Since I have much more time on my hands over this winter break, I finally got around to update this thaaang! In some ways, since I last wrote, I have made a lot of progress with things, and in other ways, there are still many many challenges to overcome. For Modeling, I booked the biggest campaign yet of my career, I was the Asian face for WonderBrown, special hair dye just for L’oreal’s Asian market. Although it was 14 hour days, and it took 20 hours for them to prep and dye my hair (Hair dye + styling + extensions), I had a lot of fun, and I really cannot wait to see the final photos!
I also found out that my Westfield campaign that I shot all the way back in January is now everywhere! Apparently it is on the sides of buses in the bay area, and there are also billboards everywhere. Here’s one I saw at my local mall @ Century City:
Posh Pants and Miss Misa are going really well too, Miss Misa is hugely profitable now (thanks to the advice from the CEO entrepeneur group) since I have so little overhead and only pay $30 vs. the $120/month I was paying before. I’m still working on getting Posh Pants in the #1 spot for Sequin shorts and Sequin Hotpants, but even though I am not there yet, sales are still pretty decent.
As for Nom Nom, this is honestly the most difficult business I have ever been a part of. Although I love our business, I really would never ever recommend anyone to get into the food business, especially if they have no food business experience under their belt (ie me). Yes we have gotten amazing press– Zagat guide, LA Times, Sunset Magazine, TV show we are soon pitching to networks– however, having all of that does not necessarily equal a hugely profitable business. Although our eventual goal is to open a Brick and Mortar Store, and then franchise, we have quite a few more obstacles to overcome before we can make that happen. December and January are the two most difficult months for food trucks– one due to weather conditions (no one wants to go eat out in the rain and/or cold!) and two due to all of the Holidays that occur and that we need to take off. I know that we will reach our goal and that we have an amazing product, it’s just really a matter of tweaking certain things about the business– finding better suppliers, finding strong dinner locations, and changing our pricing– that will get us there.
In these past couple months, it has sometimes been hard to stay positive, especially if I put the truck in a location or an event where we do not do as well as I had hoped. However, after reading these points below (Tony sent it to me it’s from the Blog Get Rich Slowly) I have really changed my outlook on my business and just on life in general. I hope that if you are reading this post, you can apply some of these principles to your life too:
Building success from the ashes of failure
In Failing Forward, John C. Maxwell writes that there are seven key abilities that allow successful people to overcome failure instead of taking each setback personally. Successful people:
Reject rejection. Successful people don’t blame themselves when they fail. They take responsibility for each setback, but they don’t take the failure personally.
View failure as temporary. “People who personalize failure see a problem as a hole they’re permanently stuck in,” writes Maxwell. “But achievers see any predicament as temporary.”
View each failure as an isolated incident. Successful people don’t define themselves by individual failures. They recognize that each setback is a small part of the whole.
Have realistic expectations. This one is huge. Too many people start big projects — such as paying off their debt — with the unrealistic expectation that they’ll see immediate results. Success takes time. When you pursue anything worthwhile, there are going to be bumps along the way. And remember: The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Focus on strengths. This was one of the biggest lessons I took away from Tim Ferriss’The 4-Hour Workweek. When I interviewed Ferriss last year, I asked him to expand on this idea. He told me: “Focus on leveraging and amplifying your strengths, which allows you to multiply your results. Fix any fatal weaknesses to the extent that they prevent you from reaching your goals, but perfection isn’t the path to your objectives; finding ways tocater to your strengths is.”
Vary approaches. “Achievers are willing to vary their approaches to problems,” Maxwell writes. “That’s important in every walk of life, not just business.” If one approach doesn’t work for you, if it brings repeated failure, then try something else. Maxwell is saying that to fail forward, you must do what works for you, not necessarily what works for other people.
Bounce back. Finally, successful people are resilient. They don’t let one error keep them down. They learn from their mistakes and move on.
These seven points form a firm foundation for dealing with failure in all parts of life, including personal finance. As you pay off your debt, as you learn to invest, as you cut your spending, accept that some failure is inevitable. But you are not your mistakes. Own them, learn from them, and move on. (And remember: Good habits keep small mistakes manageable.)
Okee I’m off to South America tomorrow, so my next post will probably be about ma trip, I will be sure to write at least one post RE my travels!
So many more fun times to come. 
It turns out that Miss Misa has many errors in the Internet Explorer Browser, so I’m going back to basics, and redesigning the entire infrastructure of the site myself. Wish me luck, soooo much to learn!