47. My Mom's 7-Figure Business Wisdom - with Dr. Joey Liu

My parents built a seven-figure business in Korea starting at age 50, almost completely broke, with zero business experience. And I'm telling their story for the first time.

Listen to hear more about:

• What happened when my parents put their home up as collateral with almost no money left
• The shocking move my mom made with money after a devastating tax penalty — and why it changed everything
• Why the Western obsession with ROI might be costing you longevity (and what to focus on instead)
• How my mom practices the feng shui of money

My sister-collaborator Dr. Joey Liu joins me to unpack this wisdom through Taoist and Buddhist lenses — and we're inviting you to run it through your own ancestral paradigms too. 

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Take the free course Building Post-Capitalist Wealth: https://play.simonegraceseol.com/pcw

Apply for the 8-week course, Ancestral Wealth: https://play.simonegraceseol.com/ancestral-wealth

Transcript

Welcome to Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol.

So this episode is a little bit different. Since I started creating and promoting a course called Ancestral Wealth, I've been talking to my own elders and ancestors more than ever. I'm really taking myself through the exact same process that we're gonna take our students through, and it's incredible what this is opening up for me personally.

Like for example, it occurred to me to ask my mom in a formal way the story of how she and my dad built a seven-figure business in Korea for 20 years, starting when they were 50 years old, almost completely broke, and having zero experience running a business before. I asked her to tell me the 10 factors that created their decades of enormous business success. And when I asked her, it was like she was waiting for me to ask. She just went, bah bah bah bah bah... She just rattled them off, like number one, number two... And I was like, oh, this has got to become a podcast.

So here it is. Of course, she mostly only speaks Korean, so I fastidiously transcribed her words, translated them, and I'm sharing them with you here. And once I had my sister and collaborator, Dr. Joey Liu, listen to it, we both realized that this was something rare — business wisdom from a living lineage, and most of it's stuff that would never be taught in a business school.

Let's get into it.

My mom's story: how it all started

When you both graduated in the US and we came back to Korea, our bank accounts were almost empty. Five years of supporting two kids overseas — for our level, that was astronomical money. Back then every single day, the only thing your dad and I talked about was: how do we get them to graduation? How do we make money? It was endless.

Eventually, maybe luckily, a sponsor appeared in Sogong-dong. The deal was, Dad would receive 10% of total revenue. The sponsor would take the rest because he would cover rent, advertising, ancillary services, expenses. The revenue split felt extremely unfavorable, but we thought we could learn how to run a business for the first time. So we said okay, and we signed.

From that moment on, Mom and Dad commuted together seven days a week. We didn't even have a car. We took the subway. Dad only lectured, and I handled membership management. I set up a blog. I ran the blog, and I also helped to create ad creatives. My salary was zero won. But I still worked at full intensity.

After about five months, the members that I was managing had grown a lot. The revenue was growing, and the owner didn't even know our content. He was just a pure merchant mindset, and I started to not like it. At that point, I thought if I did this myself, I could do it better. So I suggested to Dad that since the business was going well, we should ask for an extra 10% incentive.

Dad agreed. But when we told the owner, he suddenly blew up. When we signed the contract, there was no contract term written. He thought he could basically use Dad forever until the day the office closed, and he claimed that we were violating the contract. Your dad and I had been naive, and when he started raging and threatening, we got scared.

So we went to a lawyer, showed him the contract, and the lawyer said we could actually terminate immediately with no problem because there was no contract duration written. So Dad went back and told the owner exactly what the lawyer said, and the guy gave this weird sneering look and said, let's talk in a few days.

Few days later, the owner suddenly came back with a meek expression saying he'll pay us an extra 10%. But we told him we'd rather just quit and slowly build our own business. But he begged. If we would take over the deposit and monthly rent of the office and acknowledge his interior construction costs, then he would hand the place over to us.

We thought, actually, hey, that might not be so bad. So we put up our home as collateral, got a bank loan for the deposit, and then under your dad's name, Seol Ki-Moon Mind Research Institute officially began. And then the story ends there. But that's the end of the beginning of the story.

The 10 factors that built a seven-figure business

And so when I asked my mom to tell me about 10 factors, 10 things that she did that contributed to the extraordinary thing of being able to run a seven-figure business — I mean, I'm talking seven figures annually for close to 20 years — she rattled off these 10 things as if she was waiting for me to ask.

We were on the phone and she was like, well, number one, da da da, number two... And I was like, okay, hold on. I was like, I have to write down everything you're telling me and then I have to translate it into English.

And so I wrote down everything she said verbatim and I translated it, and I'm gonna share those with you. The 10 factors that created my parents' seven-figure business, of which my mom was really the mastermind. So how my mom did it.

Number one: I thought only about work. Totally tunnel visioned.

We were desperate. Before we started the business, we really were desperate. We'd already spent almost everything that we had sending you kids to school in the US for five years, and for our circumstances it was way too much money. So our accounts were basically drained. And in that time, your dad had even resigned from his university job, which made things even more uncertain.

For Mom and Dad, getting you two through university became our single sacred mission. Because of that, when we started working, we really went all in. It was 24/7, only thinking about work. For example, like: how long should a program be? How much learning volume is right? What tuition would make the students happy and also make your dad happy? How do we create courses that people would naturally want to apply to their own work? How do we handle blog content? What about community strategy? How do we operate study groups? And while thinking about those things, also thinking about how to do daily workshops at a cost that a lot of people could join. The days were never long enough.

Number two: When things were going well, I was working hard to keep things going well, and then focus on creating "cash cows" that could carry us through lean times.

Thankfully, at some point, business hit a stable rhythm and new questions emerged like: we're doing well now, but what are we missing? How far could this actually grow? We thought about those things ahead of time and we tried to figure out what members wanted from us beyond the formal education content.

We were slipping in questions like jokes, casually listening in on conversations between members, and when we could naturally join in those conversations, being really alert and focused to catch what they truly needed. Around this time, we started thinking, how can we create cash cows? That's when we decided to produce video classes, hire staff, film your dad's lectures, edit them, and sell them on our website.

Number three: From the bottom of my heart, I was so thankful to everyone who engaged in business with us because they were providing for our food and you guys' education.

Even really rude people or just really unpleasant customers — I was still grateful for them. So I did everything I could to treat them in such a way where they could feel our gratitude.

In fact, we treated every member like a benefactor sent from heaven, feeding our family, educating our children, letting us keep the office lights on. We were genuinely grateful whenever someone made a deposit or swiped their card. Almost like as a joke, we would say, study well and make back multiple times what you paid. But we meant it.

Again, even with customers who stressed us out or treated us badly, we tried not to hurt them with words or judge them based on our own assumptions.

Number four: There were failures. I tried to put it behind me as quickly as possible and pour everything into figuring out "how can I overcome and do what's next?"

Strictly speaking, it wasn't failure, it was pain. And because it was our first time running a business — we'd never run a business before — we were ignorant about things like taxes, and so we delegated everything to an accountant, and problems happened. We were audited by the National Tax Service for eight months, probably the most terrifying period of my life.

And this is Simone again, just interjecting to say: I remember this period, and my mom literally got ulcers. And back to reading my mom's words.

In the end, I studied taxes like crazy, realized that it was our ignorance that caused the audit, and paid a huge penalty, and I accepted it. This happened because I didn't know. After that, as a symbolic restart, I poured energy into remodeling the office. If money was gonna go out unexpectedly, then I would also spend money intentionally. It was a lot of money too. It was a purging expense. And every time money went out, I whispered internally to money, "Let's meet again. But next time, even bigger."

Number five: If I came into some profit, I saved 95% and spent 5% on what made me happy.

When you immerse yourself in work, you are at risk of disappearing. Your body and mind get used up. So every time income came in, I spent 5% on something that made me happy. I gave myself small awards and many of those rewards were like objects, and even now when I come across those objects, I feel the same happiness again.

Rewarding yourself and not withholding praise from yourself — this is one of the most important keys to doing the work.

Number six: We did not spend excessively, but we never held back on investments that were truly necessary.

For example, we bought comfortable chairs so that visitors could sit and wait in a pleasant space. Even if the classroom desks or chairs only had a small issue, we replaced them immediately. If someone wanted a copy of Dad's book, we gifted them one. If a new projector with better performance came out in the market, we bought it. In that sense, we always acted quickly and decisively.

Number seven: We always kept any promises we made and we never made any promises we could not keep.

If members wished for extra supplementary classes or study group support after the main class ended so they could get more out of what they learned, we provided all of that for free. We also always tried our best to answer questions, give good advice to those who were starting their own practices. We were very sincere about the concept of aftercare.

And if someone could not attend class properly, we sent them the class files for the days that they were absent so they could easily get back in when they returned.

But in the opposite case, if someone was absent too often or had a bad attitude that negatively affected other students or constantly complained, we told them not to come back anymore and we offered them a full refund. This was also stated clearly on the class application form from the very beginning. We were very sincere also about being that "bad cop" role sometimes. But as a result, there was not a single case where someone dropped out mid-course after paying.

Number eight: No matter how profitable an opportunity was, if it didn't feel right in my heart, I didn't do it. I never gave into temptation, even though there were many sweet temptations.

Some organizations suggested that they would handle the teaching and they would use their own intellectual property, and we should just sell our name, sell our institute certifications or completion documents. Some people said, with the number of members we had, each certificate would create huge extra income for us. Another person said they would give us tens of billions of won if we joined their training center. Others said they would find people for us if we gave them a commission.

There were so many examples like this. I said no to all of them. They didn't feel right.

Number nine: I was always careful not to become too close nor too distant from the members.

This work is about human relationships. Even though we have to serve everyone equally, of course there are people — you know, some people you like a little bit more, some people that feel a little bit more unpleasant. So I was extremely careful.

Human relationships, no matter how good, can't last perfectly forever, and the closer people get, the more points for friction arise. So I tried not to get too close. Also, for members who might feel insecure or hurt if they sensed that they were disliked — because they're paying to learn — I tried even more to show a good face and to speak gently so they wouldn't feel wounded or view us negatively.

I'm sure I didn't do this perfectly, but the effort to maintain harmony without discord over a long period of time turned out to be effective.

Questions I asked my mom

Okay. So that's the nine things. After these nine things, I asked my mom certain questions. I feel like questions that a lot of us would want to ask someone like her.

So here goes. I asked her: How do you deal with big disappointments or failures?

Honestly, there's no way to avoid feeling hurt for a while, feeling the weight and the depth of that pain. That actually wasn't a bad thing for me. When it happened, I set a time boundary for myself. For one week, I'm gonna let myself feel the hurt to the fullest. I'm gonna feel the hurt until I can't possibly feel worse. Sometimes this period was months, sometimes weeks, sometimes only a few days. And during that time, I allowed myself to think only about that problem and really sit in the pain.

But what I experienced many times was that when I stayed faithful to that period, my mind would eventually shift on its own. Once you hit the bottom of the suffering, it changes direction and bounces upward like a ball. At that point, the problem looked different from a new angle, and my attitude and emotions about it became more objective, more detached.

And once your perspective shifts, the quote-unquote problem often becomes small enough that it can no longer feel like a real problem.

And the second question I asked her was: How do you deal with public criticism or bullying or internet trolling?

Because I remember there was a lot.

She said: I've had a lot of experience with public criticism and malicious comments. The Korean Medical Association even filed a criminal complaint to the prosecutor's office saying that the hypnosis your dad was teaching violated medical law, and it was covered on the news. Some people wrote vulgar curses about us on their blogs. Others posted slander about us on their personal social media.

If you haven't gone through something like that, you genuinely cannot imagine how painful it is. There were times when I tried leaving clarifications in the comments too. And strangely, those were ignored. The explanations just became fuel for more hurtful replies, one after the other.

And in those moments, I felt terrified, like their posts might completely destroy us. And I felt furious that those baseless lies could harm our livelihood. I had so many moments when I trembled in fear thinking our clients might disappear because of these posts.

And in the end, for the medical association case, we thoroughly prepared all the documents, entrusted everything to our attorney that we hired, and we won in court. And for the malicious online posts, we reported each one to the Cyber Investigation Unit without hesitation.

Every time those things happened, I would browse sites full of attacks on public figures and analyze comment sections about people in similar lines of work. The conclusion I reached was: people who insult and criticize exist everywhere. And no matter how loudly they scream with hate comments, it ultimately just becomes noise. And regardless of that noise, our real clients are the people who ignore such things and still come to us.

This too takes time to grow calluses. Your skin has to peel painfully once, but after that, the callus protects you and you don't feel pain from every little thing anymore. And now in any situation, I no longer feel shaken by comments. This is something you get trained in, and over time you inevitably overcome it.

The third question I asked my mom was: What do you do when you feel like you're going at it all alone and there's no one to show you the way? No blueprint.

Because there were certainly times when I felt like that. I know that many, many, many of my clients feel like this, especially those who are doing creative, original work.

And my mom took me to school immediately. She said: This is actually a really foolish way to think. Think carefully. You need to realize — at the end, every decision is mine and everything comes from my heart. Even if someone shows you the way, even if someone gives you a blueprint, that's still their path, their blueprint filled with that person's personality and energy.

When you feel lost, it's okay to think about it only as much as you can and then forget about it for a while. If I leave it alone long enough, at some point, intuition opens. I rely heavily on those sudden feelings, intuitive hits that just pop up. And ultimately, the direction that my heart wants to go — that is my direction. And the option that feels good to me — that's my path.

I once read something in a book: When you're walking alone on a mountain path and suddenly the road splits in two and you truly have no idea which one leads to your destination... Stop. Focus quietly and look at each path carefully. If you look at both, one of them will undeniably look a little brighter, and that's the one you follow. I love that passage so much.

Whenever I was in conflict, I would think: which choice makes my heart beat faster? And that's how I found my answer. And it was always good. No one knows my path. I find it. To discover, I have to learn how to focus inward, especially in those moments that feel hopeless and foggy.

Now, final question I asked her was: How do you start tackling a super ambitious dream that feels impossible now?

Her answer: First, think about whether it only looks impossible or whether it is literally and physically impossible. And if it just feels impossible because it's hard and overwhelming and you've never done it before, you have to ask: is this something I absolutely must do? Or is it something that I just kind of wanna try?

If it's something that you truly must do, then you have to just leap first. Once you leap, the next step becomes visible, and once you finish that step, the next door opens. In that cycle: leap, stabilize, leap, stabilize. Eventually the dream starts taking shape bit by bit. What was only in your head or only in your heart begins to take actual form.

That's how it works. One step at a time. But you need sincerity and a spirit of desperation like: this needs to work. I have to make it work.

Unpacking my mom's wisdom with Dr. Joey Liu

Okay. I've invited my sister-collaborator, Dr. Joey Liu, to just spend some time talking about this. Because first, it's in big part thanks to her that I'm involving my mom so extensively in this process. And I invited you to come talk about this with me because obviously it's my mom, so it's very close to me. And I felt like you'd have fresh insights on how we can all learn more from this.

Joey: It's impossible to respond or react to the wisdom that comes from your mom without first having a response to who she is as a person first. Like in that moment, I don't know what she had going on in her day, in her life, but your little friend came and was like, "ask Mama Seol" and she just laid it out there for us. That spirit of generosity is so present in the story that she told and in all of the advice that she gives about how to create a seven-figure business.

I'm just so struck by that. This truly isn't like, you know, she sat there and tried to craft something that sounds good. No, it is her through and through.

Simone: She had no idea I was asking her these questions.

Joey: I mean, not that telling Mama Seol's story is laying out a blueprint and saying that everybody needs to try to align their life as closely to this as possible. Like, these are the steps you take. But I'm really sitting here with the appreciation that she had already raised her two children. You were in college. She could have been in a sense like, well I've already done that hard work for two decades. Let me live some version of an easier life now. And she didn't.

I was really blown away by how devoted she was to the vision, that even when things got hard, she didn't give herself a way out. And as you were reading through all of this, I kept noting at different points along — it was never a matter of like direct exchange. I think like in the Western world, you're taught about ROI, the Western business world. You're taught about ROI and it's like one action, how do you measure the return on it?

And when you look at Mama Seol's story, a lot of times it was like: I'm devoting myself to their aftercare. I'm giving them these supplemental materials. I'm devoted to their learning success. And there was no dollar amount placed on that. It was just this devotion to be excellent at the craft that they were providing.

Simone: I think it was her devotion to collective flourishing, to really enriching the lives of everyone that came her way, and being of just the most sincere, devoted service to them was just as important as making the money to educate us. And I don't think she could have thought those two things apart. She couldn't compartmentalize. It's a spiritual orientation thing.

Joey: So many aspects of spiritual orientation resonate with my own Asian worldview. There's something that's really striking when she talked about learning from her mistake around taxes and losing some of that tax money due to just what she called ignorance. Like not knowing. Totally checking myself — I'm like, I need to learn about taxes better because, you know, there's just so much technical skills there.

But she says that when she accepted that that money had to flow out for her to learn her lesson, but then she made a really remarkable choice after that, which was to intentionally spend money and purge the energy. And immediately I recognized —

Simone: That's so Asian.

Joey: It's so feng shui. It's so, yeah. My excitement grows about putting these conversations out there. I am so curious and excited what other folks, as they tap into their cultural and ancestral paradigms and lenses, what your elders and what your ancestors would say. I'm starting to see this big picture of this compilation of all these.

Simone: I love that so much. It's not just our Asian culture, but it's like your Arabic culture or your Haitian culture or whatever it is, right? There's so many things that she's told me, she's taught me over the years that really create my entire orientation towards business and money and wealth.

And one of the things that she always told me is: if you are paying someone, if you're negotiating and haggling, or if you're paying them but you're like, oh, it's just too expensive, you're mumbling under your breath — she's like, that's such bad qi. You know, like, am I saying that right? In Chinese, qi?

Joey: Yes.

Simone: In Korean, it's ki. She's like, that is how you block your own fortune. Like if you're gonna pay someone, pay them fast. Pay them with a grateful, joyful heart and make the payment with blessings for them. And so whenever she caught me doing this — "oh, I gotta make this payment. I don't know if I can afford... it's expensive..." — she's like, don't do that, don't do that. And if you can't feel glad and joyous about paying someone or for something, then don't buy it.

Joey: Yes. Right. I'm so tickled right now. I'm feeling so affirmed because I'm thinking about when I first started my business, how many gifts I would give. Or if someone did help me proofread one of my workbooks, I always either sent a gift, and this was just sort of intuitive.

I'm wondering for you all listening — if you're starting to think about what little intuitions have glimmered up for you over time that felt so unconventional or not mainstream? Because I remember, you know, having some people kind of comment like, why would you do that? Like, you're not profitable yet. You know what I mean?

And I would tell them: no. In my culture we believe that when you give gifts and you give generously, reciprocity — it's gonna come back to you tenfold. But you have to keep it — it's a cycle. So you just keep giving and receiving. And you could be giving in time, in excellence. As evidence in Mama Seol's story — giving of the services, of the knowledge, of the care. It's gonna come back to you.

Simone: I think that was such a deeply ingrained thing in me. This belief in the law of reciprocity. Which means that if you give more than you take, it always comes back multiple fold.

Joey: Let's talk about this. She — in addition to the generosity, there's this sense of just laser-sharp discipline, right?

Simone: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Joey: So I'm looking at: we kept any promises we made and we never made any promises we couldn't keep. This discernment to — no matter, if something felt profitable, if it didn't feel right in her heart, never gave into temptation. This is another aspect maybe of Asian, like Confucianism or whatever. Just this fierce discipline and discernment. This is again, part of the lost paradigms that isn't given or trained in Western education. As you can see here with Mama Seol, when you do practice these skills and this discernment, it taps into a deep power, right?

Simone: Yeah. And you know, there's always hype, right? When something becomes successful, and there's always people who are gonna be attracted for the sparkles and the shimmer of success and fame and all that. But that's always temporary, right? And I think that she was able to achieve that longevity and loyalty from people because over time her absolute unyielding dedication to scruples and principle and a sense of honor becomes so evident.

I think people who don't have that, they can be a one-hit wonder. You can have a flash of success and then it fizzles. I think that's what maintains your operation in the long term. What are your values? How steadfast are you in your morals? What are your morals? And are you living by them in a way that matters? Which means when it's a sacrifice, when it means you have to leave money on the table, right? When it's the harder thing to do.

Joey: I think it's important here that you said living out those morals and values, because morals or values or ethics has become such a buzzword in Western business. But in each of the examples that you read in your mom's story, she added tangible, anecdotal evidence like you didn't ask for it. But when you talk about morals, she talks about treating every single customer, including the rude ones, including the ones that treated them poorly — she said she treated them like a benefactor sent from heaven. And she gives this really tangible example of wishing that whenever somebody paid their tuition, that they would make it back multiple times and that they would never hurt... Like, talk about that being a skill that's missing.

Simone: Can I tell you something? I knew that because she told me that consistently. Like, she'd be like: I'm going to bed, and before I go to bed, I'm gonna pray for the people who came and learned today. I'm gonna pray for the person. Like this was a daily devotion to her. She prayed very sincerely for everyone that crossed paths with their business.

This isn't altruism. This is a very, very deep-seated, I think Asian Taoist belief that the more people prosper around you, the more you're gonna prosper. The more you contribute to the wellbeing of those around you, even if just through prayer, it comes back to you. In this interrelated Asian point of view, self-interest and communal interests aren't separate. They're the same. They're not separate. They're the same thing.

Another thing that I've been raised on, another principle, belief system that I've been raised on, is: you always exercise generosity towards others when you don't have to. You always are kind to people when you don't have to, because all that comes back to you and your descendants, you know? And it was disorienting for me for a while to sort of adjust to a Western mindset where it feels like a competition, right? Between self-interest and looking out for others.

Joey: I can't look out for me unless or until I look out for you. But it's not in the sacrifice of me. It's my worldview is that we are inseparable. We're so connected. I love studying and looking at the world through living systems theories. So when you look at biology, when you look at physics, interconnected living systems reverberate the very same lens that we're talking about, which is that the survival and the flourishing, the thriving of every part of the connected system, right? There's no such thing as individualism. Individual functions to make the whole flourish, and the flourishing of the whole benefits the individual member.

Simone: Exactly. I know for a fact that it's not just East Asian culture. I'm just speaking on behalf of what —

Joey: Because that's our lived experience.

Simone: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So speaking of Asian practicality, right? I always think of my mom as being way more spiritually strong than I am because she's just so strong. But one thing that really strikes me is, even when she goes through the hardest thing, the bitterest disappointments, the hardest failures — there's something so pragmatic about the way she talks about it. It's like: yeah, you feel the pain and then you let that pain be the lesson, and then you learn what you have to learn and then you keep going. You know?

So I feel like — I don't know how to say this, right — but I feel like in the Western world, people over-sensationalize pain or disappointment. You know, it's like we're gonna sit here and analyze our childhood trauma and there's a sense of self-indulgent wallowing, if I may, you know? This isn't about pushing down pain or repressing it. Like my mom said, she just gave herself all the space that she needed to just really feel that. But also it's about not overdramatizing your pain. Okay, this happens. Like, okay, this sucks. Okay, let me feel the suckiness of the suck. And then what's next? You know, just kind of like, let's learn from it and move on. You know, like —

Joey: It's so Taoist though. It's like this non-attachment to the pain. Recognizing that the pain is here for a moment. It's here for a purpose. I'm gonna — why would I not feel it to the fullest? It's with me right now, but I don't have to make it my whole identity and my whole story. I don't have to make everyone in the world aware of it and feel it with me. Like it's just something to go through for right now.

Simone: And listen, I'm not saying this from a holier-than-thou perch, because talk about wallowing in pain — I could've won an Olympic medal in that at many points of my life. And so it's not that I don't understand that. But at the end of the day, does it move us forward to build an altar to our pain and to circle around it endlessly, you know? Because I think ultimately there comes a point where you realize: okay, building is more interesting than examining my pain in the greatest detail, you know?

Joey: And so what's coming up for me right now — I know from hearing your mom's story, she worked incredibly hard. I have witnessed in the few months that we've worked together, you working incredibly hard. There is — this is not a substitute for working so hard and so long, with such rigor and high standards. But there's a comment right here, which is that you really enjoy what you do. Like there's a choice to just be joyful. You do not have to be a victim to your own business and your own building. Like you can enjoy working really, really hard and then watching that become the thing.

Like your mom said something about it goes from an idea in your head and your heart to taking on form. I can't think of anything more miraculous. And despite all the hard work, what a joyful process. It doesn't have to be a story you tell that is so painful and you're the victim to your own creation.

Simone: Not everyone in the world is so fortunate to be able to earn a livelihood from our heart's deepest passions. There are many people in the world who have really amazing gifts, ancestral endowments, you know, with which they can do a lot in the world, but they can't because there's just no opportunity or... There are so many people like that. But people like you and me, we're so lucky to be able to do the work that comes from the deepest place in our hearts and spirits and have it be something that can take care of our families.

That being such a blessing — like being able to live one's ancestral assignment is such a blessing. And I think this ties into what my mom talked about: the importance of gratitude. And I think that deep sense of — I really think, once again, I think this is Taoist and Asian, even though not exclusively Asian — this deep grateful reverence towards life and understanding it as a gift, right?

And I think this is not only Taoist, but also Confucian. Your parents gave you life and that is the biggest gift — your life, right? And I think that fundamental sense of indebtedness to your ancestors, the universe, for the gift of having a body and breath — that permeates how we see the world. And that, I think, is a critical ingredient to the stamina, right? And the sense of resilience that fuels us for the long run, because I don't think you could do it otherwise.

I don't think you could keep going for 20-plus years like my parents did. And by the way, even more remarkable thinking about how when all this started, she was 50. My parents were both 50. They're the same age, and that's when a lot of people are counting down until retirement. And they both started something they'd never done before, which was starting a business. Before that my dad had a job. So something so challenging, right? At such a comparatively late point in one's life. Or whatever other challenges that people have that seem just as monumental, right? I think a non-negotiable ingredient is this profound gratitude towards the gift of life itself.

Joey: Yeah. It sounds like what you're describing is really reverence.

Simone: Yeah.

Joey: Wow. I agree with you. It's something that's landing so deeply in me, and I think the question that comes up is: if there's people that feel disconnected from that because they haven't had a living model, like your mom is for you, and now by proxy for me — but I also have so many living models that embody that deep reverence — what would you say about where someone can get started in rooting into this non-negotiable ingredient of gratitude and reverence to have stamina to do the long work?

Simone: Honestly, I would direct people to the study of Buddhism, because you know, Buddhism isn't a religion. It's not like you believe in a Buddhist God. It's just a way of thinking about existence. And for those who can read in English and not an Asian language, you have easy access to Thich Nhat Hanh, you know? And there's so many beautiful things about Buddhist wisdom that allows you to be really connected to your own breath and be present to the constantly unfolding miracle that is life.

And I would say, honestly, apprentice yourself to a living wisdom lineage, you know, even if it's just by reading books. And I think that's really hard if all you've been exposed to is modern American culture or some other kind of modern, Westernized industrial culture where that's not something you grew up with. It can be hard, but I think the invitation is always there. People have been keeping these wisdom traditions alive and there's so many people teaching. And make sure to learn from real teachers. I actually think Buddhism is a very good entryway.

Joey: When I think about the best teachers in Buddhist traditions, I really think that they teach most powerfully through the version of humanity that they live out. Like I'm thinking about these teachers — they laugh so easily. They find joy. They really embody gratitude. And so I have a suggestion that I'd love to just offer.

Simone: Please.

Joey: Piggyback off of yours. If you could be present enough in your life now and just start to scan your surroundings and see if there's one person — and maybe it's not somebody you're super close to, maybe it's an acquaintance, maybe it's somebody in your workspace or in your neighborhood — but who embodies that quality of just simple joy and gratitude. And I think sometimes these people in society get sort of categorized as being simple-minded, right? But I think we have so much to learn from folks who don't complain very much and are genuinely grateful for almost everything.

Simone: I actually think the real reason I thought about Buddhism is because I think, you know, you and I know this, but the source of suffering is attachment, right?

Joey: Yeah.

Simone: Expectation. So I think people, especially Westerners, the unhappiness begins where: well, it's great that I'm alive and healthy, but I don't have enough money for this. I want this. I don't have that. This thing that other people have. I'm entitled to this. You know? So all of this attachment and over-desire, right? That's a very specific Buddhist term — is what creates suffering. And I think Buddhism is what allows you to see that what we call the quote-unquote simple-minded person really is the sage.

Joey: Yeah.

Simone: It's not about lacking intelligence. It's about not making those attachments the condition of your happiness.

Joey: Yeah, exactly. You can't hold bigger things until you know how to steward and hold what's in your hands well. So this idea of: yeah, I'm alive and I'm happy. Okay, do the most that you can with that. Appreciate that to the most instead of just feeding that hungry ghost or that complaint that I don't have enough. But how are you doing the most? And are you appreciating the most with what's in your hands, in your being, in this somatic body that you have? Are you stewarding that to the utmost flourishing?

Because if you are, then automatically, like by laws of nature, you're going to expand and what's gonna flow your way is going to be more and more. This is so clear in your mom's story, right? This is so clear. And to grow at the pace that she grew, how could she not win? Every person that's walking through those doors — she's praying for at night, she's handing all these materials, she's making sure they're sitting in the best chairs. Like she is stewarding what she has in her hands to the uttermost. And of course she's gonna be given more each year.

Simone: I can't believe that it's taken me this long to actually talk about this. And one of the things that I'm so grateful to you for, for our friendship, is that I actually get to be who I am, which is the product of my parents' making, and say: I do actually owe everything to my parents. It feels like I'm finally getting to tell people who I really am. So, and it's such a big part of that. I feel so indebted to you.

Joey: Oh, you're gonna make me cry on this mic because I've just received so much. Like I've told you, it's beyond measure — the wisdom, the care, the love, the support that your entire family... Like I didn't just get one friend. Even if I just got Simone as my friend, it would've been such a blessing. But your entire family unit has come on board. I feel like I get to talk to them via you. Like every few days.

Simone: Yeah. Joey's like, ask your mom, ask your dad. And vice versa. I'm like, ask your aunties, you know? That is actually a really decolonial model of doing business — heavily involving our families.

But listen, if you're listening and you're like, oh my god, what Simone and Joey are talking about, I want in on that — I wanna invite you to Ancestral Wealth, because that is literally the cocoon that we're creating where we can talk about lineage, collectivistic values, the spiritual orientation, all of it. Because we cannot think of these things apart from business. Like it is all one and the same.

Joey: Just like what Simone talked about — how she's unraveling so many of these stories and how it's feeding her in this moment. Yes, we're inviting you into our space, but a lot of the work that you'll be doing is going into your soils, your families. We will be supporting you to have these conversations maybe for the first time, maybe not for the first time, but deepening them. And we'll be there with tangible support and energetic support as you do this work too.

Simone: And for some of you, it might mean the beginning of the process, or the continuation of an extensive healing journey, right? Journey with you and your people. And that is something that both of us have done a lot of. We have things to share about that. And so wherever you are, whatever you're craving, we got you.

Listen, Joey and I were crying like crazy yesterday because we just got an email from one of the students who downloaded our free course, Building Post-Capitalist Wealth. And she said I can share any part of it. So Stephanie, shout out to Stephanie. She sent us a story and a picture of her and a group of her people in Nashville, I think it was, getting together, printing out the workbooks —

Joey: And coloring pages that they made. We didn't offer coloring pages, but it was so cute.

Simone: Stephanie created coloring pages depicting each of the people in that group and their faces. And on top it says: I'm building post-capitalist wealth. And we just lost it. We lost it. And we've heard from several other people who are like, I'm gonna start a study group.

Listen, Building Post-Capitalist Wealth for people of the Global Majority — the course is free. It is a fan-fucking-tastic thing to build a study group around. Grab your friends of the Global Majority and download it and start the study group. It's gonna change all of your lives. Like it is monumental work. That's the free pre-work course that we are making available. That obviously includes an invitation to join the full course, Ancestral Wealth, the eight-week intensive and practicum that's starting in December. But if you just did the pre-course, that is a whole-ass complete education. A course that stands on its own.

Joey: And why are we offering it for free? Well, just like Mama Seol, we are in this not just because of cash return, even though we're gonna talk a lot about money in the course. But we have big goals about changing — we keep saying change the internet, change the world, change how people view themselves in their communities, their role in the revolution.

And so Stephanie's story that she's so graciously shared with us — that's evidence. We just thanked our ancestors. We're like, our prayers are being answered. We can't wait to see little glimmers of that happening everywhere. We want everyone talking about these things. Maybe you already are, because we're just tapping into collective consciousness too. Let's aggregate that because this is how systems actually start to change. This is how we actually start to shift paradigms.

Simone and I are fully trusting that the resources are gonna flow in, whatever — we don't care. We are here to do our best and offer our best so that you all can get liberated and do it with your communities and do it with joy and creativity.

Simone: And just as sincerely as my mom prayed for her customers, yes, Joey and I are praying just as devotedly for every single person listening to this podcast, every single person that follows us and benefits from our work, every single person downloading the free courses. If you're one of them, our prayers are going to you and for your flourishing, for your freedom, for you to have everything you want, for your descendants to have everything you want.

Okay. I guess we can cut off here.

Joey: Thanks for listening.

Simone: Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Joey: Bye.