From Investment Banker to Creator: The Story of How Khe Hy Carved Out His Unconventional Entrepreneurial Path

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:00]:

Like me, Khe Hy is also the son of immigrant parents.

Khe Hy [00:00:07]:

The, um, child of two first, uh, generation immigrants who came to the United States in the early 70s from Cambodia, and they came into New York City with a dream. Not, uh, a lot of money, no family, and just, uh, my dad had a job at the United Nations.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:00:24]:

Like my family, Khe's family also made sure to give the Hy siblings a well-rounded education to ensure they got a great start to their lives in America.

Khe Hy [00:00:32]:

SAT prep, violin, um, week educational camps over the summer, all in a spirit of getting to a great college, then getting a good job, and then, poof, you'll be happy, right? That was kind of the immigrant dream, right, for their kids. And to their credit, they succeeded in that. I went to Yale. I majored in Computer Science. I graduated in 2001. Um, during the dot-com crisis, I was an investment banker for a year and a half.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:06]:

And like me, Khe also decided to quit his Wall Street finance job or as he calls it, 'pull the cord' to start off on his own.

Khe Hy [00:01:21]:

I hated that life, uh, which shows that I have a rebellious streak against kind of people telling me what to do. Then, uh, I migrated into a different part of financial services called Fund of Hedge Funds. It was a little less intense than investment banking. And I was in that industry for twelve, uh, years. So at 35 is when I pulled the ripcord and, uh, left to go off on my own.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:01:36]:

In case you haven't realized it yet, Khe and I have A LOT in common. In fact, when I came across his story for the first time, I HAD to invite him onto this podcast because his story resonated deeply with my own journey. . My conversation with Khe proved to be incredibly illuminating and I found his life to be a rich treasure trove of stories and life-lessons, which I hope to convey over the course of this episode. Hi, my name is Yong-Soo Chung and I am a first-generation Korean-American entrepreneur living the American dream. I started Urban EDC to cater to enthusiasts of everyday carry gear. I also own two other successful ventures: GrowthJet, a climate-neutral certified third-party logistics company for emerging e-commerce brands, and SpottedByHumphrey, an online boutique curating dog goods for good dogs. Through these three ventures, my business has generated over $20 million dollars in 8 years and I'm here to tell you how YOU can do the same! On this episode of First Class Founders, I am sharing with you my insights from my conversation with Khe Hy, the Founder and CEO of RadReads.

Khe Hy [00:02:51]:

My name is Khe Hy. I'm the founder and CEO of RadReads. RadReads is an online education company that helps people lead more productive, examined and joyful lives. I'm a father of two young girls, husband to an incredible wife, Lisa, avid surfer, and, uh, teller of lots of bad dad jokes.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:03:12]:

I spoke to Khe about his journey of becoming an entrepreneur and the places it led him over the years from being one of the youngest Managing Directors at the prestigious private equity firm BlackRock managing a fund of hedge-funds, to starting his own newsletter, to quietly offering his services as a business coach, to becoming the founder and CEO of his own company, RadReads. Through the course of our interview, Khe shared many incredible life-lessons he learned while going down his unconventional entrepreneurial path, which I hope to share in this episode. Also, very few people know that Khe occasionally takes on clients for one-on-one coaching but doesn’t really advertise it as one of his offerings. Khe shared his thoughts on why that is the case and why he actually prefers it that way. These thoughts can be heard in the extra segment included in the special ad-free version of this episode, available only to our premium members.Become a premium member of First Class Founders by signing up to firstclassfounders.com/join today - I'll leave a link in the show notes. Oh, and one more thing. You may have noticed, this episode is a bit longer than all our other episodes. The thing is, there was so much awesomeness in Khe’s story that we found it difficult to trim it down to our usual thirty minute length. So, I decided to treat you - and myself - with the longest episode of this podcast so far. Regardless of the length, I know you are gonna love listening to it as much as I loved making it!

Khe Hy [00:04:46]:

Hi. I'm Khe Hy, the founder and CEO of RadReads. Let's get down to business!

Yong-Soo Chung [00:04:54]:

The first life-lesson from Khe’s life-story dropped barely a few minutes into our conversation, when he began telling me WHY he decided to quit his incredibly lucrative investment banking job and decided to venture out on his own.

Khe Hy [00:05:09]:

Over those 14 years, all these great things were happening. I was getting promoted, I was getting huge bonuses. Uh, I bought an apartment in New York. We would vacation wherever we wanted. And every time those things happened, it was great. And I'm so grateful that I had those experiences. But my happiness kind of my stationary, my resting rate of happiness, or level of happiness, baseline level of happiness, didn't really change much. I was kind of bored going through the motions, um, kind of anxious about like, why am I not fulfilled? And I would look at people who were 10, 15 years older than me, and they had two houses and kids in private schools and multiple X5s. And I kind of said to myself, I don't really want that. There's got to be something different. And so a few years, there's a joke on Wall Street, when's the best time to leave your Wall Street job? After next year's bonus? And I had that experience a few times, and I just said, you know what, I'm living groundhog today, I'm living for tomorrow. I'm not getting any younger. Um, it's time for me to take a risk, try to figure out really, what is it that makes me come alive. We get one life, and it's too precious to go through the motions in a job that is kind of met.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:06:41]:

And he did exactly that. He decided to quit his highly-lucrative job at BlackRock - a job that he had been working for EIGHT years! Think about that for a minute. That’s nearly a full decade! I wonder what was going through his mind when he made that decision.

Khe Hy [00:06:59]:

I think the best way to describe it was that I felt like I was living the deferred life plan, which is when you say, basically, I'm busting my butt today for some promise of a better tomorrow.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:07:08]:

That right there is an incredibly important life-lesson. I'm marking this down as the FIRST life-lesson of this episode. LIFE LESSON NUMBER ONE: Don't live your life deferred - don't trade your precious time for money if you don't enjoy what you do. So, Khe decided to cut the BlackRock cord and (pause) start a newsletter. Well, it wasn't technically a newsletter and he hadn't technically 'quit' his job when he started it. And the reason I said it wasn't technically a newsletter is because the first edition of RadReads started as a simple... email. Yeah. An honest-to-god old-school email, sent when he was on vacation.

Khe Hy [00:08:01]:

I was still working at BlackRock, but there's an important disclaimer here, was I had already decided that I was going to leave, but I hadn't actually resigned yet. I was on vacation, and Wall Street is a demanding job. 60, 70 hours a week. You got to work on the weekends. So I was on vacation, and I just had time to read. I was reading a bunch of stuff online. I was on Twitter. This is 2015. No one in my office was on Twitter. And I would just find these cool articles, and I said, hey, let me just send it to 36 friends, because I found these cool articles, and I think they would like it. So I shared these five articles, and it's funny. In the PS, uh, in the sign off, I said, I'm on vacation. Now, I have no idea when I'll do this again. So I wasn't trying to start a newsletter, but a bunch of people replying like, this is the best email I've gotten in a long time. When's the next one coming? And I was like, oh, I guess I got to do it again. But the good thing was, I love reading stuff online. I love curating. I shared my philosophy with you of my duty to serve and help others. And I'm like, I guess I'll do this next week, and then next week, and then next week, and then next week, and then that was 388 weeks ago. So that newsletter has spanned two kids, the birth of two kids, uh, cross country move, leaving BlackRock, two trips, uh, like, two trips around the world. So the newsletter has been the anchor to it all.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:09:32]:

388 weeks, forty-thousand subscribers, all because thirty-six friends enjoyed an email that he sent while he was on vacation from a grueling job where he worked 60-70 hours a week!But, here's what I think is truly remarkable about this entire story. Khe didn't plan to be an entrepreneur - the whole thing was entirely...

Khe Hy [00:09:51]:

Accidental. Like, so many things started, not because I sat in a room, wrote a business plan, and made this thing happen. It's because I just tried a bunch of stuff. I followed my enthusiasm. Um, I'm very public on what I'm working on, and stuff just found me, right? Like that quote 'Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation.'

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:13]:

"Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation." This is something unique about Khe's entrepreneurship that kept coming up at different points of the conversation. His entrepreneurship is built on a foundation of incredibly collaborative - maybe even altruistic - principles.

Khe Hy [00:10:28]:

If there's something that I know that could be helpful to someone else, it is my duty to share it with them. That's a fundamental philosophy that I have. And you see that in my courses, in my short form videos, and in my blog, in my newsletter, it's always a duty. It's like, I found this interesting thing, and I I must share with you. so that you can try it out yourself.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:10:54]:

Yup, that's another life-lesson right there. The second life-lesson of this episode. LIFE LESSON NUMBER TWO: You have a duty to share helpful advice with other fellow entrepreneurs.The first email that marked the beginning of RadReads was sent with this exact thought in mind, "Hey, I found these articles interesting, I am sharing them with you, maybe they will help you too like they helped me?!"And that is also the exact sequence of thoughts that has driven the RadReads newsletter for 388 weeks since that first email - now closer to 400, in fact.

Khe Hy [00:11:27]:

There's no magic recipe. You do something for 388 weeks. I'm in the league. Not in terms of, um, popularity and success, but of the James Clears and of the Tim Ferriss's. And they've just been doing it for. So just by doing it for that long, right? Not by anything else. So it's a long game. I always say I want to be a creator for 30 years. So from like age 35 to 65. So I'm playing super long game. I'm not even the first decade yet so the newsletter has evolved and it kind of goes against what a lot of people say. Keep in mind, this was eight years ago, so it was a very different landscape. Substack didn't exist. Like, my first newsletter was on Tiny Letter.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:12:24]:

It blows my mind that not only has the core principle of RadReads NOT changed over the last 10-11 YEARS, but that RadReads hasn't followed the ONE rule that I always tell other entrepreneurs who are just starting out on their journey - "Find your own niche."I've dedicated entire episodes to this. I have had guests who swear by it. I have found frameworks and mental models and learning materials that all insist on choosing a niche that you can OWN. And here is Khe, completely BLOWING that idea out of the water...

Khe Hy [00:12:38]:

A lot of advice now is like, niche down, find your thing and just talk about the same thing over and over and over and over again. And I think that that works. But you're not going to have the staying power because human, we change. Everything change. We change our interests change our families change, the world around us changes. Right? Pandemic um, and so I think that if you niche down, yes, it's much easier to be like, hey, I am the no code person for Android apps. And people will find there is need for that. But the minute you decide you want to do something else, it's going to be very difficult because people came to you for one thing. So I've always taken the opposite tack, which is I'm going to share things that I am interested in and they're going to change because I'm going to change.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:13:37]:

That... That makes me... uncomfortable. Yeah, uncomfortable is probably a good word to describe it. Because it goes against what I have always preached - "find your own niche". But, I do see Khe's logic here and I think I understand what he is trying to say here. When I say, "find your own niche," I am referring to figuring out YOUR topics of interest. As in stuff you have gained expertise in over the years. Remember what I said back in episode 25, 'How To Turn Your Side Hustle Into Million Dollar Business'? "All of these thought leaders, they did something incredibly simple and incredibly basic - they chose a niche and they worked towards OWNING it. That's what you need to do - OWN a niche." However, some people might be tempted to choose a niche based on whatever is currently trending. That, Khe says - and I agree - is a bad idea.

Khe Hy [00:14:31]:

Clubhouse. No code. Notion. Notetaking apps, NFTs, Web3. Crypto. Yield farming. People need something to be excited about, but that's because they're not excited about their core thing. Like, they're chasing the hot trend. Right. If you chase the hot trend, you're always going to be chasing something. Or you can look inside and see, like, this is what I stand for. And that can change, too. But those are more pillars of identity. Right. And if you can connect that to your creative work, then you'll have staying power and you won't get washed up, um, or caught in the next trend.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:07]:

Sometimes, it just so happens that your expertise doesn't fall neatly into a niche. For example, your expertise - like Khe's - could be that you are able to curate great stuff from various different niches. In a situation like this, you can't find a niche for yourself because it simply doesn't exist!

Khe Hy [00:15:16]:

I write about productivity. I write about money. I write about happiness. I write about marriage, I write about fatherhood, I write about tech, I write about solopreneurship, I talk about creativity. Right? The common unifying thing is that Khe is passionate about those things, right? It takes much longer to grow. Like, I can't be like everyone puts on Twitter, the writing guy or the no code guy or the note-taking gal. I can't put that for me.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:15:55]:

There is additional support for what Khe's arguing for, by the way. The book "Range - Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein offers similar arguments to what Khe has been saying.In the book, David Epstein argues that the more the world specializes, the more it becomes complex and unpredictable. And in such a complex and unpredictable world, Generalists are better at seeing patterns, making connections, and solving problems that require creativity and flexibility. To be honest, I get where Khe is coming from. I’m a bit of a generalist myself when it comes to my career and life experiences. I started my career as a Trader at a hedge fund on Wall Street, moved to San Francisco to get into startups, attended a Software Engineering bootcamp to be hired on as a full-time Software Engineer at a cryptocurrency startup, then gave up my software engineering career altogether to sell pocket knives online with Urban EDC, my first company.If you want to listen to my entire backstory of how I got to where I am today, that’s Episode 13: Rag to Riches: How I Built a Successful Business from Scratch. But when it comes to starting a business online? I always advocate for niche-ing down. While Khe has a more generalist approach to his personal brand, several guests on this podcast - often advocate for finding a specialist niche for yourself.That’s why I have two e-commerce stores, Urban EDC and Spotted By Humphrey and BOTH cater to different niches. Urban EDC caters to the everyday carry niche, while Spotted By Humphrey serves the French bulldog community. But, getting back to the generalist vs specialist discussion - and this is the key thing in my opinion - being a generalist also means evolving over a long period of time - something that Khe and his newsletters have both done consistently over the years...

Khe Hy [00:17:49]:

My newsletter has always evolved. Like, in the early days, it was a lot more about, like, I thought I might want to be a tech founder, like a venture back founder. So it was a lot more about how tech works and so on. And then there was another phase where, uh, I was doing a lot of psychology of money coaching, so I had more of a money bend. Then I became more of a solopreneur. So I got a slightly more creative bend.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:20]:

And over that period of time, things have stabilized and patterns have emerged. The newsletter is beginning to forge a clear identity and Khe - and Radreads - too have greater clarity about their overall mission in life.

Khe Hy [00:18:29]:

Now we found, like, a good rhythm, a good balance of, like, at the end of day, there's a mission. We want to help ambitious people lead more productive examined and joyful lives. So it's an intersection of productivity, which can be a lot of things, like career work, um, but also tools, um, more productive examined, which is like philosophy, self, uh, awareness, introspection, spirituality, and joyful. Like, happiness. Like, what is a life well lived? And so that is a big enough container that gives us a lot of maneuverability within.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:18:52]:

I think this qualifies as our third life-lesson for today. LIFE LESSON NUMBER THREE: Be yourself and talk about your interests, which are always evolving as you evolve as a person. Jokes aside, Khe's decision to not chase trends, to NOT restrict himself to a narrow niche, and to focus on being a generalist all these years has served him pretty well, in at least one aspect - sponsorships.

Khe Hy [00:19:17]:

That's the thing when you show up in people's mailboxes for 380 consecutive weeks, when you post on social, daily, people just know you're around, and they know you're doing some cool stuff, and they want if there's, uh, a synergy, they want in. Reporters will reach out to me all the time, because I'm just always in their feeds, and they know that I'm a deep-ish thinker, I've got ideas to share, and I'm a good communicator. Uh, so that's kind of what happened with sponsors. Um, people would be like, oh, I'm very public about transparent, about subscriber counts and things like that. I'm not really trying to hide anything. And some people would come. Usually it was like a friend that we did an early ad with Adams, like the shoe company. I, uh, had a friend doing spiritual, ah, retreat in Costa Rica. So at first it was kind of friends and friends of friends, and some readers. It's pretty difficult to do sponsorships by yourself, uh, because what people don't realize is that there's a lot of work that goes into, let's say, just say it's a one paragraph insertion in your newsletter. There is a lot of work that goes into there. There is copywriting, there's the customization of the copy to match your voice, there's logo placements, there's tracking links, there's sending test emails to the client. Then once you send it out, there's the reporting requirements. Do you report after five days, you report after seven days, click through rates, and so on. That's a lot of work, and you need to have a pretty sizable newsletter to justify doing that work for it to be worth it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:20:52]:

Even with RadReads, the sponsorships weren't a big part of the strategy. They just, sort of, *happened* because he uses ConvertKit and...

Khe Hy [00:21:03]:

ConvertKit turned on their sponsor network. And we were lucky to be a longtime ConvertKit user. Um, and I'm friends with Nathan and many people at that company. I love that company so much. And, um, we were lucky that we were part of the beta test of their sponsor network. And I'll tell you, they give you a short code, you put that short code in your newsletter, and then the money comes in, and they take a pretty penny for brokering, right? But unless you're committing to sponsorship, being your driver of revenue, it's hard to match what that level, um, of, um, turnkeyness. And again, it just turned on. It's like a 55,000 $60,000 source of revenue for us at 40,000 subs. It just turned that on. Like no new employees, nothing to support. It just that short code.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:21:55]:

But even with ConvertKit making sponsorships for RadReads practically a one click affair, Khe insists that the overall editorial policies that make RadReads what it is have remained unchanged.

Khe Hy [00:22:10]:

Not at all. If anything, sometimes we reject some of the ads or we ask them to change it because it doesn't feel like the ad is aligned to our newsletter. We had one customer, and they were a design firm, and so they were so picky about the padding on their logo and the resolution. And look, they're the client. Right? That's their prerogative. But in hindsight, oh my, I think I spent, like, two and a half hours just trying to get and there's, like, ConvertKit adds, like, a little pixel around the images. And we couldn't find how to get that out. And because they're designers, they really cared about that extra pixel. I was just like, this is not worth my time.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:22:44]:

Sponsorships aren't the only way Khe makes money, though. He's pretty open about it so you might already know what I'm about to discuss next - his courses.Specifically, his course "Supercharge Your Productivity" - which was pretty much responsible for about 50% of his revenue in 2022. I asked Khe about how and why he chose productivity as the subject for the course and positioning himself as the authority figure for the product.And I'll tell you all about it but first, let me introduce you to our sponsor for this episode - Riverside. Alright, before we went into the break, I told you that Khe's course "Supercharge Your Productivity" was pretty much responsible for about 50% of his revenue in 2022. It turns out that "Supercharge your Productivity" has been a REALLY successful course for Khe and RadReads.

Khe Hy [00:24:58]:

Supercharge Your Productivity is a core-based course that we have run since September of 2018, that course, and there's like, a little paid alumni community on it, I think since inception, has done like 1.2 million in, uh, sales over that time period.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:25:14]:

Naturally, I was very curious to know how and why he chose to go with 'productivity' as the core-subject for the course. And what did he specifically do to position himself as the authority around the subject.

Khe Hy [00:25:25]:

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but when you write about a certain topic over and over and over and over again, you become an authority or people deem you an authority. Right. If you go through my blog posts and my tweets and my videos, you'll probably find 75 blog posts on productivity. We've curated probably, let's say, 388 articles on productivity. We've probably filmed 50 videos on productivity. I've probably been on 25 productivity podcasts. Um, and that's one of the big tools in our quiver. Right. Uh, and so you can't fake that. Right. I've genuinely been interested in productivity since I was 21 years old, when I bought David Allen's book, physical Copy paperback, um, out of Barnes and Nobles. Right. So you can't fake that. And I was genuinely interested in that. And so I would write about it, talk about it, tweet about it, and then over time, that's how you establish yourself as an authority or as an expert. Again, I didn't set out to do that. It was just where my interests were taking me.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:26:34]:

What I find fascinating here is that productivity ISN'T Khe's niche in any way. But, over the years, Khe has read, written, spoken, and recorded so much content about productivity that he is now DEEMED by the people as an expert on the subject.Even without having a specific niche, he managed to construct a niche for himself in order to position his course for the market!And to build this course, Khe did something truly incredible - he went straight to his audiences!He spoke to his readers, asked them questions, gathered feedback with the aim of understanding their pain points while building this course. And I can vouch for the fact that he does this regularly while building out courses. Because, recently, he and I were DM-ing about our finance days and how we both decided that it was an unfulfilling path. Khe wanted to learn more about me so, I sent him a link to the podcast episode I mentioned above outlining my journey.The point is, Khe is always learning about his audience and how he can serve their pain points.

Khe Hy [00:27:35]:

You need to really, really understand your audience's needs and their pain points. Right? And so I talked to my readers a lot. You and I, we were DMing, right? I'm very I always ask, like, what, like, what's on your, what's frustrating you? What's your, what's your biggest challenge? What would you like to see me write more about? It's very unscientific, right? A product manager listening to this at Big Tech is rolling over and being like, that's not how you do product interviews. But again, it's a small team, and I feel like I have a good pulse to the ground and a good ear to what's happening.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:28:07]:

But even with a good ear to the ground and a general sense of the pulse, sometimes, over-ambitious decisions do happen. And, sometimes, the positioning, or the product - or sometimes even both - don't work out as well as intended. Khe gave an example of a product - a course - he was looking to build out.

Khe Hy [00:28:24]:

Right now, things are tough in the creator economy. Just in general, things are really tough. People's wallets are closed. A lot of creators are shutting down, laying off teams, ourselves included. Uh, but we are, uh, testing out we have this thesis, like, what's on people's mind right now. It's the recession, right? And so we're like, well, what if we could offer a course or workshop around the recession? And so we kind of came up with a name first, right. I think, like, having a catchy name is actually important just to get people to pay attention. So we came up with a workshop is how to keep your job in a recession. And so from that, we've been writing a bunch of tweets LinkedIn posts, very simple ones, like one or two liners. It's not getting much traction. You might have just seen I posted, like, uh, like a Twitter essay, it's probably, uh, 600 words, where I basically wrote a blog post about it. It it's not getting much traction. We're going to share it in the newsletter this weekend because it's already written, but I can already tell you right now it's not going to get a lot of traction. Just based on the different data points that I've seen. We're still going to do the workshop, but we're not going to spend as much time it's free. We're not going to spend as much, as much time preparing for it because it hasn't got a lot of traction. But we've already, we're kind of already invested in a lightweight way to just see this through the end. And maybe we will be surprised. But that goes to show me that either that's not a product that the market wants, if they're not even responding to tweets about it, then they're definitely not going to pay money for it, or that's not a product that they want from me. Right. And I don't know which one it is, but it doesn't matter, because if they don't want it, whether it's from here or in general, I shouldn't go out and build it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:30:06]:

I love what Khe is doing here. He’s testing out the market for a new course concept by surveying his audience prior to spending time and money building out the actual course. This concept is one of the key principles of Jim Collins’s work: Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs. It refers to putting in just enough effort to test demand for a product to see if there’s real demand for it BEFORE you invest your time, money, and energy into building the thing itself.Because the last thing you want to do is spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building something that nobody wants. Let’s make that our fourth life lesson for today, shall we? LIFE LESSON NUMBER FOUR: When building a product, make sure you have the right product-market fit.That said, I feel like the performance dip seen by this particular product may have been an anomaly. And my feeling was further supported when Khe described the rigorous iterative process through which the courses are designed.

Khe Hy [00:31:09]:

It would start with a bunch of Tweets and Reels Then, it would go like blog post, newsletter, then it would go to free event. Then from free event, it might go to paid event. And then from paid event it might go to course. And you'd be surprised. Very few things make it through that thing. In each way, it's kind of like an MVP minimum viable product style approach to product development. But the good thing is you're building assets along the way.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:31:27]:

In other words, Khe is firing bullets first in the form of Tweets, Reels, and free events to see how the market responds. If those did well, then I’m sure he would have gone ahead with the full fledged course, his cannonball. But the content didn’t resonate with his audience, so he stopped short of firing that cannonball so he doesn’t waste anymore resources.One popular way of testing demand is running a pre-sale. Entire industries were born out of this concept such as crowdfunding. In fact, my company, Urban EDC, run pre-orders on new products to see how much demand there is before placing our order with our manufacturer. But Khe? He has an interesting take on pre-selling his courses.

Khe Hy [00:32:18]:

I know that that's a big school of thought. I'd rather test it through content and free events. And I know that there's probably someone that's going to say that that's the wrong way to do it, but that's the way it feels. I don't feel comfortable. I also need to be, I need to feel the thing that I'm building to try to sell it and to try to sell something off. Just a ghost sales page just doesn't feel very natural to me. And so it's a struggle for me.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:32:41]:

The more I spoke to Khe, the more I found myself speaking to a person who had pretty clear ideas of what he wanted for his newsletter, for his products, for his brand... Everything he spoke about was a glimpse into his leadership style. And, from what I could see, his leadership style was forward-thinking and clear-headed. I wasn't surprised because I already knew that to be the case. Particularly because I had heard him speak on the subject in a webinar, titled "How to CEO during an Economic Meltdown." But before we get to that, let me just set the stage first. So, a few moments ago, Khe was telling us about the rigorous iterative process he uses to design and build his courses. This process received a massive jet-fueled boost during the pandemic.

Khe Hy [00:33:30]:

For a huge number of businesses, COVID was a godsend. People had money, people were bored, and people were at home. That is a confluence of events for positive and negative for others. Like negative for gyms, positive for Peloton. Right. Negative for Broadway shows, positive for YouTubers. Right? So we had this perfect storm that a lot of people forgot or didn't realize that's not real life. That was an anomaly. Obviously, we knew COVID was an anomaly, but we didn't realize that the economic sea-change that came with COVID would also be an anomaly.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:34:19]:

But, at the time, it didn't seem like an anomaly. At the time, what really mattered was that the cash registers were ringing.

Khe Hy [00:34:27]:

We're making a lot of money on a very small team. And so what classic entrepreneur thinking is like, well, I've cracked the code on something in entrepreneurial terms. Product market fit. Once you have product market Fit, you throw gasoline on the thing, you throw gasoline on marketing, you throw gasoline on advertising, you expand your offerings. And so at the end of 2021, it kind of ramped up a team. People that had been friends, collaborators, so on, and we're like, okay, it's go time, right?

Yong-Soo Chung [00:35:02]:

Except, it wasn't go-time, as it later turned out. The anomaly began to make itself evident, little by little. When people were stuck at home during the lockdowns, they had plenty of time to do their jobs AND grow themselves. They were listening to podcasts, taking courses, spending money online - primarily because there was nothing to spend on offline.But, being cooped up also meant that people were yearning to go out. Even if living our lives online had become second nature to most of us, it was obvious that online activities would see a dip once offline became accessible.

Khe Hy [00:35:44]:

The cracks started to emerge in hindsight, in early 2022, because that's when, I don't know, COVID ended, so to speak. Like, people started going back to the office, work from home. People got busy. Socially, professionally, everyone got busy. And so being online for self improvement productivity courses was, like, not that appealing, right, because you could go to Coachella instead, or Burning Man or whatever.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:36:06]:

This was further worsened by the economy itself taking a big hit in the post-pandemic era.

Khe Hy [00:36:17]:

And then the economy started to dip and continues to dip. It's so hard to even describe, like, we're in some dip for sure now. And people started to close their wallets.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:36:27]:

The thing about such anomalies - either dips or peaks - is that they are only evident in hindsight. No matter how hard you try, you just can't see them happening in real-time.

Khe Hy [00:36:39]:

Because you're like, oh, this was just like a tough sales cycle. Oh, our April Cohort never does. Well or, you know, like, it's easy to, to kind of look at the data in that moment and be like, oh, this was an anomaly because of X, because of Y. But then every I mean, we still have people that are like, big companies that are delaying their payments to us. Everything is just harder when it comes to getting paid. Everything's harder.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:37:02]:

The consequence of it all was this. Khe had rapidly expanded his team for a market that was rapidly deteriorating to the point where he had over-hired.

Khe Hy [00:37:13]:

I had given like, full time offers to a bunch of people. And then, was like, two months later, I had to lay more than half of my team off and get back to the basics, because our launch in January was just very low relative to what we had forecasted and relative to what the team that I had built.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:37:27]:

Khe offered some more examples of a few other businesses that were similarly caught off guard by the same anomaly of the pandemic.

Khe Hy [00:37:40]:

Think about Peloton. Right? It was like a nice, nice to have product before the pandemic. No one really, like, not a lot. Then everyone bought one. They were like, back ordered for so long, trading in secondary market and all that. And now I don't know if they're on the verge of bankruptcy, but they're definitely, like, in vulture-distressed. Uh, private equity firms are circling the wagons on them. And it's an amazing product. People freaking love it. Tremendous brand recognition. I'm sure that they made scrips along the way, but their scrips are similar to our scrips. It's just like we just took a straight line and we kept drawing it straight up and not recognizing how it could change.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:38:20]:

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And Zoom too, right?

Khe Hy [00:38:28]:

Zoom, Doordash, I mean, Netflix, any pandemic, anything where you were at home in front of a screen... you would see that trendline.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:38:34]:

I guess that is an important lesson for all founders and creators to take away.LIFE LESSON NUMBER FIVE: Even if you have the PERFECT product-market fit, the market might shift unexpectedly on you.That was one of the key things Khe spoke about in the "How to CEO during an Economic Meltdown" post that I came across. He has now converted it into a free course that you can access on his website radreads.com - I'll leave a link in the show notes. In fact, the whole thing has been a huge learning experience for Khe as the CEO of RadReads. For one, it has reinforced a key belief he has held for a long time.

Khe Hy [00:39:09]:

I'm a big believer that you only need to make a few important decisions a year as a CEO, even in your life.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:39:18]:

And, in the wake of the hiring and the layoffs that happened in quick succession, Khe knew that one of the first things he needed to do as a CEO was consolidate the bottomline. Thankfully, the layoffs gave them some much-needed breathing room...

Khe Hy [00:39:31]:

Because of the layoffs, we have cut our expenses tremendously. So we have more breathing room. We just had too much payroll, so that gives us more breathing room.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:39:38]:

And so, one of the first decisions he took as CEO after this incident was to postpone his next course, hoping to use that extra time to reevaluate.

Khe Hy [00:39:51]:

We basically said the next course will be January of next year. So we've kind of, like, pushed out the launch, kind of see where things the market has felt very saturated. A lot of cohort based courses have shut down. Um, so we got to push it off to a year, for a year, uh, until next January.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:40:14]:

The other major decision Khe made was to go back to the basics and focus on the newsletter - specifically, sponsorships.

Khe Hy [00:40:16]:

Potentially, one thing we're discussing is splitting our newsletter into two. And that could effectively double, not necessarily double, but maybe like 1.5 or 1.75 our sponsorship. We have a group of our readers who are very, very senior in their organizations. So kind of like high end mastermind type individuals. And so they they are less affected by the economic downturn, and they are always looking to grow. And so we launched a mastermind actually for finance professionals, like a mindset, like how to how to be a better leader, how to be a better It was all men, how to be a better husband, how to be a better father, how to take care of your health, how to cultivate your relationships, and how to be a better business person. So we launched a mastermind. This was all there's no, like, sales pages or any of this. It's just like we we know that there's a segment of our audience that this type of these type of things appealed. So, and most people, it doesn't, mostly because it's out of reach price price point.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:41:24]:

And finally, Khe is using this time to plan for the short-term and the long-term future both as the CEO of RadRead.

Khe Hy [00:41:38]:

We're doing some of these experiments, like I told you, the one we did with how to keep your job during a recession. I am thinking about, um, maybe using this kind of downturn to write a book. So kind of exploring that path of agents and publishers and so on.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:41:50]:

Basically, he's trying to figure out ways to get people back into learning the way they did during the pandemic and the lockdowns.

Khe Hy [00:41:58]:

We experiment a lot. We do a lot of surveys. We're always talking to our audience, trying to figure out their pain points and then trying to figure out what they'll pay for. It's a big leap in Creator for creators is like, people can love your stuff, but getting them to open their wallets and buy something from you is a completely different ballgame. Completely different ballgame. Mhm. And so we're always trying to figure out what our pain points. If we're going to do anything, it's going to be smaller group workshops, not a huge time commitments and very little self serve courses. It just feels like people don't have the desire to be online right now.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:42:51]:

On a personal front, Khe has built a pretty powerful brand that he occasionally leverages through one-on-one coaching or consultations. But, as he is quick to clarify, very occasionally...

Khe Hy [00:42:55]:

It's usually like people trying to change industries, like at a very senior level where there's a lot of sunk-cost fallacy and a lot of perceived opportunity costs. So I can kind of dial that up or down. And it's quite lucrative.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:43:10]:

I knew about him doing one-on-one coaching and consultations but I also know that he usually doesn't advertise it very openly. And I did ask him about it. He went into a fair bit of detail about the kind of coaching he offers, the kind of clients that approach him, and why it is particularly limiting. All in all, Khe shared some pretty interesting insights on why he doesn't do it more often. But, and you know what's coming next here, you'll need to become a premium member of First Class Founders to hear what Khe had to say on this! I always craft a special segment in all my podcast episodes exclusively for the members of First Class Founders and this episode is no different. At this very moment, in this exclusive segment, the premium members of First Class Founders are listening to Khe explain in detail why he doesn't advertise his one-on-one coaching and consultations. Especially because I know for a fact that they are highly sought-after and, more importantly for him...

Khe Hy [00:44:13]:

It's quite lucrative.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:44:14]:

There are two primary reasons he mentioned for not advertising his coaching offerings.

Khe Hy [00:44:28]:

I like to keep an air of mystery around my coaching. So there's no sales page, it's not written anywhere. Like, I'll allude to it, like I am here or talk about it, but there's no, like, work with Khe.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:44:36]:

Khe also explained that his coaching styles are a bit unique and that he doesn't have a specific framework that he applies to each problem.

Khe Hy [00:44:51]:

It's not like Khe's five step method for finding happiness. That's not part of it. The fact that they (BEEP) is also a, uh, challenging thing from (BEEP) perspective.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:45:04]:

All of this, the unbleeped version of that last piece of information, and much more is available to the premium members of First Class Founders. Additionally, the First Class Founders membership also comes with a ton of other perks. For instance, members of First Class Founders also get early access to podcast episodes, bonus episodes - including the entire raw, unedited interview - the ability to Ask Me Anything, and much more! Head on over to firstclassfounders.com/join - I'll put the link in the show notes! And while you do that, I'll cue up the next part of the episode! I obviously couldn't end the interview before asking him for advice for young entrepreneurs and founders who were just about to begin their journey. And Khe happily shared some incredible tips, starting with this powerful message:

Khe Hy [00:45:57]:

Be very careful of getting on another hamster wheel.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:45:59]:

By ‘hamster wheel’, Khe is referring to the salaried jobs that most founders have been in at some point in their lives, and typically in corporate jobs.

Khe Hy [00:46:12]:

A lot of times people leave corporate because it's a grind nine to five and meetings and OKRs and performance reviews and just the repetitive-ness of it.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:46:15]:

If that sounded familiar to you, that's because Sam Browne also said pretty much the same thing in episode 32 titled, 'Musician to Serial Entrepreneur to LinkedIn Creator: How Sam Browne Grew His Audience 100X in 1 Year' - "Spend a lot of time, however you do it, journaling or thinking about or whatever, about what you would like your work life to be. And so what I mean is sometimes I see people identify an opportunity to make a dollar and they'll dive into that and a year goes by, or two years, and they realize they've accidentally committed themselves to something that they don't really care about." But Khe's advice comes from a very personal, intimate place of genuine concern. Having been on the hamster wheel himself and having spent a considerable time off of it since starting RadReads, Khe knows very well how alluring the world of content creation can get. He also knows how misleading the allure can be, especially because he has seen how quickly content creators will forget their north star and fall prey to the slavishness of the algorithm.

Khe Hy [00:47:28]:

I just saw this thing where some leak from Instagram is like, you have to post seven stories a day, two posts. One of them has to be a real instagram is your new the Instagram algorithm? Is your new boss? Eff that, you didn't trade one for the other.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:47:43]:

He was also quick to issue a reminder to creators about staying true to their trajectory, and playing the long game and NOT chasing trends...

Khe Hy [00:47:57]:

If you're going to chase the trend that's your hamster wheel. You're on the trend hamster wheel. I've seen it like the people that went from web three to AI, I see you. You're so obvious. And so you're just trading one hamster wheel for another. But at some point, I suspect you're going to be unhappy. You're going to be burnt out. You're, uh, going to forget lose touch with who you are. Right? And so again, just keep those in check. Keep awareness on that.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:48:30]:

That's a pretty good piece of advice, and, the perfect and final life-lesson to close out this episode:LIFE LESSON NUMBER SIX: Be very careful of getting on another hamster wheel. Before we end the episode, let's quickly recap all the lessons we learned from Khe Hy, the founder and CEO of RadReads. LIFE LESSON NUMBER ONE: Don't live your life deferred - don't trade your precious time for money if you don't enjoy what you do. Khe quit his highly lucrative investment banking job because he wanted more from his life. LIFE LESSON NUMBER TWO: You have a duty to share helpful advice with other fellow entrepreneurs. Khe's first-ever email - that eventually became the much loved RadReads newsletter - was sent to thirty-six friends because he felt he had a responsibility to share his learnings with them. LIFE LESSON NUMBER THREE: Be yourself and share about your interests, which are always evolving as you evolve as a person.Contrary to what most creators say, Khe believes that you DON'T have to confine yourself to a niche. That it is okay to have different interests as you grow and evolve as a person. LIFE LESSON NUMBER FOUR: When building a product make sure you have the right product-market fit. Launching a product without properly evaluating the market for it is a bad idea and will almost always result in a bad outcome for everyone involved. LIFE LESSON NUMBER FIVE: Even if you have the PERFECT product-market fit, the market might shift unexpectedly on you.Sometimes, even with the very best of your efforts, even after you think you have done everything right, things can go wrong. And that's OK. LIFE LESSON NUMBER SIX: Be very careful of getting on another hamster wheel.Don't trade the bosses you dislike in your corporate life for corporate bosses, that is social media algorithms that you will dislike in your creative life. You can reach Khe on his website.

Khe Hy [00:50:25]:

Radreads.co, the blog. Sign up for the newsletter there. We continue as we approach our 400th episode. Most active social media is Twitter, but I'm making a run for it on Instagram. And so those are Twitter, it's my first name Khe Hy, which, uh, you could just Google Khe, and I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. Uh, Instagram. TikTok is RadReadsCo, playing, around a lot with short form video, having a ton of fun.

Yong-Soo Chung [00:50:56]:

Alright, that wraps up today's show! In the next episode of First Class Founders, we are speaking to Chenell Basilio, a digital marketing expert and writer of the excellent newsletter “Growth in Reverse” which has Chenell doing amazingly detailed deep-dives of fast-growing creators and how they got there. Her newsletter is on fire, growing rapidly. I sat down with her to discuss her process, her motivations, and of course, dissect any patterns and strategies from today’s most successful creators to see if we can apply it ourselves. You will learn a ton in this episode, so don’t miss out!And, one last thing before I go... If you're a new listener and you enjoyed this episode, you can follow the show by going to FirstClassFounders.com and clicking on the link that matches your preferred podcast player - like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, you can also add YOUR voice to the show by leaving a message on firstclassfounders.com - for example, what did you think of this episode specifically? And, when you get a chance, could you also head over to FirstClassFounders.com/review and leave the podcast a five-star review? It really helps boost credibility for the show which means more incredible guests for you! And why wouldn’t you want that? I’ll leave a link in the show notes to leave us a 5-star review. Thank you so much!If you wanna connect with me, you can hit me up on Twitter @YongSooChung. I’m pretty active there and would love to connect with you. You can find links to all my social accounts in the show notes. I'll see you on the next episode of First Class Founders.

Khe Hy [00:52:38]:

I am forty three years old, and I have read page 6 and TMZ every single day since I was twenty one years old.