LegendaryLife Blog

I’ve been learning Mandarin Chinese on/off for 15 years… each time, making great progress then life getting in the way – usually in the form of a business that takes over all my time (WoodMarvels.com didn’t grow from a lack of work!). This has happened to me several times so far – and will continue probably until I retire. I actually moved to China and lived there for close to two years in the hopes I could finally get this long term goal of mine accomplished!

What I saw while there surprised me and then I realized how little education I actually got both from various books / tapes / CDs and even my year learning Mandarin Chinese at my local university about anything beyond the language. There was so much that I didn’t have the opportunity to learn about that was just as important to me as learning the language. China and the Chinese people are fascinating and complex, I wanted to show this to others trying to learn Chinese while, at the same time, having a book that took this into account and improving based on my personal experience, all the shortcomings of what others had done.

Learning a language is very difficult, it takes at least an hour a day, everyday – even when you are living in a country surrounded by this language – for it to sink in. I felt there was so much I didn’t grasp, hence how both the website HowToChinese.com and the book that was written came about.

My wife and I built a resource that I wished I had when I was in university – it’s by far superior to anything I’ve ever used previously to learn Mandarin Chinese and unlike the other systems, you have live video that will help you throughout the learning process. Lucky really enjoys making the videos and I doing the post-production… it’s great fun and I hope you can also see great benefit to the system we have developed for you to benefit from. Lucky worked extremely hard on this book and I’m very proud of her for how she has developed HowToChinese.com… there is a lot more coming in the very near future regarding this business to make it all the more educational and fun.

Book Information

Experience Lucky’s passion for teaching Mandarin Chinese to students around the world through her comprehensive and professionally produced online video series to help you build fluency in record time!

A fantastic book for both beginners and advanced students!

• Step by step learning process with each chapter building onto the next
• Multiple in-chapter exercises to reinforce new learnings along with real-life conversation dialogs
• Pinyin and Simplified Chinese characters throughout
• In-book Chinese <—> English mini-dictionaries
• Comprehensive video series tie-ins to help with your pronunciation and fluency
• Chinese history and modern cultural notes
• Over 170 photographs taken across China!

I’ve been traveling for a while now and am finally staying put for the next month or so while I wait for things to sort themselves out with (I hope) Australia but with each new place, you see new habits.

Going from a cabin in the woods back to “civilization”, I noticed my uncle took a break from the regular stock market trading and started playing poker online using the FaceBook system… don’t quite know how it works but he seems to enjoy it. It got me thinking of how marketing is done by poker companies, as they are a dime a dozen nowadays… the old advertisements for free poker at PokerStars.net on television, knowing full well that people would only remember the .com I thought was a wonderful marketing ploy. Those commercials for the .net where everywhere… funny how that ended-up for the guy.

I believe the owner of this got his domain was taken over by GoDaddy a while back because he, making millions of dollars online, forgot to renew one or both domains. There are tons of other poker sites online as well, you see them on TV every afternoon during the weekend up here.

I’m unsure if it’s the same owner but another poker site that seems to have given this .com pay vs .net free marketing system recently is PartyPoker.com.

All I got to say is that I hope these guys don’t forget to renew their domain like the PokerStars guys… otherwise, we’ll be reading about them online in forums!

As for me, I’m not that big a fan of Poker… I prefer to keep doing my 3D modeling, animation and growing my online businesses… but the thought did occur to me more often than not to get other domains for my sites, so instead of just WoodMarvels.com, getting the .net variation – not sure as to the value though… from my stats, most people by default look for the .com on things.

The nice thing about both sites is that they allow you to play online for free… so if you are a big fan of poker – no point in buying these video games at the store, you can just do like my uncle… spend endless hours playing this stuff at home. Unlike the stock market, you can’t lose your savings playing the free versions of these games.

Every once in a while, I’m reminded at just how narrow minded people at the executive level of a company can become the longer they work on ONE task for an extended period of time at a specific position. It isn’t their fault, our minds are built to build initial comfort then doing anything possible to REMAIN there. The result? Rejecting ideas or individuals who may challenge you to grow in new risky directions.

People get their weekly salary and THAT’S IT. They wake-up, go to work, come home, watch TV, kiss their kids goodnight then repeat the same again the next day… each time re-enforcing the level of comfort and dulling the senses slowly regarding their true potential. Basically, your mind optimizes itself overtime to coast along and optimize life around this repeating pattern and any deviation from these thought or action patterns is quickly stamped-out. People become COMFORTABLE and soon cannot imagine themselves doing anything else in life. BIG MISTAKE!

Wonder why some companies prosper while others fade away? Easy… comfort! The ones that grow and thrive keep trying new things, fail often but always move closer to an ever moving goal-post. The ones that fail? See their job as a 9-5. Not bad… but we are in a GLOBAL MARKET and 9-5 thinking just isn’t going to cut it anymore! There is always a company in the world that’s willing to do things cheaper, faster and better than you. How do you stay ahead?

1. Keep re-inventing yourself and the company you are directing!
2. Hire passion over expertise. You can teach a task but not passion!
3. Fail… fail… and fail some more. If you don’t fail, you aren’t trying hard enough to succeed!
4. If everybody is driving a Prius… drive a Monster Truck!
5. If you notice others or yourself starting to say “no” to too many ideas without thinking it through – guess what. YOU’VE BECOME COMFORTABLE!

There are two kinds of companies out there, the “me-toos” which see how successful others are and try to replicate it with a few changes in order to enjoy the same amount of success and the “what-the-___” ones who create their own unique niche and take years to get steam. I’ve had a very bad habit of creating “what-the” since I was a kid, always thinking of the world in a very different way than most others.

I use to deliver newspapers and much to my customer’s puzzlement, would only collect money from them on a bi-monthly basis ONCE (if they weren’t home, it would be another 2 weeks before they saw me) after I realized the more customers owed me, the higher the tips were. Giving 10 cents tip out of 3$ is too easy, not having change for a 20$ when they owed me 17$ was more profitable.

I began a 3D animation studio when most companies had no clue what it was (ironic considering how much “3D” type articles you write about now) and in vain tried to acquire 3ds.com but Dassault Systèmes beat me to it – hence i3DS.com which is starting to sound like a lot of the names of 3D systems out there. Convincing the DELL phone sales rep that I was an industrial company needing a 10K workstation for CAD so it was fine selling it to me.

I was given a line of credit while in university which I promptly cashed-out a few months later (giving my parents two weeks notice in the process) to travel abroad alone for two months to Japan, Australia and Malaysia! I even got another line of credit to help fund my business while learning how to fly!

Since September, WoodMarvels.com has really been on a tear… in the most positive sense of the word. Sales keep going UP, people are more and more offering me great opportunities which, based on my past, I don’t say no to. I still remember the time when I first started WoodMarvels.com, there was just me and my computer (that hasn’t changed much) but the pictures of the resources available all showed hand-crafted toys with guys wearing mustaches showing their handywork. There were screws, nails, extensive material lists and MEASUREMENTS (I hate math!). Suffice it to say, I knew there had to be a better way, computers, 3D animation, no measurements… this seemed like the path forward! Back then, I didn’t even know about lasers, on-demand manufacturing… I was designing things using wooden dowels meant for jigsaws but kept looking for a modern equivalent. I had visited industrial companies around North America and they showed me what was possible… so I designed based on what I saw, not on what I knew.

Barriers to entry where steep, I had no way of cutting much less knowing if my designs worked other than what my computer told me but I didn’t let that stop me… I plowed through. I didn’t know how to design toys but that didn’t stop me. I couldn’t draw but I didn’t let that stop me. I didn’t have any money! That didn’t stop me either! Basically, I saw a door and come hell or high water, I was going to open it!

I wanted others to join with my company as well, and to this day, I still actively look for other designers to have their stuff on my site – nothing worse than going to a store that sells only one style of things… and after each of those collaborations, I learn a little something that helps me improve on my designs!

The more I design for WoodMarvels.com, the more it surprises me that there are no equivalent sites to it. Sure, there are a few hobby places here and there but doing things the way I do? Nope! The cost of entry is huge – you need to get a full time 3D artist (not cheap especially now!) or learn yourself (very steep learning curve), build products out of thin air (easy for me now but incredibly difficult for me when I started), build a brand and partnerships (again, very difficult without an extensive portfolio) and even if you have all of this… finding customers to make it a profitable enterprise! If anything the barriers have only increased, not decreased with time.

Suffice it to say, I believe I created my very own niche and for however a short time I dominate it, the ride has and continues to be fun! That being said, I’m always trying new things… I really and truly love what I do here at WoodMarvels.com and anything I can do to grow the audience and customer base – I’ll give it a try.

There is a motto that I feel myself living through quite often, there is nothing to fear but fear itself – when you realize you have nothing to lose – and go for it… the journey might take a few years with challenges along the way, but taking the initiative and jumping off the diving board without knowing how high or even if there is water in the pool… makes life worth living!

Growing up, I was never the best student when it came to academics… I would look outside and see a place of endless adventure then go into a classroom and find it rather stifling. I never seem to have the same values or goals as other people… I always wanted MORE and DIFFERENT so conformity to learning things only one way following endless steps was not of much interest to me.

Awards and my perfect attendance record!

In elementary school, there were awards to the graduating 8th grade class every year, the best student in math, best in sciences and so forth… we all knew who would win these awards at graduation but there was one award that I knew I could get that nobody paid much attention to. The PERFECT ATTENDANCE AWARD! It was easy, all I had to do was show-up for class everyday for a whole year. In other words, no sick days! I was driven to get this award… it was something within my means! Suffice it to say, after a year, I was called-up on the graduation ceremony podium and accepted my perfect attendance record with pride. I was the only student to get this award that year!

Longest serving newspaper delivery boy

I learned that there is more than one way to succeed in life… and going for things that most people think as not important are equally as satisfying. I repeated this again when I was a paper boy. I grew my newspaper route from about 10-15 customers to over 100 over the course of 10 years… I basically had a whole city section covered and if it wasn’t for my goal of working only 45 minutes a day (making 20$ in the process at a young age), it would have gotten bigger! There was an award with The Standard, the paperboy who had the oldest route… basically, the guy or gal who delivered papers for the longest period of time. Well, that was something, yet again, I could gun for and I did. I ended-up delivering newspapers for a decade… my customers saw me grow from a small 8 year old kid to an 18 year old man with a moustache! I got the recognition and only quit about a month before starting university. I saved a lot of time, collecting money from my customers only once every 2-3 weeks instead of every week… some hated this but to me, why go to somebodies door every week for a little money when I can go every few weeks for bigger money using the same effort? Making over 20$ for 45 minutes of work day after day was something my friends would both admire and joke to me about. I learned the value of money, and saved as much as possible so that I could buy my own computer.

Learning 3D

I’m not sure why, but I always wanted to get into animation, doing 3D work was the coolest to me but I couldn’t draw if my life depended on it. My artistic skills are limited to stick figures… and sharks that look like overgrown fish! I would tell my friends about 3D and back then, the answer was “what’s that?” With the money I made from my newspaper, I bought a 5 000$ Mac IIci… it was FAST and capable of doing some rudimentary 3D stuff, mostly Strata 3D Studio Pro and Bryce but I had a computer and taught myself day and night how to make stuff. What would render in about a minute on my current machine would take days on this old computer but I never gave-up. It got to the point where I’d spend more time working on my 3D skills than doing homework at school – as long as I got 70% in a class, I was happy… and then I decided to start a 3D animation studio. I figured that I’m “alright” at 3D and nobody in my area could do this stuff so I had the market! I can’t draw, but I can build!

The beginnings of i3DS International Corporation

I soon realized trying to sell a service that costs thousands of dollars to local companies was going nowhere fast… of course, I bought a 10 000$US Dell workstation with DUAL Pentium processors! How did I get that kind of money? Well, I always wanted to fly so I went to the airport to get information about getting my pilots license and they told me of a guaranteed government program which would give me a 25 000$CND line of credit that I can borrow from to pay for the course.  Well, I thought it was perfect… I can buy an industrial 3D workstation AND learn to fly at the same time! Two lifelong goals in one shot… I went for it!

The new computer was fast and back then… I had to call Dell and tell them I was an industrial customer as these computers were not available to the general public. Now I needed a way to pay it off AND 3D was going nowhere but people were asking me about website design. I kept saying “no, I do 3D, not web” but after a few weeks, I turned around and said “I do 3D and web” and a steady cash flow soon trickled in followed by an office with staff… producing websites, custom programming and now, 3D animations for industrial companies around the world! How was I able to expand globally like this? Well, my secret is that I decided to e-mail, call and send physical mail to EVERY INDUSTRIAL COMPANY IN THE WORLD. Crazy? Absolutely… but it worked! For instance, when Forbes would release their fastest growing company lists, they always include the name of the CEO… what a perfect way to get into a company! So, I’d send them a congratulatory letter and also introduce myself in the process. I got a lot of replies back, letters I’ve kept to this day from CEOs who manage billion dollar companies… inspiring me to push even harder to grow my business!

You want to deal with decision makers!

Why focus on CEOs? I never took a formal business course EVER but almost every time I was waiting for a decision on a project, I was always told that they are waiting for the CEO to make a decision so I decided “screw it, I’m dealing with the boss!” That was my sole focus unless he/she directed me to the marketing director or other high level executives. I like dealing with people given the power of DECISIONS.

I still have this database with me to this day, it took me 5 years to build it up one by one! My average was one paying customer for every 100 industrial CEOs I contacted… it was profitable and fun work! I became so well known in the industry that I was approached to build “The Industrial Sourcebook”website, which was a huge custom programming project that we built for a publishing company which essentially produced the phone book for all industrial companies in Canada!

Success!

It worked so great that I won an award for “High Tech company of the year and was nominated for ACE Canada entrepreneur of the year (only one of three across all of Canada!).

I was probably the only Brock University Biology/Geography student to ever represent my university at an international business conference in Ottawa! As I spoke fluent English and French, I had no problem communicating with visiting dignitaries from Africa and Europe!

I actually was so much “into business” that I had to excuse myself from a very important business meeting with my universities’ executives because I forgot I was graduating on that day! They laughed… and I saw them a few hours later at the ceremony. By the way, that year I also joined the “entrepreneur’s club” at my university… they won the ACE CIBC best club across Canada. I can’t say I learned much about entrepreneurship there, but I did learn about business… notably, the power and influence you yield. I almost flunked my Entrepreneurship class (which I took after my Japanese class was canceled) because the only part that interested me was meeting entrepreneurs (they would come for seminars and talk about their businesses). I couldn’t care less about the “theory”… I wanted the “practical” stuff!

Falling on hard times

For a while, business was running great… projects getting bigger and so were the opportunities. I was in my early 20s and was interviewed for a TV show, was in national newspapers and I had a few sales people working for me – and on the afternoons I’d take a client up flying now that I was a real pilot! Life was great… I was married, talking to business owners around the world, visiting industrial shops all over the USA and Canada then I got wacked on the side of the head by the .com bust/following recession! Before this time, businesses where spending crazy money on marketing, money that was my lifeblood funding my dreams! After the stock market crashed, my large industrial clients all of a sudden has to put lots of projects on hold… I thought, no problem… I got money and enough to survive. Things were going down and I made a critical mistake. I decided to ride it out… acquiring huge debts in the process.

The stress was incredible, at the same time, after being married for about 3 years (felt like 6 months as things were flying so fast) to a woman I loved and dated internationally for several years – it got to her (both of us) and we divorced.

Hospital time

I was facing personal and business bankruptcy, a divorce and debts over my head. I cracked… and my appendix decided there were better opportunities outside of my body. I spent 3 days in a hospital drugged-up. After the operation, I decided that at least I wasn’t like some of the other guys in the hospital with missing limbs – my room mate was a diabetic who lost both legs and his life story was interesting but not very inspiring.

A new life

I got out of the hospital with a new lease on life. I had a new gf, decided to pay down my debts personally – I figured I spent the money, the least I can do is pay them back and started-up business again! Things were looking-up… then 9/11 hit me and I was wiped out AGAIN! I got things back-up a third time but decided that I had to take the opportunity given to me by being young and travel the world. I was again in debt and decided on my 30th birthday that I would spent my 31st in Cairns, Australia. I got a working holiday visa, a one way plane ticket and I was off! I spent my birthday on the beaches… the way I envisioned it a year earlier!

Teaching abroad… but first more misery!

While I was in Cairns, I tried in vain to find a job – the working holiday VISA was great but nobody wanted to hire a foreigner for only 6 months stints (I couldn’t find permanent employment with this VISA). I got a job working midnights in the Cairns Post and it paid very well… but I didn’t see the Sun very often. I became a hermit in paradise! I still had mounting debts that needed to be taken care of so after 4 months, I found-out about teaching English in Korea. They would pay the flight (great as I had no money), sponsor me and gave me a salary working part-time. I thought… great! Now I can automatically pay down my debts while traveling and building back my business.

My passport was stolen in the mail while applying for a Korean E2 VISA, I had to red-eye it to Sydney with less than a hundred dollars to last me a week! It was miserable… I had no money for food so I booked a room at a hostel that offered free breakfasts. I would eat for 2 hours straight in the morning till I wanted to throw-up and that would last me until the next morning! Things sorted themselves out with the consulates and I managed to appear on Sydney television as well… the rail system broke and I saw a camera crew interviewing people so I made sure to appear in the shot! Old habits die hard!

Business Opportunities

The internet was always interesting to me, it’s what made me successful with 3D earlier in my career so I decided to do some SEO testing, building DreamClue.com (dreams mean nothing, so I could easily excel in this marketplace) and then I built buzvia.com to track my internet marketing efforts.

I was doing side-projects throughout my teaching, from web to 3D but the market never recovered. I wanted to get into woodworking! I was in a foreign country, not speaking a word of their language in an apartment the size of a western bathroom with a laptop and no money!

WoodMarvels.com made perfect sense… and after a few years, it has grown very nicely, generating sales around the world! I then build 3DMarvels.com and recently, HowToChinese.com.

After a few years going back and forth from Korea, Philippines and China… we are where I am now – I got travel bug out of me, want to start a family soon and am eagerly looking forward to what this year brings to me!

Bruce Lee says become like water

One of my idols is Bruce Lee… I actually studied Martial Arts for 10 years and got my black belt right before starting university and I think his philosophy of changing your mind and body to suit local conditions is straight on.

Bottom Line

I’ve never lived a conventional life like my friends, I’ve seen and experienced things they can only dream about and most importantly, I’m a very content and happy person. I’ve not only managed to get my finances under control but also taught myself new skills for emerging industries! I published 4 books during this “teaching” period of life, started a few businesses and developed contacts that will provide me with the challenges for the second phase of my life. Regardless of the troubles I put myself in, I never gave-up the thought that what I got myself into I can get myself out off using my mind and body. It’s important to treat both with upmost respect… smoking, drinking, taking drugs don’t solve problems, they make them worse. Like my sister who died on Christmas day a few years back, the body will only take so much abuse before it quits and when it does, there is nothing you can do to get your health or life back.

This morning, I felt for the first time in a few years… that I’m truly awake! I have a diversified income stream (gone are the days of relying on one industry or client for my income), a woman I really love by my side and now ready to kick ass again!