We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Allen Fu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Allen below.

Allen, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success is relative. Success is perspective.

What is success for you may not be success to me and so goes the contrary. But in the general sense of success – Freedom of finances, time and choice.

Success is a powerful goal that many aspire to achieve in their lifetime.

Often times we are stuck thinking of success as just a monetary thing. But it’s not. It’s happiness, pure satisfaction with how you live your life, who you’re surrounded by and what you’re doing, but most importantly having the good health to enjoy it all.

In this day and age it’s getting increasingly more complex to become “successful”.

The food we eat is laced with hormones, chemicals and GMOs.
Social media amplifies depression, comparison and the feeling of not being enough.
Time is warped so that we must have things now and have things fast.
Shiny object syndrome is riper than ever with the media promoting all these young hotshots who made millions quick.
The new youth lack commitment and are easily swayed by media messaging.
Focus is so lackluster and fragile.
The property crisis is deepening and the wage gap is growing.

The list goes on and on.

But regardless of which generation or whatever the climate and conditions, some things never change.

It’s that those who want to be successful are creative, tenacious, bold and have what I like to call a “F.U” mindset. A mindset of, I will either prove myself right or prove myself wrong and I won’t let anyone stand in my way when pursuing a vision that only I see. They are a group of do-ers, thinkers and dreamers who are willing to cop judgement and go the path their gut tells them to take.

Although I’m not at the peak of my “success” now, I remember the times where all my friends laughed at me, joked about me, talked about me behind my back and decided to turn their backs on me when I was struggling to break through. Business after business, I launched myself into every venture I had a stab at with everything I had.

Working 3 jobs and going to university to support myself, I knew that if I had committed myself to maximising my spare time, there will be a time where I’ll figure it and break through. It literally took 10 years, 16 different attempts and now I’ve built 3 different million dollar businesses within 3 years. With a goal to achieve it faster every time.

You have to be relentless. Eveytime you get knocked down, get back up harder. Everytime you try something, learn from your mistakes and grow. Improve. Get better, faster. Failure is underrated and winning is overrated. If you see life as a game, you’ll constantly be looking for ways to win and pass each checkpoint that comes your way. And each time you progress, you look to do it faster, better and more efficiently.

Whatever it is you choose to do. Never give up.

Allen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Allen Fu. I’ve been across multiple industries but I’ve settled in e-commerce, digital marketing and consulting.

Currently, I own and operate 4 e-commerce brands, with 2 more on the way. A brick and mortar experience business that spans 2 cities and a digital marketing agency that specialises in social media.

On the side, I coach budding entrepreneurs and run community events to help people network and experience different things in life.

Over the last 13 years of business I’ve learnt to connect the dots between marketing, operations and systems to allow for businesses to effectively grow and refine their practices to form the ultimate machine.

The biggest difference it makes now is that I’m not a marketer that helps businesses grow and succeed through just pure “theoretical” marketing, I am a business owner that does whatever it takes to grow a business and I am not afraid to try and do things that are not conventional.

About myself.

Growing up, we were extremely poor. My parents were first generation immigrants, who sacrificed everything to come to Australia and create a brighter future.

Watching them as me and my brother were growing up was a strong of resilience but brutal struggle. They both worked 3x jobs to keep the food on the table and saved up enough to start their own small business. They lived in shared housing with 10 other people and often shared food to get by. It wasn’t easy.

As they went through the challenges of small business, I watched from the front seat. They had me with them everywhere they went. From the second my mum gave birth, she had to go back to look after the shop and I was there alongside her when I was less than 3 months old. So I guess you could say I was raised in business.

I watched my parents grow their business through the times and face the ’08 recession face on and lose everything. From there we faced bankruptcy and many hard choices. It lead us to eating food scraps out of bins and selling our stock for drastic losses to recoup some money and pay back some debts. It took my family a good decade to clean up our inventory debts before getting back on our feet.

Through this I watched my parents work 16 hour days, they saw me an hour a day, if they were lucky. Their sacrifices meant that I had to grow up independent from the age of 6. Going to school on my own, being raised by my grandparents, fending for myself and trying to find my own way. But I don’t blame them for anything, this taught me tenacity, it taught me resilience, it taught me work ethic. I enjoyed being independent and being able to explore the world on my own despite the young age, and the blessing of my grandparents taught me traditional values, knowledge and work ethic which helped me outwork those who were smarter and more talented than I was.

But I always knew there was more to life than a constant struggle of finances. My parent imparted to me on my 12th birthday a book. A book I never knew I needed and that book was Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. A book which would go on to form a foundation of financial education I needed to think outside the box and begin my business journey. At 15 I launched my first business, a tutoring business and from there I launched many more, failing a bunch of them along the way before finding my feet and figuring out the code a decade later. Throughout my journey, I was constantly hungry for knowledge and spent my waking hours searching for the best in industry to teach me the ropes, it even lead me to going to Los Angeles, sleeping on a couch for months and learning directly from multi-millionaires about business and startups.

All the failures, lessons and tribulations I faced along the way lead me to where I am today. To be able to not only forge my own story but also help others along the way. Life has a strange way of teaching you it’s secrets, you just have to be aware enough to notice it and grab it with both hands.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is critical to the success of any individual and business.

Your personal brand is your digital business card. Over the last 5 years, my personal social media has helped me close over a $million dollars worth of deals. It helps people know who I am and what I am capable of, even before I have met them.

You have to be consistent and you have to be true to yourself. Don’t just change the way you post or what you say and do just because of clout or what is trending. Stay true to your nature and your expertise and continue forging your own path.

There are too many imitations and not enough originals so stay an original and that is the best way for you to grow, albeit slower. The benefit is you get people who truly love you for you.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

This is one of the questions I get asked all the time. Getting the money to start a business.

I’m gonna keep it simple but also it might be a painful checkpoint for a lot of people.

100% of my businesses thus far have been either self-funded or I have split the initial capital with my business partner.

If you are just getting in to the game of business you’re faced with usually 3 options.

1. Self-funded
2. Borrow money
3. Raise capital

For 95% of the population, raising money is out of the question. You don’t have the skills, experience or track record for majority of investors to trust in you.

So it’s usually borrowing money from friends and family or self- funding.

To save you from the politics, lost reputation and potential drama, I’m gonna skip talking about borrowing money.

That means for the large majority of you, self-funding is the way to go.

But the next confronting checkpoint I’m going to give you is.

If you suck at saving money, you probably lack the discipline to start your own business and right now, I wouldn’t recommend you to start your own business until you develop that discipline.

As much as social media makes entrepreneurship look cool. It really isn’t all that. It’s fucking hard. Brutally hard and you face alot of demons you never knew existed.

So if you can’t even save $10k to start a business, it probably isn’t the right time for you yet.

So learn how to do that then move forwards on an idea you might have.

Oh and execute on your idea before trying to pitch it to someone else to invest or “partner” with you. No one worth their grain of salt will be interested in a person who is pitching their dreams that doesn’t already take action.

If you believe in your idea. Start it first then figure out the funding later to scale.

But again, first step is learn to save, can you make sacrifices for yourself before you even try to ask others to make sacrifices for you?

Contact Info:

• Website: thefuagency.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allen.fu88/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenfu/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwPuy8yrX86M3AoGVJinOkg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@allen.fu88?lang=en