220: Michael Chu on The Client Retention System That Prints Profit (LTV Framework)

Today, I’m joined by Michael Chu — a five-time 7-figure founder who’s built over $100M in sales by focusing on one thing: retention.

He believes churn isn’t a marketing problem, it’s a transformation problem. If you don’t change who your clients become, they won’t stay.

In this episode, we break down the identity shifts, expectation gaps, and retention frameworks that turn short-term customers into long-term profit.

And stay to the end, because we also unpack why retention in the AI era won’t be built on information, but on something far harder to replicate.

Mic Drop Moments

• “When mentoring businesses, I do believe that the person should be where the other person has been.” – Michael Chu
  

• “We believe that our results are our reputation, not our revenue.” – Michael Chu

• “The more we go into AI, I think the less connected people are going to start to feel.” – Michael Chu

• “Commit to continuing to grow yourself, not just the business. As you grow, the business grows.” – Michael Chu

• 00:33 Who Is Qualified to be a “Coach?”
• 03:17 Why Great Sales Reps Fail As Managers
• 08:38 Repeatable Systems Beat Unsystemized Paths
• 09:55 Will AI Kill The Coaching Industry?
• 14:01 The Pivot That Unlocked $250K Months
• 19:21 Reputation & Retention as Growth Levers
• 21:34 Compete on Results, Not Revenue
• 23:04 Why the First 72 Hours Drive LTV
• 27:03 Why McDonald’s Rarely Gets Chargebacks
• 28:27 The Emotional Cycles of Change
• 30:48 The Identity Shift That Unlocked $100K/Month
• 39:53 Increase LTV Through Customer Transformation
• 43:07 The GPS Framework for Employee Retention
• 46:58 The 3 Levers That Kill Churn
• 52:38 Why Most Training Fails (And How to Fix It)
• 55:52 Maximizing Business While Prioritizing Family
• 58:35 The Content that Conditions Mike’s Mind
• 01:00:45 3 Rules for New Entrepreneurs

Brad Weimert: Michael Chu, thank you for coming to the studio, man. It’s good to see you.

Michael Chu: Good to see you, too. I’m excited to be here.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, we grew up in the same ecosystem.

Michael Chu: Yes, sir.

Brad Weimert: Selling knives to unsuspecting housewives.

Michael Chu: Correct.

Brad Weimert: You now have Champion Development, which is a platform that has grown a tremendous amount over time, coaching coaches. I have lots of questions about that because I think, as certainly listeners know, Easy Pay Direct has like 20%-25% of our book of business are coaches, creators, consultants, whatever you want to call that space these days. As a starting point, how do you think about who is actually qualified to coach anybody, period?

Michael Chu: Yeah. Well, the fact that I coach coaches, I’ll bring it back to that. I never wanted to ever be a coach who coaches coaches. When I first saw that in the industry, coming from an industry, we got called a scam-a-lot. I was like, “If there is a scam out there, it’s coaching coaches to coach.”

Brad Weimert: Yes, yes.

Michael Chu: I know that analogy gets used a lot, well, Phil Jackson never accomplished what Michael Jordan did. And I think that’s a different type of coaching than mentorship, especially in like the business world. And so, I think when mentoring businesses, I do believe that the person should be where the other person has been. Because then there’s that type of coaching where you can be 10,000 feet above and know how to ask questions and know how to pull something out within somebody. I view that more as coaching, but I think in the business consulting space, I see that more as mentorship, and the distinction of mentorship being, “I’ve been where you want to be.”

And so, I think more people in our industry, if they’re going to call themselves a coach in the business space, should have accomplished and experienced most of the things that they’re actually teaching.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I think it’s an interesting question in general for the reasons that you just broke apart, right? Which is there’s a delineation between coaching somebody on the actions that, on subject matter expertise, versus sort of outside consultative approach to general thoughts, philosophy, strategy.

Michael Chu: Correct.

Brad Weimert: I think it’s applicable inside of a business as much as it is when you talk about running a business like that. Meaning like, should a manager be able to coach the salesperson?

Michael Chu: Sure.

Brad Weimert: Right? And you know the manager probably doesn’t know how to sell like the salesperson does.

Michael Chu: Yeah, totally.

Brad Weimert: But they can coach them on behaviors, strategy, objection handling, whatever.

Michael Chu: Correct. I was an awful sales rep. And I went on to become a pretty good manager in that sense. And so, there is that side of like being a manager is coaching. But to the point, I think you’re asking about our industry of like coaching coaches, I do think there’s obviously a lot of noise and bullsh*t of people who haven’t actually led the things that they’re claiming to help people do.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. You think?

Michael Chu: Just a few.

Brad Weimert: Well, on the flip side is I was, at least people think, I was a great salesperson, and I’m super mediocre manager, no question about it. That had to be a learned skill for me that I’m still not very good at.

Michael Chu: Why do you think that is?

Brad Weimert: I think the underpinning is the incentive structure and driver, and so I want to have control over the outcome immediately. And I know that I can do it. And so, I think that’s a common trait for salespeople. And I think managers, good managers tend to have sort of some intrinsic drive to help the people on their team succeed, and I think that that’s a requirement, but less of a focus on the direct result. I don’t know, or maybe I’m just making sh*t up.

Michael Chu: That’s an interesting take. I never thought about it from like the alignment of incentives. Can I share my take?

Brad Weimert: Yeah, totally. Yeah. That’s why you’re here.

Michael Chu: Yeah. Tell me if you’ve noticed this. A lot of the top sales reps were mid-level, if not even awful managers.

Brad Weimert: Oh, yeah.

Michael Chu: At least the story I’ve told myself over the years is because I sucked at sales, or because I sucked at something, I was able to relate to people that I was leading and managing better as they struggled as well. Anybody that I saw was like a high performing sales rep, and it came, possibly, really natural to them. When they were then put in a position to lead manager, teach somebody else, they would get, like, intrinsically frustrated that the other person can figure it out at the speed or path that they’ve figured out. Like, it came so natural to them that it almost was hard for them to then systemize or duplicate it into somebody else versus because it took me a while to get good at certain things, it almost forced me to turn how I became successful after sucking at it for a while, into like an actual model or system that somebody else at a mid-level could use to then get better results.

That’s the story I always told myself, because I think a ton of high performing coaches who then tried to coach others and were not great at it, or sales reps who were Hall of Fame level, incredible sales reps, but then we’re like mid-level managers, and I think it’s they got frustrated, or they assumed it should be easier than it really is for the 80%.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I guess I would look at that, I would think about that, the way I do think about that in this moment is the delineation between the high-performing sales rep that has sort of “innate sales skills” versus the one that develops sales skills.

Michael Chu: Exactly.

Brad Weimert: And I would think that the one that developed sales skills would still fit in the bucket that you just said, which is I learned how to do this. Let me show you how to learn how to do this.

Michael Chu: Correct.

Brad Weimert: And the flip side are the salespeople, who are the worst, who are just charismatic, fun people to be around, and so they just close, because they’re just good like that. And they’re the worst thing you can have in an organization. They don’t follow your systems. They’re not good role models, and they think through the sh*t, and they’re not. I can talk about the sales side of things forever, but it’s just any way you want to slice it, your role models follow at some point in their life, the greats, follow a regimented script to get there. Verbally, physically, in habits, whatever, they are disciplined as f*ck, if they’re going to be top of the top, no exceptions.

Michael Chu: And I’ve always told myself, other than karate and martial arts, I don’t think anything in business has come really natural to me. And because I had to learn a process and figure it out, I have felt that it has then made me both qualified in my own opinion, but also feel confident and then going to teach someone else not look at what I’m doing, but look at the process and how I got good at that thing, which I’ve then found is more duplicatable for other people, versus just saying, “Look at what I do now,” versus, “Look at the process, how I got to the point of doing what I do now.”

Brad Weimert: Yeah. How do you think about teaching to learn versus teaching once you’ve learned?

Michael Chu: Teaching to learn versus teaching once you’ve learned, can you clarify?

Brad Weimert: Sure, yeah. So, when you are forced to put something into presentation or a training program for somebody else, you’re forced to refine your thinking. And through that process, you get a lot of learning, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s why this works this way,” and you have these aha moments. Do you use your teaching and coaching of other people to learn? Or do you feel like you shouldn’t be doing it until you’ve learned a certain amount, and then that’s just sort of icing on the cake?

Michael Chu: Yeah. I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong, but I do agree that teaching, like when I’m teaching why something’s working, is when I become a better teacher, if I am understanding I think what you’re saying. Like, a lot of times, okay, I’ve helped somebody get a result, or I’ve helped myself get a result, but then when I’m forced to reverse engineer that in a way that can be presented and taught to other people, that almost always leads to a refinement of how I’m presenting it to other people. Because I find myself asking, not what is this person doing, but why is what they’re doing working. And when I can break down why they’re doing what they’re working, it becomes more duplicatable for others.

And then my brain works in like how I remember things. And a lot of my students give me sh*t about this, but my brain remembers things in like the four Vs and the five Cs in a systematic way. And as much as they give me sh*t about it, I see them living those things out regularly as part of their success.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I think a mediocre framework is far better than a great path that isn’t systematized. Definitely.

Michael Chu: Yes.

Brad Weimert: I think human nature is to want to be led and to have a structured approach to executing things. It gives them security, and despite the entrepreneur narrative that we get to make our own choices and we don’t want to listen to anybody, everybody in entrepreneurship would love it if somebody would just f*cking tell them what to do. And it worked. The problem is it’s difficult to suspend disbelief and follow somebody else’s journey unless you have tremendous conviction that actually it’s going to lead you to success, right? So, I love the frameworks, and I want to get into some of the frameworks that you have, because I think that they’re just generally very helpful and very interesting, and I think they can be applied to a lot of things.

But before we do that, we are in a world where you can learn anything from an LLM, large language model, and AI is quickly changing education at large. Is the coaching industry going away?

Michael Chu: The coaching industry as a whole, I don’t believe, as of right now, my understanding of AI, and like we were talking about pre-show, two to four weeks from now, that could be a different narrative. I don’t think the industry as a whole will go away, but the coaches that are literally just giving cookie cutter information that aren’t nuanced, that aren’t matched to align to that specific person’s business or aren’t in a deliverable where it’s valuable for the student or the client to receive the information, I think that’ll go away. So, for example, like I believe, our most valuable offer is we don’t give the information.

We have a CEO come in with what we call me plus three, so it’s them and three team members, and we both install the system into that person’s business, while making sure each of the key operators is trained on exactly what they’re doing so they can go then duplicate it back to the team, which is so much different than just we’re giving information. So, yes, I think coaching programs where they’re just giving modules and a handout and a PDF, that’s very cookie-cutter. I’m sure that’ll die if someone doesn’t innovate within a short period of time.

Brad Weimert: So, what percentage of the coaching industry do you think will disappear?

Michael Chu: That is a great question. I think the percentage would be made up. I think the coaches that don’t innovate to meet clients where they’re at and what they actually need, that’ll die. As far as my ability to predict what that actual percentage of who will innovate and who won’t, won’t look like, but if you put a gun to my head and said percentage, I think at least 70%.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. That’s the fun of this game is guessing the percentage.

Michael Chu: Yes.

Brad Weimert: I think the point is that a massive portion of the coaching industry right now is not providing a ton of value. And I mean, I can see that through the numbers of refunds and chargebacks across that industry, right? I can look at our portfolio of thousands of coaches, consultants, creators, and look at the refund and chargeback rate relative to other industries and make assessments, right?

Michael Chu: You see it in the back end, in the form of refunds. I see it in the form of other gurus and coaches of coaches that are suddenly retiring their program.

Brad Weimert: Oh, yeah. Well, you know what’s funny about that is Amy Porterfield retired her program, and without question, she is fantastic and has been fantastic at what she did. And I have not talked to her about this. She has been on Beyond A Million in the past, but the hypothesis, for me, is just the writings on the wall. Certainly, all business models are going to evolve, but I think this one’s just ripe for disruption.

Michael Chu: I like to give some of those people benefit of the doubt that maybe they really were truly called to whatever that next thing is. But I think more times than not, team bloat, they’re not having a ton of value, revenue is plateaued, slowed down, or dipped significantly, and like you said, the writing’s on the wall. And the better way to position it is, I’m being called to the next thing, and so I’m going to retire this thing here.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, I think that people that don’t headline with the benefit of the doubt for other people are often the ones you don’t want to listen to, right? So, said another way, without so many double and triple and quadruple negatives, all of the people that are giving you this clickbait bullsh*t that are accusatory towards somebody that’s in a specific situation very often have not been self-reflective and have not bothered also to dig into that other person’s world, or think about incentive structures, or what could be, which is the social media world we live in.

Michael Chu: 1,000%.

Brad Weimert: Which is just lovely. So, for you, and you talked about this a little bit, but I want to talk about your current business model a little bit, and then I want to talk about some of your frameworks. You’re in a crowded space. I mean coaching consulting, creating, coaching coaches. How do you differentiate, and what’s your unique value proposition?

Michael Chu: Well, if you know the background, which I’ll share with you, of my actual coaching business, not my coaching coaches business, but it was called the Health and Wealth Academy, and I had just finished my second direct sales job. I had gone from selling knives to selling solar systems and alarm systems.

Brad Weimert: Oh, I didn’t know that. Was that Vivint?

Michael Chu: Yeah. That was to Vivint. And we were struggling for the first two years of Vivint, and then we started to figure it out. But as we figured it out, something in my soul realized that I’m done with direct sales. Like, I’m a very disciplined guy. I started karate when I was three. I’ve won 12 national karate championships. Like, I pride myself on being pretty damn disciplined. And it was a Tuesday, and I was supposed to be going to the office, and I was on my bathroom floor, like at the time, I didn’t know like my own nervous system in my own body, but I now know to call it anxiety.

Like, I was feeling massive anxiety. I could not get myself to go to the office. And then a mutual, probably at least name between the two of us, a mentor, Jeff Gamboa, used to say to me, “When you’re lacking something, give it.” And at the time, I was lacking after 15-ish years in the direct sales industry, I was lacking any purpose or passion in my like professional side of my life. Do you remember Periscope?

Brad Weimert: Oh, yeah.

Michael Chu: So, someone introduced me to Periscope, and I just said, “If I’m lacking passion and purpose, I’m going to just give.” And I started going on Periscope one to three times a day and just teaching anything I knew about sales, recruiting, mindset, peak performance, health, anything I knew, and knew nothing about social media at all. And in turn, I got my first client who said, “Can you help me balance this like I want to make more money, but I’m also, as I’m getting in my 20s and 30s, getting into worse and worse shape in my life.” And that was my first client. So, I was just like, “All right, maybe I’m onto something,” which led to the Health and Wealth Academy. Over the next year and a half, I got one more client. So, two years, I have two clients, at which point I’m like…

Brad Weimert: Good job, buddy.

Michael Chu: I’m figuring this thing out. And so, you asked me what’s my unique positioning in the coaching space. I finally figured it out in that third year. We grew to 60K to 80K a month that year. I had less than 5,000 followers. So, I think people automatically assume you have to have massive following. We were doing that with no ads, and we grew very quickly once we started to figure out some of the content conversion types of things.

Brad Weimert: And I would imagine the team was basically nothing at that point.

Michael Chu: Yeah. It was me, an EA, and a setter.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, which means that just for people that aren’t good at math here, most of that is profit.

Michael Chu: 80%. Yeah. But here’s where the unique positioning of what we teach coaches now, I think, really came into play. We were having so much momentum to a right on the fringe of that million-dollar earmark, 60K to 80K a month, and doing that consistently. And I was like, “We’re going to be at 100K to 200K a month in no time.” And for a year and a half, we stayed at 60K to 80K. I invested $165,000 in all the “big names” that we all probably know, that coach coaches, how to do ads, how to do funnels, how to do master classes, and everything like that. And we yielded $1,500 return on that 165K plus ad spend.

And I think most people would automatically assume, “Well, you probably suck at sales.” I like to think I’m decent at sales but then read my background. Most people might think like, “Your offer suck,” but we were generating 60K to 80K a month consistently from organic. And that’s what I realized with an audience less than 5,000 followers, I don’t know if I was going to get to 100K to 300K a month, 100K to 200K a month, just from more top of funnel stuff. And so, I remember, I went back to New Jersey, where I grew up, and I sat in the bedroom of my parents’ house, and I started to evaluate some of the stuff that I was being taught by most of the gurus at that time.

And there was a phrase in some of the copy that I was given that said, “After these 12 weeks of working with me, you will never need to hire a trainer or a coach ever again.” And I sat with that because I started karate when I was three. I’m 40 today, and I still train karate. And I’m like, “Do I even believe that?” And the answer was no. It’s bullsh*t. That’s just hopeful marketing. That’s just really good copy. And so, I redesigned the model of my business to optimize for both front-end sales and back-end LTV. And we revamped the whole model after that. And in the next 6 to 12 months, we went from that 60K to 80K ceiling, and we jumped to 200K to 250K a month consistently.

At this point, maybe we’re at like 8,000 to 10,000 followers. But the point is, yeah, we weren’t crushing top of funnel with going viral, and all the traditional things, I think, most people would expect a business to get to in our industry, at least of that size. And for me, what was unique is we learned to be really efficient on the front end, because we didn’t have massive traffic and volume, but also very optimized on the back end, and I think the two combined together is what finally led to an explosion to the next level.

Brad Weimert: I like to say that it’s very easy to sell stuff when you don’t have to deliver on what you’re promising.

Michael Chu: Yes.

Brad Weimert: When you make a claim like work with me for 12 weeks, and you’ll never need a coach again, I think that fits that bucket. How do you compete in a space with your messaging on the front end to ensure that you’re filling that promise and still thriving?

Michael Chu: I want to make sure I understand the question. How do you compete when everybody is making such big promises?

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Michael Chu: Well, I think we and any coach can compete in a couple of ways. One, if you’re truly in this, I hate to judge good or bad, right or wrong, but if you’re truly in this to help people, not just to fill your pockets as quick as possible, then I believe most coaches who are getting into this for the “right reasons” are probably playing the long-term game. And the first way you compete is through your reputation. I think at some point, goodwill has to be being said about your name in rooms that you’re not even in, and that’s built through reputation in the long term. And so, that’s one way that I believe that we’ve competed over the years.

But the second way you compete is it’s really hard to not keep growing if you’re never losing customers, because over a longer time horizon, if you’re keeping all the customers from the year before, and then you’re still adding customers on, even if it’s not to the volume that other people with 100K a month in ad spend, or other people with 500,000 followers are adding on, there comes a point where you will start to beat them simply through compounding. Or even if you’re not beating them, you will grow through compounding.

Brad Weimert: Okay. This is the interruption where I’m supposed to take money and let somebody else advertise on the podcast, but I don’t really want to do that. So, I’m going to remind you that I also own EasyPayDirect.com, and if you’re a business that’s accepting credit cards or needs to, you should understand why we have thousands of people a year come to us off of platforms like Stripe or PayPal, and why they prefer Easy Pay Direct. You can check us out at epd.com/bam. That’s epd.com/bam.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I want to hit them both of those. So, the first is, over the years, I’ve had been in conversations with people who think that Tony Robbins is a bullsh*t guru or whatever, right? That he is the poster child for bullsh*t coaches. And my commentary around that grew to be, and by the way, Tony has had like a profound impact on my life.

Michael Chu: Mine as well.

Brad Weimert: His work has, not him personally, necessarily, but my commentary grew to be, look, he’s been doing this for 40 years. You cannot exist in the space that he’s existed in for 40 years with the positive. You can’t even exist in the space with any press if you don’t impact people positively. You would be gone, right? It would catch up with you in the world today. The second question, though, is what do the first seven days of delivery look like to tee up good delivery when you know that the final product’s not going to be delivered in seven days, right, and that you’ve got a long road ahead of you? How do you create a client experience that you know is going to take a long time, but keep them engaged, happy, and optimistic of the future?

Michael Chu: Yeah. So, I’ll tie that in by answering the last question, and then to the next thing, how I think we compete and stand out is we believe that our results are our reputation, not our revenue. In the coach’s space, at least on social media, I think most people try and win by blasting their company’s revenues. We did 500K last month. We did 10 million. So, obviously, we should know how to help you succeed. But I don’t think necessarily a company’s individual revenue automatically equals their ability to get you results. So, we believe our results that we get other students are our reputation long term, not our own company’s revenue.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. I have to say this. I had somebody try to get on the show a couple of months ago. He probably hit us up seven times, and he was like, “Yeah, I’ve raised $310 million,” and I’m like, “Bro, the fact that the metric you want to show me is the money that you’ve taken from investors, and you’re not highlighting the revenue that you made or the profit made, you’re not coming on.”

Michael Chu: Troubling.

Brad Weimert: Yes, you’re not coming on. 100%. Sorry.

Michael Chu: So, to answer your question about that first seven days, in your pre-show, we’re talking about how when there’s an expectation gap is where you see charge effects. So, one of the frameworks we teach people for good delivery that leads to long-term LTV. I think a lot of people think LTV or retention, if you just want to call it that, I think people think that happens at the exit, at the end of someone’s program. Like, alright, time to talk about your next level program. But the truth is good retention or good LTV starts at the entrance or the beginning of something, that first 72 hours, that first seven days. And to me, it’s a gap in expectations.

And so, we teach a framework of E = E. Does the person’s experience match their expectations? But I think most people give expectations the wrong way, right? They want to tell people their top student results as the expectation, because they think if I tell people the results I’ve gotten people, they’ll have good expectations of the results we’re going to get them. I actually tell people the worst results we’ve gotten people. So, if that happens, they’re not surprised that that was a possibility. So, we teach people the framework of best-worst-average. Also, we sometimes call it 10-80-10, top 10%, bottom 10%, 80 average.

So, for example, in my weight loss program, we’ll say, “Hey, welcome to the Health & Wealth Academy. We just want to set a couple of expectations, first and foremost, and that’s number one: you’re not going to get permanent results from 16 weeks with us. Any coach who’s told you that is lying to you. Think about the number of diets that you’ve done where you lost weight, and then you put it all back on. The truth is it takes a couple of years to transform like your lifestyle and identity. It only takes a couple of months to transform your habits. The first phase program is about your habits. The next part of our curriculum is your lifestyle and your identity.” So, we just want to start with that expectation right off the bat.

Because of that, and then we’ll give bottom 10% results, and I think a lot of coaches stare at me like I’m crazy when they first teach them this. One of the first things we say is we like, “Let me tell you about a student named Mike. In his first 16 weeks with us, his goal was to lose 25 pounds, and he lost zero.” He easily could have been like, “Mike, this is a scam. I want my money back. This didn’t work.” Mike actually goes, because we set the right expectation with them, after 16 weeks, he goes, “Mike, I know I didn’t lose the weight I wanted. But because of the way your coaching is designed, it forced me to get really honest with myself and really self-aware about where I get in my own ways. And I think in the last six weeks or so, I’ve started to finally figure out why I’m inconsistent, and my habits are starting to, like, actually get more consistent.”

He retained into our next-level program. He ended up staying with us for three to four years. He lost all 20 to 30 pounds, but it transformed who he is from the inside out, not just the scale, that he now travels the world speaking to veterans, because he’s a veteran himself, about how to prioritize your mental and physical health after serving. He would have never had the transformation he did if we didn’t set proper expectations right off the bat. Then we might say, “Yes, I’ve had a student, Alan. He lost 30 pounds in his first 30 days. But let’s be really clear that when someone tells you those types of results, why that might not be the results for you. He had 120 pounds to lose.”

So, yeah, losing 30 pounds. But I’ll also tell you why he lost the 30 pounds. He didn’t miss a single workout we told him to do for the first 30 days. He showed up to every coaching call, and the days we asked him to track his nutrition and hit certain targets, 30 straight days on the mark. Of course, he’s going to get better results when he’s being that type of student. So, let’s talk about the 80% average that you can expect during your time here. You can expect probably half a pound to a pound per week.

So, regardless if someone does weight loss or make money coaching or whatever, I think most people just set expectations poorly because they’re only telling people the top 10% results because then they think it’ll validate to the person who just bought, “Oh, I made the right decision, because he’s telling me someone else got results,” but you’re actually setting yourself up for friction and failure later. Because when that isn’t 80% of people’s experience right out the gate, they’re going, “Sh*t, this isn’t what I expected.”

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. For anybody that has a business that’s listening, I want you to apply this to training staff, managing staff, managing your own internal expectations for what you do in life, trying to create change in your own life. This isn’t about how you run a coaching program. It’s about how the fundamental human incentives and the messaging around it creates the output, right? Connects to the end.

Michael Chu: I’m a big believer that people don’t actually care what their experience could be as much as they care that you told them that could be part of their experience.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I completely agree with you. I think that there are examples of this all over the world, but one of them is that we talk about inside of payments is we do this in the beginning of training. Do you think that McDonald’s is the best hamburger in the world?

Michael Chu: Of course, not.

Brad Weimert: No. It’s f*cking terrible, and it is one of the most low-risk propositions in the credit card processing industry. Nobody ever charges back McDonald’s. Why? Because they know exactly what they’re going to get when they go in.

Michael Chu: For sure.

Brad Weimert: A trash-ass burger really fast, right? That’s part of the gig. But I think that that’s very true. And in sales, one of the things that you learn early on is that you can deliver anything with a smile, and that’s the same thing, right? No matter what the news is, good, bad, different, ugly, if you do it with a smile, it changes how somebody internalizes that message.

Michael Chu: Yeah, I think of even like our coaching coaches, so it’s more business results. One of the first two things we tell people during their onboarding is we go… You know the emotional cycles of change?

Brad Weimert: Tell me.

Michael Chu: It’s the multiple phases. They find that no matter what you’re developing, whether you’re trying to learn the piano, learn how to do Jiu Jitsu, or learning to grow a business, a human being is going to go through a couple of different emotional cycles of that change. It’s going to start off with uninformed optimism, “I don’t know what the f*ck I’m getting into, but I’m excited. I believe in where I’m going.” But there’s stage two and stage three of learning something that not a lot of people want to address as a reality. Stage two is called informed pessimism, and it’s like, “All right, I understand what this is really going to take now, and I’m a little pessimistic about how much harder this is going to be than I thought, how much longer this is going to be than I thought, et cetera.”

And for most human beings, that leads to the third stage, which is really what determines whether or not someone’s going to be successful or not. And they call that the valley of despair. And you have a choice at the valley of despair. Push forward until you actually get said transformation, or quit, start back over. And that’s why most people live in a cycle of stage one through three, over and over and over and over again. So, when we onboard people, we show that to them and we say, “We don’t wonder if you’re going to get to the valley of despair at some point with us. We just wonder what day it’s going to be, and whatever day that happens, I want you to know what I’m going to say to you, and I’m going to say congratulations, because we’ve been waiting for this day.

Because this is the day that we get to determine whether or not you’re going to get the result you came here for. And so, I need to know, how do you want me to talk to you when you’re wanting to ghost, quit, and give up? Can you tell me now, so we’re in agreement what that looks like? So, we set an expectation of that day the person wants to quit. That’s number one. And then number two, going back to the results, expectations, I tell a story about a guy named Adrian. I go, “Adrian, in his first 16 weeks, told me he was going to make $100,000. He made zero.” Luckily, Adrian was developing his skills, developing standards, and developing routines. By month six, he was starting to get some momentum and made some sales.

He then moved into our second phase program. By the time he was done, with 12 months with us, he had made $100,000, made zero in the first four-month program with us. I truly believe if we didn’t set expectations for him, that that was possible, that he might make nothing in the first 16 weeks, he would have never made the full $100,000.

Brad Weimert: Sure. So, yeah, I think one of the big takeaways that I think is super relevant, I have two things that are tied together here is you outline, change your habits, then change your identity. And those are two distinctly different phases. You can say you want to be somebody different, but you have thousands or millions of data points indicating “who you are,” and that’s your identity. That’s how you see yourself. And so, on the front end, the first thing you do is, despite your identity, you change your habits, and eventually, over time, you’ve got the habits in, but you’ll still be pulled for quite a long time to like, “Yeah, but that other thing’s fun. Yeah, but I like doing that. Yeah, but this other way I did things. Yeah, but those people I hung out with.”

And you have tons of emotions that are wrapped up in that. And that is the period of time that is when you need to change your identity. Often, that is correlated with that valley of despair.

And said another way, the moment that you start to feel something is difficult, past the habits, sometimes in the habits, but past the habits, you find what seems like, oh, this is the first time I’m experiencing this emotion after I’ve developed the habit. Anytime you feel yourself in that place of this sucks, I don’t want to do it, that’s your cue.

Michael Chu: Yeah, exactly.

Brad Weimert: That’s your cue that you are changing yourself there.

Michael Chu: Because it’s easier to go back to what you’re comfortable with.

Brad Weimert: You got it.

Michael Chu: The identity you’re comfortable with. If I can share a story, when I got to 60k to 80k a month, I was telling everybody we’re going to be at 100k a month before we know it. And I shared that I went and invested in other mentors and blah, blah, blah. I’m the type that takes responsibility for all my own results. And I try to believe I’m 100% at agency for what I create. And so, yes, the strategies I was being taught yielded $1,500 in growth. We didn’t get to 100k.

One of the other reasons why I believe what we do with clients is different than just giving strategies is we do focus on, are they transforming their identity? Because I believe identity dictates what we normalize and what we expect. And we get in life not what we say we want. We get what we actually believe is safe or normalized in what we expect. So, the reason I share that is because what finally, between strategy and something clicked and finally got us to 100k a month, I was on a walk with a somatic therapist, like feeling in my nervous system. And I was talking to them about 100k.

And her name’s Tess. And she said, “Can you just close your eyes and tell me what your body feels when you actually picture making 100k a month?” And I thought it was really interesting. I said, “Well, it feels really tight. That’s for damn sure. Like, that doesn’t feel safe.” And she goes, “Well, what does your body remember or feel or focus on when you think of 100k in a month?” And I never saw this coming, as a pretty pragmatic, logical guy, like the emotional part was really not my forte at first, but now I’m a big believer in it because I see the results it’s yielded for me too.

And I said, “I’m picturing my dad when I used to get dropped off at my rich friend’s house making commentary in the background of like, ah, freaking rich family here. They probably make six figures.” And he would make this commentary about people who made six figures as if it was a bad thing. And so, my body is responding to, if my dad didn’t love, didn’t accept people who made 100k in a year, what’s my dad going to feel about me if I make 100k in a month? And this coach like has me sit with it until I can start to process that fear, that friction, that feeling of that not being safe.

And Brad, when I tell you all the strategies that I’ve been paying for hadn’t yielded the result yet. Thirty days after the session, we did 100k cash the next month. And leading up to this point, we had had a 98k month. We had had a 92k month and 88k month. So, it wasn’t for a lack of like being close, it wasn’t for a lack of effort. And I’m sharing this story because I do think the identity part gets overlooked sometimes, that people can have all the work ethic and strategy in the world, but if they don’t have evidence or proof that that is who they are and that that’s what they expect, a lot of times they still won’t get over the hump with the external result.

Brad Weimert: So, I would be remiss to not click into that and say, okay, but what tactically changed once you had that experience?

Michael Chu: My beliefs and expectations.

Brad Weimert: So, then what behaviors manifested as a result, right? How did your beliefs and expectations translate into actions, whether they were things that you started doing or things that you stopped doing that produce more revenue?

Michael Chu: So, the version of me who felt comfortable staying below 100k a month, believe the harder I work, the more I’ll make. But I had to, and I believe that identity is made up of skill sets and beliefs for the most part, right? Expectations, beliefs, et cetera. And so, the new set of beliefs I had to adopt, if I’m going to be 100k a month to whatever number, right, month leader is not the harder I work, the more I make, but the better my leadership and systems, the more we’re going to make.

And so, I went on a rampage for the next 30 days, and the next really two years on everything was about leadership development and system creation in such a way that people could get as good of results as me, if not better. And that goes back to a mutual friend of ours, Justin Donald, back to our very first business. He gave me that advice back at that business. And that advice is also what took that organization to the next level. I had an expectation at the time that like nobody can do it as good as me, but I remember we were at a conference once and he said, oh, my belief about development of people is I develop people with one commitment. And that is that they are as good as me, if not better than me.

And from that point forward, I tapped back into that in this business and I got back to like, yeah, you’re right. I’ve been trying to hold onto everything. The behavioral change needs to be, I need to trust my leaders to go perform at a higher level, pair that with my emotional belief that 100k is now absolutely safe and possible. And I truly believe those two things combined is what started to take us to the next level.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I have a very hard time with what I’m going to lovingly put into the bucket of woo-woo bullsh*t.

Michael Chu: Totally.

Brad Weimert: And I want to talk more about woo-woo bullsh*t that you might believe that has yielded good results at some point. But I think that one of the reasons that I have a hard time with it is because so many people hide behind these woo-woo experiences about what is or what isn’t or what could be and who they are, but they’re not producing anything.

Michael Chu: For sure.

Brad Weimert: And so, they’re using it as a safety blanket instead of doing difficult work. And they call it the hard work, but they’re not actually growing through it in a way that is evident to the rest of the world. So, what it changed for you, and I think the reason I wanted to hit on it is because what it changed for you was a different mindset, but it changed your belief system to allow you to say, hey, I want to invest in the other people. It’s not important that I’m hitting all these little things day in, day out with discipline. It’s more important that I’m funneling into the leadership team because they’re a bigger lever.

And the reason I think it’s important to highlight is because I don’t actually care what your mechanism for change is as an entrepreneur or as a leader. But what you do need to realize is probably what you’re doing currently isn’t yielding the result you want if the results you want isn’t there, right? And so, then the question is, how do you get to the place where you can change that?

Michael Chu: Yeah. And the woo-woo part for me, I think just unlocked or what, in the woo-woo world they might call something else came online. I think the woo-woo part just allowed the other part of me to come online to go, wow, my beliefs aren’t matching up with the version of me that needs to be here, because I’m also in agreement with you. I grew up in an Asian household, in a militant martial arts background, like you were told to not have feelings in that way. Yeah, so the woo-woo part is a healthy, I now am a believer of a healthy dash and dose of it, but it better be backed up with strategies or logic or systems or results to back up the woo-woo side. But for me, the reason I tell that story is the woo-woo part, added that last like 1% to bring that next part of me online, which then led to the belief upgrades and the systems upgrades and the strategic upgrades.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I also firmly believe that if something’s working, I don’t have to explain to you why it’s working.

Michael Chu: Sure.

Brad Weimert: I don’t give a sh*t. I do acupuncture every other week. Every explanation that an Eastern medicine person gives me about acupuncture, I’m like, you’re f*cking crazy. For sure. There’s no f*cking system of Chi through my body. What I do know though is for sure, unequivocally, I feel significantly better from it. So, I don’t give a sh*t. You can tell me about all this stuff while I’m laying on the table. It’s great. Fantastic. Put the f*cking needles in me. We’re good. and maybe I tricked myself into believing that too. Like, I’m open to the idea of this being a self-created reality.

Michael Chu: For sure.

Brad Weimert: Don’t care about that either. If I’m convincing myself that this is producing the result and it’s producing the result, keep doing it. Absolutely. I love that. Okay, so back to some of the practical elements of creating more LTV, it sounds like at this point, you have really doubled down on how do I create a better client experience to create more lifetime value for the client, so that it creates more lifetime value in revenue for the company?

Michael Chu: I love how you put it that way because I think when people talk about LTV, it’s automatically like, how much more revenue is it going to generate the business? And I had someone say to me recently, they said, how you teach LTV is mind blowing because anyone else I’ve talked to or heard about LTV, they talk about LTV, at least in the coaching space. They talk about it in the terms of months, maybe quarters. You talk about it in the terms of years, even decades.

And I’m pointing that out because I don’t believe in LTV, just so I can get more revenue. I believe in LTV because I understand the science of human transformation. There’s a reason why high school is four years and college is four years and medical school is four to seven years, because most studies have found, whether you’re reading Atomic Habits or studying Tony Robbins’ stuff or who, it doesn’t matter, like most of them say some version of it takes two to seven years to transform an identity.

So, I’m actually just a believer in most types of coaching businesses that we’re actually just doing people a disservice by not having a curriculum or a road map that someone could opt into for that long if they wanted to. Nobody has to stay for that long. But I actually think we’re just doing them a disservice.

Let’s use weight loss as an example. The number of weight loss programs that have helped people lose weight and then they put it all back on, I think that’s a disservice to people. So, why wouldn’t I have a second phase that says, now that you’ve learned how to get some of the weight off, let’s learn how to keep it off through cold weather, warm weather, stress at work, holidays, vacations, breakups, like promotions. Like, why not learn to actually do that until it starts to become part of your identity?

And so, to your point, yes, I believe the byproduct of the Jim Rohn or different quotes, you help enough people get what they want, you’ll in turn get what you want. I believe LTVs should be built on the service that we are providing of transformation to other people. Whether it’s business coaching, whether it’s B2C, personalized transformation coaching, there’s three stages and phases of development.

Brad Weimert: You mentioned a whole bunch of different use cases for this, and I want to talk about those three stages. But you talked about different sort of versions of coaching and personal life implementation of this and where my head was wandering while you were going through those was we internally at Easy Pay Direct talk about the client experience and we talk about the staff experience. And I think when you think about the client experience, which is what we’re saying, the longest lifetime value economically should be paired with creating a long lifetime value or a long client experience.

Similarly, we look at what the staff experience is, and the staff experience is both how they implement the client experience and then what their experience is as a company. And one way to put that into play as I’m thinking through this is like, what is your career arc inside the company? And if you’re not laying out a game for a new employee that’s longer than your 30, 60, 90-day plan, you’re f*cking up pretty hard. And I am far from great at this. But it is becoming very evident through this conversation that that’s a tremendous opportunity to think about everybody, whether it’s your vendors that you work with, your staff that you’re training, or your clients.

Michael Chu: Well, I want to speak to two things about that. I don’t believe retention is actually about retaining people because retaining people has a bit of a scarcity energy to it. Like I have to keep and hold on to people. Whether it’s employees or whether it’s clients, I think people should move on when it truly is aligned with what’s next and best for their life. So, retention to me is actually about recommitting people to the bigness of the vision of their life so they can identify if what we provide here to an employee or what we provide here to a client aligns with where they’re going next. That’s the first thing.

And that brings me back to like our selling knives days. I mean, the average turnover there is six days or whatever. And so, I remember having to ask myself like, is it that I just have to get people to make more money faster and then they’ll stay? And interestingly enough, that doesn’t always actually lead to longer term. And so, if you were to go to that Bible quote where there is no vision, people will perish. And so, I’m a big believer that retention in LTV is a byproduct of constantly revisiting the GPS, right?

Just like a GPS in your car, you keep looking at it so you know if you’re in the right place and you’re going to where you’re heading in the direction of where you’re going. And so, whether it’s employees, which I also believe I have pretty good employee retention and employee LTV, if you were to call it that, and clients, it’s, is there a cadence where you’re regularly reconnecting with that person about where they are, or we call it where they’ve been? Well, when you first started here, you said you want blank, where they were, where they are, how do you feel about that today? Based on where you feel you’re at today, where are we going? So, where you were, where you are, where you’re going.

And I’m a believer that most people don’t jump off moving trains, trains that they believe are moving in the right direction of where they’re wanting to go. I am a believer that most people just need to be shown that the train’s still moving and moving the direction where they want to go, right? You’ve been on like subways and trams before. Imagine being on a subway that doesn’t have those little lights of the map. I would get really anxious, like, sh*t, am I supposed to get off on this next stop?

Brad Weimert: I get anxious with the lights.

Michael Chu: Right, exactly. Did I miss the stop? Those stops help me know, okay, I came from here. Here’s where we are, three stops from now. And it helps me like settle a little bit. And I think that a lot of times, clients and employees need that. Where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going, and then I call it the GPS. Okay, so based on where we’re at right now, what are your goals? Are we still aligned to work together, whether it’s client, whether it’s employee? P, what are the problems that are stopping you from getting to where you want to be? Do we still provide that? Do we still deliver on that?

And if so, S, let’s create a solution, let’s create a strategy to get you there. And so, that’s why I think from that energy, retention’s not about retaining employees or clients, it’s about recommitting them to, we’re aligned about where we’re still going from here.

Brad Weimert: I love that, goal…

Michael Chu: Problem or pain.

Brad Weimert: Problem or pain, solution.

Michael Chu: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Awesome. GPS. What, why, how, now, wow. That’s another framework that I heard you talk about that I love, that I’d love for you to explain.

Michael Chu: Yeah. I’m going to double tap on one last thing and we’ll move into that one.

Brad Weimert: Great.

Michael Chu: You asked earlier, coaches, how many coaching programs will die out in the coming time? And you had said something, I forget what triggered it, but with AI and all that type of stuff, I’m also a big believer that LTV and retention is a byproduct of belonging. Where we can get people to feel like they belong, we actually increase how much they believe, believe this is the place for them. So, I do think one of the unique selling propositions we offer and one of the unique selling propositions coaching programs that will survive and thrive, at least in this next one to five years, are fostering community, not just curriculum, right? I mean, the more we go into AI, I think the less connected people are going to start to feel. It’s at least a hypothesis or theory that I have.

And so, yes, we want to provide a curriculum for success, but do we also create a place where people feel connected, they feel like they’re a part of community? And so, another framework we teach is like people get breakthroughs in LTV when they believe in the result they’re going to get and they feel like they belong. When they only have one of the two, they get decent results, but they don’t always have outstanding LTV. So, I just wanted to double tap on that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I love that. I think that that’s worth actually opening up a little bit further too, because I know from all of the different coaching, consulting, creator, businesses we work with, how many of them have a big community component and how much community has become a part of that model over the course of the last couple years? Also, of course, if you’re running a company and you don’t have a sense of community within the company, you have no culture in the company. And those companies are not fun to work at.

Michael Chu: Totally.

Brad Weimert: So, what levers do you pull on? What mechanical things do you do to make sure that you’re creating community through the client or staff experience?

Michael Chu: Yeah. Early relationships, vulnerability, tribe. So, I forget which study was it, Facebook, Google, or something like that. I think it was Facebook that was like, if somebody creates a Facebook account and has seven friends within seven days or something like that, they stay with Facebook for life. If they don’t have seven friends within seven days, they never log back in ever again. I might be misquoting the statistics of that, but we believe in the same thing.

I think I saw another thing. Google ran, at least supposedly, they ran this massive study about the retention of their employees. And it was something like, and it was a study about many things. This was just one of the things that was drawn out of the study. A Googler that believes they have three friends at work stays on average for five years or something like that. A Googler who doesn’t feel like they have three friends by the end of six months leaves within a year.

And so, one of the first things we do is we try and create connections, whether it’s through cohorts, whether it’s through group calls. We don’t just talk at the people on a group call. We try and get people to connect. We try and intentionally connect people, hey, this person’s kind of– this person I’m going to connect you with was in your exact shoes a year ago, and now they’re back. They also live in the same town. I’m going to connect you.

Number two, we try and foster an environment for vulnerability so that other people go, oh, my gosh, finally someone like me, because I’m a believer, Brad, that most of the time what feels most personal is actually very universal. I’m struggling. I don’t think I’m good enough. I can’t figure this out. But a lot of times, when we join communities, at least me, I believe I have a little bit of like a never good enough like syndrome within me. So, no matter what room I step into, I think I’m not this enough, not that enough, not that enough.

But my point in sharing that is I think a lot of people step into big masterminds in rooms that way. Like everybody else is crushing it, but me. So, we try and foster an environment where even some of the top performers are like, yeah, this last 30 days I was feeling really burnt out. Or man, I ran my last marketing campaign that you guys gave me. Every campaign before this has popped off, popped off, popped off. This last one, flopped. Like we try and create a space where that’s natural so other people go, oh, my gosh, me too. But not like crabs in the bucket me too, but more like, okay, I’m not the only one that’s going through challenges and I now am seeing how that person’s responding to those things.

And then lastly, tribe, like you said, most companies that don’t have community and tribe, they’re not fun to work at. And so, when I teach this to coaches, I think sometimes they think, oh, I need to run these three-day retreats. That’s not the only way to build connection and community and tribe, but like, are you creating an identity of what it’ll mean to be a part of this tribe? Do you have clear values of what it means to be part of this place? Do you have clear standards and culture and characteristics where simply by being a part of your organization, I become a better person? And I think that for me is like tribe. When you’re around the right people, they bring out a better version of yourself. That’s the thing. So, early connections, a place for vulnerability where they feel seen and not alone, and then they feel like being a part of this tribe makes them a better version of themselves.

Brad Weimert: That’s awesome. Yeah, I have to underscore how valuable it is to have a framework like that for people to follow.

Michael Chu: Every business, whether it’s direct sales organizations I was leading or companies I actually own today, those three things are reasons that I believe we won. Going back to every business I said, I wasn’t talented at really any business, from sales businesses on, but we won over the long term because of compounding, because people saw this was a place they wanted to be a part of. And so, by the time you’re at two years, three years, five years, yeah, it is hard to compete with a team like that that keeps compounding versus a business over here is a revenue revolving door. Like, all right, ads, got 20 more sales, but those 20 customers were gone by the next month. And it feels more like a revolving door or a roller coaster. That business will probably beat me in the first 12 months. But by month 36, month 60, right, all staying kind of equal, that’s where I’ll start to compete, if you want to call it that, or start to match those levels.

Brad Weimert: Well, this plays directly into what, why, how, now, wow.

Michael Chu: Yes.

Brad Weimert: So, I, in prep for this, listened to an interview you did where you broke this down. And I thought it was so applicable too. So, this, you were explaining this relative to how you create course material and how you get people engage in the courses. But this framework applies to training employees, onboarding new employees, any customer journey. And I thought it was awesome. So, break that down for me.

Michael Chu: Yeah. We’ve all been parts of trainings, coaching modules, et cetera, where the deliverables were underwhelming or didn’t lead to a result. And a lot of times, I believe it’s because how it’s being taught is lacking one of those ingredients. Maybe they’re just teaching what to do, but they’re not really selling you on why to do it. So, you go, good, good information, but you don’t believe enough to actually take action. So, what am I going to teach you to do? Why this is important and why this is important now, right?

Then I’m going to show you specifically how, because a lot of people teach the what and never really give the how. And that’s why I was saying earlier the fact that I believe I sucked at a lot of things and had to figure out how to get good, I think that’s where I win in deliverable. That’s where I teach in coaching is I believe I’m able to give the 80%, not your top 10% that’s going to succeed no matter what, but like, I’m able to give the 80% of framework of how to actually go implement this. So, what, why, how.

Now, what should you do? Clear action step and trying to keep that as simple as possible. And then the wow part is, can I give them some sort of done for you template to remove as much of the guesswork, remove as much of the thinking as possible, whether that’s through custom GPTs these days, whether that’s done for you templates, whether that’s exact scripts, whether that’s clear, like whatever it is. Like, can I give them something where they go, wow, you actually gave me the thing to get started and it removed a lot of the friction for me to take action?

Brad Weimert: Yeah. And I think that wow can probably be anything, like you’re talking about the wow relative to a course module.

Michael Chu: Sure.

Brad Weimert: But if you’re talking about training or onboarding a new employee, anything that’s going to leave them with sort– it’s sort of the shock and awe component of any deliverable, right? If you have the shock and awe, it leaves you feeling great about the experience. Yeah, I think that’s great.

Michael Chu: Even in training employees, the wow doesn’t have to be enjoyable either.

Brad Weimert: Right. Okay. Well, tell me about that.

Michael Chu: The wow could be okay. I just taught, like, let’s say I’m talking to a classroom. All right, that’s how we handle objections here at blah, blah, blah company. Sally, you think you got that? Great. Come up to the front.

Brad Weimert: Oh, sh*t.

Michael Chu: Let’s drill for Skill It Live. And then there’s like a, oh, wow, okay, I don’t have this down yet. So, sometimes the wow doesn’t have to be enjoyable. The wow has to be, oh, sh*t. Like, okay.

Brad Weimert: The shock, not the awe.

Michael Chu: Yeah, correct. And that’s how people grow, right? People don’t grow just learning it in their head. I tried to learn jiu-jitsu just in my head for years. That’s why I had a white belt for 10 years.

Brad Weimert: That’s rough.

Michael Chu: I don’t want to get on the mat, actually, like, do the damn thing, but that’s where the wow happens.

Brad Weimert: Well, in our last little bit here, talk about how this applies to you as a human, as an entrepreneur, and how your life intersects with this. How do you think about maximizing business while prioritizing family?

Michael Chu: Maximizing business while prioritizing family. Going back to the identity part of the conversation, the two were in conflict for the first four to five years. Me and my now wife had kids, so I’ll start there. I was not doing a good job of intersecting the two, but through a byproduct of great men around us, Jon Vroman’s Front Row Dads models that I’m so blessed and grateful to have around me, I realized that it was an identity thing. And I grew up in a household of dual working. I grew up in a household of a lot of what I would call financial scarcity. And I grew up in an environment where I was hearing a lot of beliefs subconsciously put into me of things like, women are just going to take advantage of you, right? Or they’re just in it for the money, or they’re all going to leave, or stuff like that.

And I’m sharing that part because it was hard for me to see how business did optimize with family and vice versa until I addressed the fact that, hmm, why am I having so much resistance in fully owning the identity of provider. Like, provider to me in the sense of like, I got everything – financially, emotionally, physically, I provide. And there were times where I had all the dollars to provide and I still said no, right? Like, no, I still want you to at least cover this. And it created a bit of safety for me of like, what if she does leave her? Maybe she isn’t to get everything.

So, to answer your question, it’s been a long two, three-year journey that I’m actually very proud of today in developing this version of me that owns fully and feels completely at peace with being a provider and how it answers your question full circle. When I owned the identity of provider, the business only grew and profited more because I saw direct purpose behind. If I help enough people win here, the plates and mouths at home are fed, and the two were intertwined together.

Now, yes, there’s all sub things underneath there of like, do I make sure I put my family first before the business? Am I home at dinner? Am I taking weekends off? Am I present with family and being a great dad? Like, that’s all a part of it. But to just like go to the first part of why the two were not intertwined for a while is because I had a lot of going back to the identity conversations, a lot of, I guess you call them beliefs that weren’t serving me and seeing how the two could be very directly intertwined.

Brad Weimert: What’s your personal media diet? What do you listen to? What do you follow? What do you watch? How do you think about curating that?

Michael Chu: Yeah. A lot of worship music in the morning. I believe, this is the story I tell myself, I have very negative self-talk by nature. Martial arts is an independent sport, like an individual sport. And in the type of martial arts I grew up in, like, perfection was the only standard you were striving for. And so, therefore, you were never actually good enough. So, I think I was raised with a lot of like very harsh self-talk. And I can wake up first thing in the morning and already be like beating myself up.

And so, for me, it’s 3 to 10 minutes of worship music, just while I’m brushing my teeth to ground me back into where my power, where I believe my power and my source comes from. Then at some point during the day, I’m not a big believer that I need to get a morning routine done by 7 a.m., or something like that, but five to six days of the week, I do some sort of like Tony Robbins’ priming practice for 10 minutes. And that’s once again, because I’m not a believer that everybody has to meditate in prime, I’m a believer that I have to meditate in prime, because my brain will very focus on scarcity, what’s not going to go right, worry, and all that stuff very quickly if I don’t conditionally, intentionally train myself to focus on some from there. So, those two are like staples for me as far as like media, both music or videos, that I play from there.

Then from there, other than that, big audiobook and big YouTube person. YouTube, right now, I’m in a chapter of not just business growth stuff, but financial wealth stuff. And so, I’m listening to a lot of that just to keep conditioning my mind, my body, my skill set, that big wealth is possible. And to me, big wealth beyond just like your first couple millions and stuff like that, but like 8, 9, and 10-figure wealth. I try and expose myself right now to a lot of that type of stuff. And then audio books, I’ll just cycle through tons of different books until I find a book and topic that really captures me. I’m not a big believer you have to finish every audiobook you start, but I’m just constantly listening to stuff so something really captures me.

Brad Weimert: Amazing. What advice do you have for new entrepreneurs starting out?

Michael Chu: New entrepreneurs starting out. There’s a lot. There’s probably a lot. So, the pause was like, what is the fir– like if I was talking to my daughters.

Brad Weimert: Perfect.

Michael Chu: Yeah. If I was talking to my daughters, I would say, find a product and offer that you truly believe helps people. I mean, one of the biggest hacks, even if you’re not that good at sales, is sell something that people actually want and is a quality product and you believe in. So, like, find something you truly, truly believe helps people, not just makes you money, right? It’s like the whole, like, if you add enough value to somebody else, you’ll make the money first. I think sometimes people first ask, will this make me money? Will this niche make me money, right? Start with something that you truly, truly believe. Find somebody who has created results in that product, that niche, and model the crap out of that person.

And then number three, commit to continuing to grow yourself, not just the business. As you grow, the business grows. So, those are probably the first three pieces of advice I start with.

Brad Weimert: I love that. I firmly believe that the asset that you have at the end of any game is who you became. And I think that you are doing yourself a horrible disservice if you don’t acknowledge that and try to focus on that through the process and not just reflect back on it.

Michael Chu: Obviously, a common name, common friend Jon Vroman was my first like paid coach way back in my early 20s. And I remember I was really struggling to set next-level goals. And I don’t know if he got this from Tony or somebody else, or it was a Jon Vromanism, but 15, 20 years later, it’s still how I remind myself how to set what I’m going after next. And that is you don’t set next-level goals to get more. You set the next level of goals to challenge you to become more.

And anytime I’ve set the next- level goals just to get more, I either didn’t hit it or found myself miserable during the journey, but when I set a goal and also attach myself to who will I have to become during this, like right now, I decided to compete my first HYROX race this year, and it’s not really about completing the HYROX or anything like that. I don’t have a desire to be like a world champion HYROX, but it’s like who do I have to become as a dad running a business while still prioritizing, I still train Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu on a regular basis. Like, who will I have to become with my time to take my health to the next level? I am loving the process because it’s less about what I’m getting and it’s more about who I’m becoming.

Brad Weimert: I love that. Michael Chu, it’s awesome to talk to you. It’s great to go from super high-level strategic, sometimes woo-woo, to tactical implementation that’s pragmatic. Thank you so much for your time.

Michael Chu: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.