0:00:00.1 Kurt Baker: Ready to delve into the world of children’s literature and educational innovation? Meet Yobe Qiu, an esteemed author and educator dedicated transforming early childhood learning. With a passion for creating diverse and inclusive children’s books, Yobe has published multiple titles that inspire young minds to embrace multiculturalism and the joy of learning. As the founder of By Yobe Qiu, YQ Group, she not only crafts engaging stories, but also develops educational tools that support the education space. She has also launched a tech platform to provide impactful literacy experiences nationally. Today, she joins us not just to tell her tales, but to share share her invaluable experiences and insights, building her businesses with a passion. Join us in welcoming Yobe Qui, visionary shaping the future of children’s education. That’s awesome.
0:01:03.7 Yobe Qiu: Hello. Hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.
0:01:07.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, like, what inspired you get started in writing children’s books.
0:01:12.9 Yobe Qiu: I wasn’t really inspired, I think. It just came out of necessity. I used to be a preschool owner. I studied education. When I was in college, I took a part time job. I was promoted to become the director, so I ran the business side of things. And then, after a few years, I wanted to open my own school. I wanted to own my own school but the transition here was, I made $30,000, $35,000 up out of college running the school and I made my employer $1,000,000. I had access to the whole books. I was building the company. I was doing everything.
0:01:51.6 Kurt Baker: You’re what we call leverage.
[laughter]
0:01:54.8 Yobe Qiu: And then I went in and asked her for a raise after a year and I said, “Can I get $2,000 more than what you offered me?” It was $2,000 and she said, “No”.
0:02:05.8 Kurt Baker: Wow.
0:02:05.9 Yobe Qiu: And I said, oh my gosh. I went back to the desk and I thought, “I can’t go in and ask for someone for a raise every single time and get turned down and then go back to the desk”. My ego didn’t. It wouldn’t work out for my ego. So I said I need to build my own school ’cause I know how to do this. And I went on to open a few more schools and I kept growing and growing and growing. We got up to six programs in New York City. This is all before I turned 30 years old. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was really hard but I did not know what I was doing. I just kinda did it, and it worked. And then COVID happened. It shut my schools down. All the money that I’ve made, I lost it. And I was just sitting at home thinking, what could I do? And at the whole time, my community of people were under attack, we were having a really hard time, and I said you know, I need to do something impactful. And I know in order to change anyone’s mind about anything, in order to teach love and inclusion, we have to start young. And I know how to… I know what a good children’s book is. So I wrote my first children’s book, and that’s how I transitioned into the publishing side.
0:03:13.7 Kurt Baker: Okay. So, were you still… Did you still have the schools when you were trying to open the… It was after the schools. Right? During COVID, I guess?
0:03:19.4 Yobe Qiu: During COVID, I did a book. It was like a side project, a side hustle. And then, I was trying to open my schools back again at the same time. But that kind of took my mind away from the business side of things, the bills, the salary that I have to pay and all of the other issues. And then, I had a epiphany moment, like, when I went on to promote the books that I wrote, people are coming in and saying, “Oh, this is great. I’m just gonna buy it”. We got the attention of some big media and we were written up in so many different national media press and I was like, “I could do this. I can really do this. Let me figure out how I can build this published side of things and have an impactful business”. And it was then at the pivotal moment and I was thinking, “Do I wanna go back to the preschool where I was completely burnt out? Do I really wanna transition 180 degrees and do something completely different?” And then, I decided I’m just gonna do something completely different and just shut the whole school thing down. I sold some of them. I closed some of them. But I wrapped up that part of the chapter and I moved on to something brand new.
0:04:26.9 Kurt Baker: So a lot of people write books but not very many are actually successful. So what do you think was the difference in your process to make a successful children’s book? Because lots of people write books these days.
0:04:37.6 Yobe Qiu: Right, right.
0:04:38.3 Kurt Baker: So what do you think the difference was between you and the majority of people who write books out there?
0:04:42.2 Yobe Qiu: I think it’s the niche that I chose. A lot of people write books because they have this nice story about a dog or about their grandma or about love. But there’s a lot of books with those topics out there. When I wrote the book, I wasn’t thinking about sales. I wasn’t thinking about how much I’m gonna make. I thought about what what kind of lack, there’s a lack in the market for books that celebrate multicultural children and families in our stories. There’s a lack of books that talk about the Asian American population here. Most about the people who wrote those books aren’t people in our culture. So when you kind of feel that, oh, a need, I think it’s just easier to be successful in sales.
0:05:27.4 Kurt Baker: Okay. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, obviously diversity plays a big role in this. So, what things did you learn through that process, and what do you… About the impact once you got the book out, what kind of feedback did you get from the community and all those media outlets and everybody that came back and said, “Hey”? So what do you think? What happened that maybe you didn’t really expect necessarily?
0:05:51.8 Yobe Qiu: I think everything happened and I didn’t…
0:05:53.5 Kurt Baker: Everything. [laughter]
0:05:53.6 Yobe Qiu: Expect it. I had no idea what I was doing. I just kind of learning. I had to learn Canva. I had to learn social media. Like, I didn’t… When I owned a public preschool, not public, the private preschools, I didn’t have to do any of these things. I opened the doors and people kind of knew where to go because we had a brick and mortar location, one location, two location, three location, business. They knew what they’re getting. They send their kids, they leave, and they pick up the kids and we’re done. And now, I need to try to reach people from all over the country and then eventually we go, books are sold in Barcelona, in Italy, in Spain. I have no idea how we got there. And it’s just really the power of social media and learning about digital marketing, and I had to learn all of that all over again. And then, I had to really research about how the Asian American population, our entire community, I had to do so much research. And I thought I knew some stuff, but I really didn’t. I had to learn about who celebrates Lunar New Year and I had to learn about why it’s not just Chinese New Year but the Vietnamese community also celebrates it. The Korean community community also celebrate, and all the different ways they celebrate it.
0:06:58.7 Yobe Qiu: And I was like, “Jeez, what am I getting myself into?” And I don’t wanna make a mistake because once you make a mistake here, we live in a world where people are just gonna get so offended even if I make a mistake. So, I had to do a lot of research. I had to ask a lot of question. I had to really think about what to put in illustration, how to depict some of the stuff. So it was a big learning curve for me as well.
0:07:20.3 Kurt Baker: So you’re dealing multicultural books. Right? So it sounds like you dealt with a lot of cultures. So how do you weave all that together in the book itself? It sounds it sounds very interesting, but also sounds very complicated.
0:07:31.7 Yobe Qiu: It’s very complicated. I think it’s more complicated than, like, people think it is. I, for example, in our book, ‘I am an Amazing Asian Girl’, I had to really think about what what do we look like? What do people think that we look like? How do our hair look like? But we… And we have a lot of, like, mixed families now. I wanted to make sure we feature a family that looks like a modern day family. I wanted to put a little Asian girl with darker skin, little Asian girl with thicker body size. And there’s a lot of things that we have to think about before we kind of write it in, and the multicultural side really comes in because it’s such a diverse community of people and the clothing that we wear, the food that we eat and have to really think about what’s important for every single community and write notes down.
0:08:21.1 Yobe Qiu: And there are some things that I just can’t include but I did put on things that I feel like will feature the most communities, so I put in the way a little Asian girl eating with her hand, a little Asian girl eating with a chopstick, a little Asian girl doing taekwondo and someone doing skiing. It’s just… And then, a little Asian girl with a lighter skinned mom and a darker skinned dad. And I think that these are things that we’re seeing every single day in this modern day family, but it’s a lot of decision-making to put together.
0:08:49.8 Kurt Baker: Right. Yeah. I mean, this is a whole bunch of variations ’cause no matter what culture you’re in, there’s all kinds of variations within that culture itself. And nowadays, you have multicultural, like, parents. So obviously, that makes things even more different.
0:09:02.8 Yobe Qiu: Yeah. And I think that these are really interesting conversations to have with little ones, and I think that sometimes we don’t know how to have these conversations with them so showing them pictures of things like this. So I went to read in my child’s school for her birthday and I read that book and I was like, “Hey, you see her eating with her hands in this book? Can you think of a time when you eat with your hand?” And all those 1st graders in kindergarteners was like, “I ate chicken wing with my hands. I eat a wrap with my hands”. And I think that these are just great conversations to have to kind of think about we’re all the same.
0:09:33.2 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:09:33.3 Yobe Qiu: Yeah. We eat stuff with our hand, you eat stuff with your hands, we eat stuff with our food, you do too. Things like that. Super cool.
0:09:40.8 Kurt Baker: Wow, wow. So, you actually go to the schools and actually present this to the kids directly as well as and read the books?
0:09:45.3 Yobe Qiu: All the time.
0:09:46.6 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:09:46.7 Yobe Qiu: All the time. The schools are looking for authors to go in. We go in for author visits. We go in for school assemblies. We go in for AAPI month. We go in for everything.
0:09:56.0 Kurt Baker: So what’s been the general response like from the school themselves?
0:09:58.8 Yobe Qiu: Oh, they love it. The schools are looking for things like this. And I really love that they are so supportive of it. And they say that they just need more resources and someone to tell them because they’re too scared to make a mistake. They don’t wanna read something wrong, pronounce something wrong, leave out a culture. So having someone like us and other authors in the space go in and talk about our experiences is key and that’s how I grew BookanAuthor.com.
0:10:25.8 Kurt Baker: So any surprises when you talk to the kids? I know we talk to kids sometimes.
[chuckle]
0:10:30.7 Kurt Baker: I mean, you get little surprises here and there. Any kind of surprises that kinda…
0:10:31.8 Yobe Qiu: No, no.
0:10:32.1 Kurt Baker: Nothing? Really?
0:10:33.7 Yobe Qiu: I feel like because I’ve been in the education space and I’ve taught for many years, I’ve heard a lot of things. No surprises there. It surprised me how much they actually do know.
0:10:43.8 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:10:44.1 Yobe Qiu: There is one time when I went to a school, a public school in New Jersey, West Orange, and I was like, “Hey, this book is about missing red envelopes”. Right? And I was like, “Who have seen a red envelope?” and only about 30% of their hands gone up. And something that I thought was super duper common and everyone should know what a red envelope is, we have lucky money inside. There’s just a lot of people who do not. And I was like, wow, There is still really a lot of people who do not know what something I thought was super common. So that might be a surprise. But other than that, they’re super nice people. These kids are very kind.
0:11:19.7 Kurt Baker: Excellent. We’re gonna take a quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. So I know that red is a very popular color ’cause it’s lucky, right, in the Asian culture, but I had never heard of the red envelope. So could you tell a little bit more about that for people like myself?
0:11:38.8 Yobe Qiu: I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it.
0:11:39.5 Kurt Baker: See, there you go. See there’s another person who hasn’t heard of it.
0:11:42.4 Yobe Qiu: Right. And you went to, like you were literally in Pittsburg area the whole time.
0:11:45.7 Kurt Baker: Oh, there was a big Asian population when our kids grew up.
0:11:47.1 Yobe Qiu: So what were you doing the whole time?
0:11:48.6 Kurt Baker: Apparently, I wasn’t paying much attention during Lunar New Year. I don’t know.
[laughter]
0:11:52.8 Yobe Qiu: The red envelope is the moe, the really exciting part of Lunar New Year, especially for little ones. When we’re little, when we’re kids… And you can’t get them when you’re married anymore. So when you’re… Okay, you go and you see anyone older than you, hopefully, they’re, like, a couple or your grandparents or your mom or your aunties, whoever they are. Say, “Happy Lunar New Year”, and then you just kinda wait for them to slip you a red envelope. And the red envelope is filled with money, and we call it lucky money. It’s usually an even number in there. So like $10, $20, $50, $100, and the kids will just kinda take them and put them away and these are their money for the year and it’s supposed to bring them good luck. It’s just good vibes. And that’s what we do all the time when we’re little. We look forward to this day so we can get a lot of money that our parents won’t give us.
0:12:37.8 Kurt Baker: That your parents won’t give you. Right? Darn parents, they don’t give you money.
0:12:40.7 Yobe Qiu: I know, right?
0:12:41.5 Kurt Baker: They just give you food, shelter.
0:12:42.1 Yobe Qiu: No, they gotta… They make us work for it. Gotta do dishes for it.
0:12:44.7 Kurt Baker: Exactly. Exactly. So your educational philosophy, so how did that shape the themes and lessons in the book, the actual lessons in the book that you’re trying to teach?
0:12:56.1 Yobe Qiu: I don’t think I was trying to teach a lot of the lessons in the book. I think, I want the book to feature families in a very fun, creative way. I want them to see these families as someone with very, a lot of similarities as their families, whoever is not reading it. You know, it’s very interesting because a lot of my audience and the folks that read our books are not Asian. So, I wanted to make sure it’s easy enough to digest. It’s easy enough to kind of learn from and enjoy, and enjoy the pictures mostly. That’s why I do picture books.
0:13:32.1 Kurt Baker: Okay. So can you kinda take us through the creative process, like the beginning and then how you got to where you ended up with the book? ‘Cause it’s… There’s a lot more to writing a book than most people, I think, realize that haven’t actually written a book. So you wanna take us to that a little bit? Where did you start and where did you end up?
0:13:47.7 Yobe Qiu: I think, like, writing the book is the easy part. I think a lot of folks would think, “Oh my gosh. It’s so much work to put it together”. Oh, you have no idea what’s waiting for you after you published it. Right? After you print it, you publish it, it gets even harder. You now have to sell it. Because what good is your book if you don’t get it to the hands of children and families and schools and school districts and libraries? And how do you get it in there? You gotta sell it. You gotta go out, like, shows like this and talk about it. You gotta do social media. You gotta run some ads. There’s so much work to do, and a lot of people are not comfortable with the marketing part of it. And I think that’s what really helped me set myself apart because I’m very comfortable with that side of things. I’m really comfortable with telling people, “Hey, I have this. I think you need it. I think it’s gonna be really great for you if you have this”, whatever product I’m trying to sell you. Because I come from a side where I feel like it’s really gonna help someone when you try to sell someone something. Like, you’re giving them something that will help grow their minds, their whatever, their intelligence experiences. I would just tell you something about red envelopes.
0:15:00.2 Kurt Baker: That’s right.
0:15:00.3 Yobe Qiu: Yeah. Now you gotta buy one of my books. There you go.
[laughter]
0:15:03.7 Yobe Qiu: But we started doing things like that. And then, the marketing side is one thing. We eventually started realizing that a lot of people really do not know how to do this. And a lot of people wanna go into schools, and they wanna talk to teachers and principals who sell their books to all of the education market. And I realized they don’t know how to do it. They don’t really know how to, who to call, who to talk to. So we built the platform to help them. And this is me just kind of figuring out what is lacking in our industry and how I can help make their business and life a little bit more easier, and we built BookanAuthor.com. It’s a marketplace for PTOs and media specialists in schools and corporations, nonprofits, including museums to come on and find authors to talk to their audience going for programming and going for events. So, we built that in August 15th. We just launched it, and it’s going very well. We have already helped a lot of institutions book authors for all of the events. So it’s super exciting.
0:16:02.6 Kurt Baker: Okay. ‘Cause, I mean, there’s places you can buy books now. So this is, the difference here is you’re booking the author to come in with the book, it sounds like. Right?
0:16:08.7 Yobe Qiu: Yes. There are a lot of places you can buy books. There’s Amazon. There’s bookstores, Barnes and Noble, blah blah blah. But I think that if someone who don’t really have the traditional publisher on their side and all these agents and marketing money on their side, they really have to go out and sell their own book. And how do you do that? You gotta sell your own story. You gotta build your own brand. And the way to do that is to get into all of these events and talk and speak and then read your book and get you in front of all the audience.
0:16:39.8 Kurt Baker: Okay. So, yeah, explain a little bit how the platform works. I mean, it’s obviously you put your information in the platform, I’m assuming, and then you put your book in there. But then how does the community part work? ‘Cause now you have to actually promote, so just listing your book on a site is not really gonna do a whole lot. Right?
0:16:55.1 Yobe Qiu: Right. So the platform already have… And we spend a lot of our time and energy behind getting the institutions like schools and principal and PTO to come on and look at our authors. There’s a filter that they can use if they’re looking for I mean, tomorrow, Diwali or, Hanukkah is coming up, Thanksgiving is coming up, New Year is coming up. They want someone to come in to talk about these stories that they wrote. They can book to get through the platform. We have a backend chat box that can talk directly with the author. The author can get a premium listing, and they will show up on the front page or second page. They have catalogues that we send out to all of our Scoop and Corporation partners. So they get to review people and their stories and their bios and their books and what they can talk about. And then we kinda bring them in, they get to list their own prices. The schools will see exactly when they’re available for the booking.
0:17:49.6 Yobe Qiu: They get to see their price. They get to see what they’ve done before, some photos. It’s a fully, think of it like a Airbnb, but for authors and institutions.
0:17:58.3 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:18:01.1 Yobe Qiu: It’s been fun. It’s been fun building it. There’s a lot that I didn’t know. But, obviously, I think everyone knows by now, I like to do things I have no idea how to do.
0:18:09.4 Kurt Baker: Right. Right. Well, I’m gonna ask you that question. So how do you do things that you have no idea how to do? That’s moving to my next question. ‘Cause both of those things, all three of those really. You didn’t have any experience in the schools, you didn’t have any experience writing a book, you didn’t have any experience, as far as I know, at least, writing and doing a platform. That’s high tech. You need technical… I mean, you need partners in here somewhere, I’m sure.
0:18:31.8 Yobe Qiu: It’s, I don’t know. I think it has to kind of do with my personality. I think you have to be a little bit crazy to be an entrepreneur.
0:18:39.6 Kurt Baker: I would agree with that, yes. That I will agree with.
0:18:41.0 Yobe Qiu: You have to be a little bit crazy.
0:18:42.0 Kurt Baker: A little bit.
0:18:42.3 Yobe Qiu: You have to kind of like… Well, I think… I already met you a few times and I was like, you have this personality trait of, “I’m just gonna do it. I don’t wanna work for anyone. We’re gonna create and figure out problems as it comes”. I mean, it needs to have that kind of attitude towards projects. And I have that and I like that. If I had researched a lot, had I thought about how to do things, I would never open that first school that I own. It’s because I had no idea how hard it would be. If I knew that I had to read all of the regulations from five state departments, I would never open it, right? If I knew that I have to be dealing with kids that bite each other and parents that was gonna get so angry to try to sue our schools, I would never get into it. But I think wrapping your head around like just doing what you’re passionate about, really feeling something for your community, it will help build this platform. Like passion has to be something that drives you forward. And I feel like once you build something really good and give it your all, the money will come. It’s been proven for me, time over time. I put my heart into it. I kind of study how to do it really well, give it my all, money just comes and people you meet along the way will come and help you. Give me the platform, like you. Give me this radio talk show right now, this time.
0:19:58.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I think a business is if you go out and create something that’s so good that you’re doing a disservice by not offering it to your target, then they will be happy to pay you, because you’re adding value to their life. If you’re creating something you feel strongly about, if you’re really hyper-focused on giving them a good result, all the rest of those pieces kind of come along the way. And you seem to be very focused on that end result. So when you have to deal with the regulations, these are just things in your way, like little speed bumps in the road. But you still have your eye on, “When I get there, I’m gonna have something that people are really gonna gain value out of, and they’re gonna want this and they’re happy to pay for it”. You’re always happy to pay for value.
0:20:39.8 Yobe Qiu: 100%
0:20:40.7 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause you’re getting more than you’re putting in, right?
0:20:41.8 Yobe Qiu: I don’t even worry about if they are going to… I don’t think about the money side when I was building all of these things. Folks have been asking me, “Oh, what’s your business plan? What’s your financial plan?” I have none. I don’t know how to run the Excel and the numbers and things like that. I just know once I built this product, I’m gonna service this community of people and there’s a need. I’m gonna do it because the next big thing I have to do after I am hyper-focused on building a really good product, I have to kind of figure out how I can find these people. And as long as I can crack that, I’m okay. There’s only two things I have to focus on. One, the product, making sure you have a wonderful product. And two, finding the people that you can help.
0:21:21.9 Kurt Baker: That’s exactly what I was gonna ask you, because obviously it’s great to have a focus and a vision, but you have to fulfill it and the people are key to fulfilling the vision. So what’s your process for finding these people and kind of what order do you kind of say, “Hey, I need this person first, I need this person… ” ’cause you can’t hire everybody on the same day. So how do you kind of like go through that process, like here’s how I need to do this?
0:21:45.1 Yobe Qiu: I just kind of keep putting myself out there and I find that they will come find you. And for example, when I’m building the Book an Author platform, I knew that I need someone who has really good skills on managing everything on the back end. And I kind of put it out there like, “This is what I wanna build, this is what I wanna build”, and folks are like, “Just are you sure you wanna say all of that?” And I’m like, “Yes, I wanna say it so everyone can hear it”. And they said, “What if they copy your idea?” I’m like, “Well, let them”. I really believe in… And we have had people copy our ideas. I really believe in the more that you say it to, the better. And I’ll tell you why later.
0:22:23.5 Kurt Baker: Okay. We’re gonna take another quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. And right before the break, you brought up a very interesting point, which is that a lot of entrepreneurs who are not experienced, I’ll point that out, are always afraid to share the details of their ideas because they’re afraid somebody is gonna steal it. And at least what I’ve found is that very few people are willing to do the work to actually make it realized into a full-fledged product, service, whatever it is. So sharing the idea really just attracts the people that can help you. It doesn’t really attract competition like you might think, right? I mean, that’s kind of been my experience. So what are your thoughts about that?
0:23:10.8 Yobe Qiu: I think that’s a really interesting concept because I have always been sharing everything that’s on my mind, all my ideas. And I know that it’s not easy to copy someone’s idea because it’s so hard to build a legit company. It’s so hard to go from zero to one and then one to ten. It’s not easy. So, if anyone can copy, let them, because that could probably be one of your good partners and friends later on if you are both very vision-driven. And if not, they can make the mistakes and it’s just more marketing for your product anyway. I don’t see it as a threat. I see it as the more people that can start this, the more marketing it brings to your product and ideas it brings to your product, especially if you’re doing something new. And a lot of people will fail in the process of doing this. And if you have a plan of sticking it through, I can acquire all of the companies later on. I can work with them later on ’cause these are all gonna be good resources for me later on. I see it that way.
0:24:14.0 Yobe Qiu: And another thing about me, always talking about what you’re building and sharing your ideas because you have to talk about your thing. People have to see it seven times. They have to hear it seven times before they even whip up their credit card. Our list, it takes $18 to buy a book, $12 to buy a paperback book. They still need to see it ten times before they go and actually buy it. So, it’s never enough marketing these days, really because it’s just so competitive in the ad space. If you’re the only one that’s doing something, I’ll be worried. If you’re the only one that ever thought of doing anything. But if I’m the only person who’s thinking about making multicultural books, then we have a problem here. Who’s gonna buy my books? Do we even have a big enough market? If I’m the only person who thought about building this platform ever, then maybe it’s really not needed. Maybe there’s no need for it.
0:25:06.7 Yobe Qiu: But after I spoke to everyone and I went on live, I talked to thousands and tens of thousands of people who were listening to me. So I wanna do this. And I can’t believe this hasn’t been done before. You know what? I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before too because I need this. And I can’t be going out trying to sell my books one at a time, one school at a time. I would never be able to scale it fast enough. I need to find a way where I can reach all of the schools, 200,000 of them in the nation. And that’s what prompted me to build it. And everyone said, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve been thinking about doing that for a long time”. And I was like, “Yes, you have. And now I’m here”. [chuckle]
0:25:45.6 Kurt Baker: Yeah, I know we talk a lot about where people create like an industry. Like you just said, it’s one of the first things you do when you’re researching a new business, you see like what’s out there now and who is already doing this, selling it. But then how can you create like a brand new opportunity that that group of people would benefit from? And so, you’ve got people that have always been selling books, of course. But now you’re like, “Hey, that’s great that they sell books”. There’s places to go like Amazon and other places. But now we wanna be able to go in and have them actually be able to go into the schools and do interviews and a little bit more than what’s not out there now. So you’ve created like your own category. So we call the category king, right? You’re the king of this new category you’ve created. But you first had to identify another category that was already very popular where those people might say, “Hey, we would benefit from this new aspect of selling books”, which includes the author coming in and having a conversation with the kids in the schools and things like that, right?
0:26:45.7 Kurt Baker: And this happens all the time. Well, I mean, you look at things like Tesla. We had cars for years, right? But he came and he goes, “Oh, I’m gonna do it better, cheaper, faster”, whatever. But I always come out with like $7,000 cars. When you completely rethink outside of the box totally and take a clean piece of paper and just say, “Well, anything’s possible if you just figure out the answer and how to solve for it”, right?
0:27:09.7 Yobe Qiu: And you just kind of really know your community of people that you’re solving, right? You really need to understand their pain points. And as an author in a community of over 100,000 authors that are in our group here, they can publish books just fine. They can watch YouTube videos. They can do their writing. They can get editors, illustrators, whatever it is, they can get the books. And then, what happens afterwards, they can’t really break into. There’s a lot of gatekeeping for the institution side of things. They can’t really get there without the right connections. So after hearing so many of their pain points and everyone complaining about this issue, I just thought, I’m just gonna come up with a solution. And if I fail, if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay. But if it does work out, we’re solving a big problem for hundreds of thousands of people here. Folks, we live in a content creating community era now. Everyone trying to put out their own things, their own show, their own podcast, their own books, their own. But how do you get it to the real institution side of things? How do we work with corporations? How do you work with museums? How do you work with schools? And I don’t think anyone is touching that place yet and everyone wants to get in there. So understanding your audience and their pain point is the number one thing you have to do as an entrepreneur.
0:28:27.6 Kurt Baker: Right. And I just remembered this coming up when my wife was talking about her book, is that my understanding is in order for schools to buy a book, there has to be… Like, it can’t be totally self-published, right? There has to be some… I don’t know, ’cause they can’t actually code it in correctly into their system for some reason.
0:28:43.8 Yobe Qiu: I think they can now. I think they can.
0:28:44.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, they can now? Is that new?
0:28:46.5 Yobe Qiu: It’s like…
0:28:47.2 Kurt Baker: There has to be some minimum level before they can actually buy it.
0:28:50.3 Yobe Qiu: They will be willing to do things for you when they really want your book. And here comes where you’re coming in to speak to them, they’ve got to know you. It’s the relationship-driven side of things. Previously, obviously, you do need one of the big five publishing houses to kind of get you into the right booking, the right catalogs, right codes, whatever we call it. And I’m trying to break that down. Taylor Swift is now self-publishing her own book, and I think that’s gonna change massively for the self-publishing industry. And when you are in control of your own product, you are going to go much faster and much harder for your product. And the traditional publishers are doing a very good job, but they still have a lot of authors, and they may not be able to get you the publicity that you need for your book. But we live in this kind of content-driven world, so we’re gonna have more and more and more and more books coming out. And schools are changing. Institutions are changing. Everything is changing. So we are at a very good time for self-published authors.
0:29:57.8 Kurt Baker: Right. So you think they’re gaining traction because of platforms like yours where they can actually see… It’s a lot of the disruption, like Amazon came online. You used to go into the store to buy a book, or maybe mail, and you got it in a couple of weeks. But most people just went in, right? It’s pretty rare you were like mailed away for a book unless they didn’t have it or something like that. So now it’s all flipped on its head, and now they kind of sell everything. So how did you like… So you transitioned over the tech space now. So, where do you see this headed now that you kind of got traction?
0:30:33.1 Yobe Qiu: I think when I started it, my idea was really only to help authors gain more visibility in the institution side of things. Now, we are growing so fast that they are saying, “Hey, do you have any of the courses that helps us have a better presentation? What if I don’t have an education background? How do I talk to someone for 45 minutes or 40 minutes in a presentation when my book is only five minutes to read?” It takes five or 10 minutes to read a book. You can’t read 40 minutes. You’re gonna lose them, they’re like second graders and third graders. So what do you do in your programming? So it’s growing in the place where we’re doing a lot of webinars for librarians. We’re doing a lot of conferences. We’re doing summits. We’re doing online courses. We’re doing a bunch of things, and it’s growing really fast. And that’s what I learned about the tech space. And really, when you’re ready to scale this business, you have to go fast. And I’m not used to that because I owned like a brick and mortar schools.
0:31:37.1 Yobe Qiu: We service 40 kids or 100 kids or 200 kids. And that’s it. Every day is the same. And now every day is different in the tech space, in the online digital marketing space. And I have no idea what my day is gonna look like, what partnership is gonna come my way. And the business is growing so fast, so you kind of have to decide, do I go as a motorcycle speed or do I kind of like wait a little longer? How much money do I have now to think about money? How much to think about resources? So, that’s something I’m learning, that’s new to me.
0:32:08.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah. So resources, especially when you’re growing at a hyper speed, and I know tech is famous for this. And a lot of times people take on partners later on specifically for their expertise, not for the money. In fact, I’m involved in one SaaS company and they’ve taken on too large funding, not for the money. They’ve literally spent none of the money, but at all because the VC people have the expertise they needed to continue the growth. And so, it’s kind of a fascinating counterintuitive thing where a lot of people think, “Hey, I need money, I need money, I’m gonna go find me a venture capitalist”. Well, that’s fine, but actually what you need is probably expertise. Somebody that’s already been down that path who can guide you so you don’t make the mistakes. And so…
0:32:51.6 Yobe Qiu: Yea, yeah. We can’t really afford to make a lot of mistakes in somebody that’s growing that fast ’cause we have hundreds of users hopping on in a month. And if you make a costly mistake, you’re gonna lose them, and it’s hard to gain them all back. So, I do agree with what you’re saying. We’re going out for fundraising, we’re looking for strategic partnerships, and it’s a lot harder than I had imagined it to be. And I’m just kind of learning as I go.
0:33:16.6 Kurt Baker: Yeah, it’s awesome. We’re gonna take another quick break. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. Welcome back. You’re listening to Master Your Finances. So what do you kind of see happening next? Now you have this platform going and people are really building up to it. And as you point out, the tech space, especially that is growing very quickly. When you get something that catches on, it can really go crazy, right? So, what has been your experience with that and how are you handling it?
0:33:44.6 Yobe Qiu: This is new for me. So I am literally learning every single day and I’m testing all of my creative ideas on the tech space and see if they can do it. Like the developer will probably hate me by now. But, “Can you do this? Can you make this easier? Can you do this?” And they’re like, “No, no, no”. And I got to ask like maybe two more times and keep bringing it up and they will find a way. And they said, “Okay, fine, we did it”. So I like that. And then we thought about, “Hey, AI is super hot now. Everyone’s talking about AI, AI, AI, AI. And we have a tech startup. Can we put some AI in there?” Obviously, this comes from someone who knows very little about AI. And I’m kind of like, “Hey, can you put some AI in there? Can we come up with a way? Can our team think about a way where we can use AI to help this?” And if I have that, I can go to the VC and ask for a lot of money. Trust me, I can do that. And they said, “Well, it costs a lot of money to do that. We have to train these machines”, and machine learning it’s a whole different scale. And we just kind of have to think about are we ready for it? Are our communities ready for it?
0:34:44.6 Yobe Qiu: The author and publishing community side and the artist and illustrator side really don’t really like AI, so I try not to bring that up a lot. I do understand that we are working with a group of artists and creators here and they might not. And a lot of them are older folks, too. And they’ve been in education for a very long time. And I need to be very careful how I kind of go around this route and introduce it when I really have a plan. And when I introduce it, how I can help them understand it. I don’t really understand it enough. It’s scary for a lot of people. I do think that Amazon is putting a limit on how many books you can upload a day now. It takes months to write a book. It used to take years to write a book. And now it takes 20 minutes to write a book. If you work eight hours a day, you could have eight books by the end of the day. And you’re an author and you can create passive income that way. So people are putting out 300, 400 books on a lot of platforms that they’re selling. And people are buying them. So what does it mean for folks who have spent two years and three months on it? It’s a really fine line we’re walking here. But it’s something that our community have to learn how to deal with.
0:36:02.6 Yobe Qiu: I won’t say that I’m scared of it. But I do think that it can be very overwhelming because it’s going really fast. And we have to kind of figure out how can I grow and learn fast so I won’t be left behind. So, our community of people won’t be left behind. How can I stay in a way where they can learn and embrace it? I might not be able to. But these are things that we’re thinking about how to move forward with the platform. The platform is young. We have a lot of things to learn. But I think that because we’re run by very young people and we have a lot of older generation of specialists, we have really good consultants and advisors who are in the literary space, and we keep going back and forth. So we literally are like 30-year-olds with 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds working with 40, 50, 60, 70-year-olds. So we have a spectrum of brains and experiences figuring out how can we maneuver this tech space.
0:36:57.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, yeah. One thing I keep hearing over and over again ’cause this comes up in all things that I’m touching as far as industries go. And they say, “Well, AI will not replace you, but you may be replaced by somebody using AI”.
0:37:10.1 Yobe Qiu: For sure.
0:37:10.5 Kurt Baker: Because as long as you think of it more as a tool because the bottom line is we’re each our own personal brand and nobody can replace you as an individual. So, I think those that are afraid of AI, if they think of it more of like how do I expand my personal influence in my personal brand by helping this AI just speed up me getting that information, put together and getting it out there, that kind of makes it like it’s not quite so scary ’cause they talk about even in my industry like, “Oh, they’re gonna replace all the wealth managers”. I go, “That’s not gonna happen because it’s a personal relationship. Yeah, it might be helping in the automation in the back end and making it more efficient, so now I don’t have to spend as much time on the back end stuff. I’m spending more time talking to clients and helping them solve for real life things that really matter to them”. It’s actually a good thing because now you’re more client focused just like with the book writing. I know that even, and I don’t write books personally, but I know even when I’m trying to put like letters together and emails, you can do a quick list and just say, “Oh, that’s right”. That way you don’t even have to… It just speeds things up for you. And you’re always doing the last part of it, for sure. Because if you do, it looks horrible. It’s not… AI by itself doesn’t work in my opinion, not yet at least.
0:38:28.4 Yobe Qiu: I think that you just got to learn how to use it and I think that you just got to get used to using it and I think that you have to figure out ways to use it. And I think every single industry should figure out ways to use it. I mean when I was running all of the private preschools, we work with two-year-olds and three-year-olds and we were not worried. I wasn’t even thinking about AI or the computer or tech because we would not allow any devices in our schools, so that didn’t bother me at all. But now, five years down the line after COVID, the two-year-olds and three-year-olds are using apps to learn. The teachers are using technology to teach and now librarians are talking about how to use AI in there. So the conversation is changing very fast and we do need to learn how to use this. So I agree with you 100% there.
0:39:13.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, so you seem to be identify… You’re a true entrepreneur ’cause you identify problems and you go out and solve them and you can not solve them because you feel a need to solve them because it’s gonna better somebody that you feel passionate about serving. So what do you think is happening next as you grow this business? What other things are you kind of being connected with that you’re like, “Hey, I think there’s some other things out there, maybe I’m gonna go after and maybe try to help out”?
0:39:36.2 Yobe Qiu: I don’t know. I think that all my focus now is trying to make sure this platform is built and serving everyone that we can serve. I wanna change the way business is being done between schools and the creators that they wanna bring in and corporations and museums, all the institutions. Because previously they were doing it in a way where, “Do you know someone? Do you know someone? Can I get a referral?” So, I wanna make sure we can change that to ensure folks without connections can get an opportunity. And I think that we wanna see how we can put AI into the platform. We wanna see how far this tech company is gonna take us. I’m very hyper-focused on building this out. When other problem comes along, I’m gonna send it to my entrepreneur friends and say, “Hey, here’s a problem. I think you can fix it. Why don’t you try to give it a hack?”
0:40:27.7 Kurt Baker: So you’ve been now exposed to a lot of authors out there, I’m assuming, right?
0:40:31.2 Yobe Qiu: Yes.
0:40:31.3 Kurt Baker: So, being an author and being exposed to all these other authors, are there some things you’ve learned from the community itself that perhaps you didn’t know prior to dealing with these other authors?
0:40:41.8 Yobe Qiu: I’m learning that there is a special story for everyone out there. There are things that happened that I’ve never assumed, I’ve never heard of because I don’t own a TV. I told you that. I don’t watch TV. I don’t watch shows. And I’m very focused on just building and working. And now, because I am exposed to 100,000 authors, I hear their stories all the time. Why did they write this story? What are some things that happened in their life that’s unique to their community of people or where they live, their locations? I’m learning so much, and I think these are really wonderful people who are very passionate.
0:41:15.7 Kurt Baker: So many of those affected you personally that you said, oh, wow?
0:41:19.5 Yobe Qiu: So many that I lost count.
0:41:21.1 Kurt Baker: Okay. All right.
0:41:22.0 Yobe Qiu: There are so many. But I love that we’re seeing people from all walks and all different places and cultures are talking about their… These are conversations that are so important that we’re having, and I love that I am included in those.
0:41:41.1 Kurt Baker: Right. That’s really awesome. So you have a lot of different groups you deal with. So what other areas are you involved in as far as advocating for education in general? I know you’re doing the platform and everything.
0:41:52.5 Yobe Qiu: Yeah, I think me just being in the room with educators and policymakers is a win. I think they got to see that there are people showing up and people want our stories and want them to kind of think of the Asian American community as one big community and not try to break us down as this Indian community, the Chinese community, Korean community. We’re already a very small number. We’re not that large number. We can’t be breaking down even more here.
0:42:17.2 Kurt Baker: [laughter] Okay.
0:42:18.3 Yobe Qiu: I want folks to kind of… And even our community of people ourselves, I wanna just kind of use the term, “We’re Asian-Americans, and these are our stories. These are our books, and we would love our teachers to read them and our districts to kind of use them and think of it when they’re doing curriculum planning”. And it’s been really well received. There are a little bit of pushback on the teacher side, and they say, “I don’t really wanna read it because I can’t pronounce some of these words”. And I said, “Well, I get you. I was a teacher once, so here’s an audio book for you. Here you go. You don’t have time to do the lesson plans. It’s done for you. Just use it. Just read it”. And they’re very accepting of it. I was a teacher, so I know exactly what they’re saying. We don’t wanna get in trouble. We already deal with all these kids all day. We have no more capacity to deal with parents and policymakers.
0:43:07.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah, you brought up a interesting point ’cause a lot of times teachers are… What they have to do, the required courses, the required teachings are so vast, they don’t have a lot of time for these extra things that we would like to do that we think will benefit the kids. It’s so structured a lot of times. So what’s been the impact as far as that goes, and how have you been dealing with that?
0:43:28.7 Yobe Qiu: I think the teachers, their jobs are harder than it was years ago. I think they have so much that they have to pay attention to these days, and they have to be very careful with their jobs now. And I think it’s harder on them. And I hope that what we’re building here and the resources that we’re giving them can help their days go fast easier, and it will serve more of the children in the community that they serve.
0:43:53.2 Kurt Baker: Okay, that’s awesome. Any final words there before we leave? It’s been awesome spending time with you today.
0:43:58.1 Yobe Qiu: That’s amazing coming here. Thank you, everyone for listening. I want everyone to go out there and build their side hustle, go for the passion, and give it a try. I think we live in a time where ideas are very welcome and you can find your community of people pretty fast.
0:44:13.8 Kurt Baker: All right. Well, thank you. I hope you appreciate it. Have a great day.
