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.

Thursday, November 09, 2017

A Long Day... Thursday, November 9

After a full morning of breakfast out at Kitchen 1B, shopping at Greenhills and I then returned home to work on Empowered and do some administrative stuff for Hulk's.  

I was suppose to split my workout into two -- boxing in the afternoon, weights at night, but that totally didn't happen on account of the fact I got so wrapped up with business.  

Finally at 6:45pm I showed up at Elite Boxing.

I figured I'd do a quick boxing session, then hit the weights for some lower body functional training, and be out by 8:30pm. 

...but then I was introduced to someone.

The other day I brought some gloves to Elite for the coaches to test out.  They were sample gloves sent to me from a potential supplier of mine in Pakistan.  He sent me a pair to test out the quality of his gloves and I thought who better to test them out then the coaches at Elite.  So I left them there with them and told them to beat the hell out of them.  In giving them these sample gloves though this sparked a conversation between a coach and a fellow fighter.  There's only one brand of gloves that are locally made here in the Filipinos that some know of but for the most part they're really still so unknown by the general public.  I only heard about them because I was inquiring about local producers of boxing equipment.  If I could get a locally made glove as oppose to an imported one not only would that totally chop my shipment travel costs and hassles at customs but I'm sure they'd get a lot of attention.  If Filipinos are anything like Koreans then they'd rather support a local brand product than an imported one.  I for one would totally support a Filipino brand; I think that'd be awesome.

Well, turns out there's a fighter at Elite that is very much interested in making his own Filipino brand.  He heard about me the other day and today he introduced himself to me.  I had to laugh when he reached to shake my hand because I gave a "caught-in-the-headlights" response to him telling me his name.  He was as wide as I was tall, dude was built, and at first it was so distracting.  Turns out his business venture is very much a giving-back-to-the-community kind of venture.  He really wants to support local fighters and donate much of his product to those who can't afford to buy it.  Anyways, he and I talked a lot about his idea, what he'd need for startup and how he could promote his brand, and I told him that the day he launches this I'd totally be up for being one of his customers, for sure!

I left the boxing club at 9:55pm.

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