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  • - When I was 17 years old

  • I was living in Canada as a teenager.

  • My father was screwed over by a business partner

  • in Hong Kong.

  • Now, my father is a very kind man,

  • very trusting man,

  • so he was the one who signs on every dot

  • and him and this business partner,

  • they start a business together,

  • an international trade business,

  • many many years ago,

  • and over the years my dad was working very, very hard,

  • very, very hard, does most of the work

  • and one day the business partner basically took off,

  • took all the money and because my dad was the guarantor

  • for everything and that left him about

  • a million dollars in debt.

  • A million dollars in debt.

  • That wiped out my father financially, emotionally.

  • He was never the same man again after that.

  • He lost all his confidence,

  • he could never bounce back,

  • and as a result I started early.

  • That's how I got pushed into business

  • because I needed to take care of my mom

  • as the only child in my family.

  • And from that incident I said to myself;

  • I'll never be screwed over by a business partner,

  • that I never wanna be like my dad,

  • I don't want to repeat the same mistake that he made.

  • But guess what, I did.

  • Over the years I've had so many different partnerships.

  • Some are very, very good partnerships,

  • some are horrible partnerships.

  • If you're watching this video maybe you've just been

  • screwed over by a business partner,

  • someone that you trust,

  • someone that you called a friend for a long time,

  • or maybe you've been betrayed by someone

  • that you care for.

  • Someone you thought would never betray you

  • and you feel hurt and you feel lost.

  • Well I wanna share my experience with you

  • and how I overcame some of these things

  • and maybe it will help you as well.

  • My first business partner.

  • At the time I was just getting started in my career

  • and I wanted to promote my business

  • and I printed out all these business cards,

  • free business cards because I couldn't afford

  • to get business cards, right,

  • and I was living in a small condo with my mom

  • and I would run up and down the building

  • and I would put the business card under people's doorway

  • trying to get some business,

  • maybe I could get some business that way,

  • I didn't know, I didn't know marketing,

  • I would put flyers in the building.

  • It's stupid thinking about it.

  • And I got a call and I thought oh great,

  • I got some business and the gentleman,

  • the older gentleman was actually a web master

  • saying I saw your business card, what do you do?

  • And I'm like hey, well, good I got some business.

  • He said why don't you come to my place, meet with me?

  • So I went down to his floor in the same building

  • and we talked and I shared with him what I do

  • and I was selling him.

  • He said you know what?

  • Why are you running around giving away business card?

  • You should have a website.

  • I said a website, like how does that work?

  • Because he builds websites for people.

  • So I borrow money from my relatives to pay him

  • to start this website.

  • I thought great, that I'd only to knock on people's door

  • and try to stuff business card under the doorway,

  • maybe that would get some business.

  • And afterwards he came up with an idea,

  • hey, instead of doing that,

  • why don't you do this business instead?

  • And he was pitching me different business ideas,

  • I thought this is great.

  • I could be successful faster,

  • I could make money faster and be able to provide for my mom,

  • and I trusted him.

  • Long story short; back and forth, back and forth.

  • I was sinking money into the ventures.

  • I was borrowing money, maxing on my credit card,

  • put all the money into it,

  • someone that I trust.

  • I trust him so much, he was an older gentleman

  • so sometimes he might be building websites and stuff,

  • he's so busy,

  • I would have mom cook dinner and I would bring

  • the extra dinner to him.

  • Long story short; we put in tens of thousands of dollars,

  • I got into tens of thousands of dollars in debt

  • trusting a man like that.

  • One day I wanted to see the progress of what we've done.

  • I went to his floor, the door was not locked.

  • I opened the door, the place was empty.

  • He took all the money,

  • scammed me out of all the money

  • that we have and disappeared.

  • The things that I sweared I would never let that happen,

  • what happened to my dad, guess what?

  • It happened to me.

  • I was so mad at myself,

  • I was so pissed off at him that I wanted to kill him.

  • Literally, I wanted to kill him.

  • But I couldn't find him.

  • I've never seen him since then.

  • I took upon myself that why am I so stupid?

  • Why do I trust him?

  • Because I didn't know I was being guided,

  • I was misled by greed if you think about it

  • because I wanted to make money without doing the work

  • and that's the perfect victim for him.

  • So I took upon myself that I'm going to educate myself.

  • No matter what it takes,

  • I'm gonna learn how internet works,

  • how marketing works,

  • how business works

  • and I remember back them I bought a course by Corey Rudl

  • called Insider Secrets Of Marketing On The Internet,

  • two binders like this.

  • Five, six hundred pages of content.

  • My English wasn't that good.

  • I went through that entire thing and locked myself in a room

  • in two days, in two days,

  • and I've never stopped since then

  • because, yes, it's his fault to scam me

  • but it's also my fault to believe in him

  • and being so naive and not knowing what I do.

  • So I learnt a lesson from that.

  • So maybe you're thinking why did they do that to me?

  • But look within.

  • Who trusted that person?

  • Why did I trust that person?

  • I was trying to take a shortcut.

  • What can you learn from it?

  • And I learned from it,

  • I learned from it.

  • So don't beat yourself up.

  • Second business partner,

  • and now a few years later.

  • This partner I met on-line.

  • He saw what I was doing and I was growing.

  • We formed a company together doing website conversion

  • and website optimization for company's entrepreneurs

  • and we signed an agreement.

  • Basically a 30/70% split

  • any revenue that comes in.

  • I will keep 70%, he would keep 30%

  • and he would help me with the traffic,

  • he would help me with the website and certain things.

  • I said great, I will do the selling and marketing

  • and write all the copy and do all of that.

  • What ended up happening is

  • I ended up doing 99% of the work.

  • I was the one that's carrying the weight of the company.

  • I was talking with the clients,

  • I was the one that's doing the work.

  • He was doing very, very little, very little

  • and I was paying him 30%, 30%, 30%

  • to a point where I was like this is not working.

  • He's not doing anything,

  • I'm doing all the work, I'm taking all the risk, right?

  • Why am I giving a big chunk of my revenue away

  • to someone who's not doing the work?

  • So I confronted him.

  • I said this is not working.

  • I wanna end this partnership.

  • And he said well, you cannot end this partnership.

  • And I said what do you mean?

  • Well we signed a deal, you can't just walk away.

  • I said I can't do this,

  • we gotta change the percentage.

  • No, you gotta keep paying me,

  • otherwise I'll take legal action.

  • More than that I said no, I'm not gonna do that.

  • So what happened back then was the guy was

  • actually threatening me.

  • He said if you end the partnership,

  • 'cause he has access to our customer base,

  • our list, our database,

  • I'm gonna email all your customers and tell them

  • that you are not an honorable man.

  • That he's gonna frame me as a bad person

  • and destroy my reputation.

  • Now, what would you do in that scenario?

  • What would you do?

  • Someone that I have a partnership with,

  • I thought he would do the work,

  • I trusted him.

  • I gave him away 30% of my company.

  • So now what?

  • I end up the one, again,

  • doing all the work, carrying the company

  • and I couldn't sleep for many, many nights.

  • It was very, very stressful.

  • I ended up shutting down the entire company.

  • I said fuck it.

  • I said if you're gonna email my customers,

  • email my customers.

  • I shut down the entire thing.

  • So all the revenues coming in,

  • all that, I just let go of all of that

  • and I start something new.

  • Now that's difficult.

  • That's very, very difficult.

  • So, maybe you have a bad business partner right now

  • and you feel like,

  • it's like the end of the world.

  • How do I get rid of this person?

  • And you feel like oh my God it's gonna affect

  • my employees, it's gonna affect the people that

  • work with our vendors, our customers,

  • or this person is like holding you by the balls.

  • Let me tell you this.

  • That partner, the second partner that I had,

  • nowhere to be seen and yet I'm here today.

  • Yes, I did the work, I did almost all the work.

  • You do the work, you get the knowledge,

  • you get the experience,

  • no-one can take that away from you.

  • You can always build something again,

  • always build something again.

  • That other person trying to shortcut,

  • trying to take advantage of you,

  • they will still do that.

  • People like that don't succeed long term,

  • they never become successful.

  • I know it hurts,

  • I know it might cost you a lot of money right now,

  • I know that.

  • It's difficult.

  • It is very, very difficult

  • but I learned.

  • So from there I let go of that, guess what?

  • The new company that I started,

  • more successful than the company I closed down with him.

  • Third business partner,

  • happened recently,

  • was so disappointed.

  • This guy came to me

  • a couple of months away from bankruptcy,

  • literally a couple of months away from bankruptcy.

  • I helped him.

  • I turned his life around,

  • taught him a skill,

  • pay off his debt.

  • Treat him like family.

  • Invite him to my home.

  • Invite him to my company.

  • After working together for a period of time

  • what I found out is he was

  • doing a lot of reputation destruction,

  • a lot of things behind my back.

  • Lying, deceiving, spreading rumors

  • about my company, with many of my students.

  • Was I disappointed?

  • Absolutely.

  • That's a business partner right there.

  • But I learned from that.

  • It doesn't matter what you're going through,

  • let me tell you this:

  • Give it time.

  • Give it time.

  • It might feel like you'll never get out of it.

  • It might feel this is such a big deal.

  • Three months, six months, nine months,

  • a year, two years, looking back,

  • 10 years, looking back you're like hmm.

  • It may be just like a bleep.

  • It's not that big of a deal.

  • You're still you.

  • You'll still make it,

  • you'll still be successful.

  • The business partner,

  • the three business partner that I had,

  • the bad ones,

  • where are they?

  • I'm here, I'll always be here.

  • Those guys?

  • Irrelevant, history.

  • No-one remembers them,

  • no-one cares about them.

  • You shouldn't care about them.

  • As much as it hurts,

  • as much as it bothers you,

  • as much as you wanna kill that son of a bitch,

  • I get that,

  • let it go.

  • Winners are winners, losers will always be losers.

  • Let it go.

  • But next time when you select a business partner

  • be way more selective.

  • At the the end of the day you should take responsibility.

  • I take responsibility.

  • I chose the person.

  • I chose that person to be my business partner.

  • It is like how many of you of you had bad meals?

  • I've had bad meals, you've had bad meals.

  • Do you still eat?

  • You still eat.

  • Just because a couple people

  • lied to you, betrayed your trust,

  • it's not everybody.

  • I've also had some very successful partnerships,

  • I'm glad I have those partnerships

  • and they're phenomenal, right, enriched my life.

  • And that's great.

  • Working on projects with great people,

  • that's wonderful, right.

  • It's not like oh then I don't trust anybody anymore.

  • I never want a partner anymore.

  • No, you need to collaborate.

  • You need to work with people.

  • So as disappointing as those incidents,

  • learn from those incidents.

  • And trust me, five, 10 years from now looking back,

  • those incidents, the first one?

  • It turned me into an obsessed learner.

  • The first business partner turned me into

  • an obsessed learner, right.

  • The second business partner taught me

  • the importance of having team,

  • not counting on one person.

  • The third business partner taught me

  • about legal structure, protecting yourself.

  • It made everything that I do stronger,

  • it made me stronger.

  • And it's great.

  • I don't recommend anyone to go through this

  • but sometimes you gotta go through this

  • to become who you are capable of,

  • who you could be.

  • So that's my story.

  • So if you've ever been screwed over by a business partner,

  • comment below, share your story with us,

  • share your story with me,

  • I wanna hear them.

  • And what have you learned from it?

  • Put aside anger, put aside the rage.

  • What have you learned from this?

  • You might say, oh I learned he's an asshole.

  • No, seriously, what have you learned from this?

  • What was your takeaway?

  • There's some good in there,

  • I know there's some good in there.

  • In spite of how bad the scenario is,

  • what could you learn from this?

  • If you can find those couple key lessons

  • you can learn from it,

  • then next time you won't repeat the same mistake.

  • Right?

  • So share your story with me,

  • comment below.

- When I was 17 years old

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