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Feeling overwhelmed by your family's daily grind and looking for a way out? Welcome to "Dig the Well," the podcast that empowers you to build the life you deserve. Your hosts Vikki and John are top earners at Neora. Vikki is a # 1 best-selling author and John is a retired Los Angeles Police Officer. Together they’ve navigated family challenges, raised successful kids, and achieved financial freedom.
In each episode of "Dig the Well," they dive deep into the strategies and mindsets that can help you break free from the constraints of the traditional 9-5 lifestyle. They understand the unique challenges faced by stay-at-home moms and families who are juggling multiple responsibilities and struggling to find balance. Their mission is to provide you with the tools and inspiration you need to create additional income, gain more family time, and ultimately, transform your life.
Throughout their journey, they’ve had the privilege of working with renowned figures like Jack Canfield and Jeff Olson, whose wisdom and insights have greatly influenced their path to success. They’ve also celebrated significant milestones, such as raising two valedictorian children and supporting their son, an Olympic weightlifter on Team USA. These experiences have equipped them with valuable knowledge and practical tips that they’re eager to share with you.
"Dig the Well" is more than just a podcast; it's a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to personal growth and financial independence. Whether you're worried about your family's financial security, longing for more quality time with your spouse, or simply seeking a way to reignite your passions, this podcast offers actionable insights and real-life stories that can help you achieve your goals.
Our mission is to inspire you with the belief that if we can do it, so can you. We want you to feel empowered, educated, and ready to take control of your future. By tuning in to "Dig the Well," you'll gain the confidence and knowledge needed to break free from the daily grind and create a life full of possibilities.
So, if you're ready to transform your family's future and discover the greatness within you, join us on this journey. Subscribe to "Dig the Well" and start building the life you deserve today!
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John:Ever wondered how you could turn your side hustle into a full time gig and spend more time together?
Vikki:Hi. I'm Vicky, a number one best selling author.
John:And I'm John, a retired Los Angeles police officer. Welcome to Dig the Well, where we help couples navigate the world of business.
Vikki:We've been married for 30 5 years, and because we built a successful side business, John retired 9 years earlier than he originally planned from the Los Angeles Police Department after 25 years on the job. Now we spend more time together, and we want to help couples like you do the same.
John:Join us as we help you overcome common obstacles, and we show you how to make extra income without sacrificing family time.
Vikki:Ready to dig deep and build your well? Let's get started. Alright. Here we are excited to be sharing a topic that is being talked about more and more. But when we first started our business years years ago, multiple income streams was not talked about.
Vikki:So we're gonna get into the why you should have multiple income streams.
John:Yeah. It only makes sense, right, if you have just one income stream. So almost like investing. Right? You know, if you don't diversify and you have just your income coming from one source, that gets pretty tough.
John:I I don't remember who quoted I remember this quote. It said I would rather have 1% of a 100 people's income than a 100% of 1. So that's what we kinda looked at too, is just having multiple income streams. And it's something like Vic said, we've been doing since the eighties Yeah. When nobody was talking about it, and it just made so much sense.
John:And it's worked out really well for us. And I think part of the key is residual income, like passive residual income, and we'll get into more in that about that a little bit.
Vikki:Yeah. And, you know, fun fact, you brought up before we started recording, 5 decades. Is that possible?
John:Yes. Since the eighties.
Vikki:Yeah. 5 decades. Do we look that old? I don't I don't hope not.
John:I don't feel like that.
Vikki:But lots of life, lessons I've experienced. That's for sure. And, yeah. So, you know, I kinda wanna ask you, John, about, you know, your first business, tinting windows out of your parents' garage.
John:Yeah. So I started that when I was in high school, and I remember my dad bought a truck. And he wanted to tint the windows in the truck. So he said, hey, let's give this a whirl. And so he and I tinted the his truck windows, and it really wasn't that difficult.
John:I at least I didn't think it was that difficult. And it turned out it was we did a pretty good job.
Vikki:Yeah. You did.
John:And then when I met my dad and I
Vikki:Yeah. Oh, gotcha. We went there.
John:So, and then my buddies that had cars in high school, they were like, hey. Can can you tint my windows? I'm like, yes. I started tinting them. And at that time, I was doing it for beer money or they would just give me beer for tending their their their cars.
John:And then I thought, well and then somebody has actually said, you can make money doing this. My dad's was all all about it. He said, you know what? Why don't you? And if you're gonna start your own business, do it now because later when you get a family and you get kinda kinda, stuck almost in that kinda working rut, just having a job, you'll probably not wanna start a job at that or or a business, start your own business at that time.
John:So I did, and I worked on my mom and dad's garage through high school. And then the business grew, and then I I got a a business location, actually got a business license, got a Dealerships.
Vikki:Right? You were doing car dealers too?
John:Bunch had a bunch of commercial accounts besides just retail. And then, we met in college.
Vikki:Yeah. Yeah.
John:Yeah. And then when you graduated, I made an offer to Vic. I said, hey. Look. Here's the deal.
John:Whatever she had a lot of job offers when she was in in in college. And I said, once you graduate, whatever your best offer is, I'll I'll at least match it if not beat that if you wanna come and work work for me.
Vikki:And he did. You did. I know. Crazy. Yeah.
Vikki:You paid me a lot of money to be your office manager.
John:Yeah. It turned out it was, you know what? I'll tell you, we're gonna we're gonna talk about that in another episode about how, stressful it is working with, someone, your your partner. I mean, we weren't obviously, we weren't married yet, and it's shocking that we ended up getting married after that.
Vikki:We had some knock down, drag out verbal fights.
John:Lot of lot of screaming and yelling. I'm surprised no one called the police officer.
Vikki:No. Me too. Me too. But back to the multiple women countries. Yeah.
Vikki:So you so you had Prestige Window Tinting.
John:Yeah.
Vikki:And then, that morphed into Prestige Motoring Accessories.
John:Right.
Vikki:You started was that kind of your you know, it wasn't multiple income streams, but it kinda led to that. So was there a method behind your madness at that time? Or how do
John:you The the the place I leased what had some commercial space up front and had, quite a bit of warehouse space in the back. So it was a really tall portion in back, and it was a couple of 1,000 square feet of just warehouse space. And that was where we worked on the cars. That's where we were able to tint the cars and, hired a couple of people to help out. I mean, the business was growing.
John:Everything was going well. Then I thought, well, you know what? Why not tap into another source of income, not just from window tinting, but we have all we have this huge customer base that's coming to us to get their windows tinted. And we were doing and one of the things that we really strived on was quality. We wanted to be the best.
John:And when we kind of made a name for ourselves as being the best, we could charge the most.
Vikki:I remember your motto. John Kate John's really great with branding and mottos. He it was Prestige Motoring Accessories. We major in the minor details. Yeah.
Vikki:And it goes right with what you're saying. Like, quality.
John:TV commercials that had that on there. And at any rate, we wanted just I always wanted us to we always did the job right. And if we didn't do the job right, we did it over again. And it was frustrating at times when you spend, you know, an hour or more on a car and something doesn't look exactly right, but you have to rip it all off and start over again. But I wanted that kind of quality.
John:And so our customer base would come to us and say, hey, look, I wanna upgrade the audio system in my car because I just have the start. And back then, if you think of it back in the eighties nineties, car car stereos weren't very good. Yeah. Like today today, you can buy a car off the showroom floor that has, you know, just a Yeah. Great audio system in it.
John:But back in the day, you couldn't, and you couldn't buy a car that had nice rims or wheels or a decent suspension. All those were upgrades later. So we kinda moved into all that, and we just took on first, we took on, like, car stereos, then we took on car alarms, and then we started taking on more Wheels
Vikki:and tires. I remember Yeah. We do that.
John:And we would get certified through, like, a couple of the companies that did, suspension systems. We could certified through them so we could do that even though we didn't have a lift. So it made our jobs a lot harder, but we still wanted that because it was income for us. It was just another another source of income. So so I think we didn't I don't know.
John:I I didn't probably read about it or hear about it, but it just made sense. Like, we have this customer base. We can reach a larger we can reach a larger customer base and just keep getting more and more income, and it really worked out well. We kept growing. We we ended up getting to a bigger location.
Vikki:Yeah.
John:More and more, accounts. We were doing, pretty much all the window tinting, for cars and television commercials and print advertising.
Vikki:Yeah. We still have all those pictures. You know, I love to tell the story about you see it all the time in car commercials that the windshield is blacked out. Right? The side windows are all blacked out in the car.
Vikki:Why? You told me this. So the consumers are watching the ad, pays attention to the car instead of seeing the person driving inside. Right? And we were the first company to do that, and we made a killing.
Vikki:Yeah.
John:We did. We made an absolute killing of it. The company that came to us was a company that did car prep. And they said, hey. Look.
John:This is what our client wants. And the client was the very first car. If you think of it, the very first car in a television ad or in any advertising at all that had tint was a Mitsubishi Galant, I think it was. And the commercial was a white Galant driving through, supposed to be the clouds. It was like it was floating through clouds, so they had these smoke machines on set.
John:And so the client, which was Mitsubishi, wanted to have, this white car, but they didn't want people to pay attention to the driver. And they said, can you do something about that? I'm like, can we? We have no chance. So they paid us go to go on set with them, and then they had several of those car prototype, cars set up.
John:And we tinted them at different, varying levels of tint so they could figure out which one they wanted, and they shot each one over and over again and figured out the one they picked on. The one they picked was one that was tinted really dark, but that's what we did. We tinted the windshield, all the windows. And that kind of kicked it off from that point on, that company and everybody came to us to do the window tint. Yeah.
John:And anybody could have done that job, and it really didn't even require a quality job because I know.
Vikki:We put the windshield on the outside. Right?
John:Yeah. Just for for speed. We had we did most of the tint on the outside of the car, not on the inside.
Vikki:You would never do that. Because you're not gonna pick
John:that up on on television.
Vikki:Yeah. So that was, yeah, that was really super fun.
John:That was a fun time.
Vikki:It really was. But then think about it. Then we got into, well, we'll get into a couple things, but one was the window tinting of bill office buildings because we have earthquakes out here in California, and we have security film. And so remember CalCan? Yes.
Vikki:CalCan for dog dog food. Are they even around anymore?
John:No idea.
Vikki:I don't know. But, anyway, their big corporate office was in an earthquake zone. Remember that? And we had to hire more people to go out and get that job done, but that was so lucrative,
John:that job.
Vikki:And then then we expanded into home theater and created a separate company called Prestige Home Theater. Yeah. And, yeah, tell us about that too.
John:So and that's that's when we kinda got into a little bit more of the residual income. So we got into the Prestige home theater, and we were selling high end home theater equipment and doing the installs, and back then, they didn't have straight we weren't streaming anything back then, and it was either cable TV or it was through those giant satellite dishes, those 10 foot in diameter satellite dishes. Well, a lot of our clients wanted that because they could access these satellites and the several satellites that are that are orbiting the earth, and they could watch almost anything they wanted and it's and the cost of programming wasn't that much. But they got the they they signed up for the programming through us. So the companies that were that were that were, I guess, broadcasting all of that, they paid us a royalty on on or a commission on all of our customers who had signed up through us.
John:So once we did the sale, we we made money on the sale, we made money on the installation, and then we were getting a monthly check as long as they kept their programming going. And that worked out also when we got into cellular phones because back in the eighties, it was really rare to have a cellular phone. And so we ended up selling cell cell phones, And back then, there was no such thing as a mobile cell phone. So they had to be hard hard wired or installed in the car, and that was there was
Vikki:a lot of phone. Huge bag.
John:That came even came later. It did. The first crew doing those are called transportable. Oh, jeez. Because you had to if you it was portable, but you had to take that giant transceiver with you, which was like the size of a, like, an old VCR.
Vikki:Big purse. Yeah. Woman yeah. But men were carrying them around.
John:And you I don't know if for those of you who are probably dating it now, but for those of you who remember, the little the little, curly antennas that were on the back window, so we would install those, run the wire the the antenna wire through the car, run all the power wires from the transceiver we mounted in the trunk to the actual headset that was mounted in the front of the car. So it was a several $100 installation, and the equipment itself was 1,000. And then we would sign them up on a cell contract. There were only 2 cell phone carriers in Southern California, and we were authorized resellers of both. So whichever one they chose, they were signing up through us, and we received a monthly residual check on every single account.
Vikki:And didn't we figure out on average, it was about $3,000 a month for your cell phone bill, wasn't it?
John:Can you imagine?
Vikki:Yeah. And we got a percentage of that, but add that up a lot of customers.
John:And back then, it was a it was a simple system. You paid a monthly fee for the for the cell service, which is pretty expensive, and then you pay 90¢ per minute of use. And then during peak time, which is pretty much most of the day, then in the middle of the night, it dropped to 45¢
Vikki:a minute. That's right. That's right.
John:And here's the crazy part. If someone called you on your cell phone and it rang, it counted as a minute. Yeah. Even if you don't pick up and answer it.
Vikki:That wouldn't even even went into the 2000, I feel like, when Might have. When our kids went to high school, we finally got them a phone. I feel like we're we told them, you're gonna pay, you know, even if you don't answer.
John:But Steph, that was kind of our first test taste of residual passive residual income, and then I thought, wow. This makes sense. Yeah. This is where you're gonna make money because all the work we did the month before, we're still getting paid on. The year before, we're still getting paid on.
John:And it worked out great until the cell companies realized, hey, we can keep all that money ourselves, so we need to devise a way to cut all these resellers out, which was us. And thousands of people like us across the country. And the way they did it was all of a sudden now they're giving away free phones.
Vikki:Oh, yeah.
John:That's where that came from. If you wondered why is why are all these cell providers giving away a free phone if you sign up for them? Because now they can cut us out and go direct.
Vikki:That's right. That's right. Yeah. So that crazy
John:train came to a halt.
Vikki:Yeah. That's for sure. And, you know, it's funny. I'm sure some of you heard of direct sales, multilevel marketing. We had our business, traditional brick and mortar, in the city of Brea.
Vikki:That was the second shop we moved to. And, somebody comes waltzing in the door at selling us personal alarms. You know, we had car alarms, personal alarms, and it was great for women that would be walking alone because they had this screeching alarm sound when you pull this plug. It was almost like a pager, you know, and you just pull the plug if you were being attacked, and it would scare the guy away. And, I actually even went to my sorority and sold something to them.
Vikki:But when that guy walked in and told us about it, he made a grave mistake because he didn't even offer the business model of that direct sale. It was Quorum, if any of you guys have heard of Quorum. It was that company, and they didn't even offer us to become a a distributor. He just sold it to us, basically, half price. We marked it up, you know, and then sold it.
Vikki:And then somebody else came and brought Amway our way. Yeah. Remember that?
John:Yeah.
Vikki:Yeah. And if you don't know much about, again, multilevel direct sales and say what you want, there are people that do it the wrong way, but we have the best experience in with our Amway business. Because guess what? As brick and mortar business owners going through all that we're paying for payroll taxes, for workers' comp, for just the insurance on the shop itself, you know, all the things, you know, the lease. When they brought when Amway was kinda dumped in our lap by a friend, we thought, why has no one ever told us about this?
Vikki:We were in our twenties, and we were like, why didn't they tell us before we started our business? We would have cut out a lot of headaches. Right?
John:Yeah. In fact, it was kind of after that that, I had I had made the decision that I would never own a conventional business again. It just doesn't make any sense. There's too much trouble, too many pitfalls. There's an easier way to make money.
John:There's a better way to make money because, we're no longer with Amway. But it like Vic said, it was a really good good experience when we were a part of it. Yeah. We learned a lot.
Vikki:Our marriage got stronger. They had us reading some great personal development books that helped us with their traditional business too. You know? Yeah. Things like that.
Vikki:Yeah.
John:That was really cool because there was a team of people that were helping us when we got started, and we were able to help the people that we got started. So was everybody kinda helping each other? So that all worked out, but there were some other reasons why we we finally just pulled away from Amway.
Vikki:Yeah. I feel like we had people leave the company, and they were really good friends. And I, at least I, let that steal my own dream. You know, they left and I thought, oh, I can't be successful. And that's a shame.
Vikki:That's really a shame. But that's about the time when we ended up closing the doors of Prestige Motor Accessories, and John went to the Los Angeles Police Department around that time, early nineties. And, but we knew we would always be business owners. Remember, we discussed it. Right.
Vikki:We were heartbroken. We, you know, we know that's the way for the American dream to happen. Working for someone else isn't.
John:And once again, that was one of the big pitfalls of of being an you know, owning your own conventional business is that, you know, you don't have anyone supplying you providing you benefits. And so our healthcare was, we had to pay for our own health insurance for not only both of us, but then we had our our kids. So we had 2 children at the time too. So it was getting expensive, just just that alone, with all the other expenses too. So that's why I thought, well, let me get, like, a regular job.
John:So what more could be a regular job than the Los Angeles Police Department? But I liked it because I could help people. It was a lot of fun, and they they I got benefit full benefits and, you know, a pension Yeah. And all the things that I I want, but I'm still trading hours for dollars. Right?
John:Right. I'm working not for my dream anymore. I'm working I'm just a a cog in the in the wheel. Right? And and
Vikki:And putting yourself in harm's way. Yeah. Let's not forget that. Like, major harm's way. Yeah.
Vikki:As the wife that's what I paid attention to. Yeah. And so I'll never forget when you said, you know, we are gonna find that perfect business, Vic. I promise. Because we were heartbroken when we closed Prestige.
Vikki:We really were.
John:Yeah.
Vikki:And then other things fell in our lap. A friend of mine was selling candles, and it was a fun way for me to make money alongside of raising the kids, being home for them, but bringing in some great income to contribute to the family. And I was successful there, but then I started seeing some changes when the company sold from a family owned company into, owned by a you know, it's traded on the national the on the New York Stock Exchange. Big changes there. We're not gonna get into all that because we're still talking about multiple income streams.
Vikki:I promise we're gonna get back to that. But, John, here comes the multiple income stream. When our son was in high school, decided to be create a photography business still while working at the Los Angeles Police Department.
John:Yeah. So I was thinking about what else could I do to bring more income in for the family. Right? And and like at the top of the show, we were talking about multiple income streams and, and not not wanting to trade hours for dollars. Well, I can work overtime, and I did work a little bit of overtime, but not much, because I still saw working overtime is just still trading hours for dollars.
John:That just may be a few more dollars, but you're still trading hours for dollars, and you can only work so many hours in a day. So I I remember I read a study where they looked at some of the highest income earners in America, and they looked at what they had in common. There were several things they had in common, but one of the things that was kinda glaring was every one of them had multiple streams of significant income. And, I think they said the minimum out of all these guys that are make men and women that are making so much money, the minimum was 7. Most had well in the double digits.
John:And so if you think about it, if you had how much overtime to have 7 well, you couldn't have 7 sources of your regular job plus 6 more overtime spots because there's just not enough hours in the day. And if it's not a passive kind of residual income, then you're gonna have to repeat that week after week after week. So I was always looking for something else that had that passive residual component to it. And so, like Vic was saying, when our son was in high school, I've always been interested in photography. So I thought, well, you know what?
John:He's only gonna go through high school once. Don't know if he's gonna go on playing football after high school or not, which I'm I'm glad we took I took the pictures that I did because he decided he didn't wanna play past high school. He was kinda burned out on it. So I went out we went out and bought, some really good professional, photography gear. Spent a lot of money on that stuff.
Vikki:Yeah. A lot.
John:But I wanted I wanted to have, quality pictures of him so that he could have for the rest of his life and show his kids. And, so then I was taking some pictures, and I remember someone came up to me and said, hey. Could you submit some of your photos, to me? And it turns out he was the he was the director of photography for CBS Sports, and, it was at a high school football game. And I said, sure.
John:So I sent him these pictures. He goes, give me pictures from 5 different sports, daytime, nighttime, everything. I just wanna see. So I sent him these pictures. And so he said, great.
John:You wanna start shooting for for CBS Sports? I'll get your media credentials. And you and you said, we'll now sell your images. Before I was I decided that I could take other pictures from the other sports and put them on my own website. So then it's conventional business again almost.
John:Right? Yeah. So here I am having to get a website, having to fig either pay someone or figure it out myself how to make that work and do all of that nonsense with it. It's just a pain, but there's still a residual component to it. Because once I take my pictures, put them on the website, they'll live there forever.
John:Well, CBS and Max Preps, which is the high school, part of CBS Sports, they put them on their website, and they get thousands of view viewers every day. So those images sold like crazy. I have not taken a picture at a high school sports event in over 10 years, and I still get to this day, I still get used to be checks to from them, but now they just do direct deposit. But I still make money on those images.
Vikki:That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So, honestly, really, our point, and and I think you really touched on it in that that last share there, was that, you know, you read that article about millionaires.
Vikki:And, you know, that's what we wanted wanted to talk about the most and leave with you today. Whatever you're doing now, whether you have a
John:conventional business, whether you
Vikki:have a traditional business, whether you have a traditional 9 to 5 or or or not non not 9 to 5, you know, anytime where it's typically corporate America or a city government job, You know, look at having multiple income streams. That's the wave of the future. Gen z, all these kids born after 2,000, they're all entrepreneurial minded. They get it. And congratulations, Gen z, if you're watching this, listening to this.
Vikki:We are so proud of you. You are our people. John, did you have any last minute tips on, you know, what else what what specifically they could look into?
John:Well, I would say there's so many things you can do. The sky's the limit. But I'll tell you, we've tried so many different things and we've we've found some we have personally found something that has really stuck. And we've been how many years now?
Vikki:12 years now with the company we're with now. Yeah.
John:And it works. And, that has just been a goal line for us. And so if, you know, I I I mean, like, the photography thing was great. It was still a lot of work though, but that that turned out well. It's still working out well for me.
John:I just haven't done anything. In fact, I sold Yeah. Sold my some of my stuff. It was it was rough selling some of that stuff because, it was just it was just nice to have, but I'm not using it, just sitting in sitting in a room. So, anyways Yeah.
John:What would you suggest then if if
Vikki:Yeah. And, you know, we've talked about it a lot. You know, one, I think, poor piece of advice that a lot of people are given is do something you're passionate about. Now in some cases, that's true. Right?
Vikki:You should do something you're passionate about. But in a lot of cases, like the work business we're in right now, it is not something John was passionate about. It's not something I was passionate about. But guess what? It's products that are in demand, desired.
Vikki:They sell. They get repeat orders, and that was key for us. When when we were kind of still looking for that perfect business, it didn't necessarily it it it would be great if we were passionate, like car stereo is an alarm and fun car stuff, you know, for John. It didn't turn out that way. It's it's clean skin care, hair care, wellness, and weight loss.
Vikki:But guess what? It sells. It performs better than anything else out there on the market. And I'm not pitching you on the company, but I'm just saying that because we were smart this go around and didn't just follow something we were passionate about because even me as a woman, I wasn't passionate about skin care. I just I'm not.
Vikki:I wanna grow old gracefully, but it wasn't that I was passionate. But we wrote down our pros and cons, and and we were like, wow. This seems like the answer that we've been praying for. Right?
John:But there's a lot of things out there. So, you know, I would suggest find something. And if you need help finding it, reach out to us, and and we can see if we can help find something that might be a good fit for you. But find something because, I think it would really you would do your family so much if you would get away from working overtime, if that's what you're doing, and focus on working for yourself. Focus on something that has some, residual component to it to where you're gonna continue to get paid on it, and that's kind of the secret right there because then as you continue to do that, it just keeps compounding, compounding, and it's pretty soon what may only seem like a small amount of money per month turns into something fairly large.
Vikki:And it's honestly the name of our podcast, dig the well. You're digging your well, maybe before you need it. But when you need it, you can really turn it up. Right. So thanks.
Vikki:Thanks for joining us on Dig the Well.
John:We hope you feel empowered and ready to take on new challenges.
Vikki:Remember, if we can do it, so can you. Keep learning, keep believing, and going after your dreams.
John:And if
John:you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who needs a little inspiration or maybe a nudge in the right direction.
Vikki:Help us grow this community of go getters. Together, we can achieve greatness and get back to family.
John:Thanks for listening, and let's keep digging the way.