As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).

After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.

Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.

Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Day One of Renos!!!... Tuesday, April 2

It’s easier for me to stay up till morning than to wake up early, regardless of what time I go to bed, but at the arrival of 6:40am today I jumped out of bed with such great excitement. Today was day one of renovations at our boxing club.


We showed up at the club at 7:30am and were greeted by our crew of five renovation workers – all middle aged-men who were all cheery-eyed and smiley. It was a nice welcoming party to arrive to but I was desperately needing coffee. The idea was to show up, give out the directions and details, stick around for an hour or two and then head home to bed.

We’ve changed our floor plan so many times by now and when I realized we hadn’t updated them, I came in screaming at the very top of my lungs. I screamed one single word, not a pretty word I must note, and everyone stopped. One of the workers had gone ahead, taking a sledge hammer to two of the mirrors we had changed our minds on and decided to keep. It was a painful mistake but I knew we were to blame. We hadn’t updated them on the plan. Needless to say though, I had to excuse myself and walk down the street to cool off. The mirrors are about $300 a piece but more importantly they were a key component in creating a kind of division among the sections of our club. We ended up deciding to take a third one down, to work in a different plan, but it wasn’t a mistake that was easy to swallow or quickly get over.

Such is life, right?! On the plus side, our cable machine will score the spotlight there now.

From 7:30am to about 6:30pm we were at the boxing club slaving away with the reno workers. It was hard work – definitely not a job I’d ever consider taking on full time – but it was good to work there together. We left with aching pains and super cold but it felt good knowing that we’re literally making this club from the bottom up, not just pouring in our ideas and money but also our effort, scraped knees, blistered fingers, and sore backs.

WOW Motors called us and asked us to meet up with him. It was rather humbling showing up with poop stuck in between my boot treads and dirt on my face. He told us to go home, shower and then meet up with him in thirty minutes at his restaurant. I had NO idea he had his own restaurant – it was beautiful. It’s an upper scale restaurant where we were given a private room and dined in style.

The manager of WOW Motors is increasingly supportive us and I am ever so grateful for him. He may never know how awesome it is to have his support though sometimes I think he knows so he gives me a bit of a hard time with my training. He insists I have to be better than others and tonight at dinner he really laid it on thick that I have to push harder at training.

After dinner we headed back to the boxing club to deal with some detailing planning and to go over the equipment measurements and pricing with our equipment designer who had drove in for the evening.

At 10pm, just as we were about to finally leave the club and call it an evening, WOW Motors posed a challenge to me that he just wouldn’t let me not accept. The challenge is that tomorrow he’ll be taking me out for a run. Currently my pacing is 5:14min/km but tomorrow he’ll be forcing me to run 10km under 5min/km. Having to shave 14 seconds off is one thing but being told there’s a large lump sum of sponsorship money on the line,… ya, no pressure.


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