- Here is a good question from you.
What is the best thing to do if your parents
don't believe in your journey of entrepreneurship?
Well, my mom didn't believe my journey
of entrepreneurship either. Neither did my dad.
When I told my mom,
"Mom, I'm gonna quit school,
I'm gonna be an entrepreneur,
I'm gonna do my own thing,
I'm not going to college anymore."
You should see the look on her face,
as if I told her that I just killed somebody right?
And I remember my mom told me,
"Okay we're gonna talk about it.
We're gonna talk about it over dim sum."
So a few days later we had dim sum right here in Metro-town
in Burnaby. And it was my mom and my other relatives
and her friends and me and nine of them.
so 10 of us together.
We call that the famous dim sum ambush.
So basically my mom asked my relatives
and my mine and her friends all gather together
wanted to convince me why I should go to school,
why I should finish school and get my degree.
They spent hours convincing me
and I spent hours convincing them why it's not a good idea.
And by the end of that dim sum, by the end of that lunch,
I convinced one of my uncle's to loan me money
to start my next business.
See don't expect your parents to believe in you
and maybe or maybe not, you may or may not cut out
to be an entrepreneur,
but I do think and I sincerely believe this
that your parents want you to be happy
and your parents want you to be successful.
When I made that decision I proved to my mom
not through what I say my words by my actions,
I was working 12, 14 hours a day every day.
I didn't party, I didn't chill, I didn't hang out,
I didn't watch TV for five fucking years.
Every day I was working not a single day off.
When my mom saw my determination,
when she saw that I'm not slacking off,
I'm not being lazy by not going to school,
but because I found something I believe in
that I'm willing to die for.
I'm willing to put everything on the line
and I promised my mom
I said, "Mom give me five years. In 5 years, I don't make it,
I promise you I'll go back to school and get my degree.
But within these five years, let me do my own thing."
And I made it.
I proved to her through my actions. Not what you say
because for most of you guys watching this video
you talk about you wanna be more successful.
In the meantime, you spend three hours on Netflix,
you spend four hours playing around and playing video games
and doing all this shit.
If I was your mom, I was your dad I'm not gonna believe you
because your actions don't match with your words.
Your actions don't match your ambition.
You think it's easy, if you think school is easy
being your own boss running your own business is way tougher
than you think.
You cannot even imagine how tough it is.
You cannot even understand and fathom how tough it is.
So don't expect their support.
If you don't believe in what you do so strongly,
you don't get obsessed with your vision,
no one's gonna believe you
and don't expect anyone to believe you.
They're not supposed to believe you
'cause you've got no track record.
You haven't done shit.
It's normal they don't believe you
and guess what even though when you're successful,
they still don't believe you, right?
Even as successful as I am today,
I still have people that don't believe me.
So forget it,
forget trying to seek validation from other people
and say, oh, you know what, if they believe me.
Do you know, some people would do, some people won't
and who will people believe you
they follow what you do, great.
Build something great with those people
the ones who don't believe you that's okay.
Who cares, right?
Who cares?
I don't know the surefire way to success,
but the surefire way to fail is try to please everybody.
So don't be a pleaser forget about that.
Focus on what you do.
Many years later I was driving my dad.
He came to Vancouver. At the time I was already
experiencing little bit success
was making decent money on the internet.
I was already teaching and speaking.
He saw one of my CDs,
right, that one of the the speech that I did.
He put in there my car was driving.
He was sitting next to me.
And after about, you know, I don't know 20, 30 minutes,
eject, he hit the eject button.
He took the CD out, he looked at me and he said,
"You're still doing the internet shit?"
And I looked at him and said, yep, dad I'm still doing
that internet shit.
And it's the internet shit that got me this car
that I'm driving you in.
So after so many years my dad still
doesn't understand what I do.
He still doesn't, he still thinks
that you know, I should go get a job or something like that.
He still doesn't get it, it's okay, right?
But both of them I can tell you that your parents,
they would be very proud of you once you make it.
Once you make it and it doesn't mean how much money you make.
It means that you are doing something
you're passionate about that you like
that you are helping people,
you're impacting a lot of people's lives
and you're building something good for people.
They'll be very very proud.