Tough times never last,
but tough people do
I have been constantly asked about how we began our seminar business. Looking back, we know that the series of events that took place did not happened by chance. The opportunity was there at the right place, right time and it was also the act of a divine intervention. I am a believer that nothing happens to us by coincidence or chance.
We were in poor financial condition and state at that time. After a challenging period of running a restaurant business of 2 years, we were almost a victim of bad credit loan with almost nothing left ourselves other than a roof over our heads and an old car to take us around. It was tough financially, emotionally, mentally and physically for us.
So when we decided to start the seminar business, the first thing that concerned us was our financial situation. My husband considered the options of taking an overdraft from the bank, applied for a secured loan or perhaps, an unsecured loan. Running an event required financial back-up for marketing and advertising plans, and most of all, to pay a 50% to the speaker.
International speakers with credentials and strong reputation can cost between USD$15K – $30K a day. We took the ‘risk’, got the loan and went ahead to organize first seminar. And since, it was a point of no return for our careers (for now, that is).
We were thankful that the event did tremendously well and 1,200 participants flooded the hotel ballroom that morning. We were fresh and new in this business and there were so much to take care of. The learning curve for this project was significant to our personal and business growth.
Looking back, we cleared our personal loans within a year and we couldn’t be more thankful than that. At one point, I was very emotional on tying our house to the loan but we had no choice. But if we had not made a decision and took on the challenge, we wouldn’t have this business today. And the law of focus helped us achieve our goals that were crucial for our business success.
“We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.” ~ Dale Carnegie
What is your ‘risk’ today?
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