My life story - as an entrepreneur

My life story officially began when my wife had a pre-marriage pregnancy 14 years ago. It was kept secret. I never have the guts to tell too many people.

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My life story officially began when I have my pre-marriage pregnancy. It was kept secret. I never have the guts to tell too many people. I was 26/27 during that time and I gave birth to my lovely cute little daughter olivia at age of 28.
I was scared and I was loss and I lived in fear from hindsight.

I have begun to ask myself what do I want to achieve after the birth of the baby. My status have changed, I can no longer fool around. I m a father and a husband but I wasn't ready and I didn't know how to be a good one.

Because life has caught onto me ( until now it sounded like I was not responsible for my misbehaviour) since the baby's birth, especially financially. I was still dreaming to work as little, but to earn much. I had this fantasy. And of course, the world does not work that way.

I started to think being an entrepreneur can solve all problems. Most entrepreneurs are rich, they have financial freedom and they do what they like. However, I missed the key points being a true entrepreneur - they are determined, relentless, they never give up. They have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. I never had those quantities.

After giving birth to my child, we went on a honeymoon. As the marriage is not planned. We went to the nearby Thailand. We were walk through Chaktuchak flea market and my wife recognised our first business opportunity selling slippers.

I started my first business on yahoo auction seling slippers. We were offering over 30 styles of flip flop having a nice margin. The cost was HKD5 while we were selling it at HKD39-49. That's my first taste of a business. I didn't brand it or anything just a pure transaction through yahoo auction. I remember I was hawking on the street together with my wife near the beach and the first hkd500 we warned we went to buy a wok.

I remember during my wife pregnancy probably in 2003. After getting married and collected all the red pockets from our family. In the Chinese world, we don't usually send gifts, instead we will offer money as gift wrapped in a red packet. We made money from our wedding.

As my wish to run away from the corporate world started to grow. I kept thinking about escaping the corporate world. Not because there is a calling or a mission but out of fear. And that's why it wasn't successful in all my attempts.

With those extra money, I wanted to start up a homeware store since I was living in a newly developed without many shops in the neighbourhood.

I came up with any investment plan to convince the landlord ( big developer in Hong Kong) to rent me the place with a 1 year contract. Later on, I don't remember how, we changed the idea into renting a small booth at a shopping mall to try out our business idea, which is a total different neighbourhood. That's wasn't even the right move from the start.

After 1 month, I went back to a job in an advertising agency because I thinking the business that sits there the whole day waiting them buy my stuff wasn't the ideal version of my business.

In 2006, I then changed my field altogether to a regional sales role which I was traveling. I enjoyed it in the first year. I spent quite a lot of time reading and going to bookstore, trying to figure out a way to business.

I wasn't under a lot of supervision in my job and I couldn't learn anything out of it because I wasn't thinking on getting my job done better.
I was full of greed, I claimed all types of expenses during trips and I didn't work diligently. I even took time off to play basketball in the middle of the day. That was a crazy moment. And my supervisor finally sacked me.

God gave me another job right after I was sacked. I was full of blessing. I remember my uncle david called me in for dinner and he asked me whether I need assistance. After the first year achieving some good results at work, I spent time working on my own business again

In 2009, I branded my slipper olivia & the breeze and penetrated a department store in Hong Kong. That marked my first success running a business. I pulled in my 2 friends as an investor and later expanded into canvas shoes.

However, we were not able to source other products and led open up new sales channel so I ended this business attempt.

In 2012, I was doing a business trip in Taiwan. The title four hour work week by Tim Ferris struck me. It taught me step by step how to brainstorm your business idea by listing out as many hobbies and interest possible. Narrow them down and build your website using weebly, which I m still building my current website from weebly.

I thought long and hard listing out my interest like basketball, race cars, passive income, rich dad, travel. And I found a gap in basketball which I later developed my business Jamsport.info, I also build a YouTube basketball channel and hit 32,000 subscribers which is not bad. To supplement to my product sales. I develop adult basketball training program which targeted to people like me. The program was led by Hong Kong national team players. It was an overnight success and we had new signs up for 6 month training program everyday. What went wrong was I didn't have a good network of basketball coaches and I wasn't good at listening and recognising people needs, soon I m getting into arguments with my two coaches and my business inevitably collapsed.

As I was doing fairly well with my online marketing skills and I want to further on developed that. I convinced my cousin to hire me as a part time. and later on. I became a full time staff..... (to be continued after Side Story)

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Side Story

My cousin taught me to be more aware of myself by meditation.

Dad Day Out

Dad day out has become my fourth business attempt of travel blog with entrepreneurship and personal motivation. As I feel there were so many ups and downs throughout my life. I learn so much about start up and how to become self-motivated in the face of people's negative criticism, how to remain strong and hold a positive self image.

I also want to show you how I turned my temporary failures into permanent success through positive self image and self-motivation. Let's witness my success!