July 21, 2026

The Jeremy Hanson podcast "Why I Do The Jeremy Hanson Podcast"

The Jeremy Hanson Podcast / Optimized Entrepreneur

Show Notes
Transcript

Most business podcasts teach you how to build a bigger company. This one is trying to teach you how to build a better life. In this episode, Jeremy Hanson steps out from behind the frameworks and case studies to explain exactly why The Jeremy Hanson Podcast exists, what it will always be, and what it will never be.

Jeremy became a father at sixteen. He didn't start businesses because he read a book about entrepreneurship or because someone told him to be his own boss. He started them because there was no other option — nobody hires a sixteen-year-old for enough money to raise a child, so he had to build the math himself. Pressure washing in Missouri summers. Cleaning crews. Food trucks. Broadcasting and voice work. Today, exterior cleaning and restoration through Shimmer Services. None of those businesses got applause, and none of them were ever the goal.

This episode makes the case that business is a tool and nothing more. Money is a tool. Employees are not trophies. Marketing, sales, systems, software, and AI are all tools, and every one of them exists to produce five things: freedom, time, choices, security, and opportunity. When a business starts consuming those five instead of producing them, the numbers can still go up while the life underneath quietly comes apart — and the numbers will never warn you.

Jeremy also lays out what failure actually teaches, which is not tactics but the true price of every trade you made, and the more surprising lesson that success teaches the exact same thing. He explains why nobody was teaching entrepreneurship from this angle — everyone was talking about scaling, exits, venture capital, hustle, and Lamborghinis, and almost nobody was talking about building a marriage, raising children who want to be around you, health, peace, and purpose.

The episode closes with the Best Life Formula: five questions that replace revenue, headcount, and follower counts as the real scoreboard. Do your kids want to spend time with you? Does your spouse enjoy being around you? Can you sleep at night? Are you proud of who you've become? And does your business serve your life, or has your life become a servant to your business?

This is the mission statement episode. Thirty years of scars, stated plainly, with no highlight reel.

For more like this, subscribe to the Built Different newsletter and find everything at jeremyhanson.pro.

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QUESTIONS THIS EPISODE ANSWERS

Listeners often want to know why a working entrepreneur with multiple businesses and a full family life spends this much time making a podcast, and this episode answers that directly. Jeremy explains that when he was twenty-two years old and drowning, nobody was saying the thing he needed to hear, and he waited a long time for someone with a bigger platform to say it before deciding to say it himself.

People also ask whether entrepreneurship is really about money, and this episode argues that it never was. A business is a truck you drive somewhere in, not a destination, and the culture around entrepreneurship has spent the last decade worshiping the truck. The intended destination is a life — a stable one, a safe one, one where the people who depend on you can stop bracing for impact.

Another common question is how to tell whether a business has stopped working even when it looks successful. The answer offered here is diagnostic rather than financial. Ask whether the business is producing freedom, time, choices, security, and opportunity, or consuming them. A business can consume all five while the revenue climbs, which is precisely why revenue is a poor early warning system.

Listeners frequently ask what failure teaches. Jeremy's position is that failure does not primarily teach tactics. It teaches you what you were willing to trade and whether you would make that trade again — and the receipt is almost never just money. It is the missed dinner, the lost weekend, the night you were physically present and mentally somewhere else entirely.

Finally, people ask what they can expect from this show. Four promises: Jeremy will never pretend he hasn't failed, will never teach theory he hasn't lived, will never claim entrepreneurship is easy, and will always show what thirty years of scars have actually taught him.

Jeremy Hanson, The Jeremy Hanson Podcast, entrepreneurship, why I started my podcast, entrepreneurship is not about money, business is a tool, building a better life, work life balance for entrepreneurs, teen dad entrepreneur, dad at sixteen, small business owner podcast, service business owner, pressure washing business, exterior cleaning business, Shimmer Services, blue collar entrepreneurship, business failure lessons, learning from failure, what success actually costs, hustle culture criticism, anti hustle culture, freedom time choices security opportunity, entrepreneur burnout, entrepreneur marriage advice, family first business, raising kids as an entrepreneur, business owner mental health, can you sleep at night, best life formula, redefining success, revenue is not the scoreboard, business serving your life, purpose driven business, thirty years in business, Missouri entrepreneur, Springfield Missouri business, Fuzzy Life Studios, Storyblocks, human made stock media, stock footage for podcasters, Built Different newsletter, jeremyhanson.pro, business podcast for real operators, entrepreneurship without venture capital, bootstrapped business owner

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Jeremy Hanson Podcast is a business and life show for people who actually run things. Hosted by Jeremy Hanson — a thirty-year entrepreneur, founder of Fuzzy Life Entertainment and Fuzzy Life Studios, and owner of Shimmer Services — the show trades theory for lived experience. Jeremy became a father at sixteen and built service businesses because there was no other option, and that origin shapes everything about how he teaches. No venture capital. No exits. No highlight reel. Just what thirty years of building, failing, and rebuilding actually taught him, delivered straight, with the assumption that your business is supposed to build your life rather than consume it.

New episodes publish regularly. Everything lives at jeremyhanson.pro, and the Built Different newsletter delivers the same thinking to your inbox.

CREDITS

Host: Jeremy Hanson Written by: Jeremy Hanson Produced by: Fuzzy Life Studios Distributed by: Fuzzy Life Entertainment Show Website: jeremyhanson.pro Newsletter: Built Different Episode Sponsor: Storyblocks (storyblocks.com/HANSON) Storyblocks Offer: 15% off any annual plan, available only through the host link Storyblocks

Q: Why does Jeremy Hanson do The Jeremy Hanson Podcast? Answer: Because nobody was saying the thing he needed to hear when he was twenty-two and drowning. He waited years for someone with a bigger platform to teach entrepreneurship as a means of building a life rather than a bigger company, and when nobody did, he decided to say it himself.

Q: What is the core thesis of the episode? Answer: Most business podcasts teach people how to build bigger companies. This one teaches people how to build a better life. Business is a tool, never the goal.

Q: What happened to Jeremy Hanson at sixteen? Answer: He became a father. That ended his adolescence almost immediately and forced him into entrepreneurship, because nobody was going to hire a sixteen-year-old for enough money to raise a child.

Q: What businesses has Jeremy Hanson run? Answer: Pressure washing, cleaning crews, food trucks, syndicated broadcasting, professional voice work, and today exterior cleaning and restoration through Shimmer Services, alongside Fuzzy Life Entertainment and Fuzzy Life Studios.

Q: What does Jeremy say business is actually for? Answer: Producing five outputs — freedom, time, choices, security, and opportunity. Money, employees, marketing, sales, systems, and AI are all tools that exist to generate those five things.

Q: What does failure actually teach an entrepreneur? Answer: Not tactics, but cost. Failure teaches you what you were willing to trade and whether you would make that trade again, and the receipt is rarely just money.

Q: Why does Jeremy say success taught him the same lesson as failure? Answer: Because the threshold where the pressure comes off does not exist. If a business is the only thing holding up your identity, no level of performance fixes that — you simply build a bigger and more expensive version of the same anxiety.

Q: What is the Best Life Formula? Answer: Five questions that replace the fake scoreboard of revenue, headcount, and followers. Do your kids want to spend time with you? Does your spouse enjoy being around you? Can you sleep at night? Are you proud of who you've become? Does your business serve your life, or has your life become a servant to your business?

Q: What are the four promises Jeremy makes to listeners? Answer: He will never pretend he hasn't failed, never teach theory he hasn't lived, never claim entrepreneurship is easy, and always show what thirty years of scars have taught him.

Q: Does Jeremy think everyone should start a business? Answer: No. He says some people should get very good at their job, save aggressively, study how their boss operates, and start in three years from strength rather than desperation. He started from desperation, and he does not recommend it.

Q: Who sponsors this episode? Answer: Storyblocks, the 100% human-made stock media library. Listeners get 15% off any annual plan at storyblocks.com/HANSON.

Q: Where can listeners find more from Jeremy Hanson? Answer: At jeremyhanson.pro, and through the Built Different newsletter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Jeremy Hansen Podcast. This episode the Why

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of what I do Now. If your business is making

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you richer while it destroys your marriage, I've got some really,

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really bad news for you. You've already failed, so you

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just haven't gotten the invoice yet. If your business gives

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you more money but less time with your kids, you

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haven't won anything. You lost, And the truth is you

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paid the full price for the privilege of losing. If

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you become a millionaire and you wake up every single

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morning completely miserable, sick to your stomach, dreading the day

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in front of you, well, then I have an honest

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question for you. What did you build exactly? You see,

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you didn't build a life. A life doesn't feel like that,

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A life doesn't taste like dread at six in the morning.

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Now you build a machine, and somewhere in there you

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climbed inside of it. Then you shut the door behind you,

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and then you handed somebody else the key. I know

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that because I've done that, and I didn't do it

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just once. I'm a slow learner. I did it several times,

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and every single time the machine looked and felt like

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success from the outside, especially in the beginning, and that's

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what this episode is about. That's what this entire show

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is about. And after all of these years and all

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of these episodes and all of these conversations, I think

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it's time I told you exactly why I do this. Welcome, Welcome.

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To the Jeremy Hansome.

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Good Cash.

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So let's get back at it. This is the Jeremy

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Hanson Podcast. I'm Jeremy Hanson. Today's episode is a little

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bit different than the normal episode. You know, there's no

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framework that I'm walking you through today. There's no five

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step system that I'm telling you to do. There's no guests,

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there's no case study, no breakdown of somebody else's company.

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This is really personal today. It's just me telling you

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why this show exists and what I'm actually doing here,

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and then what you can expect from me every single

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time that you press play. Yeah, I've had a lot

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of people ask me some version of the same question lately.

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They'll say something like, Jeremy, you've got businesses to run,

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you've got a family, you've got more work than ours,

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so why do you spend your time on a podcast?

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And it made me think, you know, the short answer

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is that nobody was saying the thing that I needed

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to hear when I was twenty twenty two years old

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and drowning. I know there's guys out there right now

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that are thinking that same thing. See, the long answer

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takes hours, So let's take this answer and make it

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as short as possible, but as effective as possible.

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So I come to.

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You humble today and with humility, but no regrets. See

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I was sixteen years old and out of options. You see,

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I was the wild child. I had done things that

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some teenagers do, and I became a dad at sixteen.

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I want you to think about that for a second,

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because I think people hear that and then they nod,

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and then they just move on, and I think that

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they actually miss what that means. You See, at sixteen,

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most kids are worried about a driver's license. They're worried

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whether somebody's gonna say yes to a dance, you know,

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They're worried about a grade in a class that they'll

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never think about again. And I was worried about diapers. Okay,

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I was worried about how how much formula costs, which,

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by the way, I could not have told.

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You the week before.

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Literally, you know, I was worried about whether the car

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was going to start, because if the car didn't start,

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I didn't work, And if I didn't work, there was

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no money. And there was a human being who didn't

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care about any excuses or real life problems that I had.

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You see, that's the thing about a baby. A baby

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is the most honest business partner that you will ever

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ever have. See. A baby doesn't care about your potential.

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A baby doesn't care about your five year plan. A

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baby doesn't care that you're young and that it isn't

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fair and that other kids your age are at a

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football game right now. You see, a baby needs to

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eat and they need to eat tonight. Now, when you're

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sixteen years old and somebody needs to eat tonight, you

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stop being a kid.

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Now.

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I didn't start a business because I read a book

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about entrepreneurship. I didn't start a business because somebody told

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me to be my own boss. I didn't have direct mentors,

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I didn't have a network of people. I didn't have

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a garage full of somebody else's tools, and you know,

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a family safety net underneath me.

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You see, I started a business.

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Because there was no other option for me. You know,

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nobody was going to hire a sixteen year old for

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enough money to raise a kid. That math doesn't work,

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So I had to build the math myself. And I

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guess that's the first thing that I want you to

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understand about me, because I think that it kind of changes,

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or at least lets you see everything else in a

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different color. I'm going to tell you something else about

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that time of my life that I don't say very often.

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At that time, I was happy that I had a baby,

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but man, was I ashamed of the path that I

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had created for myself. And it wasn't just one. I

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ended up having two kids by the time I was eighteen,

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and for years I felt ashamed about it. Because when

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you're sixteen you've got a baby, people look at you

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a different sort of way. You know, teachers look at you,

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different church people look at you. Different adults who don't

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know anything about your life. They get real comfortable with

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telling you exactly how your life is going to end up.

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And see, I decided somewhere in there that I was

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going to spend the rest of my life proving these

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people wrong, one by one. And I'll tell you what

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that is, A powerful, powerful feeling and a powerful engine. See,

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spite will get you up at four in the morning

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for ten years a decade straight. It's incredibly effect to fuel.

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It's also a terrible, terrible reason to build anything. And

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it took me some time into my thirties to figure

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that out. See, when you're constantly building something to prove

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something to people who stopped thinking about you years ago,

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well what happens is you'll never ever be finished. And

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there's no number that satisfies that. There's no house that's

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big enough. See, you're trying to fill a hole with

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the wrong stuff, the wrong material. And I'm telling you

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this right now because some of you listening right now

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are running on that same fuel, and you know exactly

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what I'm describing. See, I'm really not a theorist. I've

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never gotten the luxury of being a theorist. Everything that

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I know, I know because I ran out of options

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and had to figure something out before Friday or next

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Thursday or two, had to get to work.

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I had to the business nobody applauded. Let me tell

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you about what.

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Those businesses actually look like, because it's not what people think,

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and it wasn't glamorous. And I think that this matters.

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I have pressure washed houses in the middle of Missouri

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summer where the air is so thick that you're basically

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breathing soup. I've been up on ladders at six in

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the morning, and I've been in a driveway with a

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wand in my hand at eight o'clock at night. And

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I've done both on the same day more times than

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I can count. I've run cleaning crews and I've been

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the cleaning crew. You get a very specific kind of

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education when you're cleaning something that somebody else makes dirty,

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and then they there and watch you do it, and

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you have to be happy and pleasant about it because

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you need them to call you again. I've run food trucks.

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If you've never run a food truck, understand this. A

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food truck is a business, a restaurant, a vehicle, a

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marketing campaign, and a fire hazard, all stacked into a

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space the size of a hallway that every single one

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of those things can ruin your week all by themselves.

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I've done broadcasting, I've done voice work. I've stood in

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front of a microphone for other people's brands a thousand

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times before I ever stood in front of one for

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my own, and today my family and I. We run

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Shimmer Services, which is an exterior cleaning company and restoration

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and it is still to this day the business that

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taught me most about what a business actually is. Okay,

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that nobody gave those businesses applause. Nobody wrote an article

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about a guy pressure washing a house. Nobody did. Nobody

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put a food truck on a magazine cover. You know,

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there was no announcement, there was no round, there was

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no exit. There was just work, consistently, everyday work. You know,

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those businesses were never the goal, not one of them,

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not ever. You See, every business I ever started was

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a tool that I picked to build something else. And

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the something else was a life, A stable life, a

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safe life, one where the people who depend on me

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could stop bracing for the next crash. And that's it,

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That's that's absolutely the whole thing. The business was never

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my destination. The business was the truck that I drove

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in there, And somewhere in this culture we've gotten that

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completely completely backwards. See, we started worshiping the business, and

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we started worshiping that truck. So what failure actually teaches you? Hey,

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you've heard a lot about me building things, but I'm

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going to tell you. I've also broken things. I have failed,

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and I say that in the plural, repeatedly, in ways

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it cost me real money. I didn't have the time

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that I couldn't get back. See.

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I've launched things that nobody wanted.

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And I've hired people I should not have hired because

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I was tired and I was desperate and I was

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trying to get the problem to go away. I've kept

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people too long because I just couldn't stomach the conversation.

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I've been the guy that price worked so low that

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I essentially paid a customer for the privilege of ruining

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my Saturday. I've had months where the revenue looked great

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on paper and I still was having a hard time

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making payroll because revenue and cash are two completely different things.

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And I learned that the hard way at night with

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a calculator. Okay, and here's what I've learned about failure.

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And it took me a lot of years to be

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able to say this and to say it clean. Failure

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doesn't teach you what you think it teaches you. Most

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people think failure teaches you tactics. You know, don't price

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that way, don't hire that guy, don't sign that lease.

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Then sure it maybe teaches some of that. That's the

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surface layer anyways, but the real lesson underneath is about

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what you were willing to trade and whether you'd make

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that trade again. See, every failure that I've had came

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with a receipt, and the receipt was never just money.

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It was a weekend that I didn't get. It was

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a dinner that I missed. It was a night somewhere

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I was supposed to be physically at a table and

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I wasn't really there. See at night doing math in

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my head. Will my kids sitting there telling me a

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story and I didn't even hear a single word of it.

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You See, that's the real cost. And nobody that I

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know has ever put that on a balance sheet. So

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when I failed, the question that I eventually learned to

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ask wasn't well, what went wrong with whatever strategy I

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was implementing. The question was what did that cost the

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people that I loved the most and wasn't worth it?

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And a lot of times, most of the time the

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answer was simply no. Now let me say the other half,

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because I think people expect the failure speech and then

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they check out. So success and most people don't think

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about it this way either. But success taught me the

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exact same lesson, and I guess that's the part that

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surprised me. You See, I just assumed that success would

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feel like a rival. I assumed that there'd be some

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threshold where the pressure just came off, where the not

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in my stomach untied itself, you know, where I just

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look around and go, Okay, we're good now. But what

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I've learned is that idea, that doorway, that threshold, it

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does not exist. See I've hit numbers now that I

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would have considered impossible at twenty five years old, and

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I felt almost nothing, maybe a day, maybe an hour,

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maybe an afternoon, And then the number moved. The number

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always moves, and the truth was I was right back

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in it.

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If your business is the.

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Only thing holding up your sense of who you are,

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then it doesn't matter how well it does. See, there's

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no amount of good that fixes that, because you'll just

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build a bigger, more expensive, more sophisticated version of the

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same anxiety, the same problem structure. Failure taught me what

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things actually cost. Success taught me that the thing I

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was buying was never going to be worth what I

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was paying for it. You see, building a company was

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never my goal. Building a life was my goal. It

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took me about eighteen twenty years and a whole lot

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of scar tissue to be able to say that sentence

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out loud without like flinching. So I'm going to say

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the thing that nobody will say out loud. Somewhere along

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the way, somewhere along this journey, I started paying attention

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to what was actually being taught out there. I started

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listening to shows and you know, radio and podcasts, and

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reading books and watching videos YouTube, sitting in rooms with people,

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and I realized something that really did, honestly bother me.

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Nobody was teaching entrepreneurship from this angle, from what I'm

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talking about, through real life entrepreneurism and marriage and kids

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and all this thing. Almost nobody. Everything that I was

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listening to was about scaling. Everybody was talking about exit

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strategies and you know at the venture capital and you

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know what it could do to raise your valuations and

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what you could do to make things multiply. And everybody

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was talking about hustle and sleep when you're dead and

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rise and grind and just out work. Everybody. Everybody was

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talking about the cars, or their watch, or the new

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house they got.

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Everybody had a Ferrari or.

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A Lamborghini, and the thumbnail with the guy leaning against

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it and his arms crossed telling you that you're just

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not a good enough worker, You're just not hungry enough.

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And listen, I'm not here to be bitter about anybody

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else's success. If a man wants a Lamborghini, well God

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bless him, go get the Lamborghini. I'm not moralizing about cars.

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What bothered me was what was missing the reality of

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what was missing. I guess almost nobody was talking about

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how to build a marriage that survives the first five

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years of a business. Remember I'm on marriage number two.

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Thank goodness, it's going great. It's you know, quarter century,

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twenty five years.

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But I learned a lesson hard way.

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See.

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Almost nobody that.

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I was listening to, and I was trying to listen to,

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everybody was talking about how to raise kids who actually

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want to be around you when they're twenty five years

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old and don't have to be. Almost nobody was talking

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about health. And I'm talking about real health, the kind

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of health where you can carry a grand kit up

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a flight of stairs at sixty years old and not

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even think about it. Nobody was talking about peace, about

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the ability to just sit there without reaching for your phone,

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because for some reason, silence feels like a threat today.

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Nobody was talking about that. Almost nobody was talking about purpose,

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about why any of this is happening in the first place.

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And I kept waiting and listening for somebody with more

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credibility than me to say, Okay, yeah, this is it.

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You see. I figured somebody smarter is going to handle this,

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Somebody with a bigger platform will say the quiet part

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out loud. And I waited, and I waited, and I waited.

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I waited a long time. You see. Eventually it occurred

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to me that maybe the reason nobody was saying it

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was that's saying it doesn't sell. Okay, that's just the reason.

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Build a company that lets you be at dinner with

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your family. Okay, that's a lot harder pitched than Hey,

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I'm going to ten times your revenue in ninety days. Okay,

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I get it, and I understand it, the economics of attention, boila.

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But I've got thirty years in this thing now.

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I've got a marriage, I've got kids, I've got grandkids,

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I've got businesses still standing, still running.

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And I also have a lot of scars.

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And emotional scars and physical scars from the years that

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I did things the other way. So I looked at

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my myself and said that nobody else is going to

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do this, that I'm going to do it. And that's

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exactly why the Jeremy Hanson podcast and Optimized Entrepreneur exists.

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It's exactly why.

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Now with that, let me take a quick break because

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this episode is about tools, and I want to tell

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you about one that I actually use. Story Blocks is

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a stock media library built for creators. Footage, music, sound effects, templates, images,

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millions of assets and they're all professionally curated, all pre licensed,

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all ready to drop into monetized work under one subscription.

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And there is something that made me pay attention. Every

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single asset in that library is made by a human being,

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a professional filmmaker, a working artist. It's never ai generated, okay,

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And this is in a year where everybody's flooding the

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internet with machine made Everything that mattered to me more

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than I expected it to. Now, let me tell you

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how it actually shows up in my week. See, we

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were in a full production house here, Fuzzy Life Studios

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puts out multiple shows, okay, the video versions, the clips,

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the trailers, the social cuts, and on the narrative side,

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on the cinematic stuff. I need music beds and sound

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effects that carry a scene without stepping on the story.

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Okay. That used to eat my life.

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I'd burn the entire evening hunting for one piece of

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music that didn't sound like a corporate training video from

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the early two thousands. Story Blocks literally killed that problem.

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Unlimited downloads under one subscription means I stop rationing, I

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stop second guessing whether a clip is worth pulling. I

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00:23:39.119 --> 00:23:41.920
grab four different options, and I test all four. I

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keep the ones that work. Now, that's completely different way

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to build. The templates are the other piece. Thousands of customizable,

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pre made templates for the different editing platforms that we

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already run. So an intro that use to take a

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day now takes an hour. And the story Blocks plug

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in lets you search and download right inside Okay, premiere

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pro after effects, which means to me that nobody on

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00:24:13.480 --> 00:24:17.279
my team is bouncing between six browser tabs mid edit.

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That's awesome. Members save an average of three and a

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half hours a week. Okay, and I truly do believe

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that number because I've lived it. I've been using stuff

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like this for years. It's awesome to have an extra

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three and a half four hours a week. More than

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one hundred and fifty thousand creators and businesses use story

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Blocks as part of their workflow, and every download you

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make directly supports a real working artist.

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Okay, that's not a small thing to me.

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I've been the guy that nobody was paying attention to,

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that was just doing the work. Anyways, So head to

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00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:01.759
storyblocks dot com slash hansen to access the human made

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00:25:01.799 --> 00:25:06.359
stock media library that's essential to my workflow. For a

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00:25:06.440 --> 00:25:10.200
limited time, they're offering fifteen percent off any annual plan

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00:25:10.759 --> 00:25:14.599
and that discount is only available through my link. Again,

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00:25:15.079 --> 00:25:20.720
that's storyblocks dot com slash Hanson for fifteen percent off

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00:25:20.920 --> 00:25:26.759
annual plans. Storyblocks dot com slash Hanson for fifteen percent

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00:25:26.799 --> 00:25:36.640
off annual plans. Now, business is just a tool, Okay,

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00:25:36.680 --> 00:25:39.880
Let's let's get into the part that I think will

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actually change how some of you think and operate your

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daily lives. You see business as a tool, and that's it.

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00:25:49.359 --> 00:25:52.359
That's the whole reframe that you need to wrap your

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mind around. I know it sounds small, but I want

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00:25:57.559 --> 00:25:59.640
you to walk it out because I don't think most

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people actually believe it. They'll not at it and shake

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their head for you, but they won't really live it.

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Here's another one. Money. Money is a tool.

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Okay. Money isn't some sort of score word, and it's

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definitely not a personality. It's simply a lever and it

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simply moves things. That's the only thing that it does. Okay.

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A hammer doesn't mean anything either until somebody picks it

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up and decides.

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What they want to build. Employees are not trophies.

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I hear guys say all the time that I've got

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forty employees and the way that another man would say

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I've got a boat. Okay, forty employees is not an accomplishment.

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Forty employees is forty families betting their mortgage on your judgment.

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I don't look at that like a trophy.

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You see.

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That's a responsibility that should make you a little bit

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nervous every time you owe them on payday. See marketing

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another thing. It's a tool. It's not magic, it's not evil.

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It's just how a stranger finds out that you exist,

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and they decide whether they should trust you sales, same thing.

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It's just a tool.

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Sales isn't manipulation, you see.

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Sales done right, is just clarity delivered with enough confidence

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that somebody can make a decision.

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You know, systems, systems are tools. Software is a tool,

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your CRM.

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Is a tool, and AI is a tool.

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I know.

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That's the loud conversation right now. Either everyone's terrified of

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it or convinced it's going to hand them the fortune

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00:27:47.519 --> 00:27:48.200

The Jeremy Hanson podcast "Why I Do The Jeremy Hanson Podcast"

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