335: Does Luck Or Skill Matter More For Business Success With Steve Chou

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I’m doing a solo episode to talk about luck. Are most successful entrepreneurs successful because they got lucky or is it a hundred percent skill? But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s actually crushing it for me.

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I never thought that people would want marketing messages in their text inbox, but it works. And in fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce, and you can segment your audience just like email. Now it’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash dev. That’s P-O-S-T-S-C-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash dev. I also want to thank Klaviyo, who’s also a sponsor of the show.

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Now, if you’re looking to stand out in the inbox this holiday season, get more out of your email marketing with Klaviyo. Every customer is different. Klaviyo helps you build more personal connections with each customer based on the things that they actually care about. So you can send more relevant emails by tailoring every experience based on individual preferences and shopping behavior. With top-notch targeting and best in-class segmentation, you can unlock the full potential of your e-commerce data and create email marketing moments that keep shoppers coming back well after the holidays.

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Just ask Living Proof, Tipsy Elves, Huckberry, or more than the 50,000 other brands growing with Klaviyo. And because Klaviyo was built for e-commerce brands of all shapes and sizes, there’s no better marketing platform to help you close out the year strong. So you can get started for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash my wife. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle.

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so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Tu.

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Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today I wanna talk about luck and business. Now one of my favorite podcasts in the world is How I Built This with Guy Raz. And if you’ve ever listened to an episode of How I Built This before, the final question Guy always asks is, do you think your success was due to luck or skill? Now I’ve actually thought about this question for a long time now, and here’s my answer. First off, I’m a firm believer that every business requires a little bit of luck

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in order to succeed. And oftentimes success depends on timing and being at the right place at the right time. But have you ever wondered how some people keep getting lucky over and over again? And is it just a coincidence that some entrepreneurs always seem to find a way to steer luck in their direction? Now personally, I don’t believe in coincidences, but I know many of you are skeptical. So for example, I’m gonna read an excerpt from an email.

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that I recently received from a reader after she listened to my podcast interview with Abby Walker, which is a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course. Now for all of you who haven’t listened to this episode, Abby actually stumbled upon her product accidentally and ended up securing the sole rights to be the sole distributor for an amazing product that now makes her millions per year. So here’s the note that I got. Hey Steve, I just listened to your podcast with Abby, great podcast. Now I don’t want to discount her success, but a large part of it,

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was based on a series of fortuitous events. It’s not repeatable. Now I know a lot of you guys haven’t listened to that podcast episode yet, but just based on what you heard from that email, do you agree with this reader? Here’s a quick recap of Abby’s story for context. In October of 2019, Abby made over $100,000 in a single month, selling high-heeled insoles online. And then the following year, she ended up making many millions of dollars selling this single product.

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But what was amazing about her story was the number of things that magically fell into place during her journey. So one, she accidentally stumbled across her product while running her blog. Two, she happened to reach out to the manufacturer who was willing to let her sell their products under her own brand. And three, she happened to meet the CEO of the home shopping network who helped her get on the show. And the list goes on. Actually, there’s a number of things that just happened to fall into place. So was Abby’s success

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based on luck or skill. When my wife and I first started our wedding linen store, several fortuitous events helped us on our path to success. So one, we happened to stumble upon selling handkerchiefs because my wife was a crier. We just happened to source a bunch of hankies from a Chinese supplier we discovered during our wedding. And we just happened to sell the excess handkerchiefs on eBay, where we discovered that they were in high demand.

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And then when it came time to start our e-commerce website back in 2007, and remember, I knew nothing about websites or HTML or CSS back in the day, I just happened to be friends with someone who started an e-commerce store who pointed me in the right direction. And when it came to advertise and get traffic to our site, my brother-in-law just happened to work for Google on the AdWords team, and he suggested that I give AdWords a try. And with my wife, QuitterJob.com, I can’t tell you how many lucky events have taken place over the years.

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So for example, I’ve been randomly featured in many large publications like Forbes and Inc Magazine. I’ve met so many amazing people that I’m now proud to call my friends. I’ve been invited to speak at popular conferences like Social Media Marketing World, FinCon, the ManyChat Conference, a whole bunch. And back in the day, when something lucky would happen to me, I’d literally thank the heavens above for helping me out. But looking back, did my actions play a part in facilitating these lucky events?

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And did my wife and I do anything to improve our luck? Was my student Abby just at the right place at the right time? So in this podcast, I’m gonna break down some of these portuotous events and teach you how to get lucky in business and life. So here’s what I wanna say about Abby. First off, Abby’s success was the direct result of her ability to take immediate action. Of course, there were elements of luck in her story, but to base her sales entirely on circumstance, it would just be insulting.

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And if you closely analyze her story, you’ll realize that Abby is a big time hustler. In the beginning, when she was researching and developing her first product, she stumbled upon a forum where two women were talking about this amazing insole called Insolia. And then right away, she picked up the phone, found out where the company was based, and made a proposal to sell their insoles. Now was it luck that this company was willing to let her be the sole supplier for this product? Probably. But was it luck?

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that Abby secured this vendor. And here’s where I would say no. Was it luck that Abby accidentally stumbled upon this product on a forum? Yeah, probably. But would she have found it if she wasn’t working hard doing research on products? Probably not. When Abby met Mindy Grossman, the CEO of the Home Shopping Network at a random product pitch event, was that luck? Absolutely. But would she have met Mindy by staying at home watching TV all day or playing video games? No way.

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So bottom line, Abby took the initiative, hopped on a plane to pitch her product and drastically increased her luck. Now, when my wife and I first started sourcing product, we primarily looked online to find our vendors. But while the web is a great place to do product research, it’s actually a lousy place to establish lasting business relationships. So for example, it requires tremendous patience to communicate with someone in a foreign country in a different time zone. And for our online store, cultural differences

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caused a lot of miscommunication early on, which resulted in products that we sold that didn’t match our specifications. So one day, my wife and I decided to get off our butts and we booked an impromptu flight to Asia to meet our vendors directly. In fact, we literally hopped on an airplane and dropped in to visit our potential manufacturers on a whim. And fortunately, our timing was right on cue because our vendors just got back from the Canton Fair in China and they had all their inventory available to show us.

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Had we visited at a different time, we would not have been able to see the products firsthand and probably would have had to wait several weeks for samples to be fabricated. Even though we arrived too late to attend the actual fair, which at the time we actually had no clue about the Canton Fair at all, we still managed to nail down two solid vendors during that trip who we still use today. Now, another way to boost your luck is to build up your network. A long time ago when we first launched our online store,

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our website was actually stuck in the Google sandbox for an extended period of time. And for all you guys who are kind of newer to this online business stuff and you don’t know what the Google sandbox is, it’s kind of like a jail where Google places your website before it actually gets indexed into the main search engine. Now during this time, your site’s not gonna get any organic traffic at all and you pretty much just have to wait for Google to change its mind. I’m actually not sure if the Google sandbox still exists anymore, but back in the day when we first got started,

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It was actually really frustrating if you got trapped there because even if they typed in your site directly, it still wouldn’t show up in the search engines. Anyway, this is a long time ago, but I was tired of being stuck in the sandbox. So I actually reached out to a friend of mine who worked at Google, asking her advice on how to just get out of the sandbox quickly, basically. And as luck would have it, my friend happened to be in charge of writing the next post for the Google blog, like the main Google blog.

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And the topic of the blog entry was how online websites use Google Webmasters tools in order to improve traffic to the website. Now you can tell this is old because Google Webmasters tools doesn’t exist anymore. It’s now called the Google Search Console, but you get my point.

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If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

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Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

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And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show.

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Basically, my friend told me that if I sign up for Google Webmasters tools and found it useful, that she would write the blog entry about our online store. And as soon as the blog entry was published with a link to our website, which is a very valuable link I want to add, we immediately escaped the sandbox. Anyway, this just goes to show that you never know when a random person that you’ve met in the past can actually help you out. And that incidentally is why I spend so much time trying to expand my network.

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every new person that you meet drastically increases your luck. And in fact, meeting other like-minded people is the main reason why I run this podcast. I don’t make a lot of money writing this podcast, but what I do enjoy is meeting a new person every single week. And what’s cool about running an interview podcast is that you have the opportunity to speak and network with other successful entrepreneurs one-on-one for an entire hour. And what’s even cooler than that is after the recording’s over,

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you actually end up talking with that person for another hour. And man, I’ve had so many people that would otherwise have been inaccessible had I not run this podcast. Now, another great way to meet new people is by attending conferences. And even though I have a wife and two young kids, I still try to hit five or six conferences per year, obviously when COVID’s not going on, because the connections I make are worth every penny. And this actually incidentally is what led me to start my own conference called The Seller Summit.

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which will take place in 2021, I promise you. But anyway, because I’ve been doing this for so many years, I can now travel pretty much anywhere in the world and find someone I know to hang out. And here’s just an example. The first time we traveled to China and Hong Kong, we actually had several friends show us around. And these are just random people I met through the blog, which greatly helped us locate the vendors that we wanted to visit. We also had other friends in the textile business give us some pointers as well. And…

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Quite honestly, we would definitely not be where we are today without their help. Which brings me to another way to improve your luck. You gotta put yourself out there. Now, while podcasting and attending conferences are great ways to expand your network, probably the best and the most scalable way to improve your luck is just by putting yourself out there to be discovered. And if you think about it this way, the more places you can be found, the more likely that someone will randomly discover

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and learn who you are. Okay, so what does it mean exactly to put yourself out there? There’s a whole bunch of different ways to go about it. So you can start a podcast and do what I do, interview people on a weekly basis. You can start a blog. Just start writing about topics that you’re knowledgeable about and chances are it’s gonna get indexed in the search engines, someone’s probably gonna discover you, share your content, and then over time it will snowball. You can start a conference.

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which is incidentally something I don’t really recommend because it’s a pain in the butt, but for networking it’s great. And you get a lot of social benefits for being the organizer of the conference because when you’re the host of your own event, your status instantly gets elevated in the minds of all the attendees who come. Or you can start a YouTube channel. For all you know, the last eight or nine months for me has been all about promoting my YouTube stuff and already it’s paying dividends. I’ve actually had three or four companies reach out to me

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after watching some of my YouTube videos, wanting to partner up or sponsor my event or sponsor my podcast. It doesn’t really matter what medium you choose, you just have to be consistent. Now, when my wife and I launched our online store, we actually blogged on a consistent basis, mainly because we were trying to get in the search engines. And after about six months, our website started getting some decent organic search traffic. And because we provided good content on our store in the form of arts and crafts pages,

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We actually started climbing the search engine rankings over time. And today, this is how a lot of people find our store online. And had we not had that content, we would just be another handkerchief store online. And over the years, our website has risen to the front page of Google for several of our targeted search terms. And when you start getting ranked in Google, that always sets off a chain reaction of events. So large companies began to notice us.

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And then major magazines like Real Simple, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Brides Magazine started reaching out to us in order to feature our products in their magazines. We were even featured on the Today Show because they found us on Google. And for all these magazines and TV mentions that I just talked about here, we didn’t actually solicit anyone. They literally came to us and I always like to ask, how did you discover us? And they said, oh yeah, we just Googled the certain product that we wanted featured and we found you.

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you know, or we found your blog post. And the majority of our media mentions have actually been the result of pure luck. 90 % of the time editors discover our content via search or Pinterest, and then they reach out to us to feature our products in their publications. So the million dollar question here is, is business success based on luck or hard work? And you know, I would say that every success story involves a little bit of luck, but it always comes down to hard work. And more importantly, I would say the initiative.

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Here’s how I think about it. The harder you work and the more action you take, the more lottery tickets that you earn. And so I kind of equate lottery tickets to the people that you meet and the content that you put out there. Every piece of content you put out earns you additional tickets. Every person that you meet earns you another lottery ticket in life. And if you wait long enough, even though it’s all luck, the more lottery tickets you have, obviously, the more likely your number’s eventually gonna get called.

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Now do have to say this, over the years, my wife and I have felt extremely fortunate and we attribute most of our luck to our network of friends who have provided us with a ton of help for us to get started and whenever we have problems. And how did we get so lucky? Well, in a nutshell, we continue to play the lottery. After all, if you simply sit at home on the couch and do nothing, you’re never gonna have a chance at all. So why not give your business idea a chance and just see what happens?

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If you continue to accumulate lottery tickets, good things will eventually happen. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now I’ve got some big announcements to make in 2021, but I first want to wish you all a happy holidays and a happy new year. 2020 has been a tough year for all of us, and I hope you’re all doing great. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 335. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants.

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You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base.

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SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot I O slash Steve. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quitter Job.

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where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitterjob.com.