Hey, guys. Today we are lucky, lucky to have my favorite female entrepreneur here in Hong Kong, Ashley, back on the show. Ashley is a Hong-Kong-based entrepreneur, professional speaker, and vlogger. She’s the founder of several startups, including social media agency Alarice and resources platform ChoZan, and she runs the world’s largest vlog — video log — about the China market consumers and social media on YouTube called Ashley Talks China.

If you recall, we had Ashley on back in November of last year — I believe it was episode 66 — and she came on to talk about Chinese social media, and she just released a bestselling book on the same topic, so I wanted to get her on again to talk about the book. Now Ashley has also very, very generously agreed to give away five copies of her brand new, bestselling book to members of our audience. Thank you so much for that, Ashley, and welcome to the show.

Ashley: Fantastic to be on the show, Jay, again. Thank you for having me.

Jay: I’m so excited. I must say… First of all, congratulations on the book. It’s called Unlocking the World’s Largest E-Market: A Guide to Selling on Chinese Social Media. I read it in two sittings, on the only reason is because I had to take some notes in between. But it’s a beautiful book. For people that haven’t written a book, writing a book is a very, very daunting task. I’ve written one book, and I’m not sure if I have another book in me. But you did it in a remarkable time, and you also were able to smash all sorts of records, so congratulations on success there.

Ashley: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It was really fun.

Jay: I’m sure. You wrote it in a record amount of time. I think it was only a couple of months, right?

Ashley: Yeah. We finished the book in three and a half months. So basically within three and a half months, we were able to published it and, already in the first week, hit two Amazon bestselling lists. So that was, again, a team effort. I have a fantastic team that supported me. I could have never in a million years done it just by myself. But with the right people in your network for promotion and with the right people on your team to deal with all the nitty-gritties, it’s all possible.

Jay: That’s unbelievable. I can’t believe it only took you three and half months. It took me almost a year. And that, I was told, was also accelerated. Anyway… So it’s a beautiful book. Very good job on the cover design. I love the orange. My book was actually orange-colored as well, because I think that stands out a lot on the shelves and online. Amazing.

I can’t wait to dig into the book. But before we do that, maybe you can just take a quick step back and give our audience a little bit of background on yourself, those who are unfamiliar with what you do.

Ashley: I run a couple of companies here in Hong Kong, and most of them focus on China and social media. I’ve got an agency which is doing social media in mainland China, so we help international brands to break into the China market and, at the same time, since about half a year ago, we started working with more Chinese companies that are going global. And therefore, we do social media marketing for them in the West.

The other company that I have in a training and strategy firm, and we basically prepare strategy for China, and we also train marketing teams. We come in and update the boards of large corporations on what’s happening with China, so we make sure that they stay on top of it. With the speed of everything happening in mainland China, that’s really important. So that’s a training business.

In the past year or a bit less than a year — I think right after we spoke last — I started focusing most of my time on actually doing personal branding and writing books and speaking at a lot of events. I started, also, a podcast. I started this video log, as you mentioned, the video documentary series. So last year alone, I spoke at like 58 events, if I’m not mistaken, which is crazy.

So right now I’m really focusing on that. And my major topics are China, and I’m extremely passionate about that. I try to explain China to the Western world a bit more, because people still are very, very confused, and they have a lot of misconceptions.

The second topic is female entrepreneurship. So that’s something very close to my heart. And I’ll be speaking at TED just in a couple of months about it. So I’ll be doing a lot more to help women here in Asia and globally to actually step up and lead and do amazing things.

The third topic is personal branding, so exactly what I did with the book, with video log, with blog, with all that stuff. I’m on the same page with Gary V who says that these days you do not have a choice. You need, as an entrepreneur, to do personal branding, and be good at it. So that’s me in a nutshell.

Jay: Well, you’re certainly doing a great job at it because you’re on fire. Everywhere I look, I see you, and it makes me smile every single time, because I love it when my friends are very successful, and I know how hard you work and all the hustle and grind that you put in.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Jay.

Jay: It’s awesome to see that.

Thanks for the quick background. One other thing that I wanted to add is that I love how you’re an expert in a market that is not necessarily your home market, and I think that A) it’s very difficult to achieve that, and B) I think it also helps when you are talking to foreigners, that you are someone that has been an outsider, but then you have gone in, and you’re now a practitioner within China. So I think that it helps, not only with your own credibility, but I think it will probably lend some confidence to your clients or potential clients. China is very difficult, but if you have the right guidance with Ashley, then you can be successful.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Jay: Let’s dig in. I want to try to maximize the time and the value that you’re going to bring to the audience. Last time, we spoke briefly about social media marketing, and you kind of gave a broad overview of a lot of the various topics and various channels of social media within China. Let’s start very briefly… Let’s talk about China. Obviously, with a population of 1.3 billion, it’s clearly the largest e-commerce economy in the world. Things change very quickly, as you alluded to earlier. I want to just go over where the landscape is now, and maybe we can start off — and you do a very good job of this at the beginning of your book — you talk about some of the common misconceptions that people have who don’t really know about China and broad generalizations that they make. So maybe you could start there, and you can give us a quick overview.

Ashley: In terms of generalizations, a lot of people still look at China as one market. So I think we spoke about it also last time. They feel that China, China, China, we hear a lot about China. So if you decide to enter that market, let’s just come in. China, in fact, is a collection of separate markets. It’s a little bit like Europe. So you need to choose your country within Europe. In other words, you need to choose the city or province in mainland China that you actually want to target. People in first, second, and third-tier cities are extremely unlike one another, and there are even social media platforms that are unique to, let’s say, second and third-tier cities. And people in the first-tier cities feel that they’re just below them, and they shall never use those platforms. So it’s an extremely diverse market, which is very cool and very interesting. But at the same time, it adds a certain level of complexity.

The other huge misconception is that people still feel the Chinese is all about cheap, cheap, cheap. And you hear they travel cheap, buy cheap, manufacture cheap, and do not have this level of sophistication. That’s just untrue. Chinese consumers these days are the most sophisticated consumers. They are so digitized. They live their life on mobile. They’ve seen good stuff. They’ve traveled across Europe. They’ve traveled across the States. Again, even Chinese companies that service them — not only international firms but even home-grown businesses — deliver high-quality products and services for a very low price. So they have very high standards. They’re extremely demanding.

They are fun. They’re ready to try. For instance, in the US or in Europe, it’s extremely difficult to get people on the new, let’s say, app or new software or let them try something that actually impacts their lifestyle, not just “Let me buy a new gadget,” and it’s there in the box for half a year. But in China, seriously, a friend of mine, his grandfather is 93 years old, and that 93-year-old gentleman orders his own cab through WeeChat and pays through WeeChat — lives his life through many programs and stuff, which is completely unthinkable.

So a lot of businesses that I see that come to China, they still feel that “They’re a nation of copycats” and “Maybe they came up with a couple of weird technological or apps or technology pieces that cannot be used anywhere else in the world.” They do not understand that, in fact, China right now is already leading in many, many areas, and in the coming three years, they’re going to be dominating most of the most lucrative areas of technology. And the government is on board and businesses are on board.

So there’s a lot of misconceptions in understanding the market, in understanding the consumers, and in understanding technology. And I think this is a big problem. When you don’t understand those three, you basically have no clue.

Jay: That’s right. And to be fair, unless you live or travel into China and are fluent or you can read or you have friends that are there, it’s difficult to actually break in and realize how rapidly the consumer economy has grown and matured. So I think those points are very valid, and they’re very important.

As far as current consumption trends or hot areas that Chinese people are spending money on, what are some of the hot areas now that should be focus points?

Ashley: China right now, again, what I’m talking about here is probably first-tier cities, just because it’s easier. So we’ll focus on basically Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and the first few top second-tier cities. So those guys — entrepreneurship is very hot. Female entrepreneurship is very hot. So if you know anybody in China, then probably their friends or half of their family are in business. And straight after school, they go and set up companies, and they even have a term for startup entrepreneur lifestyle, which is called 9-9-6. Have you heard about it?

Jay: No, I haven’t.

Ashley: So 9-9-6 lifestyle, it means that they work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Six days a week.

Jay: Oh, yes, I have. Yes, yes. That’s true.

Ashley: If you ask somebody like “What are you doing?” as in, “What’s your job?” And then he tells you “9-9-6,” that means he’s a hustler. He’s an entrepreneur who works—

Jay: That’s really interesting. You know where I heard that from, Ashley. I actually read that from…Peter Diamandis wrote an article — I think it was Huffington Post or something — after one of his trips, and he talks about 9-9-6, but I wasn’t aware that that was actually a thing, like a phrase.

Ashley: It’s called “Jeeyo jeeyo leeyo”. So “Jeeyo-jeeyo” is nine-nine, and then “Leeyo” is six. So 9-9-6. If they tell you 9-9-6, that’s it. You know what they are.

So entrepreneurship is hot, and that’s important to understand. So if you’re launching products that are supporting entrepreneurs, that’s always good. Self-development is another thing. So everybody in China is into education, but I’m not talking about education as in kids, learning a language — that’s been there forever. I’m talking about developing skills like communication skills, developing — I don’t know — speed reading skills, programming skills, whatever skills that are helping them excel.

So China is a very pragmatic market. It’s a very fast-paced market. It’s a very competitive market. Everybody wants to succeed. So if you can help them, get them closer to their goal, you have a huge opportunity there.

It was actually funny. About two and a half years ago, everybody started learning etiquette and how to behave at the table. Everybody was doing that. It was like the huge thing. There were so many companies. There were so many apps just launching and teaching women, men, children. So right now, from that boom, it’s slowly brought us here where people just invest in soft skills because China is all about hard skills.

Besides that, of course babies and food — these are two topics that are very hot throughout China. Food from abroad, anything that comes from healthy countries like — I don’t know — Australia, US, etc., and baby products, obviously. A couple of funny ones — for example, cosmetics and personal care. Right now, the hottest thing in China — and you will be laughing — is skincare products for young males. And when I say “young males” they are from 14 to 25.

Jay: No way. Wow.

Ashley: Can you imagine that this is the fastest growing — global fastest growing — cosmetic category. Obviously, it has the impact. Korea has impacted them, and the Chinese, I think, market matured a bit. But young guys are just investing in themselves.

Of course, traveling is another thing. Right now they don’t travel to those mass destinations. Everybody you see in those mass destinations like Thailand or Hong Kong, even, they come from second and third-tier cities, sometimes even fourth-tier cities. But first-tier cities are all going to unique destinations like Madagascar or Russia or something crazy. They really go on private tours, and they spend a lot of money on experiences, not just the products. So they’re less product-oriented.

They’re also into guilt-free status. I think we also spoke about it last time. Basically “guilt-free” means whenever you consume a product or service, it’s good for you, it’s good for the environment, and it’s good for society. So that movement is growing.

And I think the last one is anything and everything that is technology that is fun that they can use, they can try something they haven’t seen before, they would actually try. The other day I was in China, and a friend of mine was showing me the new thing. You know those little drones that you buy for fun? Now they have a ring that you put on your hand, and you can control the drone with a ring, so you don’t need to use that remote control. You basically just wave your hands all around, and then the drone is flying. It’s super crazy. Just think what can be done once this technology is perfected. So China is a great market for all of those things.

Jay: Absolutely. And what about the pricing point and the consumer attitude towards actually spending on premium products? You just mentioned about first-tier city tourists are going to the exotic locations. So they’re obviously okay spending. Even the second-tier, if they’re coming down to Hong Kong, Hong Kong is not cheap, so they have spending power. So overall, with this rising middle class, it seems like they actually have quite a bit of spending power, right?

Ashley: Yeah, definitely. Second-tier cities, I don’t remember exactly, but there are basically over 20 second-tier cities in China plus four first-tier cities. So if add them up, let’s say 30 cities. The only difference between them, pretty much, is the traditional ranking. They fall into different categories, but in terms of earning power, they are almost the same. So second-tier cities just have less options inside. So offline retail because they have less retailers there. But in terms of online consumption, they are driving more online consumption than first-tier cities by far. In general, those guys have the money.

For instance, by 2020, I think it was in the McKinsey Report. They said by 2020, household disposable income is going to be $8,000 USD. $8,000 USD. That’s huge. It’s like first-country levels.

Jay: For sure.

Ashley: And of course people nowadays are spending, not saving. So traditionally China was saving a lot. Right now they are spending. Another great indicator is actually the amount of transactions on WeChat. We can see that in the past two, three years, the amount that people are comfortable paying through WeChat, through a mobile payment system, has increased significantly. So it started from, let’s say, $300 I’m comfortable spending in 2015 to $500 to, right now, people are comfortable spending up to $2,500 per transaction. So they can actually do that. And how that happened, there are many reasons, and people got used to mobile payments, this and that, but WeeChat also ran a series of campaigns to actually encourage people to spend more money and feel more comfortable with that and establish that trust.

But all that indicates that people have the money. It’s not that they spend those $300 USD every day, but they have the money, and they’re willing to spend it. And affordable luxury is another huge category, which can be anything really from outfits to certain electronics. This affordable luxury is probably the right segment where we can place China right now. So they have the money. They wouldn’t just spend it “because,” but they would spend it for something high quality that will last and will give them that experience that they’re looking for.

Jay: You just mentioned WeChat, and obviously WeChat Pay… The mobile payments in China, they basically leapfrogged the West. While the West was still tinkering around on their computers and using PayPal and this sort of thing, China basically went straight into mobile payments. And now people don’t even carry wallets anymore in China. They just transact everything online and mobiley, and they’re very comfortable. And, like you said, the amounts that they’re spending is increasing. It’s certainly exciting, and it’s very nuanced.

So I want to just talk about quickly… In your book, you spend a lot of time talking about both WeChat and Weibo, and obviously, those are probably the two large social media networks that people are interacting on. Are these the two most important? And how does WeChat and Weibo integrate into a Chinese person’s life differently than, say, Facebook, social media, integrate into a US person’s life?

Ashley: I spent a lot of time in the book talking about WeChat and Weibo primarily because they are the most well-known. So when we talk about China, if people and about it at all, they say WeChat, probably because, when you travel abroad, you see AliPay. You see WeChat Pay everywhere. You see the logos. Just recently, a friend of mine told me that Gossip Girl, which is the TV show in the States, just recently, there was an episode where the girl was staring at her phone, and somebody asked her, “Are you on WhatsApp or something else?” And the girl looked at her dad and said, “We are on WeChat, Dad,” like, “You’re so last century.”

So I think it’s slowly penetrating there. It slowly makes the waves. In China right now, there are two major camps. There’s the Alibaba camp, the big alliance, and there is a Tencent alliance. The Tencent alliance, obviously that’s the company behind WeChat. That’s the company behind WeChat Pay and QQ, and it’s the company that invests heavily in gaming. That’s their major income generator.

And then Alibaba, they are investing in Weibo. Weibo, in turn invests into a lot of live streaming platforms. So there is definitely a battle there. So the two most popular platforms in mainland China, the most well-known are WeChat and Weibo. They are extremely different because WeChat is more like an operating system for life. That’s something that you cannot survive in China without. Even if you’re not on social media, to pay for your breakfast, you need to be on WeChat Pay. Just a couple of weeks ago, I came back from Shanghai. I was there for over a week, and I survived, literally, Jay, with zero renminbi. I had only WeChat Pay with me, and that was it. So from everything — from airport transfer to hotel payments to buying the bun on the street — it was all WeChat Pay. Seriously, there are those street vendors standing with QR codes, and you buy baked potato through scanning in a QR code from a cart and box. It’s crazy. So that’s what it is right now.

While Weibo is more about the marketing and more about news spreading and more about viral stuff and hot topics and stuff like that. So the two roles that they’re playing — WeChat, as I said is the operating system for life, when you want to book something, hail a taxi, you want to pay for something, you want to communicate with somebody… For example, you’re at the business meeting, and in the West, we exchange business cards. In China, they look at you, and you they say, “Can I scan your ID?” So they want to connect with you through WeChat. I think these are huge, huge differences.

When we look at WeChat that most Westerners have on their phones, this is not the real Chinese version. That’s the stripped, international version of it. So that’s why when foreigners look through that app, they say, “I don’t see anything extraordinary.” That’s because you guys are not looking at the right app.

Jay: This is something I didn’t know actually until I read your book, actually. So I’m enlightened as well.

Ashley: So you were the one.

Jay: Yeah. I’m the one that’s like “What’s the big deal with WeChat?” But by the way, to the audience, Ashley’s book goes extremely, extremely deep into detail on the various platforms. It was eye opening for me because I didn’t know a third or a quarter of the functionality that you talked about, Ashley. So it was very enlightening for me, actually. Thank you.

Ashley: Yeah. And Weibo is was very different platform. Again, it’s all about the hot topics. It’s all about the news, basically. Think about it as a news platform where a lot of bloggers, a lot of media and government departments and ordinary users just share stuff. Not like Twitter really. Not as spammy as Twitter, not as short. It’s still very visual because Chinese people are still visual, so there are nine pictures to attach. It’s like Facebook plus Twitter plus a lot of other things like SlideShare, etc. There are Instagram functions, so you can also create stories.

So it is a great platform for marketing. It’s a great platform to share ideas, to get reposts, to get the reaction from the audience and to also track what’s hot in China right now. Literally, those hot topics are the pulse of everything and anything that is happening in China, and you can sort it by the region, by the city. So they are extremely important. Those things are extremely important for marketers because if you’re publishing an article or a post, no matter on which platform — be it your newsletter or your website or social networks — you need to be on point with current happenings, because if your topic is not linked to what’s happening in China right now, it’s going to be irrelevant, and you’re going to lose a lot of audience.

So completely different platforms. So people go to Weibo, for instance, to follow bloggers. They go to Weibo to check out news. They go to win freebies. For example, if you would like to wake up one Saturday morning, and you want to get iPhone X — I mean in the West — you would never in a million years go somewhere online and try to participate in a campaign to win it. But you can do that on Weibo. There is a special tab which is called “campaigns,” and you go there, and you literally search by price. So you say “I want to win iPhone X,” and then all the campaigns that are currently running where the gift is iPhone X, you’re going to see that list, and you’re going to participate in them, and usually the rules are very simple. So people actually do that.

So going back to your question — how do people use social media differently in China than in the West — in the West, we primarily just instant message each other, and we connect with our friends, and we stalk our friends on social networks and share a couple of our pictures. In China, it’s like instant messaging; there is daily moments; there is ecommerce; you can buy directly through WeChat, Weibo, through live streaming platforms; you follow celebrities; you follow news. You use it as a news platform. You use it as — I don’t know — South China Morning Post or CNN. It’s crazy. You participate in campaigns. You use it as CRM, as customer relations management system, because nobody in a million years in China would ever go to complain and call some hotline or send an email. They will go to your social network, and that’s it. Stuff gets real. It hits the fan, and it gets really, really—. You better be there 24/7.

The difference is so deeply rooted that, before you experience that or before you really deep dive into it, it’s hard to imagine.

Jay: Would you say most of the population actually uses both WeChat and Weibo, or is it skewed?

Ashley: Everybody is using WeChat — so everybody with a smartphone device. You’ve got a smartphone, you’ve got WeChat. But it doesn’t mean that everybody uses WeChat for social networking. In terms of Weibo, they have twice as little users as WeChat, but this is a platform for social networking, and the user base is slightly different, so obviously on Weibo, it’s slightly younger. On WeChat, you go cross generations. It’s just everybody.

And at the same time, China has tons and tons of other social platforms. There are more than 60 platforms, in fact. Right now, live streaming platforms are huge. Short video platforms are huge. There are those viral news platforms. For example, a big one is called Kuiashou, which is called “fast hand” or something like that. It’s basically, people can share their own news. They can document what’s happening with them throughout the day, and they can report. They can become reporters by themselves, and there is tons of news, tons of stuff happening. So it’s a little bit like when you visit that platform, it’s a little bit like fake news portal, and that platform, for instance, going back to your question, that platform, for instance, is only popular in second- and third-tier cities, probably even closer to third-tier cities. So everybody who lives in cool places doesn’t want to touch it because — oh my goodness — it’s so spammy. But that one is huge. It’s one of the most viral platforms in China right now. That’s where it’s at.

Jay: That’s very interesting. I want to talk about some of the trends that you foresee in Chinese social media in the coming years — maybe in the next five to ten years. Obviously, it’s impossible to tell because it changes so quickly. But you actually see a bifurcation of just the two big players — Tencent and Alibaba — dominating and then a bunch of fringe players. Maybe a lot of them will be weeded out, or do you see still room for maybe a number three, a number four, a number five player to come into that ecosystem?

Ashley: Well, I definitely believe that as we progress, as young generations come up, they will need their own social media platforms and completely new devices, completely new ways to connect and share their lives and be part of this digital world. So there will definitely be new things.

The other question is, who is going to own them? Just like right now, if you don’t look, and if you just see the surface, you will probably not know that, again, Alibaba is investing in a lot of those social platforms, and WeChat is investing in others. But it’s just like in the rest of the world. Big companies always try to add allies into their camps.

So in China, there are two camps. There is Alibaba and Tencent, and I believe that’s not going to change significantly. There might be a rise of another company or two or three, but eventually, I think they will still ally with one or the other party, just like DJ did, for instance. DJ joined forces with Tencent, and they jointly recruited VIP shop. All those things are just happening. And you still remember the times when there were three players in the market. They used to call them BAT — Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

Baidu, because they are not on the social media war map, and they are also not on this new retail 100%, which is the thing that’s driving the whole digital landscape of China, so that’s why Baidu is right now losing a lot of grip on the market. They are still powerful in search. They are still powerful in location-based services, etc., but we’ll see what’s going to come of it. So that’s what I think.

In terms of the trends and more detailed trends, I think that we are about to witness a huge revolution of devices, of virtual reality, of the way consumers and marketing and sales are done. Retail is going to completely change. In the future, for example, let’s take an example… As a consumer, you have your friends. So you will be a micro-influencer. Whenever you buy something or experience something, you’re going to be sharing it in your circle. And if people around you would want to experience that as well or purchase it, both you and the other person will be rewarded.

So the marketing dollar will not necessarily go to marketing companies and advertisers. It will also be shared among the users that helped you spread that information. It’s just like Airbnb. I invite a friend — he gets a discount; I get a discount. And all that will be so seamless, the way you share your life and the way you share your experiences and what cake you ate today or where did you go or where have you spent your holiday. All those things will be so easy to share and so easy to upload and so easy to pass on. There will be codes that count it. It will be just fantastic.

Again, I think technology, in terms of hardware, will also change. I cannot imagine that in 10 years we’re still using hand-held devices, just because it’s extremely inconvenient. I believe that the huge revolution is coming into the virtual reality and augmented reality space where we’re going to see personalized augmented reality elements in our daily life that, again, are promoting services that we need, we want, that are making our life more entertaining. So it’s a little bit like Pokemon Go but for everything and anything. You could be, for example, sitting on the MTR or driving your car, but your car will be driving you, and you’re sitting there. And you could be watching a lecture of a professor through your, let’s say, glasses or lens or whatever it is, who is standing right in front of you, and he is talking to you. You can be interacting with your friend in real time, and there will be this other professor who is talking to you. It’s just crazy stuff.

I’ve seen a couple of those things at the Alibaba conference, and I’ve seen a couple of those things coming up right now also to the Greater Bay area, and with Tencent and all the other companies that are investing in it. And it’s really, really exciting. So social media is going to be definitely a huge part of all that, but the way sales and retail and marketing is done is going to change significantly.

So if you’re in any of those industries… I recently read a report by an economist, and they said that sales and marketing is going to be the biggest, most disrupted industry with the rise of AI. And AI, of course, is powering all that.

Jay: It’s so exciting. It’s funny. When you were mentioning all of those potential scenarios, I thought of all these sci-fi movies that we used to watch as kids. It’s literally right around the corner. You’d be surprised at what technology is there. Like you said, you’ve seen a lot of it out there. If you do visits to certain incubators and labs and stuff like that, you actual see this stuff. It’s literally going to be here sooner than you think.

Ashley: I mean, Jay, I was in Shanghai airport a couple of weeks back, and a hologram greeted me. A hologram. And I still remember when we used to watch Star Trek, and the hologram was like…whoa.

Jay: Absolutely. It’s so cool. Ashley, it’s been so good. I don’t want to give away too much of your book, because I want my listeners to go buy it because it has so much more value, but I appreciate you giving us a few of the major points.

Before we look to wrap up here, I want to talk about some of the things that you’re working on professionally and/or personally. You have two companies, and you’re producing a bunch of content. What are you working on this year that you’re most excited about? Anything you want to share with our audience specifically?

Ashley: Definitely. This year, as I mentioned, I’m focusing a lot on building expert status and personal brand and sharing all this information out. So I do a lot of public talks. I’ve got a website which is called AshleyTalks.com where you can see what are the upcoming talks that I’m giving worldwide, primarily in Asia but also in the Middle East, in Europe and in the United States this year.

I have a YouTube channel, and I recently started doing those documentary videos, which are about 15 minutes long, and I talk about my entrepreneurship journey. I invite people to talk about different things, from technology to China to running a business in Hong Kong to female entrepreneurship and female leadership.

Jay: It’s super high-quality, by the way. I watched a couple of them, and they’re awesome. Very well done.

Ashley: Thank you so much. So we have a professional crew doing that. I hope that by the end of the year we’re going to partner with platforms like Netflix or related platforms to actually launch them globally. So that’s all extremely exciting.

I started my podcast, which is called Ashley Talks, and I also speak with people from around the world. They’re not only from Asia. And I talk about things that I’m interested in. So I learn about storytelling, or I learn about LinkedIn marketing, or I learn about Lean In movement, this women and entrepreneurship movement in China. So super, super interesting guests. It’s a great opportunity for me to also stay on top of the topics that I’m excited about.

I’m writing another book.

Jay: No way. Amazing.

Ashley: Give me another three and a half months, Jay.

Jay: You can write three books in the time it takes another person to write one. That’s amazing.

Ashley: Well, I’m writing another book, and this time it’s going to be about women leaders. It’s going to hopefully appeal to a much broader audience because, with the first book, I think it’s a great book but, again, not everybody is interested in China and not everybody is interested in launching and doing all that stuff. So it’s definitely great for the purpose. It’s been a commercial success. It’s been a success for our companies, also propelled where I am now. People invite me to speak at huge events, and it’s now paid gigs and, all of a sudden, I’m the professional speaker. And suddenly TEDx wants me to talk and all that stuff.

But I want to write a book that shares with the people what I’ve learned in the past five years running a business and how I see women now are not empowering each other but focusing on the problem, not the solution. We have all those Me Too movements and Lean In movements. And while it’s important to talk about certain problems, I think we need to focus on the solution and focus on the good example and the kick-ass women and be there. So that’s what I’m going to write about. And I’m extremely excited about that.

So hopefully within this year, I’m going to get in front of more audiences physically — through talks, through TV, through all these video products and video programs, through podcasts or through a book.

Jay: Awesome. You’re going to hit everything. That’s a great segue into the second to last question. If you had a piece of advice for a female entrepreneur right now in Asia that is starting out, that maybe needs a little bit of guidance or just wants to springboard and maybe skip a couple of steps ahead and follow in your footsteps, what would that one piece of advice be?

Ashley: My one piece of advice for any woman or man — I don’t care for who — but whoever starts their own business, the one piece of advice is start investing in your brand. Not the brand for your company but the brand for you. Because no matter what you do later on, no matter what kind of ventures you start, throughout your life, you’re definitely going to change directions, or you’re going to have multiple businesses. So you need to invest in yourself. If you have a person that you look up to, be it Tony Robbins or Gary V. or Arianna Huffington — it doesn’t matter. See what have they done well. What was their journey? And then copy that journey. If you do exactly the things they did, you’re going to arrive either there, or you’re going to shoot past them. So seriously, just break down their success into achievable steps and go for it.

For example, if somebody you admire wrote a book, write a book. If somebody you admire started with a podcast, whatever. Just do that. That’s the first piece of advice. Put yourself out there. And I know that, for a lot of women, it’s more difficult. For men, they have willpower. They say, “Okay. I’m going to do this.” For a lot of women, it’s a lot more difficult because they constantly focus on “Oh my goodness, what are others going to say about this?” It’s very uncomfortable. “I don’t want to see myself in the media.” I’ve been there before. Just get away with your BS and just do it, because nobody cares really. Especially when you’re small. If you do something wrong, if you say something wrong, nobody cares. When you become big, and when you’re out there talking to The New York Times, then it’s much more complicated. So just do it. The earlier you start — seriously — that’s the biggest and best investment that you can start from early on.

Start a side hustle when you have a job or while you’re studying. Invest in your personal brand. Do pro bono things. Write a book. Start a podcast, no matter how small it is. Just get out to those people and do it.

The second piece of advice would be constantly, guys — and I mean it, constantly — upgrade your peer group. So the peer group are people with whom you hang out all the time, professionally or personally. I see that here in Asia. That’s absolutely not happening. People stick with the people they worked five years ago or ten years ago. I’m not saying that you should ditch your old friends. No, stay friends. But you need to constantly upgrade. So if you’re an expert, you need to be, as I call it, “date up.” So you need to reach out to people two or three levels above you. For instance, you can have a podcast, and then you can invite guests that are two or three levels above you. Invite somebody like Jack Ma or — I don’t know — Tony Robbins or Benedict Cumberbatch. I do not know. Invite them. Nine out of ten times, they’re going to say no. One will say yes, and that’s a start. So constantly work on that because that is going to have a huge impact on where you’re going to land in half a year from now. And nothing in life will propel you faster and further than these personal relationships — genuine personal relationships with those exciting, powerful people that you need to be building. And that needs to be a daily exercise.

Jay: That’s right. I will echo and agree with you.

Ashley: And you, Jay, you are, again, an example. You’ve got a fantastic network of fantastic people, and they impact you. Am I right or not?

Jay: 100%.

Ashley: Absolutely. They push you to be better. They show you what’s possible. And if you hang out with people that are not there, that are just supporting you or bragging all the time, it’s just not going to happen. So surround yourself. You have a fantastic network. That’s why you are where you are.

Jay: Absolutely. 100%. And you have to… There’s that entrepreneur saying that says, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” or something like that. It’s not comfortable.

Ashley: Definitely not.

Jay: I get scared a lot of times. I still get nervous when I’m interviewing, before I hit record on the podcast or I’m pitching a big game, I still feel it every single day. But that sort of fear is what keeps you going. And you know you’re growing because you’re stepping outside your comfort zone.

Ashley, it’s been so good. The last question is where is the place people can find you, follow you, connect with you, or learn more about what you’re doing?

Ashley: Follow me on Instagram. I’m now investing a lot of my time on Instagram. It’s Ashley.Lina or just can just google “Ashley talks.” I’m also on LinkedIn if you want to connect through a professional network. You can just check out my name — Ashley Galina Dudarenok. If you want to check out what I do, go to the website AshleyTalks.com. I’d be very, very happy to receive your message at the email that’s provided there on the website.

Jay: Fantastic. And if you are a company listening in that needs Ashley’s help, then you can find her at Alarice, I guess?

Ashley: Yeah, Alarice.com.hk or ChoZan.co.

Jay: Awesome. We’ll get that all linked up, and we’re doing a book giveaway. Thanks so much for your generosity. Audience, check the show notes. I’ll have a link there for the book contest giveaway. It will be running for a couple of weeks, so make sure that you check that out.

Ashley, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure, as always. And I wish you the best of luck. Obviously, you don’t really need it. But I can’t wait to see all the amazing stuff that you come out with — your next speech, your next talk, your next book, your next vlog, your next podcast. It’s awesome. So keep on rocking.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Jay. Thank you very, very much for having me here, and many, many, many thanks to the audience, guys. Love you all. Got get them.

Jay: Alright. Take care now.

Ashley: Bye.