and building this epic business i asked my mother lost smith soda to come on the pod and give her story if you are in your thirties forties or fifties and you are thinking about starting a business and you're sort of overthinking you're not sure what to do or even if you're in your twenties and you wanna figure out how to change your life this is probably the most relatable and i think inspirational episodes that we have ever done so it's a very special episode for me for obvious reasons i love to death i think you guys gonna like to check it out i feel like i could rude to world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days on on a less travel so let me set the stage here smith okay smith do you even listen to the podcast i do i do listen to some episodes alright so the story is this basically you came over in your early teens as an immigrant you had some kids and you were stayed at home mom and then the kids grew up and you were like well i'm not really sure what to do next and so you kind were like trying a bunch of different stuff i think at one point you got your real estate license and you did something a lot of people want or they think about they like i wanna start something i wanna like do something and you thought about it for a couple years i think and then all of a sudden we had a conversation and you basically told me what you were going to do and i wasn't sure if i even believed that you going to do it but basically you were like i'm gonna start a pillow business you had done zero research you didn't do any market research and then all of a sudden two weeks later you have this online store and before i know it you had a bunch of sales and now after doing this for six years you've made multiple millions in revenue i don't know if you wanna say what it is or you know you could say the numbers but you built like a seven figure business without any internet experience or any research we talked about you on the podcast and that was pretty cool and a lot people have asked and so we have smith here who's actually my mother law's well okay i'll just change a few little bits of information in that summary so i came to the us with my family when i was sixteen years old so it was in nineteen eighty three we lived in miami for couple of years and then i wind up going to school in new york city i wanted to be in a fashion industry sewing has always been a passion of mine so i've my grandparents sold and my mom did so i learned from them and then i wind up just liking it it was just a way to express myself my creativity i made clothes for myself and then i wanted to go to fashion institute of technology to study fashion so i went up being majoring and pattern making i also had to work full time and while i was going to school part time so i never graduated from fit i don't know you went to f fit that's pretty cool yes i went to f it for about a couple of years and maybe two three years part time i was really close to graduation then i got married had a child your wife and decided that i wanted to move out of new york city so and we moved into suburbs and there was no fashion industry in lit suburbs and i really didn't want to travel back and forth to work in the city then i stayed at home i begin with stayed at home mom for about three or four years then i realized oh wow i'm raising a child but i don't have enough information to raise her what am i going to do like when she needs knowledge how am i going to help her and so when i'm like okay fine i'll go to school to become a teacher so i went to school major did dual major english live and education i actually went to go for ten years while i was raising my kids and i wind up with a master's degree in linguistics then it really helped having children but i always sold or did alterations for my neighbors and they were vests were style in the nineteen nineties so i made vest and sold them on on the side so i was always sowing doing something in that field so when i started to teaching i thought four a while my husband and i own a business for short i helped out and then when the business was winding down i was like oh i really needed to work to keep working i was just too young to retire so i i really brainstorm storm ideas and then pillows just just kept coming back to me because my friends always asked me to make them for for them i made them for my sisters i made them for everybody so i'm like okay pillows you know it was funny because everyone kept discouraging me they're saying why would you wanna sell pillows how many pillows can you sell it's ridiculous nobody buys pillows but i bought a ton of them and made a ton of them so i know women like them and people in general like them and when you're saying pillows like when you said pillows to me i was thinking like pillows i put my head on it at and night and go to bed you're talking about like fancy decorative pillows like throw pillows yes you're right i should correct that i made decorative pillows the couch pillows the sofa pillows and yeah also the decorative bed pillows that people used so i thought to myself well i really don't wanna sell millions of pillows i just wanted to sell enough and i also wanted to keep myself engaged in something that i was passionate about i was passionate about working with tech style looking at fabric shopping for them i had claws its full of them so that's what i wind up doing it was definitely tricky because i knew how to sew and i knew how to shop for the fabric i had a pretty good eye for interior design the problem was i had no knowledge of an online business the technology part was a problem so i had i had to really learn a lot in order to open an online store for the listener and r if you wanna say this as well google okay so submit name is s m i t h e but she spelled bit smith with a y so the word smith and a y smith home couture you guys gotta google that right now and if you go to it you'll see your website but more importantly click the etsy link and i'm not looking at it now but i'm going off memory i think it says that you have sold or you've had seventeen thousand orders and those orders could be multiple pillows and the reviews are like four point nine out of five stars and it's like three or four or five thousand reviews is that right i have very very very good reviews i think there multiple aspects of the business there's a consultant side of it where i help people let pillows for their homes there's another side of it where you actually have to manufacture the pillows we get in order make the pillows path and ship to the client but you also i have customers you know the customer service you have to it's a service to the client so i really try to maintain a relationship with my clients i i treat them the way that i want to be treated so i respond to their questions right away if there's a they request something that i cannot do i make sure that it expressed it i'm hey i can do that so let's try something else or maybe i might even recommend somewhere else for them to find a product that they're looking for so customer service is really important to me because i want to be treated well the the reviews are reflection of that yeah they're crazy high and right now just so so people have context right now i think you have i don't know how many employees you have four or five or six how many do you have so i they're really all sub subcontractors i use about five to six sub subcontractors yeah and you have like i don't know what you call it in an office a workspace where you have i've been there and you have these five or six sixty i have a work room a work room and you're just sewing the like i think people it's pretty cool because i think a lot of people listening to this they're like oh i'm gonna go like find something online and just resell it you have five or six people in there with sewing machines and you're and and you're sewing them like you guys are actually and so like a lot of people brag about made in america which i love i love made in america stuff but you're like making all this in new jersey this is just like it's just a crazy how straightforward you made this process and it has worked really really well it's very simple we don't stock pillow covers we don't stock them we stock fabrics so i have about four hundred different roles of fabrics in my work room someone places in order and we make the pillow that day or that week we ship within three to five days from the time you order to making it packing and ship it's pretty simple i have all people who help me with the sewing but i do all the buying all the creative side is all me and we also make the answer the actual what you were thinking about the pillows is stuffing we also make them there and pack them and and ship it was so simple to start this business in terms of financial investment i started with ten thousand dollars and i've never invested in other penny in it alright so a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they wanna hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business now a lot of people message sean and i and they say alright i wanna start something on the side is this a good idea is that a good idea and again what they really just say is just give me the ideas well my friends you're in luck so my old company the hustle they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the side hustle idea database it's a list of a hundred pretty good ideas frankly i went through them they're awesome and it gives you how to start them how to grow them things like that gives you a little bit of inspiration so check it out it's called the side hustle idea database it's in the description below you'll see the link click it check it out let me know the comments what you think can i re tell the story of how i remember it and i've probably exaggerated it so many times that i don't know what is the truth or what's an exaggeration and you could tell me what is true and what's not so basically if i remember correctly five or six years ago you drove me to the airport sarah and i were still living i think in san francisco or austin i don't remember and i was there by myself on a work trip and you drove me and was like what do you wanna drive me you know like i wanna talk to you about something i was like what do you wanna talk about and you like i wanna start this pillow thing a pillow business can you like just like tell me anything you think i should know and i was like oh wow okay well and in my head i was thinking this is just another conversation that i've had tens of thousands of times or someone tells me something they're gonna do and they're never gonna do it but i like okay well i'll just like i said i don't really know anything about like e com but i could just tell you like what this thing called shopify is and i could tell you that you probably might wanna buy some ads you probably wanna do this i you the most generic thing ever that you could just have google and then two weeks later i get a link to i think it was your a website or an etsy store and i was like oh this person has a company named exactly what you were gonna name your company and you're like oh no this is mine i did what you said i created etsy or i think a shopify store something like that woo commerce and i flew down in north carolina and i bought a bunch of fabrics and i am now getting my friends to buy the stuff to give me a good review and that's where we are is that right that's basically how that's basically how it happened i wanted to under undo than what an commerce entails because again i know how to sell but someone my age or most people my age have a very hard time understanding e the commerce concept and all ling that goes along with it like what is seo what is you know conversion rates you know all all this stuff so i wanted to understand from your perspective what you understood and really should i buy ads or not like what is this exactly and i was able to pick your brand and i got a lot of information about it and of also i needed encouragement from from people who were maybe young young entrepreneurs people who were doing it and you were you were always creating new companies you're always talking about businesses what you're up to so i are you money i wanted some encouragement and and you provided that that was cool how did your first customers find you so etsy is a wonderful platform etsy made it pretty easy at the beginning you're right i want i needed a couple of reviews i have sold for like so many of my friends and families so i had to get a couple of people to buy a few pillows and interest right a of reviews but the first time i actually had a client that i have never met ordered something it was amazing it was exhilarating i was so excited and that feeling that you get like someone says say hey you worth something so and when he kept happening i i really kept doing it it really have i started my business in twenty twenty in january twenty twenty i opened my etsy store and march twenty twenty we shut down for covid so covid really helped lunch my business i think the first month in january i sold about maybe like three hundred dollars of pillows february maybe about five hundred but by the end of march april i was selling multiple thousand dollars of pillows and then the issue was i couldn't keep up the demand i couldn't make them all by myself but i did for the first nine months i did make them all by myself pack them and ship them and all that and then eventually i had to to find help so i'm known on this podcast so it's so funny i have like my home life and then i've got like this like public life and people on the audience and they they know me as someone who ask very blunt questions yes you do i know that's here yeah i was like still gonna ask blank questions but i respect you to you could you can respectfully tell me sam i'm i'm not i'm not answering that i will definitely do that when were you able to pay yourself i was able to pay myself the very first year do you remember how much or you wanna say how much or no i think the first year maybe i made like sixty thousand dollars it wasn't a lot what was the most money you made as a teacher probably about sixty seven thousand dollars so you beat your or you match your teaching your your job in one year the for the first year yeah that's pretty awesome how's does that feel oh it was it was great i did enjoy teaching as well so i don't regret it it was fun i thought i was rewarding as well so but it's nice to be able to do this and get paid wealth for doing it in order to give the viewer and listener some context are you able to say like how much revenue or profit or sales you wanna you're gonna to be doing in twenty six or twenty five so i can tell you this in in twenty twenty five i my business my revenue grew by a hundred percent so we are in a seven figures now in terms of like profit i mean we have i make a very healthy profit i'm very happy with with the income that i make so i i know what it is and i'm not gonna say what it is but i i'll say that i know people who have businesses that do twenty million in revenue e comm businesses that do twenty million dollars in revenue and i have a feeling you're making more money than they are in terms of i don't know about that but i i would say that i do very well i love what i do i never think about it as work work i love it and you know that but i think it's a viable way to measure your success so i i do try to i pay myself but in twenty twenty six all goal is to probably try to grow the business by like another by fifth at least fifty percent okay and i think i can definitely do that i i have a very clear path ahead to how to grow the business and i know you think it's really funny that's how we started one of the many reasons why i wanted to do a podcast with you was because you know me and sean we get all these people reaching out to us that say they wanna start whatever and they like write up these complicated reasons or these complicated business plans or something like that and we're like that's just not important just like start something in a week just move fast you know momentum to your first dollar and i don't know if this is like a genetic thing or people can become this but there's this weird thing that i tend to have sean has it you definitely have it where i almost call it like being a caveman man where you're like smart enough like like you're you can be both you could be really smart at the same time you're like this seems so simple and just straightforward i'm not gonna overthink it i'm just gonna like do step one step two step three whereas a lot of people tend to like overthink things well i think a lot of people would think about it they don't take action so i'm okay making mistakes i've always been that way but i was also taken action on the things that i wanted to do i'll give you a quick quick example so when i moved to the us i was sixteen i went to high school i went from catholic schools in eighty to high school in one of the worst neighborhoods in miami right so high school was horrible i didn't know the language the students were awful to us in general and i wanted to not stay in high school i had three years left but i was like well i really i really don't wanna be here so i decided to go to night school as well so i did three years in high school in two years without knowing english so i graduated they then got out so i i i just knew that dear ways to do things if you really want to do something there's always a pass to to take there's a way a wait always a way to do it for me it was that i i learn how to do i know i can definitely say that i know my business from inside at i knew from how to manage the website has it i take all my photos at the learning curve that was really huge because then i had to learn photoshop canvas and a tons of other programs but i also knew that again i i couldn't learn i never doubted myself that it couldn't learn things so you just break it down in small chunks and you learn a little bit every day so at the end of the month it's like all of a sudden i know how to use photoshop and i know like your audience generally are really young entrepreneurs but i think i was thinking well what kind of value can i add to your podcast and i think the value would be in people who are maybe in their fifties and don't want to retire or want to have a different kind of career who really had a passion that they didn't have an opportunity to follow and for me that's what i did it's pretty crazy yeah i remember looking at some photos of you when you were still in haiti and i was like isn't an incredible that like in such a short amount of time in one lifetime you can go from living in an entirely different country to then going to the one of the busiest parts in america in new york city manhattan where you live owning a multimillion million dollar e com but i was just it was just like it's it's pretty i just i'm i'm so inspired and fascinated about how how how far someone could come i was just reading barack obama's book his biography and he was telling the story about how i think it was his his father's father so his kenyan grandfather or maybe it was his kenyan ant who came to america for the inauguration and they were they they were from kenya and they were living in like a in like the countryside of kenya like not like the most nice setup and i was like it's isn't in this incredible that in two generations you go from just being a person in kenya to like holding this baby and you're like this baby is going to be the future president of america not even kenya of america and i was like it's just incredible like how far that the journey of two generic two or three generations and then i was like you know that's pretty incredible i've got a bunch of immigrant friends or immigrant family members now you being one of them and the the the place where they are is so far from where they started and i think that's like very inspiring well immigrants don't feel like they have a lot to lose so if and i will consider myself to be first generation immigrant but my parents really were the first generation immigrants but they came here and they were already in their forties so it was too late for them so they sacrificed a lot so that we could do well so if you've traveled this far you actually you've left your homeland and you traveled to foreign land to make a new life immigrants kinda of feel like they have nothing to lose they have to give it their all because you you displaced you feel this displaced all the time anyway like you're not fully from one place or the other so you really have to go for it because the opportunities are they are here i we left there because there weren't any opportunities so you won't i we won't wanna be here and not take advantage of the opportunities offered to us or try to really hard i love new york though i have to say even growing up in haiti the used to be a seven up commercial that was filming times square i thought it was amazing i wanted to be right here in new york and you know how obsessed i am with new york city you're the most new york person i know like when we walk in the street i'm like smith that you have to slow down well yeah i yeah you kinda like once you leave here you become a little bit more aggressive but but i do like the energy of new york it's it's a really cool place but but i had that idea i i didn't i knew i would be new york phone at a very young age today's episode is brought to you by hub did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifth to the pages point is you miss a lot and unless you're using hubspot the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights that are trapped emails call logs transcripts that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it visit hubspot dot com you know on this podcast we've talked to like you know billionaires and people have these like companies where tens of billions of dollars and china and i always say we're like we're equally impressed by them as we are a small business that is small but does great work because what we love are people who kind of blaze their own path and kinda like turn dreams into reality and it and it doesn't exactly matter how big the reality is it's just really cool to see people kick their debt in the world and i think that like the takeaway when i talk to you and why i wanted you on was because i think that inertia is strong i think that people tend to do the same thing for years and it's hard to break that and the older you get it's not it's it's just for the reason of inertia you've been doing the same things for a long time and so you're like i don't want to change and what was fascinating was i don't know if it's true that you were wanting to start something for a while but i do know you like were i did i think you had like i think you had thought of it maybe i heard you like brainstorm out loud but then what was interesting is like you went from maybe talking about all these other other things talking about a pillow business and then launching it literally in two weeks and then like before i knew it i think i don't remember what you did your first year but it was like i remember the first thing you told me you crossed six figures i was like are you serious i think a lot of people like to change their look of their home it's a new season it's it's a really a very easy way to transform your space without spending a huge amount of of money and the way that we were able to build our website we also work with interior designers interior designers by a tons of pillows is there a world where you would wanna like go really hard and turn this into a big hundred million plus company i i don't know i think i really like working one on one with the clients if it were to be really big i i think i wouldn't lose that aspect of it so i don't know i am considering a wholesale program though so stores will contact me they want to buy the pillows and i've done some business with some smaller local stores so if i wanted to sell the pillows on a national international level they would not be made to order anymore so that i will stop the pillows so get a lot of orders ahead of time and maybe bloom dallas might want to order a hundred of them for their store in new york or something like that so that would be wholesale they will be buying by the gross is a hundred and forty four of them at a time well are you can do anything besides pillows for the time being no but there are different kinds of pillows that i would like to consider maybe throws i i actually hired a group of artisans to make throws for for smith home couture do you know what a throw is sam just like a little blanket for your couch alright i thought a throw pillow oh yeah i don't know i thought a throw i thought throw pillow was a term wait i've been telling people throw pillows is that the wrong word same thing though throw pillows but a throat would be like just a blanket so people often ask you know do you have throws to match with your pillows that's something that i will look into i am looking into one hand i'm like i don't want you to do this because you know you watch your grandkids on wednesdays of which i'm a huge recipient of that so i like that but on the other hand like man you totally could become martha stewart i could sort like because this is for the listener if you guys ever go to sm house it's like the most perfectly decorated home and it's like it looks it's it's insane and the way that you make dinners it's like you are basically martha stewart yes i like a home depot decor gardening and cooking yes and i'm like you could definitely become a thing and make this a thing and i'm like that sounds awesome i i'm just conflicted do i wanna change it the business model or not so this year would be the year that i think i will make this decision right now i love working one on one with the clients a lot and i also have a great work and live balance i have very flexible hours i can spend a lot of time with my grandkids your children and there's a lot to lose to go big going by going bigger so i have to really consider if that's what i want to do it's it's so interesting because i listen to your podcast of like the young entrepreneurs and and i think it's amazing how well that do don't don't do in and they're really excited they take a really small business and scale it up and really fast and i want to do that but i do dubai doing that i think i believe that i'll have a lot to lose i think what you have is actually the ideal situation which is intentional i think that there's a lot of people myself included even though i try to be really intentional but there's a lot of people who they do things you know it's sort of like a ready fire they kinda just like do stuff and like whatever happens happens and then sometimes we're actually just talking about this in a previous podcast you kinda eventually if you don't do it intentionally you can build your own prison where you're kinda like tap this thing that you created you seem to have this good attitude of like knowing what you want and who you are versus the dopamine rush of more and more and more well i would say that i had that in my thirties like this it was time to build a career a family and to make sure that you're financially stable for your family right i did have to pay college tuition for our children we did have to pay college tuition so we work really hard so that i could have this time where i can really think about what i want to do moving forward and to really follow something that i really liked and i'm interested in so i wake up every day i'm interested about going to work i spent hours online looking at fabrics and i i love this so i had to work really we had to grind first in another for me to have this time and i think there are a lot of people who do do that why in my situation where you get you later on in live and but you still wanna work but you don't want to two things that you don't enjoy doing so i do very well financially selling pillows and i love doing it i'm actually making money doing something that i used to do for free for people so so that's amazing thing what do you do with the money once you've already made it this is a question sean and i ask our successful guests all the time and the reason we ask it is because if you are successful if you do have a little bit of money information on how to spend or invest your money it's actually really hard come by and i know this because inside of hampton which is my media founders people ask this question all the time people have made ten or fifty million dollars how do you spend it how do you invest it and so it helps solve this problem and answer this question i actually interviewed eighty plus founders guys like scott gallo alex mo brian johnson people who were are worth fifty a hundred even billions of dollars and we got them to reveal everything so their net worth how much they pay themselves their monthly expenses their portfolio things like that and we turned these eighty interviews into one document and i don't think you can find this type of information anywhere on the internet and it's completely free so if you wanna see behind the net worth of people who are worth billions of dollars and their portfolios or expenses everything you go to join hampton dot com slash again join hampton dot com slash reveal check it out i remember one time i tweeted out your story and i think i forget what's the guy's name mark marcus lee leo mona or you know talking about the guy who is the champion of that beyond he's come bed bath and beyond yes and he's far to the tv show i think it's called like the profit he's i he's i think i think he's a pretty big deal and he like tweeted at you and he was like hey email me let's get you in bed bath bed bath and beyond and i remember i was like smith i think this is a huge deal and you very calm and collectively it would like that's interesting maybe i'll reach out or something like that it was just like like there was like it was just smooth it was just straight you there was no but i really believe like no one will give you or anything for free like if he wants to talk to me he there's something for him so i have to evaluate what is it that he wants out of this is it gonna be worth it for me as it turned out i think it was a good opportunity but he just didn't work out for us i didn't like their business model so i did go we did have all pillows on bed bath and beyond but after two or three months i pulled them out i don't have to do anything i don't wanna do which is great it's a great place to be in i really like that but i we're on way fair i do very well on way we have a very strong presence on way and i love way and i know a lot of people complain about way but i like it i like working with them their software is very simple and we do great business i know way fair sells a lot of stock items but we'll still a made to order company on way we make we get tons of orders way fair and then we make them that day and then we ship them and we have very low returns on way fares and maybe i think the return is five percent so it works for us if it didn't work out i'll just also not sell on way fare our website is doing very well and between s sea way fare and our website we we are doing very well there's also another service that we offer that's really interior designers really like and some of our clients use it too so we allow clients in and interior designers to ship their own fabrics if they can find a fabric that they like on my website they ship their own fabrics and i provide the labor to sew the pillows and ship to them ship it back to them this is fun i love celebrating your success last last question explain the first time that you met me when i was dating sarah oh yes okay well that was our first that was our first trip to san francisco i think i went there and dropped her off in san francisco because she landed did a great job and all that so i told her to san francisco and made sure she was settled down and then the next time that we went to san francisco and she said she was dating someone and she wanted us to to meet you and of course as parents we were really like concerned like oh my god who is she dating all the way san francisco we live in new york and all that and you insisted that we went directly from the airport to your to your speech to your house was like we're just second why can't we just why can't he wait for us to meet him tomorrow like dinner like a normal family will do and it sounds was like mom can you please just go to his house he really wants you to meet his dog and i was like oh my god alright fine i'll go we'll go go to his house and media his dog and your dog turned out to be like this huge massive pit i was terrified i first i was like oh my god and then of course you started doing all the tricks with with with him and with sid and i was really cool we i thought the person time we met was when i was eating a hot dog or something oh yes that's the next day do you want me to tell the story of the next day here okay yeah oh first i have to say that night before we left your house and we were leaving i was like goodbye sam and you you said to us oh wait you didn't say goodbye to sid and i thought i was very cute i was like oh my god he thinks his dog is a baby okay and then the next day i think i had mentioned that i wanted to go to the botanical garden i love flowers and all that and and you said you wanted to go with us and i was like what he wants to go to the botanical garden i could do were really cool to wanna spend time with sarah's parents most guys will be like oh it's nice to meet you by but you wanted to spend time with us i thought it was cool and you wind up we drove there you wind up going there on your motorcycle and you walked up to us with a hot dog dripping with sarah crowd and catch up it was like falling to the ground i was like you you what is this i was just off i'm like sal should you wanna take this guy but i really i really trust to tower i i i felt like she's an amazing person i always felt like she was an amazing person and i really trusted her judgment and she really seems to like you and i was like okay so i guess we really should get to know sam as as it turned out you'll pretty cool alright you'll you the you guys will have to like google if you could like google sam park fat and you'll see photos of what i looked like back then but i was significantly heavier than i am now and i was much s and yeah i've i when i look get back at those photos i'm like oh my god i can't believe sarah talked to me when i when i walked up to and then i remember of like i think we were dating for six or twelve months i don't remember and well first of all when i met sarah she was like i was like you you don't remember how i said but i was like you're you seem kinda of fancy did you go to like a good college or something and she's like i went to penn and was like is that like a good school i don't know anything and she's like yeah it's called wharton and she didn't say it in like a rude way but was like this thing called warren it's like a it's like kinda big it's i it's part of the ivy league i was like what's the ivy ivy league i don't even know what that is and had like look it up and then she was like i'm from new york city my parents live in manhattan i was like people live in manhattan that's a thing and then six or twelve months later i go to new york for the first time ever i was such a i don't know how you could describe what it was i was a little bit of a hill but i went to new york city and i remember seeing your apartment and it was on floor fifty or something and i was like this is the highest i've ever been like in a building and i can't believe that someone lives here and i remember walking yet and i walked in as if it was like my parents are like you know like parents recording something video i like the whole thing i was holding an iphone like recording everything i was like i can't believe someone lives here i it was crazy you know that of course my husband tells the story all this time because we'll like we thought you were a keeper that day literally that day made a huge difference because you walk into the apartment i must say we had an amazing view we could see all the way downtown it was just spectacular and you weren't in the apartment for like five or ten minutes you pulled out your phone and you facetime your parents you're like you have to see this view and jeff and i thought was sc that the first thing you wanted to do ways to reach out to your parents to share the moment with them so will i well this guy is amazing if he likes his parents and his mom he has this kind of relationship with his mom maybe he'll be alright maybe he'll be wanna do the same thing with sarah and so far it's been proven true so that's really cool i think i i think people on having so my parents are entrepreneurs as well you guys are entrepreneurs jeff your husband started a really successful company as well and i think if my parents have a successful company and i think that not not at one point have my parents or you or jeff ever said like are you sure that you should go and do and start this business versus going and get this job like when i told my parents i was gonna leave school and move to san francisco they were like we'll come help you pack like that like support and i remember like i've told you some of my like before i start hampton i think i like would brainstorm to some different ideas and like there was never like a are you sure it was always like that sounds interesting yeah i can i can't wait to see what you do next well what i what i mean it's like having entrepreneurial like parents like just emotionally support you versus say are you sure you don't wanna play it safe i think it's such a huge advantage when i started my business my parents didn't purposely didn't ask for any i wanted to do at my own but what i had was even more valuable which was like emotional support and i think that's a huge deal yeah i i i agree i think it's a huge deal and for us it's it's like i said i really think it's very exciting like you have such great ideas like everything that you tried to do i i'm always excited because i want to see what's the outcome where you're able to do it it's a challenge and i think that's the way we grow we take on challenges and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't but if you don't try you will never know so let's promote you here alright so smith i'm gonna google it so do you want people to go smith home sm home couture dot com and then do you use instagram at all yeah i do have an instagram sm home couture i think you've gotta promote yourself sometimes i think that getting people bought into your lifestyle i think is a win are you're never gonna do that i'm afraid of cameras thank god you're doing this podcast good i know this pay camera yeah i know it's interesting this probably because it's with you too so it's not so intimidating alright well thank you for doing this let's see what happens and that's it that's pod i feel like i could rude to where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a go less travel never back alright my friends i have a new podcast for you guys to check out it's called content is profit and it's hosted by luis and ph ka after years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like red bull and orange theory fitness luis and ph are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue in each episode you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators and you're gonna hear him share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit so you can check out content is profit wherever you get your podcast