Jacky Chou: How practicing what you preach turned into an entrepreneurial Wunderkind

Hailing from the island nation of Taiwan, Chou grew up in Richmond, British Columbia. He learned Chinese while other kids played games. He played the piano while other kids did sports. But, most of all, he learned the value of persistence from his parents, James Chou and Ena Chen.

The practice of what you preach mantra came up in a Reddit post. He wanted to share a success story and mentor others. Who can blame him? By following the morals and ideas he wanted other companies to do, he turned a USD 3,000 loss per month into a USD 250,000 gain. That’s quite a turnaround, especially considering he did this by getting a 30-40% return on investment from a dropshipping company.

How might he have got into that kind of business, you might ask. Well, that would take him to the eve of a challenging exam at the University of British Columbia – where he was studying for a B.A.Sc. in electrical engineering. So many of us have sat on the eve of a challenging event and wondered if it was the right thing for us – if there was something else out there. So it morphed into a simple Google search for Chou – “how to make money online.”

Even then, it was not a direct path from Googling something to $250k. First, he went to Berlin, met his business partner Albert Liu and took up an internship at a mobile marketing agency. He studied, learned, and worked his way up the company and industry.

Dropshipping is a tricky business. There’s a lot of competition, significant players, a competitive ad market, and tons of shoddy products. So how did he turn it around and not only become a successful entrepreneur and be dubbed a “wunderkind” by Forbes?

He combined his natural persistence with some great mantras. But, first, a great businessman needs to ask for advice. So Chou turned to Evan Roberts, who became a mentor and helped him find a niche – home décor.

Second, during a pitch to The ASO Co, he learned about the ABCs of serial entrepreneurs – Always Be Closing. This means closing deals, doing pitches, starting new projects. This is where Elon Musk works on Tesla electric cars and starts a business to make reusable rockets that can land and the Boring Company.

For Jacky Chou, it meant selling off the dropshipping company to a private equity firm and starting two new ventures.

First, he created Indexsy. This business is designed to buy, improve, and sell digital assets. Through this exciting project, he’s been able to purchase Towing Less and also Laurel & Wolf.

In addition to this, Chou has raised USD 150k in angel investment funding with an extra USD 75k in Kickstarter funding. A new homeware business called Far & Away is all that is going on. Perhaps inspired by dropshipping, this company focuses on direct-to-customer products.

Due to turning 30 this year, Jacky Chou is still a young and exciting entrepreneur. However, with technology and online opportunities constantly morphing, it will be an exciting decade to see where the young wunderkind goes next.

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