Self Esteem Mastery - How to Raise Your Kids to Become Entrepreneurs with Special Guest Mort Fertel, Dad and CEO of Sudshare

Welcome back to another episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the behavioral and emotional challenges within our home. Hey, moms and dads out there, are you sick and tired of doing laundry? Does your laundry just pile up day after day and then you end up spending the whole day on Saturday just trying to get it caught up? And even when you do get it caught up, does it sit on the stairs or a table or a couch just waiting to be put away?

Well, today I have a super special guest that is going to talk to us about a simple life hack that's going to save you two to three to six hours a week, depending on how many kids are in your home. And I have to say, this episode is kind of like, at first I was going to say it was a twofer, but it's actually a threefer. Are there any of you out there, and please put in the comments if this is you, are there any of you out there that love to do laundry and just wish you could get paid to do it?

what about those of you that are trying to get your kids to do the laundry or to help around at home and just can't seem to do that well this three for episode is going to share with you a simple life hack that's going to save you time doing the laundry or going to help you get paid to do the laundry and it's going to help you build relationship and connection with your kids by helping them to master self-esteem. So, all right, you guys, meet Mort Fertel.

Mort is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at 18 years old. He has a private equity portfolio that consists of Sudshare, two other businesses, and some real estate holdings. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business, and during a short time when he thought he might be a corporate guy, he also worked on Wall Street for Bankers Trust Company. He's an author and creator of the first online relationship renewal system back in 2004 and the subject of Back from the Brink, which was a documentary written and directed by Thomas Torres and chronicles people in marriage crisis.

Now a grandfather, success for Mort means making a difference, and SudShare makes a difference by allowing customers to enjoy life and for the Sudsters, or washers, to have their own work-from-home business. Mort loves working with his family to revolutionize the laundry business and today he's not only gonna share about the SudShare company, he's gonna share with us how mastering self-esteem can help your child grow up and become who they are called to be and he's even gonna share their personal 10 family values that they truly have lived by which have not only helped them become the confident parents their kids crave them to be, they have created confident kids. So many golden nuggets in this episode. So I'm going to put that all in the show notes,

all the tips and tools, and even the 10 family values that Mort shares so that you parents can simply sit back, listen to the conversation and enjoy the show. All right. Well, welcome to the show, Mort. I'm super excited to have you here today. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how Sudshare came to be? Sure. So thank you very much, first of all, for having me on the show. I guess I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business when I was 18 years old, and I've had a very eclectic career with a number of different businesses and ventures. And one of those ventures is my beautiful family with my wife and our five children. And And about four years ago, you know, in the modern era, my wife is saying, you know, I can FaceTime someone on the other side of the world and I can tap an app and get to the airport and I can deposit a check without going to the bank.

But I'm still doing laundry like my mother and my grandmother did. This is ridiculous. And we have five kids. It's a lot of laundry.

And we homeschool those kids. So that means even more laundry. And she was right. I mean, it's unbelievable that technology has transformed every aspect of our life.

And yet this chore that takes more time than any other chore we have during the week has been untouched for 70 years. I mean, the last time it was really helped, the last time we were helped by technology in terms of our laundry was the washer and dryer, which became popular in the 50s. So my wife tried to solicit my children to help with the laundry, but you can imagine how that went. my 17 year one, I, we have triplets that are, we had triplets that were 17 at the time. They're now 20. One of them, uh, knock Sean, he said, well, look, mom, I'm not going to help you sort whites from colors, but I'll, I'll, I'll build you an app and solve your problem.

Oh, funny. We thought he was kidding. He wasn't. As I said, we're a homeschooling family. And our motto is like, you can do anything. You can put your mind to it and we'll give you the time. We'll give you the resources. And we teach our kids like be resourceful, figure it out. There's no such thing as I can't. And so lo and behold, he figured it out. He basically built this Uber for laundry business model, which we launched in Baltimore in 2017 and sorry, 2018. And it turns out that a lot more than my wife liked the app. It was very successful. We spent a number of years kind of tweaking the policies, procedures, and the systems, and the app, and everything.

And then over the last nine months, we scaled Sudshear to about 400 cities around the country. We're now the first and only national laundry service business. Just tap the app and it's done. we come to your house we pick up the laundry we wash it dry it fold it or turn it to you the next day wow all because one of your kiddos didn't want to sort and do laundry you figure out a way to get it done for you that is amazing smart kiddo i'm guessing he's the ceo of the company now i'm the ceo of the company he's the cto of the company he's my he's my tech whiz and he's my co-founder and the CTO.

And he taught himself how to code. I can't write a line of code. He taught himself how to write code. He taught himself all these different computer languages.

And he basically built this technology company that we are now growing. And because of our growth, he brought my other son, Moshe. We recently brought him into the business. You know, they were used to solving algebra problems together at the whiteboard in the basement.

so now they're on slack working together yeah how great i mean if you can't you do what you're good at right and then fish the rest out or find somebody else who's good at what you know at what you're not and that's exactly what they've done that is fantastic i love absolutely all of that and i bet your wife does too uh she's very proud of them and she also loves it because she uses such air and doesn't have to do the laundry anymore three hours a week and it's just a beautiful thing. You know, you just tap the app and that's it. You put in your preferences and someone takes care of it for you. The line that we get over and over from our customers is, oh my God, I'm never doing laundry again. Yeah. So we're going to talk a little bit more about how it works from start to finish, getting your laundry bagged up and getting it sent out and how long it takes and all that kind of thing. I think it's really cool. Your wife thought of the idea.

So she's the brains behind it, right? This is what needs to happen. And then you're managing the show. Your son, which son is it again?

That's doing the... Nakshon is the CTO. Okay. And then you have two other children that are now involved as well in some shape or form.

Exactly. Moshe is Nakshon's brother. And Moshe is the director of operations. He interfaces with our thousands and thousands of Sudsters.

He's involved in social media. he's like our personality. He's got a tremendous amount of energy. He loves people. Everybody loves Moshe. Moshe loves everybody. He's very, he's a real extrovert. Nakshon's the opposite.

Nakshon's the tech geek. He's an introvert. You know, they each have their own superpowers. And that's one of the keys, I think, to being a good parent is appreciating how different kids can be and allow them to be their different self and, you know, sort of appreciating, not expecting uniformity in the family, you know, but appreciating our children's uniqueness and allowing them to be unique. It's a hard thing to do because, of course, we as parents, you know, we kind of see things in one way. And often that results in creating a singular set of expectations. But that's not, I don't think that's the healthiest thing for a family. In most families, children are very, very different. And there needs to be in some realms, a different set of expectations. And they have different superpowers, and you have to let them fly with those superpowers.

yeah and I absolutely love that and it's not about what mom and dad want necessarily for the kid other than the you know we want them to be happy we want to raise respectful responsible you know capable confident human beings but let them kind of guide their path into what their interests are and what they hope to be not so much about what we help them to become especially when it comes to the workforce right and their careers 100 I think the most important our most important job as parents, I think, is to raise them to have healthy self-esteem. And that's one of the most important qualities of a human being. And if you do the research on self-esteem and what really cultivates self-esteem, it's really one simple thing. And that is mastery. If a child learns to master things, then they will develop good self-esteem. But what are they going to master?

but same thing we all know we only master things that we're good at and that we love right and again it gets back to the uniqueness of each of us um so nakshon you know he he loves computers he loves technology he loves coding he's a very rational logical left brain thinker so you've got to let him fly in that direction you know um you know i remember he came to my wife once and said, you know, I want to learn computer language. My wife's like, computer language? What do you mean? Is that French? Is that Spanish? Is that like, what? Like what? She didn't know. I mean, what computers a language? What are you talking about? You know? Yeah. But, you know, we set him up to, you know, to succeed. And Moshe, you know, he's, he's, he's the opposite,

you know, he wants to, you know, get in an RV and drive around the country and talk to all the and meet the social media influencers and and you know he wants to be out there and just uh you know um and be with people and just yeah yeah yeah he's he's the important thing is that they're they're going to master things that they're inclined to love i once heard and i thought it was brilliant there's three keys to parenting example example and example And so if we don't want our kids hanging out on social media and playing games and instead investing themselves and becoming more resourceful and industrious and learned, so that needs to be us. They need to see that in us, you know? And so every parent should watch the documentary called The Social Dilemma. Have you ever seen it?

I have not yet. It's on my list. I don't get to a lot of TV, but yes, I have heard it. It's a very important documentary for everybody, particularly every parent to watch.

And you can't help after that hour of watching that documentary of being reminded of how important it is to keep our kids off of social media and wasting their life with that kind of stuff. Right. Instead, investing it in things that can really enrich their lives rather than create anxiety. Yeah, for sure. I would say the biggest benefit is, you know, as the kids get older and anybody with older kids knows this, there's less natural reasons for us to interact with them.

In other words, when kids are little, they need us for everything. And they're in the house and we have to take them to baseball practice and help them with their homework. And like, you know, there's just, there's a tremendous amount of natural interaction between parents and children. My kids are 20 years old, or my triplets are 20 years old. I have two other kids as well, but the triplets are 20 years old. There's not a lot of natural interaction between parents and 20 year olds that are out of the house.

so when you have a business together all of a sudden now there's this this platform for this natural interaction which if if you if you love your children your children love you and you have a good relationship it's it's amazing you know it's a it's a it's just a great way to to have something to work on together and to talk to each other about and it just creates this interaction which is really great and it also you know we have these 10 family values which when they were growing up and being homeschooled and um uh and family vacations we would always always sort of reference back these family to these family values and use use books and and teachings and experiences and vacations everything is an opportunity to promote these family values and basically help these children become the kind of people that we're imagining them that we want them to become. So how do you do that with 20 year olds? How do you do that with a 24 year old?

It's not so easy anymore. But when you're when you're running a business together, now you have this additional platform to show them that these values manifest themselves in a business operation also. And that they're not just relegated to inside the home, but these values permeate outside the home into this business and how we treat our employees and how we interact with the IRS and how we treat the sudsters, those are the washers and how we, you know, it just, it's just an opportunity to show them that the world is one, that life is one, that things are not bifurcated. We don't behave one way in the home and another way at the office.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. No duplicity in a great person, a great human being is unified, isn't it? That's, I think, the ultimate definition of integrity. Integrity is somebody who's integrated. Their full life is integrated and there's consistency in all the different aspects of their life.

So when you're running a business with children, it's a tremendous opportunity to show them that the way we conduct ourselves in the home is the way we conduct ourselves outside the home. It's a lot of work. So you need two things to accomplish that. And I think this is also important from a parenting perspective.

You need resiliency because things always don't go perfect. Right. And of course, that's one of the most important things that we can teach our children is, you know, how to be resilient, never give up, keep plugging away. Nothing comes easy. 10,000 hours.

You know, whether, you know, my daughter is training to become a concert violinist, you know, whether it's business, coding, violin, real estate, whatever it is, you have to be dogged. it takes tenacity and um uh you know that that's how we were able to launch such there and that's how we're able to to scale it yeah the other the other thing it takes um and this is this may ruffle some feathers but it takes time and what i mean by that is that in order for a 17 year old to launch a startup, he can't be spending 45 minutes learning history and 45 minutes in social studies and 45 minutes in music class. And I mean, you know, our education system today doesn't make you good at anything. Uh, and it doesn't really give you the opportunity either to be great at anything. And, you know, in our opinion, it's, that's messed up.

Kids become great people when they have great self-esteem and that self-esteem comes from mastery and mastery comes from time, 10,000 hours. And, you know, to give a kid 10,000 hours to become great at something, they can't spend, they can't have eight 45 minute blocks that take up their entire day. Just doesn't work. So, you know, I realize that's not a popular idea for 99% of parents that send their kids to school and the whole, you know, the whole, the school system wasn't designed to produce the kind of people that we really want and need now in the world.

The school system was, if you look at the history of the school system, it was designed for the industrial age. It was designed to create factory workers, people that would, metaphorically speaking, sit in a chair that's in a row and follow the teacher's orders. That's not what we need today in the economy. What we need today is creativity.

the people that succeed today are not people that follow orders they're people that create orders they're people who are creative and they're knowledge workers yeah I 150% agree although my son is in a school setting and it's yeah my husband and I have talked about this before it's so interesting to me we always thought we'd have a larger family and we ended up we had one God gave us one. And it was like, what do we do with one? You know, I was a babysitter at nine years old. I'm from a very large family with over a hundred first cousins between my mom and dad's side combined. I'm from a family of five. You know, I always thought I'd have more than it was one. So I couldn't justify staying at home and homeschooling one. And now he's 16. I look back at that. I'm like, what was I thinking that that would have been? I mean, look at all the time. He probably would have been an entrepreneur by now. He would have had a sleeping bag invention, you know, at eight years old out on out on the market. Anyway, I do I do agree with that it is it is,

you know, how to comply, sit in a chair, take direction, take orders. Also, I think it is good for people who don't really know what they want to do. It's great to give them a variety of subjects and topics and things to learn on. So I think that is great. You can get that from obviously homeschooling too, right? You know, you kind of help your kiddos find out what subjects and things they are interested in. So there are some benefits with that as well. But I do love that idea that once you're, you know, what your kid is passionate about, whether that's an academic role, a music role, a theater role, a, you know, sports role, whatever, that you really let them go all in with that and, and help them master, master that skill. I absolutely love that. And I, and I completely agree. And I think that self-esteem, I mean, have you written a book on this yet, Mort? Because you've got it. Self-esteem, mastery, and it takes time. It's so often part of why I started Hello World and No Problem Parenting is too often when our children do struggle or there is a problem, whether it's a behavioral quote unquote problem or an emotional quote unquote problem,

we spend too much time and attention on that problem and less time on the relationship. And subsequently, I think we create more problems out of the deal. You know, they're not getting a good grade in this specific subject. So we're spending all this time and energy trying to get them to be, you know, get the better grade, whether they're interested in the subject or not.

And then last time focusing on the subjects that they're great at. So we do need to make a shift. Yeah, there's a great book. I think it's called Animal Farm. Have you ever read that?

No, I have not. It's a very short, like illustrated book. It's, you could read it to a five-year-old. It's so short then with the illustrations, but it's a very profound.

It's essentially about the school on the farm that's like trying to teach the squirrel to fly and the fish to walk. And like that they're failing at these things. and you have to read it. It's- I will.

I'm definitely gonna look that up. And I will try to get the link in the show notes for that book as well. And also the social dilemma, because I love having, you know, it's one thing when we're listening to podcasts, if there's parents out there driving, listening to this and they're like, oh, I want to remember that. You know, I got to write that down, but they're driving, you know, home from work or wherever.

I'll try to get those in there. This is part of how I think you raise kids to be entrepreneurs, right? Because what's an entrepreneur? How did we start Sudshare? How did Nakshon build these apps? How is it that we're able to save two to three hours a week for, you know, tens of hundreds of thousands of families throughout the country now?

it's because we taught nakshon to be creative to be resourceful that there's no such thing as can't and we gave him the time to succeed with it i mean basically you know he he um we eventually did send him to a particular high school in the uh a particular high school but but when he went to the high school, he didn't go to any of the afternoon classes. He only went to the morning classes. And we got permission from the administration to allow him to work on Sudshare in the afternoon. So this is part of how you, I think, raise kids to be entrepreneurs is you give them time, you appreciate their superpowers, and you teach them resiliency.

Yeah, I love that. What they're best at, what they love. And I really would love to know what your 10 family values. Some families have three, some have five, you have 10, 10 family values. So if there's time, maybe you'd be willing to share that with us towards the end here. But let's talk about those SudServes and how SudShare works from start to finish. So SudShare is a marketplace for laundry.

And on one side of the platform, I already described, we have our customers who want to outsource their laundry. They tap the app, they put the laundry outside, they're done. We come, We pick it up, wash, dry, fold it, return it the next day. On the other side of the platform, we have our washers who we call Sudsters.

And for them, Sudshear is a work from home gig. And they turn their laundry room into a work from home gig. And the key to that is work from home. Because if you think about most of the gig job opportunities out there, whether it's DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, Uber, etc., they're all interesting work opportunities.

But if you're like a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home dad or for whatever reason you want or need to work from home, you don't have the opportunity to work for those companies because you've got to be out on the road. And so SudShare is the first manual labor work-from-home gig opportunity on the market. other than such here if you want to work from home you've got to be a knowledge-based worker you have to be able to sit behind a computer and be productive there's some people don't have the skills to do that there are people that don't want to do that and so if you know most people know uber so we are essentially uber for laundry like if you think of the uber business model and how it works we essentially applied the uber business model to the laundry business and i I have to believe that there are plenty of people out there who love to do laundry.

It's really interesting you say that because most people hate doing laundry. Yeah. But it's interesting. And so we have about 20,000 sudsters throughout the country that are, you know, doing laundry for families.

Some of them are, you know, really turned on by the work from home opportunity. They need to make more money. They need to work from home. This is perfect.

They don't necessarily love laundry, but it's a good work opportunity for them. But it's very interesting. A certain percentage of our sudsters, we have learned, they really love to do laundry. And that's why they're doing it.

It's a certain personality. It's a certain type. I don't know. I mean, it's not me.

I don't love to do laundry. But there are people that love to do laundry. And then we also have sudsters who love to serve. They love that they're taking care of a family.

and like we see in the delivery pictures because when they deliver the photo they have to take a photo a delivery photo and we see in delivery photos that we have sudsters who use these colorful ribbons to tie the bags they write these handwritten personal thinking notes a lot we have a lot of military customers and of course we know they're military because we're doing their laundry. And so we have sudsters who are returning their laundry with little American flags, you know, in the laundry. That's so great. Just really thoughtful, like just beautiful people who just love to serve. I saw a delivery photo yesterday of a sudster who delivered laundry with a box of a dozen Dunkin' Donuts. Oh my gosh. Oh,

and another one there, she keeps delivering her laundry with a bouquet of flowers. We actually asked her, how are you affording to do this? I mean, you know, it's not like they're making a million dollars doing laundry. Right.

So she said, I happen to have a florist down the street and a bouquet is 99 cents. So she buys a bunch of bouquets for her customers. She delivers it with the laundry. The customers, of course, appreciate it.

And then, you know, they end up giving her a bigger tip. And this person who delivered the laundry with the dozen Dunkin' Donuts actually got a $50 tip. I mean, isn't that fun? What great customer service.

what great relationship building. And I love that aspect too, of you're helping, you really are genuinely helping out another family when you can bring that laundry all fresh folded right to their doorstep. I mean, it's, it's absolutely fantastic. Anybody can go to sudshare.com and you can learn more about becoming a customer. And you can also learn there more about becoming a sudster. And you can also learn about the company.

so sudshare.com and if you want to skip that step you can go right to your app store and if you're interested in getting your laundry done you just download the sudshare app set up an account just takes a couple of minutes tell us your preferences in terms of laundry detergent and stuff which you only have to do once it's saved and then put your laundry at your pickup location you know your front door your back door your side door whatever and you're done, go on with your life, enjoy, you know, do whatever you want to do. And we'll do it. We'll take care of your laundry. If you want to become a Sudster and you're looking for a work from home gig, you can download the Sudshare for workers app, Sudshare for workers app. And that's admittedly a longer startup process because we have a very extensive in-app training process where you're responsible for going through a training, watching videos, passing a test.

You know, we'll make it crystal clear exactly what our expectations are and make sure you're ready to serve our customers in the way they need to be served. There's just so much greatness in this company, in this idea that you guys had and have really worked as a family to make happen. So I just, I absolutely love all of it from the, you know, serving others, coming up with a fantastic idea that can help families, help those moms and dads out there.

And then also offer an opportunity, a work at home, a work from home opportunity for people. And then on top of that, just your model, your philosophy, your values, and how you've done this all as parents, you and your wife. I just am absolutely over the moon, thrilled about it. So before we go today, I have to hear about these 10 family values that you taught your kids.

Why don't you just run through them really quick and maybe give us a few examples of how you live those values out in your everyday home life. So here they are. love, mastery, responsibility, dignity, modesty, honesty, financial responsibility, order, health, and joy. Like any family or corporate values, they can come off as just words, and they are just words and they could mean nothing. The key is to parent day in and day out and bring life to those words so that the kids really understand all the meaning behind those words and how they translate into our life. So like, for example, you know, when a child would ask us whether or not they could do something, if the answer was no, and they would say why,

which is common, not common that it would be no, but common, they would say why. right so we would always try to answer by tying it back into one of the family values um so that they so that there was you know rationale behind it and they could begin to associate those words with real behaviors um or the refraining of certain behaviors right Okay, so let me give you just two quick examples. You know, can we buy such and such?

Well, no. Why not? It's not financially responsible. Like, in other words, it's a waste of money.

Like, we would be better off, and then we would explain, well, what does it mean to be financially responsible? Well, we have these bills to pay. 10% of what we earn we should give to charity. um you know a certain percentage we should save just in case we need it in the future and like you know what what exactly does it mean to be financially responsible so another example would be you know you're in the mall or in a store or these days online with your kid and um let's say uh and they want to buy a particular type of uh you know clothing um can i buy this no why it's not dignified no it's not it's not dignified no we we have a we have a saying in our family blend in on the outside blend in on the outside stand out on the inside oh that's good and it right if you think about it the world operates in the reverse of that yes yes the world the world places a tremendous amount of value and emphasis on what's the way things appear on the outside and it's very easy to disguise and cover up what's on the inside so we promote we try to promote blend in on the outside in other words make it unimportant i know this is a podcast and nobody can see me but you can see me jack you can see I'm wearing a white shirt, right? If you go into my closet, you'll see about 10 of these.

It's basically what, you know, it's basically all I wear. And by wearing this, what I'm trying to say, don't notice me on the outside. I'm not going to wear anything that's going to draw your attention to the way I look. I'm going to kind of force you, if you want to understand and know me, to look beyond, you know, the externalities.

I was trying to give an example of how these words, love, mastery, responsibility, dignity, modesty, honesty, finance, responsibility, order, health, and joy, it can just sound like, you know. But the key is, whatever your family values are, to consistently tie them into your behaviors and the things you're refraining from. So you put meat on those bones. the kids begin to understand what is, you know, what do these words really mean? How do they come to life? Not just something we say. Right. So just another example to spend, you know, a dollar a pound to have your laundry done would be financially responsible. Ah, nice work. Way to slide that in I totally do.

But it really is. Why is it financially responsible? Because the most valuable thing in our life is our time. And if I can spend a few bucks to get three hours a week of my time back, oh my gosh, I should be doing that every week.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Sign me up. It's just absolutely fantastic. Thank you for being here today, for sharing all your wealth of knowledge from raising five kids and from the work from home option to starting up a business with your kiddos.

And it's been a real pleasure to speak with you, to learn about you and your family. Really appreciate you being here with me today. Thank you for the opportunity. All right.

seriously how great was that I love Morton his family I love their mission their vision just their family values the company I mean sometimes that you know it's like the the quote-unquote simplest things that become the best inventions or the best businesses and so who knows who is boy for taking a task or trying being like I ain't doing that I'm gonna come up with a way that we can get other people to do that I mean that's genius so absolutely love it Thanks for sharing your story with all of us, Mort.

One of my favorite ways to learn, and I'm an avid learner, is through real-life families, real-life parents, kids, situations, examples, their stories of how they've dealt with and overcome problems or challenges in their homes and their family values. So this, everything, it was just absolutely wonderful. Please go check out SudShare at sudshare.com.

You can also download the SudShare app. and then I'm going to have a link in the show notes for all of this, but also how you can get in touch with Mort on LinkedIn. And finally, to learn how you can become the confident leader that your kids crave you to be, go to noproblemparenting.com and get started now.

All right, parents, hugs and high fives. You got this. Jackie.