River Run

“Growing up” in my entrepreneurial ventures and learning lessons, looking back, I noticed how I lost majority of my friends. Well, I didn’t lose them literally, but as time went on less and less I hung out with them and even kept in touch with them. The main connection I had with them was through Facebook. And even then, I didn’t really converse with them. They were my childhood friends growing up and bonds that I made through high school.

In hindsight, I lost touch with them because majority our interests differed. When I was getting into business, that’s all I wanted to mettle in. I read books, watched videos of talks and seminars on success, business, investing, etc. and hustled while most of my friends were out partying at night and on the weekends. So, there was a disconnect between us and we naturally lost touch.

Some of my friends went off to serve in the military, labored in the construction industry, went forward my former passion of cooking and became chefs, and one of my good friends even became a successful self-employed plumber (Check him out at Plumber Honolulu). So, most of them became successful in their own services and interests which is great.

But what I wanted was to become Read More

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, my parents were working class parents. So growing up, I was cultured in the typical mindset of go to school, get a good job, and save my money. The mindset was very conservative and  risk adversed.

Because I was brought up in such a way, when I started to meddle in the business world, I naturally resisted a lot of things. The business mindset was totally out of my comfort zone. Fear of doing things that I wasn’t comfortable with and taking up a totally contrarian mindset than what I was used to was very challenging for me.

Risk, selling, meeting new people, being independent, etc. were some of the thing that I feared, especially being an introverted personality type (yes I’m introverted).

It’s ironic that many people who want to be entrepreneurs or want to get out of working for someone else don’t realizeRead More

The one major thing that changed my life wasn’t a dramatic circumstance that inspired me to change. Although an unfortunate event triggered and sparked me to change, it wasn’t the fuel that fueled me to strive and grind.

The one thing, the one trait that I learned to love and do often is also dying trait of today’s generation. That trait is reading. Reading and the acquisition of knowledge is what really changed my life.

No one reads anymore. It’s no wonder most people stay stuck in mediocrity. Very broadly put, reading stimulates the mind, expands your imagination, and provides the knowledge and understanding to fulfill those imaginations.

For me, every time I read about something I didn’t know, it motivated me and gave me the sense of empowerment. It made me feel empowered because I knew that almost everyone else didn’t know what I knew, for the reasons that no one reads anymore. Knowing that, it me feel powerful. I understood first hand the meaning of the cliche saying, “knowledge is power”.

It’s no wonder why majority of the people do not hold that power. It’s because of ignorance and not even knowing that the “power” exists.

It may seem selfish and cynical of me thinking the way I did of taking advantage of people’s ignorance for my own motivation. Well, in my perspective it’s not. Because everyone has access to the information that I have and it’s there for the taking. I also understood that if I wanted to be successful and financially free, I had to do things opposite of what everyone else that I knew was doing. No one that I knew at that time had or was where I wanted to be, so I knew I had to be contrarian to what they were doing.

That is why I began to read a lot, because no one read.

The kind of books I read up books on were non-fiction, self help books, to business and financial books. I just went with the flow. After reading up on one subject, it led to another, and another. What this did for me is it began to make connections from one seemingly unrelated subject to another. I began to see the “big picture” of various things.

I remember the very first book that sparked it all. It was recommended to me by a friend that has a mobile auto mechanic business in Hawaii. The book was Read More

If you’ve read my earlier posts, I’ve mentioned that in order for someone to make a major change in their lives, they usually go through some major event to inspire them to do so. Whether, the change is positive or negative, big change just doesn’t happen naturally – it usually happens by “force” started by a significant event.

I can’t speak for everyone, but it did take a major series of negative events for me to change and end up becoming the successful entrepreneur I am today.

The, at that time, devastating event taught me about resiliency and something I call mind alchemy, both in which are essential principles, traits, and mindsets needed to become successful in anything, not just entrepreneurship.

First, lets start with mind alchemy mentality, or the turn shit into sugar mentality.

“Every negative is a positive. The bad things that happen to me I somehow make them good. That means you all can’t do anything to hurt me.” – Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson from The 50th Law

A commentary from The 50th Law By Robert Greene & 50 Cent:

During my hard times as a teenager, Read More

As I’ve mentioned, I always held the mindset that I could get anything that I wanted for myself, and I understood that there was always a way to get it – the key was to figure out how.

How did I get what I wanted?

Well, I got a job as a cook. Because my parents were working class people, that’s what I knew on how to get money. I was brought up on the get a job and work hard mentality. So I did. It was only when I was mentored by a man that had his own Hawaii towing business that I learned the ropes of being an entrepreneur.

But before that, as I worked hard at my part-time job after school and on the weekends for my money, I learned a valuable lesson on value and the economics of supply and demand. I took the newly learned concept and became a hustler.

“I’m a hustla, imma, imma hustla'” – rap song by Cassidy

Read More

A little preface to my entrance into entrepreneurship. I think it’s important, because it’s usually the things that are buried deep in some one, experiences from the past, successes, failures, learning experiences, etc., that truly makes up a person and his/her fundamental passions.

I was a spoiled kid growing up. I didn’t ask to be, I just was. I guess it was because my parents wanted to give me what they didn’t have or could’t acquire when they were young(er). I’ve come to understand that this is common amongst parents coming from a poverty lifestyle when they were children.

Here in the U.S., they became a part of the middle working class group and got pretty decent paying jobs. My father is a painter and worked for the union majority of his career, so he was the major bread winner, My mother hopped from several jobs and being mother.

Since my father made some decent money, he spoiled me and my younger brother. We got the latest toys, video game systems (I grew up a video gamer freak), and gadgets. When I didn’t get something I wanted, I would freak out! And then I would get what I wanted.

The result of spoiling a child isRead More

For someone to get into entrepreneurship is pretty easy. It’s just a matter of choice. But, in order for someone to stay an entrepreneur, it takes courage and a whole bunch of persistence.

Growing up I never knew the word entrepreneur, never used it, never heard of it. Thinking back, the closest thing I knew relative to entrepreneurship is a business person. I’d never exercise the idea of becoming a business person as a child or a teen.

Being that my parents were working class people, business was never spoken in my family. I was raised being told to go to school, get good grades, go to college, and get a good paying job. And that’s what I strove to do.

I never had any ambition to be in business. In fact, to me business had a negative connotation. I used to think business people were boring people in suits that stayed in offices and tried to sell and manipulate people into spending money in their businesses – a correlation with salespeople, but hey that’s what I knew and thought of business people.

I also was, and still, am a shy, quiet, introverted, a little anti-social, person who didn’t like to hold conversations with strangers. So, being a business person was way far down on my list of career choices for me. I, instead leaned more towards being an artist, scientist, and an engineer because I didn’t have to deal with much people.

It was when I was in high school that any type of business thoughts delved into my mind.

I acquired the passion for Read More