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Transcription / Summary
For my second podcast, I’ll be focusing on answering a few questions that were given to me in my recent talk with Philip Morris International. My talk was about Intentional learning which means actively choosing what it is you’re putting into your mind.
Bear in mind that when you’re continually putting unnecessary information, like the random things that you find on Facebook, then you’re not really going to grow in the way that you want to grow.
You won’t be able to achieve your personal goal.
The most upvoted question dealt with missing opportunities.
Some participants wanted to know what to do when they know where they want to be, but there’s just no opportunity that lets them get there.
For me, I think you can only go about this in two ways. You can take the safe route and just stay where you are. Or you can take a risk and jump ship.
I’ve experienced this when I realized that the IT industry wasn’t for me. During that time, I took the riskier option of starting up a company and becoming an entrepreneur.
It was not easy.
I had to work a lot, sacrifice a lot, and get tired a lot. All for the sake of doing what I want to do and finding success through it.
Speaking of risks, some of the audience also inquired about how exactly they can motivate themselves to take them.
I motivate my self to take risks when I know that these are calculated.
In terms of business, the main way I motivate myself is through making sure that I’m providing a solution to an ongoing problem.
One example is my recent startup Leadership Stack. It’s my solution to an otherwise unknown problem.
I am a speaker, and I have my own rates, as we are paid by the hour. In most cases, it’s the HR representative that hires me, but after the whole seminar, they won’t have anything to show their boss but the assumption that the people in the audience were motivated by it.
Leadership Stack takes in data within the seminar and records them so that the HR can have a better understanding of what they can do to further better their company.
In life, my greatest driving factor has always been my faith in God.
To put it into perspective, I wanted to be married at 25 years old. It was funny to some, but it was a really big deal for me.
I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time. But believe it or not, my wife was my first and only girlfriend. When I met her, I knew she was the one.
It was divine intervention. Divine appointment in all of this aside from my concrete goal of getting married at 25.
My goal of getting settled by 25 was a huge driving factor for me, but what really pushed it was the faith I had that everything will be okay by then.
Success is something that is relative to people. To me, it’s doing something you love that glorifies God.
So as long as you’re doing something that you love today and it glorifies God—that, for me, is already a sign that you’re successful.
There’s also the notion of me being able to provide for me and my family. I no longer have to worry about m retirement, how to feed my children, how I can take care of them growing up, and how to support my parents when they’re old.
There are also a few people that are curious about who are the people that helped me set up my business. In all honesty, I had a lot of help. My first hires were basically my brother and a few of my close friends. When things became serious, I never did anything alone.
Keep in mind that as good as you are at anything, you can’t do everything. Each person is limited to the 24 hours that we have in a day.
In cases where you don’t know what you want to be, the only thing that I can tell you is to be adventurous. You won’t be able to find what you want if you haven’t tried anything.
Exploring more can get let you experience more things such as the arts, tech stuff, business, marketing, etc. by knowing them, you’ll be able to figure out what you really want to do.
And you can figure out better what you want to be.
Most people think that I’m someone that can be seen as very successful. However, I don’t consider myself as there yet—That I’m a successful person.
That being said, my next goal is to make sure that my two startups this year would become successful.
SEO Hacker is now being handled by Apple and Kevin. Right now, I only come by the business when there’s a special client that I handle personally and for the nitty gritty stuff. Or if there’s a roadblock in the strategies.
However, there’s not much that keeps the company moving because the team is doing a fantastic job as it is.
Leadership Stack has broken ground and is making a profit but not yet stable, while Teamstrr is still being polished to the point where it can make a profit.
For the people that think I settled down too early, bear in mind that early is relative.
I didn’t think it was early. One of my mentors got married when he was 25. And since he was a really good example, I wanted to live my life like him. And so, I thought, when I get married at 25, I think that’s really good.
I know it sounds like a shallow reason, but the impact it had in me was phenomenal. I really look up to my mentor and I consider him as my spiritual father.
I am no means a master of my craft. I’m still learning today. In my industry, you must be able to get in pace with Google because they change every so often.
Sometimes they announce these changes, while most of the time, the changes aren’t announced.
The best way to learn about them is to read, to listen, and to do your own experiments.
Finally, there were people who wanted to know my mindset when I chose to make my own business instead of taking over what my family had.
My dad was a businessman—but not by choice. He didn’t graduate college, and the only reason why he went into the hardware industry was because he needed to provide for us, his family.
He actually suggested that I climb the corporate ladder instead because doing business is hard. It takes a lot of hard work, it brings a lot of headaches and you need to deal with a lot of bigger institutions.
I tried working for some other companies, I had an argument with him regarding me choosing to leave my work and start my own company instead.
He knows that I made the right decision now since I’m the CEO of 5 companies and have around 40 people working under me. He didn’t ask me to take over anymore because he sees that I’m doing great on my own.
