(fast dramatic orchestral music)
- When did you start your first business?
- I started my first business when I was in high school.
With just a couple of my buddies,
mowing lawns for people in our neighborhood.
I will share a story of how I started the business,
if I could, that'd be beneficial.
At that time, because when I was going through high school,
I was getting beat up quite often by all
the other kids because I was one of the only
three Chinese in my school.
So I was kind of skinny and they beat me up.
You know people talk about school bullying
and stuff, and you know it's true,
because I experienced it, and it's true.
So then I learned martial arts and karate,
so I try to protect myself.
The funny thing is no one tried to beat me up
after I learned martial arts.
(audience giggles)
Which is not, because I thought I could practice,
I have nothing to practice on.
(audience laughter)
I said come on, let's go!
Eh, I don't know, but anyways so I was getting beat up
so then I was very much into, and still am into,
but at that time I was kind of a fitness nut,
a fitness fanatic, I was running every day,
and one day I was running and jogging in my neighborhood,
and I saw an older gentlemen, and he was
just mowing the lawn, and he was like,
he must be in his sixties, maybe his seventies,
and he was mowing the lawn with the
lawn mower like very slow like that, very slow,
and I was jogging like young guy, like hey you know,
maybe I just wanted to help him out,
because I could see the machinery was too heavy,
so I said hey you know sir, is there
anything I can help you with?
You want me to help you mow the lawn?
I thought it'd be, you know, good exercise,
like biceps, shoulders, so I would do that,
and he said young man, sure, thank you very much,
and I mowed his lawn, and he said oh thank you very much,
and I said oh no problem, I live just right there,
and he then pulled out 20 bucks, and he gave me 20 dollars,
and I thought oh, this is interesting.
I never thought I would make money doing this,
but here it's 20 bucks and for
high school kids, it's 20 bucks,
and I'm like maybe, I thought to myself
there are other people who would need the same service.
Now there's one problem though.
I could not afford to buy a lawn mower,
because those machines, they were expensive.
I mean they could be, at the time, like a
thousand bucks or something like that.
I'm not sure, I wrote that, guessing and everything,
so I came up with the idea, I said you know,
sir, you know I live around here,
and the machine was brand new,
I said obviously this is too heavy for you.
I said would it be possible, like would you consider
like if I help you mow your lawn,
like every week, no charge, but you loan me your machine.
And he said well, young man, I said young man,
hey what the hell, I'm not using it,
it's too heavy for me, so yeah, okay sure,
so then I got my lawn mower with no money,
and then I say okay now, we got no worries,
I'll take care of it, any repair, I'll add gas,
anything, no worry, I'll take good care of it.
So I got my machine, and then I need some customers,
or some clients, so at the time my aunt,
my mom's friend, she owns a printing shop,
she would like print business cards
and flyers, things like that,
and I approached my aunt and said,
you know aunt, you know you do this printing business,
you want to try to get business,
I said how about, why don't you print out flyers
and I will help you when I'm about to leave a door,
then I'll slip in the door and help you promote.
She said, oh that would be very nice,
sure, yeah, why don't we do something like that,
and you know a flyer has two sides, right,
so one side you put your printing business,
the other side I put my lawn mowing business.
(audience laughter)
I said that's free to me.
That's free marketing, and she said yeah, why not,
it's okay with me, and so I did that,
and I was five to 10 thousand flyers.
I was running around, I was giving these flyers
and things like that, and I have a phone number.
I remember I was so excited, after I distributed
all these flyers, I was running home
waiting next to my telephone, and I thought,
oh my god, I'm going to make like hundred of dollars
overnight, right, waiting for the phone to ring.
It didn't ring.
It did not ring.
One hour, one day, two days go by and I looked at the flyer,
did I print the wrong phone number?
No way.
(audience giggles)
No one called, and that was one of the first lessons
I had learning business like marketing,
like in business, no revenue means you
don't have a business, and without customers,
you don't have revenue.
So I might have a great machine,
I might be a hard worker, I might have skills,
but without customers no business,
so from that point on, I thought okay,
what do I have to do to get my first customer?
It's nice that I have the older gentlemen,
but I'm not getting paid, I'm just getting a machine,
so I thought of the idea, huh,
what did I do to get my first client?
I got my first client by giving value up front,
because think about it, back then
I never thought I would get the 20 bucks,
I thought I would just help out and exercise,
but he paid me money, and that affected me deeply
in the future, how I conduct business,
and it's all about adding value first,
not about being a taker, but being a giver first.
So from that point on, I said okay,
that's how I got my first client,
so I went, the neighborhood with
the nicest homes with the tallest grass.
And tall, it was like up to here,
and I would mow the entire lawn,
I mowed the entire lawn,
it was, I would take out the flowers,
everything, I would take out all the weeds,
everything was spectacular, before and after.
After I'm done, I sit on the front steps
just waiting for the owner to come back.
Lady drove by, and she actually drove by,
because she didn't recognize her house,
(audience laughter)
and she drove by and then she came back,
and then she parked, and then she went up, young man
what are you doing in front of my house?
I said you know what, ma'am I saw your lawn,
and it seemed like the grass was quite long, quite tall,
and I just mowed it for you, and I actually,
actually I'm a young guy running a business here.
Here's my flyer, if you need somebody else,
you know I can help you, and it was like
oh this is perfect, you know my husband
travels all the time, he's not home,
the damn machine is too heavy, I don't want to use it.
This is perfect.
She pulled out a hundred dollars.
She gave me a hundred dollars,
and I thought this is awesome,
I got my first client, right, and then
from there I knocked on her neighbor, right,
and I said you know what, the neighbor,
I forgot her name, but Mrs. I forgot her name,
I'm coming back next week to mow her lawn.
Since I'm in the neighborhood,
if you need your lawn mowed.
How you do?
In a short period of time, kind of, you know I dominate
that little neighborhood, but that's the first lesson,
now the lesson is this, two things,
number one is in business adding value up front
and not asking anything in return,
and you might not get anything in return,
but adding value up front to other people's lives.
That's what I do a lot of trainings,
like invite you to YouTube and speeches for free,
because you don't know who you're going to touch,
you don't know who you're going to touch.
I have a partner right there, Matt,
who's working away.
Matt owns Internet Masterminds,
one of the largest Internet Masterminds in the world,
with four or five thousand members.
I met Matt at almost five years ago
when I was doing a speech, and I
gave him a copy of my book.
That's how we made that connection,
and then from there now today
we are business partners, five years later,
so you don't know who you're going to touch,
adding value up front.
Second thing is think of the first gentlemen,
the older gentlemen, how I structured the deal,
it's a win for him, it's a win for me,
it's a win for my client, so there's a win-win
kind of situation there.
Same thing with my aunt, the flyer,
it's a win for her, it's a win for me as well,
so in business you want to strive to win-win all the time.
There are some deals that if you win-lose
where you make money on the party's dollar.
Don't do those type of deals,
because they will not do those deals with you again.
You want to kind of do long term business,
and build a long term relationship.
- [Narrator] 10 times your finances,
10 times your business, 10 times your marketing,
10 times your life.
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