My business mentor posed a question to me the other day, a question she wanted me to ponder over and then come back with my answer.
"What do you want more of in your life?", she asked me.
I want freedom.
Freedom from depending on my financial support from Korea and various sponsors here in Canada. I appreciate their support and am grateful but I want it to be a pure bonus and not something I need. I want financial freedom.
I want to disconnect myself from Korea, close that book so that I can be free to start my new story here. I still have strings that tie me to Korea and some days they feel like they're choking me or burdening me more than I can handle.
I feel like I'm on a leash with Korea holding the end of it.
I would love to cut all the strings that attach me, chew this leash off and just be free.
"Money is just dirty paper, it's what it can offer you that is the important thing", my mentor has said several times and that's true but my money comes from Korea. Money wasn't an issue for me in Korea, I was a successful entrepreneur with a booming boxing club, but now I'm a starving athlete. I'm beginning my life all over again. Part of me likes the challenges that come with starting over and having a limited source of funds. It has made me respect what money I do have more and it's made me wiser with my spending. It's also made me hate shopping though so I avoid shopping malls and feel a bit sad when I see my friends talk about all the things they bought.
It's exhausting starting all over again. This is the second time I've started life over.
More important than financial freedom though, I want more of the feeling that what I'm doing is making a difference. I want someone to one day say that because of me they didn't give up or they did something big, that I inspired them.
There's a drop-in place by my old boxing club that has a set drop-in time for women only. I want to get involved in that. I would love to solely do charity work but it doesn't pay the rent and buy me groceries.
There's definitely a lot of potential for me to make good money with a side project I'm working on with a photographer and manufacturer but that's not how I want to make my legacy. Selling things isn't how I will make a difference or even leave my mark. There are so many fit females out there selling products and I don't want to be another one of them because I think it's can get rather superficial. Sex sells and that's so true in the fitness industry but I'm not this sexy female. I'm not sexy at all and even the thought of me trying to be sexy embarrasses me and makes me shy. Instead, I'm this cute little Polack whose father always says she smiles too big and giggles too much. That's me. If I sell a product, I want to put a part of me into it. I want share more of who I am like adding personal thank you notes to those who buy my sweaters or writing personalized comments on the signed pictures I sell.
I'm putting my faith in my female-only company but I think it's not until it gets big and has time to expand that it will reach its potential and really make a difference. My ultimate goal with it would be to not to start my own training facility like Hulk's in Korea but to launch a kind of club house here in Toronto, a place that would cater solely to women.
When we're younger, us females, we have Girl Guides and groups like Pioneers. When we enter university we have sororities but once we grow up and leave university there is nothing really for us females to join, group wise. Sure there are clubs like sewing clubs and book clubs but they're all interest or skill specific. There is no real general club. My company would be a fitness-oriented club that would cater to not only the gal just starting her fitness journey but also the pro star athlete.
For right now, I think launching my product line will be something that helps me work towards financial freedom and starting my boot camp sessions with my female-only fitness company will help me with getting that club house but it's going to take time. There's so much I want to do and these days I find myself struggling with the fact that not only are there so much I want to do but also how Canada works at a much slower pace than Korea.
I am still so Koreanized, wow.
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