I am glad to be home this Christmas and be with people I love more than I love myself! That's some deep love because everyone that knows me knows how much I love myself.  

Truly I am glad...happy... and very grateful. I am going to focus on the last part of how I feel - 'grateful'. I truly am grateful. Grateful to be surrounded by Family. Grateful to have a family. Grateful to have someone to spend Christmas with. Grateful to have somewhere to be this Christmas. Grateful for a wonderful year and more wonderful years to come. Greateful for all the new and interesting people I met. Grateful for the old friends. Grateful for 'Bombay' (Bombay is my dog's name). Many people don't understand or realize how fortunate they are for everything they have.  I hope you can take a moment to count all the positive things in life and I hope you pay less attentions to the negatives. 

There are always ups and downs in life. You will be placed in positions where you would be uncomfortable. There might be times where you would question 'hope', 'your dreams', you 'path'. Its at this time, you need to realistic face the situation that you are blessed. You are alive. Do you realize how important that is. Start to appreciate life. Appreciate the fact that you are alive, that you are breathing, that you are in good or relatively good health. That you are breathing oxygen. Many of our fellow bothers who share similar DNA as you were not. They did not make it you did.  
Be grateful this year that you are alive. 

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But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you’re hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!
Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!

Its been such a long time.

I guess I will give you a quick update on everything.

Lifes going good. Very busy due to the holiday season but good busy. I am enjoying and loving every minute of it. The only bad thing is that I haven't worked out in like over a month. Which sucks because I was in really good shape in the summer. I need to bring it all back.

Family life is good. Parents are happy. My brother was on China for 3 weeks! He loved it down there but I am glad to have him back. Bombay is getting older.

From a business perspective we have very close to passing our goal of 100m this year and we are already thinking about next year. We want to continue to grow aggressively and continue to dominate the ecommerce market. Right now we are the largest spender on social media in Canada for Facebook and Instagram. Recently ranked the 5th fastest growing company in Canada. Hoping to be number 1 next year.

This holiday seasons been the best yet. Black Friday was the best yet in terms of rev, we did over 7-figures in one day. Insane right. I am so proud of the company and the talent it has. I'll keep it short but I promise to write another one soon. Below are some pics! p.s. American Express gave us a black card - which is a great accomplishment for us. It's a card with no limits made from titanium which means it will never break. And also only 30 people under 30 in Canada have it. Come a long way and got a longer way to go.

Pictures!!!

Be Happy.  Two things inspired this blog one of my friend indicated I hadn't rewritten in a while and that I should write a blog. And also, last Friday, I got bored and send a bunch of my cousin and family friends a video of me ranting about being happy. One of my cousins told me I should put it on my blog so here it is!

By any means or measures, I have not reached the stage of happiness and to be completely honest, I don't think I ever will. But that's okay because I am content at the fact that I will never reach that stage. That's because I always want more and I am never satisfied.  So pretty what I am trying to say is that I am content by the fact that I can never be content. Get it? Didn't mean to give you a headache.

Back to the topic now - Be Happy! Life is short. You are only here for a limited amount of time. Be Happy. That's one of the most important things in life. If you want a meaningful life without regrets, be happy. I truly mean it. Find your happiness. Its not found in money, chasing woman/man, or new toys and gadgets. Its not found in bigger homes, shinier cars or fancy suites. True happiness I believe is found in yourself. You have the power to make yourself happy or make yourself sad. You ultimately have that power. Use it. No one else can make you happy or sad. Only you can do that. You can interpret how the world sees you. The world will see you how it wants. What matters is how you see yourself. 

I know many millionaires who are sad and I know people who work average jobs, live in a average place and are really really really happy. I mean just interacting with them, they are glowing with abundance of happiness. They are the kinda of people you want to be around. The kinda of people you would like to hang out.  Happiness attract happiness. 

Stop stressing and be happy. Trust me if you are reading this blog, the probability is you have access to the internet and a computer. Which also means that you are pretty well off. You have alot to be happy about. I don't mean to be rude but your first world problems are pathetic and if they make you sad... then. I guess you can follow the train of thoughts.

Be happy people. Its very important. Don't wake up every morning complaining. Be happy like a child. Be happy for yourself. Be happy for your friends and family. Be happy because without happiness, there isn't much. Being happy is probably the most important thing in life. 

So by now, I guess you know what I am going to conclude with.

Be. Happy.

We are meeting with a bunch of investors! Typically, I would be nervous but I am not. We bootstrapped a company which is on its way to do a $100M in revenue. But we can grow. And with the right investor/advisor and right people, we can grow even faster. 

We aren't going into the meeting with a deck or a presentation. We are simply going to go there and talk about our business. Our value proposition. How we grew and what our plans are for global expansion. We want to let them know we want to replicate our success that we had in the US/UK/Canada into several other countries.  

I want to also discuss getting our products in retail. It would be a dream come true for me, to walk into walmart one day and see our product on the top-self. We have had our product featured in retail but through a distributor and not us.

Wish us luck because luck is 90% of the game. 

When things get tough, when the door closes, when people become strangers, when you feel isolated, when life hits you the hardest, when you fall, when you get hurt, when you lose someone you love, when you get stabbed in the back, when your eyes are full or tears and your heart full of pain, when you feel hopeless, when you feel lifeless, when you feel like giving up... never give up.  

Because you are the toughest when you need to be, when the door closes you see opportunities, you will see people that truly matter, you will gain strength, you will learn to cover your back, your pain will be your weapon, there is a beautiful hope in hopefulness, you will understand the value of life, you will not give up....never give up.

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We hosted an event at the Mississauga Convention Center and it was crazy! Literally, crazy! We had almost 10,000 people show up to the event.  The event was mainly for our cosmetic products where we featured our 'famous' brushes! We also featured electronic and jewelry at this event. 

Below are some great things and things we need to improve on for the next event! 

Great things:
Alot of people showed up 
The lines were long
Most products got sold out
With 10,000 customers buying an average of $80; you can do the rest of the math ;) 
Strong community support
Amazing venue, security, parking service, event coordination
Most importantly, I can literally say we have the best team in the world. Our team was on the feet for almost 8 hours without anyone taking a break. We are truly fortune to have such a dedicated and strong-willed team. Koodos to our team! 

Bad things:
The lines were long - I felt we let our customers down. We should have been more proactive. We should have hired more people. The line to get into the event was almost 2 hours. The line to get to cash after you got to the event was around an hour! That's insane. Next time, we will have triple the number of staff. 

Stealing! We had customers who got caught stealing. No we did not call the cops of them. We simply talked to them and told him what they were doing was wrong. Some of the customers caught stealing were with the kids - imagine having a child witness this. I hope after our talk, they don't steal every again! 

What's next? 
Well this is out of our core business. In terms of revenue - it's 'okay'. When I say it's okay, I mean yes there was a huge profit made but comparatively to our sales on other channels, it was lower. But we do like it. We like seeing our customers in person. We like talking to them. We like to engaging them.  The short-term plan is to hold events every two months in a different city  in North America for the next year. The long-term plan would be to open an event marketing company where we do more than just events which are good's based. We want to get into other types of events and social gathering.

Below are some pictures from the event! Hope you enjoy them.

Do you have a servant's attitude when it comes to leadership? Don't be too quick to say yes. Here's how you can tell. In situation where you are required to serve others' needs, how do you respond? Do you become impatient? Do you feel resentful? Do you believe certain tasks are beneath your dignity or position?  If the answer is yes to any of those questions, then your attitude is not as good as it could be.  Make it a practice to perform small acts of service for others without seeking credit or recognition for them. Continue until you no longer resent doing them. 

Just a random thought. I feel I am not real anymore. I feel most people aren't real. What do I mean by real?  I define real by looking at two things being genuine and being sincere. 

I don't know if it has to do with adulthood, maturity or politeness - but I am not real anymore. You get to live life ones, why be fake? Why suppress your opinions? Why always try to be politically correct? Be real.

I am going to try to be more real. More real with my opinions, how I feel, how I interpret things. I am going to worry less about being politically correct and how people would interpret the things I say.  At the same time, I don't want to hurt anyone's feeling either.


So some real thoughts:

Stop talking about me and start talking to me.  When I randomly meet people that I knew from the past, they always say 'oh we were just talking about you the other week' or 'he/she was just talking about you'. Well stop. I am pretty easy to find. 

I work almost 12 to 16 hours a day. This means two things 1) I don't have a social life and 2) If I don't get back to soon - I am not ignoring you nor am I trying to be rude. 

When I help someone - anyone - I genuinely do it because I want to not because I want something in return. At the same time, if I don't help you, it doesn't mean that I don't care about you or that you can be upset at me. Same thing with space. I like to give some people space. People I admire and people who I feel I can trust. Don't take the space for granted. 

Now that I know people actually read my post, it encourages me to write more. In the last week alone, I had around 170 unique visitors! I guess I have some silent admirers or silent haters or bots. Probably bots. (Not both but bots)

Story About A Bird:

There was a bird who learned to fly too early.  Happily he flew. High as he could. From roof top to roof top. Around and around the building. Each flight had passion and young energy. Many saw the bird as young and naive. Many saw him as arrogant. The bird was just a bird.

Until one day. 

​His wings broke.  Broken in a way, no one would believed the bird would fly again. Why would someone rob this bird of his ability to fly.  Would the bird ever fly again?

As the wings broke, he fall down from the sky.  Closing his eyes. His dreams. His ambitions. His hopes - flashed before him. As he hit the ground, he laugh. Silently, he laughed. In pain, he laughed. In agony, he laughed. When everyone else laughed, he laughed. When everyone pitied him, he laughed. 'There will be tomorrow' - he kept reminding himself

Silently he worked. With broken wings, he learned to fly. With broken wings, he really learned to fly. Fly like he knew flew before.  Had his wings never been broken, he never would have learned to fly the way he did.  He took the grief and pain and made it into something positive, something useful. 

All the bird's dreams were broken when his wing broke. Within the pain and the broken wing, he saw his dreams. He took the broken pieces and put them together. Quiet and patiently, he waited for tomorrow to come. 

He flies again. Higher than ever.