Ep.233: How To Start A Business With Nothing The Leadership Stack Podcast

Sean: We want to hear from you first. Like any other person who ends up being an entrepreneur, what was your start up journey? How did it look like?


Sensei: Oh man, I can really go into depth on this, but I'll hit some key points here. As a kid, I didn't grow up rich. In fact, I didn't even grow up with money.


My grandparents had a lot of money. My parents did not have a lot of money. In fact, I remember as a kid going out with my father on the weekends, after business hours going dumpster diving. If you don't know what that is, we're jumping in the trash cans and pulling out produce and food.


And we would throw it in the back of the truck now to me and my brother. We were young, we were a little, we thought that was the greatest thing in the world. It was so much fun to jump into a trash can and it was like an Easter egg hunt; it was like Christmas and we loved it.


But later on in life, I learned "Oh my god". We really had to eat out of a trash can at one point. And it's not because my dad was lazy or anything. Man, that guy is a hard working dude. But he was a truck driver, in that time he would work and get laid off and get work and laid off. And so it was really, really difficult. And I had a lot of brothers and sisters.


So there was one summer back in 1984, I was in high school. I was watching the 1984 Olympics, which was happening in Los Angeles, California at the time. And. I thought it sucked that I had to stay home and babysit and watch TV.


But what the Olympics did for me is saying, "Hey, you have opportunity out there. You can get whatever you want." Because the majority of those people that I watched on the Olympics came from nothing. They had nothing and they created something and here they are top athletes of the world. And I said, I'm going to do that. That's what I'm going to do.


And so with all my efforts, I got, I was into martial arts and I put my efforts in everything to where I started traveling around the United States in competition, winning championship, after championship, and then started going international to the point where they now have the junior Olympics to qualify for the Olympics.


And I got gold, silver, bronze, gold, and silver. I got five medals. And so with that, I'm now on this journey in athletics, teaching me how to channel my energy and focus in something that's positive versus focusing, which is negative, which I was doing as a kid. And so right out of high school, I took all that positive energy.


I took my focus and said, you know what, I'm not going to be like my dad where he's breaking his back, working. But not able to capitalize on a paycheck because he has to rely on his company, his boss, and all the other people that are higher up, I will build my own boat and I will make sure that my boat sails. If it sinks it's on me and I'll figure out how to get it afloat again. I refuse to work for anybody but me.


And so right out of high school, I opened up my very first martial arts business, which 33 years later next week, we're still in business. And that was the beginning of my journey.


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