Gene Hsu

Full transcript: Gene Hsu on London Real

1:07 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Gene Hsu, recent graduate of our Broadcast Yourself accelerator. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Brian, so excited to be here. I’m in the chair. You are manager legendary. Yeah, I’ve seen this picture on video so many times, you in the suit, and now I’m live, so this is surreal. It’s great having you here.

1:35 Tell the people a bit about you. Where you from, what do you do? Well, I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. For the global audience, that’s the southern city in the south of the United States, and I grew up in a time when there were very few Asians. From kindergarten through like tenth grade, there was not another Asian person in my entire school. So that’s the environment in which I grew up, and I was an only child.

2:08 And my parents, my father’s a professor in physics. He took a 1 year sabbatical when I was in the third grade and he went to Taiwan to teach physics. So I was taken out of the school system and I was dropped into the school system in Taiwan, and back then I hated it, because you didn’t want to leave your childhood friends, you don’t want to leave your classmates, and you definitely didn’t want to go to a foreign country. Taiwan, to me, was a foreign country.

2:32 And I was put into the school system and I learned how to speak Mandarin Chinese, and fast forward to today, and this is what I specialise in. I’ve been working in Asia and China for the last 20 years as somebody who’s fluent in Mandarin Chinese, which really helps me understand the nuances of why most foreigners find it so difficult to succeed in China.

2:56 I mean, maybe they have products and technologies that work really well and that the Chinese really want, but ultimately the personal relationships that they develop with other Chinese people, and especially with the people that report directly to them, it’s just, they don’t understand how the Chinese people think. And that’s become my area of expertise: helping executives navigate the complexities of doing business in China, but generally in all foreign cultures, where the value systems are different, the language is different, the culture is different, what people care about is different.

3:40 And, you know, that’s the interesting thing about this class. You have such a global audience that I’m meeting all my classmates here, and everybody comes from a different country, everybody has a different value system and a reason for broadcasting, but you’ve been able to find this kind of common bond that brings people together and gives them additional motivation to do more. So that’s what’s really great about this course.

4:10 I mean, I’ve taken other masterclasses where you can engage with people in chat, but you don’t have the live calls, you don’t break them up into teams, and you don’t have that personal connection. I mean, I don’t think you invented an accountability doc, but the accountability doc isn’t what keeps you accountable. It’s your connection with other people. For some people it’s, I don’t wanna let other people down. For some people, it’s embarrassing if I don’t do my work.

4:39 But, you know, everybody has a different reason, but I think the overarching thing is the human connection keeps you moving. It keeps you moving forward. And that was the hardest part for me, because I’ve been living in China, in Shanghai, for like the last seven years, and then last year I decided that it’s time to come back to the US. So I quit my business in China. I was a cross-cultural performance trainer, coach and consultant. I taught classes, I ran workshops and events.

5:10 My wife was employed, and both of us literally just decided that there’s no perfect time to move back. Either we do it, or we just wait, wait, wait and we’ll never get back to the US. So we just decided we’re going back to the US and we packed our bags. So literally, I think we’ve been living in Shanghai for seven years and we came back basically with just two suitcases.

5:34 Because when we went over there, I went over to China as an expat. That means business class, full rule at relocation, you know, you got the company car and everything. And when we came back, I had already started doing my own thing, so I was a bootstrapped entrepreneur. We basically came back with just two suitcases, two carry-ons, and that’s it. And one of my suitcases was a guitar, so I essentially only had one suitcase of personal effects.

6:05 We moved back to the US, we’re both technically unemployed, and we just started our lives again last year. And so why take this course now? Why decide to start broadcasting? Well, it’s a combination of things, but you have to keep in mind the context. So when I was doing everything in Shanghai, there’s no Facebook, there’s no YouTube, there’s no Instagram, there’s no Snapchat. Anything connected with social media, except for LinkedIn, is blocked in China.

6:35 Okay. So I had not been on Facebook for seven years, and when I came back to the US and I started thinking, well, how am I going to meet people and make business connections, even personal connections in general? So the first thing I did, the only thing I knew, was hosting events. So I rented a desk at WeWork and started making connections.

6:58 And all the people that you talk about now as influencers and people that everybody knows, I had never heard of them. I mean, somebody says, oh, you should probably listen to Gary Vaynerchuk. I was like, who? I never heard of Gary Vee. Who the hell is that? I had no idea. Yeah. Because I wasn’t watching YouTube videos, I wasn’t on Facebook, I wasn’t doing all this. Okay.

7:21 And I started off hosting events, but you can only build so big of an audience if you’re doing it all organically. You know, there’s no online to offline, there’s no O2O. For me it was just events. It worked pretty well in Shanghai, because you have 30 million people in a small space and I had marketing people that were doing promotions on WeChat, in the Chinese social media.

7:45 So pretty well organically, we grew to like nine thousand members. We hosted over 200 events in like three years, which wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t able to monetise anything, because events, really, you don’t make money with it. For me, I had the long-term view, right? So I was trying to build an audience, but doing it without social media, doing it without a digital marketing program, doing it without an email list, it’s almost impossible. Very hard.

8:18 And so why join our Broadcast Yourself course? So it was the logical next step. So I was already starting to do some stuff with YouTube. I had already actually launched a free online course called China Business 101 and seven common engagements, but through the limited following that I had, it was promoted through all my social media channels, I had less than 30 people registered for a free course that I spent two months developing.

8:47 You know, recording videos, editing them on iMovie and putting it out myself, with PowerPoint animation, all that stuff, and it was a free course and I had less than 30 people sign up. And then somebody had sent me a video of yours, so I got on your mailing list and I joined your workshop challenge, the five-day challenge, the free thing. Okay.

9:10 And from that I interviewed my first guest. Yeah, I didn’t remember this. Yeah, I interviewed my first guest, and then you did the live coaching call, where it was kind of like the final, do you want to join me and take it to the next level, and we’ll walk you step-by-step through eight weeks. And I was like, this is it, because this is, it’s not just having a podcast on YouTube or podcast on iTunes.

9:34 It’s getting out of what you call resistance. But me being aware that I’m not comfortable in front of a camera, I’m not comfortable recording myself. I’m actually really good live and unscripted in front of an audience when I’m the keynote speaker, but when I turn the camera on myself and I try to say something, it’s awful. It’s awful. In fact, it’s everything that you described when you first began your journey, right?

10:04 So I experienced, it’s almost like you were talking to me. That’s why this is so weird. You don’t know me, or you may know me a little bit now, but you don’t know me, but I feel like I know you, because I see you every day and I’m watching your videos and you are exactly like you are when you’re interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk. So I feel like I could be in a dream and I could wake up.

10:28 But yeah, you do know me. That if you put out enough content when you broadcast, and you’re gonna know this really soon, is that they do know you. Yeah, that’s the weird thing about this medium. You know, when they connect with you, everything that you say is right on point. So I’m an executive coach, so I coach executives on how to do business in China, and I mentor a lot of people, a lot of students actually.

10:45 And a lot of the things that we talk about aren’t always directly related to business. They’re related to life, and then how life ties into business, and how you have to be consistent with who you are. And so the things that you talk about, it’s not like I didn’t know them before you said them, but you connected them together in a way that meant something to me.

11:06 And so whenever you pay for something, so the eight-week course obviously is not free, and it shouldn’t be free, you know, once you pay for something and you’re engaged with something, you kind of have an expectation of what’s going to happen. And because I pride myself in kind of having a lot of awareness, including situational awareness, and understand the context of what people are selling or what they’re doing, when I decided to take this course, of course I had a certain expectation.

11:37 And this is one of the rare situations where I can say that you actually either met my expectations or you exceeded them. And I paid for other courses. I’m not going to name them here, but I paid for other digital marketing courses, and that’s why initially, when you tried to get me through your email marketing to do the Business Accelerator, I said, well, I did the exact same thing last year, so I know all the concepts. I know about landing pages and autoresponders and lead magnets. I know about all that stuff.

12:03 But having paid for that other course, I never really put my stuff together, because putting your stuff together isn’t just the mechanics of what to do. Putting your stuff together is defining who you are, knowing who your audience is, and crafting a message that will resonate with them.

12:19 And you had some success doing that, and I remember you telling the whole call a couple times about this amazing conversation you had with one of your guests who had traveled into town, and you got an amazing result out of that. Tell me how was it when you actually got on the ground and the rubber hit the road and you were out there broadcasting? Well, that’s exactly it.

12:42 So when we do business in China, we talk about generally being humble and low-key, so that’s kind of become my natural personality. So I don’t like to really be out there, and it’s almost like it’s better if you come to me and you want to do something with me, as me trying to sell you. Once I got published on iTunes and I had something of value to offer a potential guest, and I started going through my 25 target people and I started emailing them, it was just, I was really surprised that almost everybody responded and almost everybody said yes.

13:22 Even though it wasn’t right away, it was like, you know, maybe I’ll have some time in June, which is perfect, because when I first contacted them I wasn’t as polished as I am now. And I can only imagine, it’s like you said, I have eleven episodes now, but by the time I have a hundred episodes, I can’t imagine how polished I’m going to be and how many guests I’m gonna be able to attract.

13:44 But yeah, I mean, that really, it truly is opening doors for people who know where they want to go. So I’ve always known exactly where I want to go. When I quit my job, stopped being an employee and started becoming an entrepreneur, I always knew where I wanted to go, and I had the wrong balance. So I talk about balance. So my balance was not going for money, being authentic and, you know, not worrying about revenue and building the audience first, but the way that I was doing it, it was just too slow. I couldn’t reach anybody by just hosting events.

14:18 Yeah. And basically the missing piece, well, there’s a lot of missing pieces, but the first piece, it’s like the beachhead. The beachhead was the London Real Academy Broadcast Yourself network. Landing on this beachhead that you’ve created has really opened the door for what I’m gonna do next.

14:41 And I’m always eternally positive and optimistic, because I think that mindset is really important for business, especially if you want to attract partners and guests and stuff like that. And it’s, you know, you can be optimistic with no plan and no vision, but now I’m optimistic and it’s clear, because I can see how, it’s like seeing the connections moving forward.

15:03 When you look back you can see how everything in your life connected to where you are today, and sometimes it’s not so easy to see how these dots will connect into the future to get you where you want to go. And this experience is kind of like setting me on a new journey. I mean, you talk about journeys all the time. I mean, this is like a fork in the road. I met Brian Rose and the London Real Academy, and suddenly I’m on this new journey and the possibilities are unlimited.

15:34 I mean, just the people that I’m meeting here, we’re forming our own tribe, because the teams are gonna have monthly meetings, and I’ve been selected as a team leader. So I’m going all-in on leading this group that I’ve spent eight weeks with, to deliver value to them so we can help each other on this journey. I call it JTS. Our new tribe is called JTS, Journey Towards Success. I love it. And that is what we’re gonna do. And what are these people like? How would you describe them to other people?

16:07 The people on my team? Yeah, the whole community, the whole London Real Academy that went with you on the Broadcast Yourself. Well, it’s just amazing that you can tell that when people join the course, everybody kind of has an idea what they want to do, but 90% of the people, I would say, don’t really know. They don’t know what their mission in life and business is.

16:29 And they just think that this could be something that is an integral part of the next step in whatever they want to do, their professional careers, their entrepreneurial careers, the business or whatever. And they all come in with different expectations, and they all come in with different types of resistance. Like, some people who came into the course, they were really skilled at digital marketing, so they didn’t have any technical resistance.

16:54 But it’s not enough just to be able to know how to do it. It isn’t enough. You still have to create something that other people care about. All right. And I think that’s the amazing thing that I’ve observed of what you’ve been able to do, is you’ve been able to essentially create something from nothing. I mean, you’ve built an audience that has nothing to do with your original jiu-jitsu.

17:22 All right, and now it’s like you’re meeting people, you’re inspiring people, and it’s ultimately what you say. It’s not, everybody says it, but you’re one of the few people that I think really is genuinely changing people’s lives. Thank you, Gene. And I actually didn’t think, at my age, because I’m your age, I actually didn’t think another person I didn’t know had that big of an impact.

17:50 Because I have my experience doing business all over the world, you know, and I thought that I’m pretty much, you know, it’s like teaching an old dog new tricks, you know. I’m pretty set in my mindset, even though I’m open-minded to new things, but I pretty much think I know how things work. But what I added on top of that is a level of awareness that it doesn’t matter how much I know, there was always something that I need from someone else.

18:20 And Brian Rose and the London Real Academy just happened to be it. It’s almost like serendipity. It was like I discovered you at the perfect time. You know, if I had discovered you when I first came back to the US, I probably would have ignored it. Yeah, it would have been too soon. Yeah.

18:38 What did you struggle with on the course? What was hard? Also that, and this is what I tell other people on my team, is the course itself for me wasn’t that difficult. Okay. The part that I struggled with most is, I call it, I mean, you call it extreme ownership, or somebody else calls it extreme ownership and you interviewed them, and now you’re using that, which is great. That’s probably the hardest thing for me.

19:05 It’s because doing the work wasn’t that difficult, even helping my teammates get their work done and watching other people’s videos, that’s not part. What’s hard is, doing the minimum amount to go green on the account doc isn’t gonna translate into a success. The only thing that’s gonna make me successful is what I do above and beyond what Brian Rose is pushing me to do, because you can’t take me that last mile. That’s on me.

19:45 And I realised that, and I’m aware of that, and I’m also aware that I wouldn’t even have gotten that first mile if it wasn’t for you. So that’s why I’m so psyched to be here. I mean, this is great. I mean, just being here, having this conversation. I mean, I don’t even need to talk about my business, I just want to have a conversation with you and I’ll be happy.

20:00 What’s it like meeting these people in person? Oh, it’s great meeting these people in person. Well, it’s almost like we all kind of know each other, because we’ve seen each other, we’ve talked to each other, we’re in the group Zoom calls, and now seeing each other face to face, touching people, hugging people, having a more personal connection, that’s an amazing experience.

20:26 And the things that you talk about, so just for the audience, the things that you talk about, people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re gonna build these lifelong connections and you’re gonna find these joint ventures that could become, you know, million-dollar partnerships, and you say it happens, but in the end you’re selling something. So I’m not selling anything, and what I want to do is I want to tell your audience that it does happen.

20:49 All right. It may not happen to me, or it may happen to me, but that’s irrelevant, because I can see the connections around me. It’s just the energy and the vibe that you, I mean, you talk about vibe all the time, right? And that vibe is, I mean, it’s there. It’s there. You know, as an entrepreneur working by yourself, it’s lonely, right?

21:15 So I paid for an office I didn’t need at WeWork just to be with other like-minded people, but we were all on different journeys, we were all on different meetings, so I would have to host events, cater lunch or catered dinner, just to get people to come chat with me, right? So with something like what you’ve put together, it’s like you join this tribe and you join this community, and everybody, even though they come from such diverse backgrounds, everybody’s on a similar mission.

21:41 So it’s easier to find where and how people should connect. Whereas if you’re just finding people that you may want to interview, and then you start following them, and then you send them an email and you do this, you triangulate how you want to connect with them, those initial connections aren’t very real. It’s just like, okay, yeah, he may have some value. Then, you know, you have to build that relationship over time, right? This accelerates that.

22:04 Now, none of these people may be famous now, but who knows? I mean, there’s a couple people here that are already like number one in their category in iTunes, right? Robert Bruce could be famous. I mean, he could be a Brian Rose or a Gary Vee in three years. Who knows? Yeah, exciting. You know, yeah, same with you.

22:29 Yeah, and so tell me, what does your show look like in 12 months? What’s going on? What’s the vibe? What are you doing? What does it feel like? Well, one of the things that I discovered, so I’m gonna keep on doing shows and interviewing people, because that’s great for building relationships, having a platform of value that you can offer to other people. So obviously I’m gonna get better at that.

22:54 One of the things that I’ve decided recently is, my podcast used to just be called The China Leadership Dilemma podcast, and I would make these promotional images that would get repurposed. They would go out to my YouTube channel, stuff like that, but it never mentioned me, because I wanted to make the show about my guests. So even when I promoted it, and when I did the introduction, “Hey, welcome to The China Leadership Dilemma podcast,” I didn’t even say my name. Right. And I like me. Yeah.

23:18 So what I’ve decided, that since I am an influencer, thought leader in my niche, that’s what I need to start branding. Okay. So now I’m gonna start introducing myself as Gene Hsu and start really focusing on the value that I can deliver. So this is why this is great, because one of the things that I also realised is, it’s a more interesting show when I am being interviewed.

23:43 And for my audience, the things that I talk about when other people are interviewing me is much more valuable for them, right? So through this thing, when you talk about joint ventures, I’ve been on a podcast already, and now I have enough content for the next three to six months, because now it’s chopping it up, right? It’s chopping up the content.

24:06 When guests ask certain questions, I can talk about something that’s related to what I do, or what I help people do in China. Thanks. All right. And now I’m just chopping it up, repurposing it, and then I can send out these shorter clips on iTunes, on YouTube and stuff like that. So yeah, it’s, you know, I have enough content that lasts me six months now.

24:24 You know, Gene, how has Gene himself changed? Like, if we walked out on the street right now and bumped into the Gene that hadn’t taken this course, how is that guy different than the one I’m talking to now? Well, I try to be pretty consistent, and I try to keep the highs not so high and the lows not too low.

24:47 So the only thing that I would say is different is, when people used to, you know, when I had to introduce myself, it’s like, what do you do? I said, well, I’m a China business advisor and consultant. Now I just say, I’m a broadcaster. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, I launched a podcast on iTunes, so now I’m a broadcaster. And then that’s kind of like the icebreaker that gets into the conversation. So what’s your podcast about?

25:11 So instead of saying, I’m a China business advisor and consultant, I help leaders develop these essential soft skills to navigate the complexities of doing business in China, I just now say, well, I’m a podcaster, or I’m a broadcaster. And then once I explain what my podcast is, then they know what I do. And it’s a better way of selling yourself without selling yourself, right? Because it’s people asking you, well, what’s that, instead of you saying, this is what I am, this is what I do.

25:36 Yeah, so that’s all. I didn’t realise that. In fact, I didn’t even realise that until you just asked me. That’s a hook, as we would say. That means they’re like, oh wow, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. Yeah, as opposed to, oh, that’s nice. Right. So these are subtleties and nuances that people don’t realise how important they are.

25:59 It’s like having people’s attention. You have people’s attention for like three seconds, right? And if the first thing that comes out of your mouth is trying to, appears that you’re trying to sell something or market yourself, then you’re gonna lose 90 percent of the attention right off the bat. All right. But now I just said, well, I’m a broadcaster, then I have at least another 10 seconds of attention. Yeah, which is awesome. That’s what it’s all about.

26:22 You know, to someone who’s watching us, who’s on the fence, doesn’t know whether they should join this course or not, what would you tell them? Well, that’s an obvious answer, but the way that I would really answer that question is, you know, before you get sold on all these things that we’re talking about, I always tell people that you really have to find out, is this for you? Which means you have to go deeper, right?

26:47 So I advise and mentor a lot of people to begin with, and for people who are at a certain stage, whether it’s in their entrepreneurial careers or building a following or becoming a thought leader or becoming an influencer, absolutely. I’ve recommended your course to a lot of people already. But my real honest advice would be, you really have to understand how this fits into who you are, all right? Because before you do anything, you have to know who you are and where you want to go.

27:19 All right. So for me it was easy to pull the trigger, because my orientation is clear. London Real didn’t change my destination, it just helped me get there faster. And if you’re in that similar situation, it’s definitely you. Well, the thing is, you have so much free stuff, right? Just do one of Brian’s free workshops or free challenges. Get a taste of it.

27:51 And once you get a taste of it and you open your mind to the possibilities of not just what you’re gonna learn, but what you’re going to experience, then I think you’ll find that it’s definitely worth the time. I mean, it’s not even the money, it’s really the time, right? You’re asking for a lot of my time. I charge 500 dollars an hour for coaching, right? So I actually paid you more in time than I paid you in money, right? But in the macro, it was one of the best investments that I made since coming back to the US.

28:23 Gene, it was amazing having you on this course. I look forward to talking with you, and I still remember this epic conversation we had about that interview that you had with someone that, you know, he’d come in, he was jet-lagged and all this, and you just made it happen, and it just looked like it changed your life. You know, it looked like you had this incredible human connection, business connection, I don’t know, beautiful moment, you know, and it was the epitome of what we’re trying to teach here.

28:46 You know, for people to cherish those things, and it was just great, and I loved having your energy on this course. Everybody else did. And so, and I really appreciate you telling me feedback as far as what it’s like to experience it from someone like you, who’s been around the block, you know, done business in all these places, and also in your situation, you know, where you’re coming back to America, trying to find the thing that can accelerate you to where you’re gonna go. And this is such a great fit for you, and I’m so glad we found you.

29:16 Well, I mean, it’s obviously mutual, and like you always said, the journey has just begun, right? And I think you’ve given me a great step forward to ultimately reach where I want to get to, and I want to thank you. So it’s been awesome. My pleasure, man. Let’s do some big things, shall we? All right. All right, so much good.