18 Entrepreneurial Learnings from a Founder Who Built Businesses in the World's Toughest Markets

I learned so much about the 50% of leadership that we all know matters-the human side. The relationships. The hard-won wisdom that only comes from building something real in difficult places.

Paul Chu, Founder and Managing Director of RedWolf Airsoft, shared his entrepreneurial journey during a fireside chat. Paul's been building businesses since 1998, when he founded what became the world's leading global distributor of Airsoft hobby products.

Before that, he was a Principal at Boston Consulting Group and a Manager at Accenture. He's also an EO member since 2004, a former Hong Kong Chapter President, and currently an Adjunct Professor at City University of Hong Kong's Academy of Innovation.

He had one slide up the entire time-a list of eighteen "Entrepreneurial Learnings"-and spent the next hour bringing each one to life with stories I won't forget.

His take on AI was tactical and practical: as leaders can "clone themselves" with AI to handle menial tasks, they'll need to be even better at making human connections.

He's right. But I think it's incomplete.

AI isn't just changing what leaders do with their time. It's philosophically changing how we have to lead in an era of people and machines. More on that at the end.

First, let me share what Paul taught us-because the fundamentals he laid out are the foundation everything else builds on.

My Take on Paul's Entrepreneurial Learnings

Law of the Jungle: Be Like Water

Paul talked about flexibility as a survival skill. He told a story about installing steel pillars outside his Hong Kong storefront because decades ago, competitors would drive cars into rival shops. The threat was outdated, but the instinct to anticipate and prepare wasn't.

Then he told us about Russia. He went to explore the market, got invited to meet someone about "investment opportunities," and ended up at a remote countryside house guarded by soldiers with AK-47s. Inside, a government official kept asking a single question: what's in it for me? Paul's team refused to pay bribes, navigated their way out of the conversation, and walked away.

What struck me wasn't the drama of the story. It was how calm Paul was telling it. This wasn't a crisis for him. It was just another situation that required flexibility. The business in Russia didn't work out, but he kept his principles intact. Sometimes being like water means flowing around the obstacle. Sometimes it means knowing when to evaporate.

Know the Law and Protect Yourself Early

Paul made a point I don't hear enough founders talk about: intellectual property isn't just something you file and forget. It's a weapon. He described how in certain markets, IP law can be used aggressively against competitors, and in some jurisdictions, violations carry criminal consequences, not just civil ones.

His slide put it bluntly: "IP is the holy grail in the race to the bottom." When anyone can copy your product and undercut your price, your legal protections become your moat.

What I took from this was that too many entrepreneurs treat IP as a back-office task when it should be a front-line strategy, especially if you're operating across multiple countries with very different legal systems.

Loyalty Isn't Bought with a Paycheck

Paul admitted to an early mistake that I think most founders make: assuming that good compensation equals loyalty. It doesn't. Watching him talk about this, you could tell it was a lesson that cost him something.

His point was that people give discretionary effort to leaders they believe in, not leaders who simply pay well. Titles don't create that belief. Results do. Personal connection does.

Paul described driving employees home just to understand how they live, asking about their personal challenges, investing in them as people. He did the same thing when he became chapter president, spending one-on-one time with every board member before pushing any agenda.

What landed for me was the consistency. Whether he's running a company or leading a volunteer organization, Paul's approach to earning loyalty is the same: show up personally, invest in the relationship, and demonstrate through your decisions that you deserve people's trust.

Be Careful Who You Do Business With

Paul shared a story about getting entangled with business partners who turned out to be connected to money laundering and tried to pressure him into selling products to foreign governments that would have violated US law. It escalated to the point where threats were made casually in meetings.

I'm not going to retell the details because the specifics aren't the point. The point is that due diligence on the people you bring into your business orbit matters more than most entrepreneurs realize, especially when operating internationally.

Paul's slide said "Careful doing business with friends & family," but the principle extends far beyond that. The people who seem most eager to help are sometimes the ones you need to scrutinize the most.

The Other Principles

Paul's slide contained eighteen lessons in total. Some he elaborated on extensively; others stood on their own:

"Peace & cooperation when there is nothing to fight over." The implication: when resources are abundant or stakes are low, everyone gets along. The real test comes when there's something to fight over.

"Cooperate with industry partners-you can't do it alone." But also: "Sometimes you have to choose a side." Not every relationship serves your interests. Strategic cooperation requires making choices.

"Protect reputation religiously (word of mouth, online)." Reputation is built slowly and destroyed quickly.

"Invest in IT early (SEO, internal systems, AI, social media, stack)." The businesses that scale efficiently build their technology infrastructure early.

"Outsourcing is not the holy grail-requires strong monitoring & cultural buffering." Lower costs come with hidden costs.

"Don't offend the petty man who acts irrationally to exact revenge." Not everyone operates rationally. Be careful about creating enemies, even small ones.

"Murphy's Law-Buy insurance." Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Protect yourself accordingly.

"Travel more, Think global, Expand Connections, Build on Commonality." Understanding markets requires being present in them.

"Who you know > What you know." Relationships are scarce. Knowledge is abundant.

"Same bed, different dreams." People can appear aligned while pursuing different goals. Don't assume proximity equals shared purpose.

Where I Think Paul's Take on AI Will Evolve Over Time

Paul mentioned that as leaders can "clone themselves" with AI to handle routine tasks, they'll need to become even better at making human connections.

He's absolutely right. But I think this framing-while tactically useful-misses something bigger.

AI isn't just a tool that frees up time for more human connection. It's fundamentally changing the nature of leadership itself.

Here's what I mean:

The traditional leadership playbook assumed you were managing humans. Full stop. Humans who need motivation, development, feedback, emotional intelligence, and genuine connection.

Everything Paul talked about falls into this category-and it's essential.

But there's another 50% emerging. Leaders now need to manage systems as well as people. And more importantly, they need to train leaders throughout their organizations to do the same.

This isn't about learning to use ChatGPT. It's about developing a new organizational capability: orchestrating work between human teams and AI systems. Knowing when to deploy AI versus humans. Understanding how to maintain team cohesion when some work is automated. Preserving the human connections that give work meaning even as the nature of work changes.

The leaders who only focus on the human side-as important as it is-will find themselves managing people who are increasingly working alongside AI they don't understand how to leverage. The leaders who only focus on the AI side will build efficient systems that lack the trust, judgment, and creativity that only humans provide.

The future belongs to leaders who can do both. Who can build the kind of genuine human connections Paul described AND develop their people's capacity to work effectively with AI.

That's the philosophical shift I think Paul's tactical framing misses. It's not just about having more time for human connection because AI handles the menial work. It's about recognizing that leadership itself now operates on two tracks-and we need to be excellent at both.

Conclusion

Paul Chu's eighteen entrepreneurial learnings weren't theoretical. They came from decades of building RedWolf Airsoft into a global leader, founding Cerakote Hong Kong, working across New York, Chicago, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Taiwan, and learning the hard way what works and what doesn't.

The through-line across all of them is this: business is human. Markets are made of relationships. Competition happens between people with agendas. Success requires understanding not just strategy and operations, but human nature in all its complexity.

And as we enter an era where AI changes what's possible, don't forget: the human fundamentals Paul laid out aren't the old way of leading. They're the foundation the new way builds on.

We just need to add a new floor to the building.

What's your take on leading in an era of people and machines? I'd love to hear how you're thinking about this shift.