UIC MBA Chicago Entrepreneur Blog Past, present, and future plans in the life of an entrepreneur and former Chicago UIC MBA student.

The Ponheary Ly Foundation

Since my wife was in charge of planning the wedding, I decided I would be in charge of planning the honeymoon. I wanted to do something different and unique and it’s always been a goal of mine to volunteer in Asia. Since this was an opportune time, I did extensive research and decided to go with the Ponheary Ly foundation. Their website does a great job of describing their history and mission, so I’ll focus mainly on my experience with the foundation.

First of all, I can’t praise this organization enough. It’s a fairly small team but they manage to accomplish so much with so little. It’s led by Ponheary Ly (founder) and Lori Carlson (President). I dealt mostly with Lori since she’s a native of the US. In fact, Ponheary was a 2010 CNN Hero candidate. There’s a great video here:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cnn.heroes/archive10/ponheary.ly.html

I honestly did not know what to expect when I arrived. We were picked up at the airport by a tuk tuk and brought to the guest house. The guest house is comfortable and close to Siem Reap’s attractions. Fast forward one week and it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Lori and Ponheary brought us to multiple project and schools they were involved with and we felt lucky to see such the scope of the organization. We started off teaching English at Tchey school. The students were so interested in talking to a native speaker that you’ll find that you don’t even need a lesson plan and will easily get carried away. The next day, we went to a rural school about 40-50 minutes away named Knar. The contrast between Knar and Tchey was shocking. Children run around with no shoes, walls are missing on the buildings, and they’re way behind Tchey in education. Despite all this, the children embrace you from the moment you arrive and I found it hard to leave. That particular day, the foundation administered minor medical treatment for scratches and wounds before starting an exam! I truly and passionately believe that Lori and Ponheary are two of the most wonderful people I have ever met. They make you feel at home despite the fact that you’re thousands of miles away. In fact, they even invited us to eat dinner with them and the Ly family one night for a birthday.

It’s hard to find people that are genuine to a cause. Without a doubt in my mind, Lori and Ponheary are passionate about the youth in Cambodia. Multiply that by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I’m talking about (sorry, stole that from Meet Joe Black). It’s truly something you have to experience yourself.

Seven Candle Guesthouse

Ponheay Ly- Tsey School

Ponheary Ly - Knar School

Posted under Ponheary Ly Foundation

That’s right folks.  I’m going to show you how to start a business.  It’s so simple, you wouldn’t believe it.  I’m expecting that you already know what kind of business you want to start.  If not, can’t help you there.

First step: Decide whether you want to be a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, Corp, or S Corp.  There is no correct choice as it depends on your situation and business.  For me, smaller businesses are usually sole proprietorship.  For all intended purposes, the rest of this guide will be a “how to” on sole proprietorships.

Second Step: Most people would then go ahead and tell you to write a business plan.  Now, while I’m not against business plans, I would have to say that almost nothing will go as you plan.  The business plan is a nice road guide but it will become almost useless in the first few months.  Instead, I say just let it flow and learn as you go.  That’s how most people did it before and that’s how most people will continue doing it.

Third Step: Once you decide you’re going to wing it, you have to register a business name with your county clerk.  Just Google your county and there should be a section on their website to register your business name.  It cost about $50-$100 to register the name.  You need a DBA - Doing Business As to proceed.  Everything is online and takes only a few minutes.

Fourth Step:  Once you get your sales tax id in the mail, you can open up a business banking account.  I usually open it up with a couple thousand just to get it started.  With the bank account setup and business registration set up, you’ll have to get a business license from you city.  This usually runs about $100-$300 depending on your city.  I believe in Chicago, I pay $250/year.

Your business is officially up and running!  Here are some very helpful sites to make your business more professional.

www.craigslist.org - Great place to find a place to rent.  You can run the business out of your house, rent a full space, or just rent a cubicle.  It’s all available on craigslist.

www.loopnet.com - site that specializes in selling and leasing commercial properties.  If you have the money, this is a great site.

www.grasshopper.com - This site will help your business look professional with toll free numbers and virtual phone systems at a low price.

www.shopify.com - Online website that will help you sell your products.  This site is easier to use than Yahoo store.  This is a great site to start selling products online.  Combine it with grasshopper.com and you have yourself a full fledge e-commerce business.

That’s it folks.  That’s who you start a business.  I never promised to give you any ideas but if you follow these steps, your business will become a reality and it’ll only cost you a few hundred dollars.  If by chance, you don’t want to start your own business and would prefer to just buy one:

www.buybizsell.com - Offering all types of business for sale.  Probably the largest marketplace for businesses and you’re sure to find one that matches what you’re looking for here.

www.flippa.com - Marketplace for just web based businesses.  The listings expire pretty often so there are always plenty of web based businesses for sale.  I wouldn’t recommend buying a web based business until you know a bit more.

Hope you enjoyed this post and if you ever run a successful business because of me, don’t forget who got you started!

Posted under Chicago Entprepreneur

So I’ve decided to come out of retirement, like MJ but not as spectacular.

While in class a few weeks ago, we learned how to use personal stories to introduce ourselves and hopefully draw connections.  Without making it complicated, here goes:

I’m really two people (not literally).  I was born in Taiwan and grew up in a wealthy family.  My father inherited a large sum of money from my entrepreneur grandfather (I’ll post about him another day).  Lucky for me, when I was about 5, my father made some huge investments in bad business deals and he lost our fortune.  My parents moved to America with $500 and we started with a clean slate.  Despite having little, my childhood is full of wonderful memories and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.  Throughout my life, my father and his siblings constantly argued about the inheritance and who deserved what.  Due to this feud, I didn’t meet my cousins until twenty years later.  Till this day, there are a still few cousins I have never met.

So this is where I’m really two people.  Part of me wants to make a lot of money and do something good with it.  The other part of me is torn because I’ve seen greed in it’s purest form.  Shouldn’t we be happy with what we have and aren’t there more important things than money?  The purpose of this blog is for me to be able to reflect back and see how and why I made decisions.

Here are a few questions I would like to be able to explore:

• Can I be half the entrepreneur my grandfather was?
• How will I make my money?
• Is money all that really matters?
• If it isn’t, where can I make some impact?

This is my story.  I hope you enjoy traveling with me on my journey.

Posted under Personal

Farewell all.  This is my last post.

I’m retiring from this blog for a few reasons.  Mostly, I would like to write about different topics and feel it’s not relevant to the MBA program anymore.

I enjoyed my program at UIC and met a bunch of great people through the process. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to shoot me an email.  Best of luck to everyone!

Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud

This past Sunday, I decided to run the Chicago half-marathon.  I’ve always wanted to see how hard it would be so I just signed up.  Sometimes you have to try something out to see if you can do it.  I’m not going to lie, it’s hard.  Below was my training schedule for the half marathon:

• Run 3 miles once before
• Run 5 miles once before
• Run 6 miles a week before the race

Yep, that’s it!  I thought to myself on the 6 mile run, “it’s only double this length so it shouldn’t be too hard.” Boy, was I wrong.  During the actual race, the first 7-9 miles were not bad.  It’s miles 10-13 that really kills you.  My body was breaking down and motivation to run the last 3 miles was disappearing.  Many times in life, this analogy can be translated to other problems you face.

1. The most difficult part of an obstacle is just to do it.  Sometimes you have to put all excuses aside and just do it.  The moon will never align and the timing will never be perfect.  JUST DO IT.
2. Once you start, you realize it’s not that bad just like the first 7-9 miles of my race.  This is about the time that you realize you should have done this all along and it’s really not that difficult.
3. The end of obstacle is where the true test comes in.  Mile 10-13 were extremely difficult for me.  I did get some motivation from couple of the bands playing but I was thinking about walking the rest of the way.  When the going gets tough, many people will just flake out.  The only reason I got through this was the strong support system.  It was weird.  As you can see from the picture below, my name is included on my tag.  People on the side would shout your name and encourage you.  This, couple along with the other runners, was the motivation I needed to finish the race.  When you’re approaching the end stretch of an obstacle, you need a strong support system.  I will try to look for support systems and encouragements for my other obstacles from now on.

Would I do it again?  Maybe.  Could I do a full marathon?  I’m not really sure.  My legs were gone for the next two day.  I’ll consider it for next year.  I might just end up signing up and forcing myself to do it.

This is how confident I was in my ability to run the race.

Not a bad run for no training

Posted under Uncategorized