Month: August 2015

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