Pursue your ‘fantastic dream’ and start a business with a blueprint from Google
Yu is currently the owner of Yu and Me Books, the first Asian-American woman-owned bookstore in New York City located in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
Yu is a highly trained chemical engineer who until recently worked as a supply chain manager for a food company. However, in 2021, when she was exhausted and found solace in books, she decided to pursue her “fantasy dream” – which has been her life’s wish, which is to open a bookstore – with works by Asian Americans, authors of color, immigrants, and people from marginalized communities.
One night of drinking, she Googled “how to run a bookstore,” and a few hours later, she found a sketch of a business plan. She raised nearly $16,000 through GoFundMe and poured her life savings into rent, overhead, and “a pile of inventory books.”
In December, Yu and Me Books opened to customers, and in February, Yu quit her job to focus on running the bookstore full-time. “I just do one thing and hope everything goes well,” she said.
Yu shared the biggest lesson of running a business
Be ready for mistakes
I might make a mistake. Sure. Learning how to make it easier on yourself is just as important as maintaining a sustainable business. If I focus only on the small things, I will overlook the big things. So I need to have space to “breathe”.
There are days when I feel like a complete failure at what I’m doing. I really don’t have much experience. I don’t know what the publishing world will be like. And this is my first time owning a business, especially a bookstore. So I feel like I’m really “beaten”. But the motivation I got was through the love and support of my friends who told me: Look what you’ve created from just a Google search. They really lifted me up when my spirits went down. And my last boss said, I have to be willing to change even though it’s still a bit vague. That way I’m always ready for anything because you can’t predict the whole thing.
The books in Yu’s shop
Find support in the business community
While planning my business, I called a few different bookstores for guidance.
Emma Straub from Books Are Magic in Brooklyn reached out to me early on in my GoFundMe campaign. She and her children showed up on my opening day. She owns a bookstore – no need for books from another bookstore! However, the enthusiasm she had for me before she knew me helped me a lot.
And the people in Chinatown are amazing. Every shop owner helps each other. And community groups like Welcome to Chinatown and Send Chinatown Love – the way they treat each other is something I’ve really never seen before.
Plan the next two weeks at the same time
I hope to expand the store’s reach beyond the New York community, host book clubs and turn it into a more community event space.
But honestly, I don’t think the past two weeks haven’t been ideal for a business owner. But I think with all the unpredictability of everything we’ve been through in the last three years, you can’t really predict anything. And if I can get through these two weeks and it’s a really great, positive experience, I can continue to plan for the next two weeks.
How to select books?
I have about 1,700 titles and I pick all of them myself, so I’m sure there are some missing book themes.
I go through a lot of Bookstagram. I’m not kidding, these Instagram writers are doing an amazing job writing about titles that don’t always top the big lists. I spend a lot of time on StoryGraph, an app with great recommendations not owned by Amazon. And I also spend a lot of time researching and putting together my book list each week.
(According to CNBC)
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