Hello, world!!!!!!! Where do I begin? I am going to start by letting everyone know that I am just your average joe, and when you read about my story I hope you get two things out of it: 0ne an enjoyable read and two that you leave this site motivated to follow your dreams.
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey where a typical stereotype has shadowed over the town for many years. For me being Asian, I grew up a little differently than most of my peers. Most people think that because my family background is Taiwanese that I come from a strict family where I needed to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant, and for many years I thought so too. My parents gave me 110% in raising me for that I am super thankful for. They didn’t give me EVERYTHING I asked for but they gave me what they could. At a very young age my parents instilled into my mind work hard now play later or else you will be working the rest of your life. My first job was at a pizzeria washing dishes at 14 years old. That was the best job ever! I know you must think I am crazy BUT what I learned from that at a very young age was to be punctual, militant, and after cleaning after other people’s dirty dishes you kind of can’t get any worse or more disgusting than that.
No one is perfect and at a young age I was far off from anything good. I was bad news hanging out with the right people doing the wrong things always getting in trouble. I did graduate completing the first milestone of my life. My senior year of high school I applied to 6 or 7 different colleges. I took Pre- SAT and SAT prep courses I studied super hard cause “this” was the test that determined my future. To say the least I did not do well. Our counselor told us to apply to our reach schools and safety school and then some schools in between that are a toss up. The weird thing was I got accepted to 2 out of 7 schools. My safety and my first choice. When the acceptance letter came in from the University of Colorado at Boulder the feeling of joy and a brighter future glowed from my face. I knew right there I can accomplish anything. That summer I was so set on going away to school and starting a new life. I was ready to leave New Jersey behind.
As the summer came to an end in 2000 leaving for college was beginning to get a little harder. One by one my friends were leaving instead of a graduation party each week to celebrate our accomplishments it was a going away party. When I got on that plane to head to Colorado a school or state I have NEVER been to I was excited and extremely sad at the same time. I guess most people would just say nervous. The University of Colorado at Boulder was NOT the school I graduated from. After the Fall semester I decided to transfer back to NJ to Seton Hall University. We all know that during our college years are some of the best years. We all went to school for experience and getting our degrees. My plan was to walk into a 4 year bachelor’s degree and I walked out of college with a Ph. D. not knowing what I done but then realized it was my “Party Hard Degree.”
My senior year of college I had no clue what I was going to do with a major in Economics and two minors degrees. I began to work in a well-known clothing apparel company. After taking a year off from college going through some of life’s downfalls I made 2004 a rebirth of me. Earlier I spoke about being 14 and washing dishes and in 2004 the only job I could find while in school was a retail sales job for $7/hr. I grabbed the opportunity and saw growth with the company. I worked my way to become a store manager. Jobs are always great when there is advancement and something to work for. I soon realized that the work life balance was not there and saw that the loyalty I had towards the company was greater than what they had for me. I knew I needed to change my profession. The video below really sums it up for what I have gone through for 10 years!
While I was working for this company I have been on the side doing a lot of R&D for my own business. My partner and I launched www. Twylfye.com in 2010-2011 as the new social media where we took the functionality of Facebook but profile capabilities of Myspace, twitter and instagram and the professionalism of Linkedin piled it all together to form our social media. The objective was to correlate online social media and someway somehow make it offline for people in different professional industries to meet. In 2012 the company TwyLyfe began to change and the image became more like a marketing company using the TwyLyfe company as a platform. Towards the end of 2013 I created an image of TwyLyfe which evolved into TMM, TwyLyfe Multimedia Marketing. My partner Sean Juan and I wanted to help other businesses grow. We knew that we had opposite characteristics and different work ethic. This was a great fit because we are able to leverage each other’s strengths and build on our opportunities. This topic of diversifying strengths in the internal infrastructure of a business can be found at http://twylyfe.com/solutions/management-coaching/ .
