August 3, 2023 • 42 mins
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Beyond Confidence is broadcast live Tuesdays at 10AM ET.
Beyond Confidence TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Beyond Confidence Radio Show is broadcast on W4WN Radio - Women 4 Women Network (www.w4wn.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
Beyond Confidence Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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(00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed on thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not thoseof W FOURWN Radio It's employees or affiliates.
We make no recommendations or endorsement forradio show programs, services, or
products mentioned on air or on ourweb. No liability, explicit or implied
shall be extended to W FOURWN RadioIt's employees or affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those showhosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURWN
(00:23):
Radio. This is Beyond Confidence withyour host Dvaparnk. Do you want to
live a more fulfilling life? Doyou want to live your legacy and achieve
your personal, professional, and financialgoals? Well? Coming up on Dvaparnc's
Beyond Confidence, you will hear realstories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
who have stepped into discomfort, shentertheir stantus quo, and are living the
(00:46):
life they want. You will learnhow relationships are the key to achieving your
aspirations and financial goals. Moving yourcareer business forward does not have to happen
at the expense of your personal orfamily life, or vice versa. Learn
more at www dot Divaparnk dot comand you can connect with div Ant contact
at Diva Parnk dot com. Thisis beyond confidence and now here's your host
(01:08):
A Park. Good morning, listeners, this is Divine. Of course,
it's Tuesday morning, and I'm excitedbecause you are with me and I'm here
talking to you. So thank you, thank you, Thank you for all
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of you who have got our books, because partial profits from the books go
to keyba dot org and as suchwe are able to help entrepreneurs from all
across the globe. So thank youfor that. And for those of you
who have not got our books,take a moment and get our books,
(01:53):
because not only it's going to helpyou help yourself live the life you desire,
it will also help help us helpthe entrepreneurs all across the globe.
So thank you for supporting us andbeing our staunch followers and listeners. So
(02:15):
appreciate you. And I'm going tohighly encourage you and invite you to spend
that one hour of your time everymonth helping someone with no strings attached,
whether if you break it down intomultiple five minute segments of kindness. So
(02:35):
let's get that kindness circle going andlet's bring in our guest. Welcome Victoria.
Thank you so much for inviting meto your show. I've been a
long term, a long time listenerof your show and a subscriber, so
being invited to come on your showis such an honor and I'm so looking
(02:57):
forward to today. Oh, thankyou. Thank you for sharing that.
Really appreciate it. And I reallydon't listen to a lot of because you
know, as you know, mytime is crazy, and I don't listen
to a lot of shows, butI do listen to yours because you just
have some amazing way of getting informationthat's really serious topics in a way that's
(03:17):
very comforting and you know, laidback style. It's not, like,
you know, just too hard tolisten to. So it's great. Thank
you so much. Oh, thankyou, Victoria. Really appreciate your kindness.
So, Victoria usually restart out atthe childhood, and I know that
you have a really warm story andinspiring story about your family, So can
(03:44):
you share with us. Yeah,it's it's a tough one. Um.
So I started. I was bornin South Korea and we had a decent
you know, like a middle uppermiddle class lifestyle. It wasn't like a
really fancy or anything. But welived right coastal city near Pussan, which
is the second largest city, andat the time, it was a sleepy
little village. You know, Ididn't know anything, and I was just
(04:09):
curious because we were we were ona very tiny little island, so I
read a lot just to see whatthe world outside of this little tiny village
was. But one day my parentscame and decided that they're going to move
their family to America. Was consideredto be like a dreamland for a family
that had four girls. At thattime, in South Korea, girls were
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not encouraged to go to college,and if they went, some very elite
families would send their girls to college. You know, they were allowed to
major in things like home economics.They weren't really encouraged to be anything other
than you know, I guess husband'sshopping put it that way. So U
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my father had bigger dreams. Hehad four girls, and you know,
decided to come to America. Andonce we got here, we found out
that all the money that he savedand sent over was frozen, so he
didn't have access to that money fortwenty five years. So the first day
he realized he had thirty dollars inhis pocket. So we lived in East
Los Angeles, and I know,you're in the East Coast somewhere, tough
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neighborhood. You know, kids wentto school with switch blades. There were
gunfights or police cars almost every dayat my school. So, you know,
I was thirteen years old and Ihad to help my parents raise my
younger siblings. I was the oldestof the five, so you know,
it was a tough, tough,tough life. But from that start,
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I got to a point where Ididn't believe in the American dream anymore.
You know, I just I wantedto just go back home, but we
didn't have the money to go back, and I had nothing left except my
ability to hope for something better becauseI kept thinking it can't. Life just
cannot be any worse than this,really, So it was a real inspiration
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for me and motivation for me tostart working towards my own future. And
that future for me was just beable to afford my own apartment. There
was seven of us. Um,my opinions, Philodras in a little boy
that was just born. I meanhe was like a month old, so
um, I studied hard. Youknow, I did all the white things,
made a ton of mistakes, butI eventually built an amazing business that
(06:27):
you know, because I felt likeDyvia, I was never going to make
a whole lot of money. Iwas never going to be rich. So
yeah, yeah, you mentioned thatI did not believe in American dream,
right, So when did that shifthappen? Because I know you've been very
successful, so as you are growingup, you mentioned that, you know,
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my first thing was to get myown apartment, So tell us about
that journey. Yeah, so I'mwanted to get my If I thought,
if I could just get my ownapartment, buy myself a used car,
that would be my American dream becauseyou know, until then I had to
share. I mean we had oneroom a Murphy bad for family of seven,
so that was kind of um Butthen I did go, you know,
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to UCLA undergraduate there, went toMBA at USC I had to get
scholarships because you know, my parentscouldn't afford anything. So and I worked
thirty hours while I was at UCLAthe whole four years. And then I
worked fifty hours a week while Iwas going through my MBA program, And
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um, so I got out andI climbed the corporate ladder for a couple
of years, and I realized thatall I was doing was just working my
ber Endolf in exchange for some money, and I was absolutely miserable. I
didn't enjoy my work and I didn'tsee I you know, even though I
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grew up in that culture of youknow, like you would think that I
would hate motherhood and all that becausethat's what I was born into. But
once I had once I got married, I really wanted to have children and
I wanted to raise them in away that I wanted to be raised,
which is parents being home. No, that is that is very important to
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have that because a lot of timespeople may have suffered through or gone through
some tough situations and then they wantto avoid it. So what I'm hearing
is that you wanted that. Sothere are a lot of how should I
say, there are a lot ofinner city schools. A lot of kids
are there, and when they gothrough this type of trauma, it leaves
(08:37):
a mark and we have to acknowledgethat. But that said, you did
turn around and you said, like, you know, for you American dream
was to get an apartment and acar and that was enough. So you
were grateful for that. I wasthere a lot of people in that situation.
What would you tell them? Howcan they get out? You know,
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how can they create their lives?I mean, yes, all the
odds are stacked against them. Youknow, I'm going to be a contrarian
my and I'm sure you come fromyou come from a very similar background that
I do. That belief system ina lot of Asian or immigrant families is
that you go get all these degrees, you go become a doctor or a
lawyer, you got a job,climb the corporate watter, you have job
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security. My parents kind of reallyput that in my head and so I
did all that. And the problemwas I was an artist. You know,
I loved art and that's what Iexcelled in when I was back home.
And then when I couldn't speak anyEnglish. I mean I've spoke not
a single word. I mean allI knew was hello, and I didn't
(09:43):
people talk back to me. Ididn't know what to say. So in
the first two years I had toactually draw to communicate I'm going to go
to the bathroom, or you know, I'm hungry, or you know,
stuff like that, So I becamebetter at expressing myself with my drawings.
So I would just say to anybodywho and I trust me, if you're
(10:05):
listening to me right now, Ihave lived the inner city life. I
mean, we had to like cutup an orange into eight sections, and
you know, my dad would givethe two sections to the youngest child.
And that's how poor we were.But you just have to know that you
weren't born on this earth to starveand suffer forever. You just have to,
(10:31):
you know, keep one figure outwhat you can do for yourself,
just that one moment, what youcan do for yourself for that day.
So for me, I realized,even at that young age, my parents
were both you know, already goingto work at six o'clock in the morning.
The one thing I thought I needto do right away was to learn
to speak English, and going toschool. Waiting for the English to improved
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wasn't going to work out all thatworld for me because you wasn't working for
the first month. So my dadactually got a English to English dictionary and
he would just randomly circle because hedidn't speak English either, so he would
randomly circle these words, and Imemorized about two hundred fifty words, and
so I'd have to look up,like in a while they were at work,
put my younger kids to band.I would look up, like you
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know, it would say something likeconfidence, for example, and then I'd
have to look up the definition ofit. And when I look up protection,
and you don't speak English, sothere's like six other words. You
didn't understand what that what that isright in the definition of itself. So
I did that every day, andwhat I realized was that American children at
at you know, at age twelve, for example, thirteen, they kind
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of survive on twenty five hundred wordsvocabulary. That's it. So I learned
that pretty quickly. In fact,because these words were chosen randomly, bibocabulo
is actually much more superior to mostkids that went to school at that age.
So it's just an example of youknow, things that you could do
for yourself, don't relying on anybodyelse, you know, and for you
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for people who are living in innercity right now, that English may not
be the thing. It may besomething else. It may be learning to
count it, maybe you know,learning a skill, or just controlling your
you know, your emotions. Imean I suffered from depression, suffered from
low self esteem. I suffer fromall that, but I still looked even
(12:24):
to today, I look for theone thing that I could do to help
myself, because once you do that, then you're in a position to help
a lot of other people. Andnow the information is more readily available.
Yeah, for sure, this isgreat that what you're talking about. Look
for one thing, one thing youcould do for yourself and yourself like,
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rather than depending on anyone, whetherit's going on YouTube, searching Google.
Right, because I remember we hadto go to the library. Oh yeah,
I remember, so let's not datourselves. You remember those microfish things
you have to, you know,go to figure out what actually which starction
to go to the library. Thatwas yeah, and then even through the
(13:09):
I still remember like having those Britannicaencyclopedias and going through that, okay,
and then putting the pieces together andright, and of course that builds critical
thinking and other skill sets right.And similarly every generation brings their own new
skill sets which we may not beable to do it, but the basic
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fundamentals remain the same. So Ireally like that transition. Yes, no
matter how of the odds are outof the situation is whatever difficulty you're facing,
find them one thing and do itfor yourself today. And I'm sure
that you know, as you've continuedworking through a dictionary and growing your vocabulary,
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it was the consistent practice that broughtyou progress. Well, not only
that once you do that, onceyou actually start to you know, whether
it's first one hundred words, evenit gives that child a confidence that I
was able to. You know,there's this dictionary that I can rely on
that it gives. It gives you. Your confidence grows as you accomplish the
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smallest little things, so you know. And the other thing I would say
is nobody's perfect. When you're inthe inner cities or when you're in any
you could be in a nice suburbwhere you just have low self confidence because
everybody else is driving nicer cars oryou know whatever. You just have to
understand that, you know, nobody'sperfect, everyone's fighting their own battle somewhere,
(14:39):
and that if you, you know, you just got to be the
best you can be at that pointin time, because, like you said,
consistency matters. And you know,I have built a business that's just
amazing, and I look back atmy journey of you know, now,
it's like seven hundred and fifty milliondollars worth business that I've done on my
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own brand that I never actually dreamtthat, I never wanted it. It
was just like, once you buildthat business, it's just kind of it's
kind of like a snowball effect thebusiness. I got to the point where
the business growing by itself almost.You know, that's great, So let's
talk some more about it. Soyou mentioned about that you were right here,
(15:24):
you wanted to have kids, andthe corporate job was not working on
for us you at that time.So it looks like, folks, we
may have lost our guest. Hopefullyour guests will join the us back in
the meantime, let's let's talk aboutwhat we were. Let's just pick up.
(15:46):
Let's say all the odds are stackedagainst you, how do you know
what is that one thing that canhelp you find your passion? What is
it that you like to do?And then based on that you can pick
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a skill or if you are feelingthat there is something that is of necessity,
because as they say, necessity isthe mother of invention. If there
is something you need to do andthat will help you grow in your career,
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whether it doesn't matter whether you're workingat Starbucks or so. Let's just
take an example recently. What happenedwas that here's one of the persons that
I'm mentoring. And as a result, what happened was, like, you
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know, the person came to me. They were in star Box and they
were thinking like, okay, whatis this job good for? Like I'm
just behind the counter, I'm serving, and you know what happened. What
happened was that they had not openedup their doors of mind. So once
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you open up the doors for mind, she climbed the ladder. And not
only that, but she got thescholarship from Starbucks to get a degree.
So you can find your ways toget that degree, and once you have
that degree or whichever way you aregoing, you can make that life for
(17:41):
yourself. And now she's in avery good place. All right, Victoria,
do we have you back? Yeah? So what I was going to
say to you is that earlier wherewe left off was nobody's perfect. And
one thing I guarantee you, whetheryou believe in whatever your American do,
we you know your dream is you'regoing to continue to make mistakes. I
(18:03):
make mistakes every day today, afterI've done all that business, both in
business and in my personal life,because you're not perfect every day, you
can look back and go, youknow what, I could have done this
better, that better, or ifI only had done this, I could
have been a you know, onehundred billion are like Oprah Winfrey. But
you just have to, you know, embrace all that life has to offer,
(18:23):
because all that good stuff happens afteryou make those mistakes. You know,
like if you show me a skierdownhill skier, like Olympic skier that
has never fallen, I would sayyou're a liar because it's probably not possible,
right, and I don't use thatword there. Yeah, it's not
possible. You know, if youlook at any like weightlifter who's never dropped
(18:48):
the dumbellum, that's not possible either. So in business, I mean talk
to authors, I mean most authorsthat write books. I mean, you
know, even Stephen King, who'ssupposed like the godfather of all writing,
some of these books actually suck.I'm gonna tell you right now, I've
read all these books. I cantell you it doesn't happen. So you
(19:11):
definitely make a great point, isthat without mistakes life, there could be
no success. Yeah, that couldyou not success. So when you make
your mistakes, like if you're inthe inner city, you make all the
mistakes, you know, you becomefriends with all the around people whoever get
it out of your system. Butthe most important thing is you have to
learn from that. You have tolearn from your mistakes because you and I
(19:34):
both know people who make mistakes whojust blame other people just move right on.
That's that's not good. That doesn'thelp you much forward towards your goal.
Right, So coming back to youtalked about that, you know,
you wanted to be in a placewhere you could have family, have motherhood.
(19:55):
So tell us about that transition fromcorporate to business. So I was
actually climbing the corporate world pretty wellbecause at that time, back in the
early eighties or a very few peoplewho had MBAs that were female. So
we were the first generation of peoplethat had job titles like marketing director.
You know, we weren't vice presidentsyet, but we weren't receptionists anymore.
(20:15):
Female as you know, female workers. So I was working about fourteen hours
a day, and I was committingan hour and a half each way to
work. And I thought to myself, you know, my parents left me
as as a basically I was justabandoned. I mean they weren't. They
didn't want to, but they hadto work every day from six am to
(20:37):
almost midnight every day. They eachworked two jobs. And I was doing
the same thing. And I thoughtto myself, when the only difference is
I had choices. So my parentsdidn't have a choice, but I had
choices, and I was making thesame mistakes that they were making. So
I thought to myself, I'm justgonna have to cut that out right away.
And I didn't see any reason whyI could have a simpler life,
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like just have feed my children,make sure that they have enough of an
education so they can, you know, chart their own waters. And I
thought I could work half the timeand make half the money. I can
still make that work. So andI also thought, you know, I
wasn't making a huge salary. Iwas making a decent salary, but it
just want to pay for rent andeverything else. And I thought, you
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know what, as long as I'mdoing this, I might as well at
least enjoy my life. Because Iwas miserable doing all the financial stuff and
list going to meeting after meetings.So I quit my work. I quit
my job. And here's the mostimportant thing that I want everyone to understand.
This is when I quit my job, I thought to myself, Okay,
how am I going to make thiswork? How am I going to
(21:44):
start my own business? Have mytwo children, and you know what's my
plan? And I thought, youknow what, if I could just make
two thousand dollars a month, thatwould be enough. Because I was still
living in our apartment, that wouldbe you know, because my car is
paid off, and I bought likea several years old Pinto that used to
(22:06):
blow up like catch bag. It'sjust pretty bad. So you know,
I have my excesses were low,and I thought I just needed to make
two grand a month and that wouldbe enough for me to you know,
accomplish my goal. And so whatwould it cost? What would it take
me to make the two grand amonth? And so I figured out that
if I just had you know,just a few customers, I don't need
(22:27):
need a huge number of customers.So if I just had a few customers,
and then, you know, Ilooked at in those days, they
had like like the norm, whichis when you do a direct mail,
because this was before the Internet age. When you do a direct mail,
you get like a like a fivepercent open rate, and then of those
people who opened the open your mailum, you get about eighty percent v
(22:51):
JAC rate. Okay, and youget about ten percent of these people.
World was kinder about those days,So you get about tencent of the people
that will kindly tell you we don'twant this for whatever reason, and then
you get about ten percent of peoplesay, send me more information. So
I thought, okay, if Isent out fifty highly qualified letters a day,
okay, and I got you know, so many people coming. So
(23:12):
I did the math, and Ithought, so I was very disciplined about
sending. You know, you hadto type it on the IBM S electric
and M, so I typed them, and I was very very careful about
not making it look like it's ait's a mass mailing type thing. So
I would say something like, youknow, dear Mystiva, you know I
checked out your collection at Neiman Marcus, and you know I loved it,
(23:33):
and I loved this, this,this, and I think I could help
you you grow your business kind ofthing, So, believe it or not,
I got I didn't get a wholelot of success. But what I
did do was when my kids wereyounger, I had to drop them off
at seven thirty seven forty five toleave at seven forty five. The kids
off by eight, so I gotup like at five am and five am
(23:57):
to seven thirty or seven o'clock orso. It's you know, it's like
a mid day in London. Soyou know, that's the only people I
could I could actually contact. Soand in the old days also it's like
I would send it by a factand whenever you send the facts, it
would actually come to somebody's desk,you know, instead of like a random
(24:18):
email. It's like facts is backthose days were kind of FedEx packages,
right, So I'm dating myself.So luckily the parents London, you know,
they're so polite. The British peopleover there are so polite. She
would um call me and say,you know, thank you so much for
sending me this you know, thirtypage facts or whatever, but um,
(24:38):
I'm not interested, you know orwhatever. And then as soon as I
get that you know, facts backor a phone call back, I would
call her. That's what I wouldcall and I would thank her profusely for
rejecting me and actually sending me arejection that because nobody even did that.
And I would ask, you know, what would it have taken for me
to, you know, pique yourinterest? Can you give me? I'm
(25:00):
brand new, I mean this businesslike for no reason whatsoever, but I
just need some information from you andso I can improve myself. And so
when they give you critiquing of youknow, this, look, I can't.
At that point, They're just kindof more polite. They're like,
oh, you know, I kindof like this floral, but it looks
too big, it might be tooexpensive. So I would work on that.
(25:22):
By the time I communicated with thisperson the fourth time, they've kind
of designed the whole thing for me, so I would at least get a
shot at it. So the pointhere is, you know, just be
persistent central goals. Break it downlike I did. I broke it down
to how many you know, directmail emails, I mean packages. I
(25:45):
had to send the other thing too. Is the only reason I sent it,
by a fact, is because whenI would get on the phone in
those days, it was like fourdollars a minute in national calls. If
you sent it by a fact,it goes in six seconds per page,
so I could you know, youknow, you'll be heard, you'd be
seen, right, you don't haveto explain anything, and I would only
explain. I would only waste thefour dollars a minute once they actually got
(26:08):
a response, right. And Ialways responded to, you know, just
being kind to people, like whenthey reject you. Instead of saying,
oh, she's a she doesn't knowwhat she's doing, she's you know,
she thinks she's hot or whatever,I would actually thank her, you know,
for I would just you know,I would just say, you know,
thank you so much for sending me, you know, this kind rejection
(26:30):
letter. And um, so thatwas that was sort of you know,
so I had a global business before, you know, I was in Galleries
Lafe yet all those paces before andthen Nim and Marcus called me one day
and said, you know, whoare you and I'm like, well,
you know, check me out.I went over there to Dallas and so
I was there as well. Imean it was just you know, incredible
(26:51):
journey. Oh that's beautiful. Soyou mentioned that, you know, your
business definitely blew up, so tellus about that as Yeah. So,
um, in the beginning. LikeI said, I went all of the
above. You know, back innineteen eighty nine is when I started my
business, was a financial meltdown.Back then, it was it was the
(27:11):
you know, economic eighty seven wasthe Black Monday, and then eighty nine
was horrible. So I thought atthat time, like, who's still spending
money these days? And um,so I went through. There was a
travel agency downstairs and they had thesegiant books of you know, hotels and
the you know, the gift shops, the airlines. So I contact,
(27:32):
you know, I remember I wassending fifty letters a day every day.
So I did some um you know, duty free leisure, some department stores,
you know, like Herod's Galleryes Lafayette. And it turns out I actually
did open. I was the numberone duty three, um you know,
on all the airplane in flights.I was on thirty different airlines, duty
free gift shops as well as allthe major department stores. And then one
(27:56):
day I got a call from hsnUM and you know, the whole TV
shopping was just beginning. At thatpoint, I didn't even know who they
were. I had never I don'thave time to watch TVs. I never
even watched them. So they callme. And you know, when I
first turned it on, I said, you know, no, I don't
want to be on TEA. Firstof all, I don't want anyone to
know who I am. And secondly, there was ninety nine percent chazz I
(28:18):
to fail because I'm just not anatural talker. And lastly, you know,
I'm just very uncomfortable doing this.And besides, like you're like a
Grandma shopping network. I don't youknow, That's not what I do.
So you know, one thing,you'll know, I'm very honest. I'm
just like I tell people, Look, I'm brand new. I have no
idea what I'm doing. I justneed some help. You'd be amazed when
(28:41):
you let people know that that youare not perfect and you're trying to learn,
and you, my customer, potentialcustomer, have the power to help
me. You cannot believe how manypeople just want to volunteer all this information
for you. Yeah, I've hadpeople like when I went to Sacks and
Nemon's on Wilshire and Hde'll draw,I just went with the sketchbook because I
(29:02):
couldn't even afford to make a samplelike gold and silver takes a lot of
money. So I would just youknow, I sketched them out. I
went to them and I would say, you know, is there assistant manager?
Because I would not ask what themanager because manager is usually busy.
I would ask the assistant manager ifshe can just take a look at and
give me her opinion. And Iremember the Sax Avenue buyer was like,
(29:25):
you know, it's just a manager. It's like, oh my god,
like we have all the movie starsand they would love it. Can you
leave the book here? And Isaid, well, can you sell it?
She goes yes, and as youwe haven't asked me the price of
anything, and she said, itdoesn't matter what the price, they'll they'll
buy it. And so I actuallyhad a bunch of things sold, but
just to offer sketches, so justyou know, like I would say,
(29:45):
if you're right now listening and youare discouraged, or maybe you're not that
discouraged yet, but you want to, you know, sort of do your
thing, have a balanced life andstill can dream. You can do all
that. You just have to thinkoutside the box. Don't listen to experts
out there that really hasn't accomplished awhole lot. Tell you why they're experts
(30:08):
really, because one of the blessingsI have is I never had time to
listen to you know, like TVor experts or any of that. I
just had time to kind of usemy grit and persistence to get just a
few steps ahead every day. That'sbeautiful. So what a journey. It's
(30:30):
very inspiring, Victoria, what youhave accomplished. So if people are like
thinking about it, what's your brand'sname? So my jewelry is titled Victoria
with Collection. And what I'm doingnow is I've had a twenty five year
live TV journey along with all theother department stores. You know, I've
(30:51):
sold products in like fifty countries.What I spend my time doing now is
mentoring other other man, especially youknow, young entrepreneurs like my daughter's age,
who are sort of lost because inthis information age, there's all this
conflicting information about following your passion,doing what you want to do, and
then some people say, don't followyour passion. You know, that's a
(31:14):
stupid thing to do. You know, they're very contradictory information. I try
to give them a realistic view oflife. It's not easy no matter what
path you choose. It's not easyat all, but there is a way
you can learn from every mistake.And you know, this is America.
I do now believe in the Americandream. As you can see that my
(31:37):
dream have, you know, definitelyexploded at some point. I think you're
three, I was doing life tenmillion dollars, you know, after I
started my company. I do thinkthat everything is possible at any age.
I mean, in America, youcan be a drug addict, you can
be a high school dropout, youcould be you could have been in prison.
I mean even you can wake upat age sixty and still achieve everything
(32:01):
you ever wanted in life, becausethat's what the opportunity today, you know,
gives you. I mean, lookat people like I find this interesting
if you look at the people thator the brands that control our lives,
you know, Apple, Amazon,Google, Most of these people except for
(32:21):
Jeff Bezos, everybody else Facebook forexample, everybody else started their company with
less than five thousand dollars in theirgarage and they failed multiple times. When
when you're looking at Amazon, forexample, do you remember, if you
have, when Amazon Bezos was comingon CNBC every quarter talking about why he
lost you know, one hundred milliondollars that quarter, and I remember everybody
(32:45):
was celebrating when he finally broke evenafter twenty years. You know it's true.
So you know, just believe inyourself, be realistic. I just
say as a as a last thingI will tell you, and I just
want to give it give you ananalogy. Every year, Americans decide they
(33:05):
want to lose weight, you know, New Year's Resolution number one. All
the retails are selling fitness equipment,diet plans and whatever. And every year
seventy five percent of Americans say theywant to lose weight get healthier, and
every year they get heavier. Okay, it's because their goals are very vague.
Okay, So if you say Iwant to lose right, I'm gonna
get healthier, that's a good goal. But if you said, you know
(33:28):
what, I've already done all that, so I just want to lose ten
pounds this year, okay, justthis year, And then you break it
down and say, if I haveto lose ten pounds and I lose two
pounds a month, I'll be attwelve pounds, right. And if you
say two pounds a month and youthink to yourself, then comes down to
like cutting out three hundred calories orcutting out one hundred and fifty calories and
(33:52):
moving one hundred fifty like walking downthe block. Now, if you did
that and you say, well,if I have to lose one hundred fifty
calories, what I have to docut out a piece of bread, cut
out a glass of wine, orwhatever you're doing for the whole day.
And if you did it every dayand you didn't meet your goal, you
only lost you know, let's sayeight pounds, and you know whatever,
(34:12):
six months or whatever, you're stillbetter off because if you do it again,
you see, you know what I'msaying, So you're better off.
Then if you didn't do it,you're better off losing six pounds and you
know six months, then gaining sixpounds six months because you didn't really have
a concrete plan and so having theyou know, being realistic, like starting
(34:34):
your own business, that doesn't meantomorrow morning you're going to be successful.
You just have to kind of likebreak it down and figure out what you
can absorb and just be consistent aboutit. Because if you, like in
that example, if you lost sixpounds a year even because you didn't quite
make it to twelve pounds. Threeyears down the road, you're eighteen pounds,
you know, lighter, that's abig deal. Yeah, you know
(34:58):
you were. You're right on themark about out making those goals very specific
and very clear. And you talkedabout, like you know, how you
mentor people. So if you're reallyreally passionate about something, then you bring
your passion into it. And seeyou also bring in some of that realism
because going back to your story,what you did was you used doodling or
(35:22):
your artwork right will be the partof your business. And as you said
that, like you know, youwould leave those you're right art with people
and then people would say, yep, you know the stars will buy it
and will purchase it, so they'renot exclusive because a lot of people think
like, oh, if I havepassion, I cannot be realistic. If
I'm realistic, I cannot have passion. So it's important as to whatever information
(35:45):
you're getting from anywhere, make ityour own whatever works for you, because
you are unique, your experiences areunique. Yeah. And the only other
thing I would say too is whenyou whether you're working for a company or
whether you are starting a business ofyour own, the only way ultimately that
you become super successful is if youunderstand how you and your skills add value
(36:12):
to someone else's life, to alot of people's life. Right So I
wrote a book, like I said, we do you know, I'm mentoring.
And I didn't really want to writethe book either because I don't want
to give false hope to people.I don't need the money now. But
during COVID, I was giving alot of free webinars fore seminars, and
you know, people kept asking forit, and so the whole series of
(36:32):
webinars actually became the book. Andthe book is called Million Dollar Passion,
and it's how you turn your passioninto a million dollar business. And it
just gives you very realistic view ofwhat it's like to be an entrepreneur,
an a mom and and I don'twant to use this word karma, but
(36:54):
I believe in karma. My parentsjust always say karma comes back with interest.
Good karma comes back with interest.Bad ones too, So just be
careful about what you do. So, you know, I was very careful
about making sure that in my bookthere are some really concrete examples that people
(37:15):
can apply to their business right now. And it's designed for people who what,
and you know what it's designed forpeople who don't have money want to
start their business with like five thousanddollars. Okay, but even if you
have the money, pretend that youdon't have the money because you don't have
to spend an absolute fortune. Thefact that I didn't have money helped me
(37:36):
really shape my business. You know, for example, when I was drawing.
When I'm making drawings, for example, it just cost me sketch pad,
which was like, you know,I don't know, two dollars at
the time and a number two penciland if they say didn't like this,
I can read sketch it. Buttoday a lot of entrepreneurs, you know,
go and look for manufacturers that's goingto make your a prototype and all
this stuff, and they're spending ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars on a
(37:59):
sample that they don't they don't knowwho's going to buy it, right,
So why you know, when Iwas on TV, we uh one of
the reasons why I built that,you know, the Maga Monster business,
which was a fifty million dollar yearbusiness that's per year annually for twenty five
years. We always tested, youknow, even so for example, if
(38:21):
we find out for example, youknow, they'll flash up some canary yellow
diamonds, they'll flash up some pinkdiamonds, and they'll flash up whatever.
At eight o'clock in the morning,they get a nice little read and say,
let's say that, you know,canary yellow sold and the pink diamonds
sold, but the emerald didn't sell. My producers are like, you know
what, a lot of your pastelspring colors are you know, selling,
(38:44):
but the deeper colors are jewel tonesaren't selling. So in the afternoon would
actually tweak it and make sure thatthose things that they're responding to. So
by the time we got the primetime, we got it completely fixed up.
Now, the reason why the emeraldwas there because they had a reason
to believe from the last show,last much show the pastels should sell.
(39:04):
But just in case things are turningaround, may they put that emerald to
see So emerald was almost like asacrificial lamb to see if it's actually gonna
work on that. So that wasa test material. They will actually look
it up. Yeah, what I'mtalking about is the product market fit,
seeing their idea, like you know, whether it's a course or anything.
Putting it out there, you know, just seeing like are people going to
(39:25):
say yes to you for what valueyou're providing into them and testing it out
before spending thousands of dollars. Sogreat point, Victoria, Where can people
find you? As we rep upthe show, you can come to Victoria
week dot com. You can findall my jewelry there. My two books.
I actually wrote a science fiction afterI left HSN in twenty seventeen.
(39:49):
And also the Million Dollar Passion.It's not going to be expensive and it's
gonna it's gonna it has got endorsementslike crazy from people that you know are
pretty impressive that are endorsing this book. So and it's made for like I
said, for anybody who's already now, if you're already in business and you're
you know, trying to get tothe from a million dollars or ten million
(40:12):
dollars, that book is really readyfor scaling doing all those things. Just
like we were talking about testing,ten years ago, you couldn't test it.
You didn't really have an easy wayto test and get instant results with
very little money because you have tobuy this information from focus groups or whatever
from marketing companies. But today youcan do that it's just that you have
(40:35):
to learn how to do it sothat you're getting real reads. Right.
So it this book has everything init and you can come. I do
free webinars once a month for andI don't sell anything. There's you know,
I don't need to sell anything.I don't sell. You're just going
to get free information from somebody who'sbeen in business for thirty five years here
on my own So Victoria Wok dotcom, wi eck dot com. Well,
(40:59):
thank you, Victoria, because it'simportant that we build entrepreneurs and we
help people to step into entrepreneurship becauseentrepreneurship is so powerful. Not only it
builds your character, but it alsohelps you build other people and create more
jobs. So thank you for whatyou're doing, and thank you for joining
us. Thank you for inviting me, and we'll talk to you soon.
(41:21):
Absolutely, Bell listeners, thank you, thank you so much for joining us
because you are the life and soulof this show. So let us know
what expertise and what stories we canbring you so you can live the life
you deserve. And we will seeyou on next Tuesday. And thank you
(41:45):
one for making the show technically possible. Be well and take care. Thank
you for being part of Beyond Confidencewith your host, Devia Park, we
hope you have learned more about howto start living the life you want.
Each week on Beyondidence, you hearstories of real people who've experienced growth by
overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Divia Park shares
(42:08):
what happened to her when she steppedout of her comfort zone to work directly
with people across the globe. Shenot only coaches people how to form hard
connections, but also transform relationships tomutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live
the life they want. If youare ready to live the life you want
and leverage your strengths, learn moreat www dot dvapark dot com and you
(42:30):
can connect with Diva at contact atdvapark dot com. We look forward to
you joining us next week.
The topics and opinions expressed on thefollowing show are solely those of the hosts
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We make no recommendations or endorsement forradio show programs, services, or
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shall be extended to W FOURWN RadioIt's employees or affiliates. Any questions or
comments should be directed to those showhosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURWN
(00:23):
Radio. This is Beyond Confidence withyour host Dvaparnk. Do you want to
live a more fulfilling life? Doyou want to live your legacy and achieve
your personal, professional, and financialgoals? Well? Coming up on Dvaparnc's
Beyond Confidence, you will hear realstories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
who have stepped into discomfort, shentertheir stantus quo, and are living the
(00:46):
life they want. You will learnhow relationships are the key to achieving your
aspirations and financial goals. Moving yourcareer business forward does not have to happen
at the expense of your personal orfamily life, or vice versa. Learn
more at www dot Divaparnk dot comand you can connect with div Ant contact
at Diva Parnk dot com. Thisis beyond confidence and now here's your host
(01:08):
A Park. Good morning, listeners, this is Divine. Of course,
it's Tuesday morning, and I'm excitedbecause you are with me and I'm here
talking to you. So thank you, thank you, Thank you for all
(01:30):
of you who have got our books, because partial profits from the books go
to keyba dot org and as suchwe are able to help entrepreneurs from all
across the globe. So thank youfor that. And for those of you
who have not got our books,take a moment and get our books,
(01:53):
because not only it's going to helpyou help yourself live the life you desire,
it will also help help us helpthe entrepreneurs all across the globe.
So thank you for supporting us andbeing our staunch followers and listeners. So
(02:15):
appreciate you. And I'm going tohighly encourage you and invite you to spend
that one hour of your time everymonth helping someone with no strings attached,
whether if you break it down intomultiple five minute segments of kindness. So
(02:35):
let's get that kindness circle going andlet's bring in our guest. Welcome Victoria.
Thank you so much for inviting meto your show. I've been a
long term, a long time listenerof your show and a subscriber, so
being invited to come on your showis such an honor and I'm so looking
(02:57):
forward to today. Oh, thankyou. Thank you for sharing that.
Really appreciate it. And I reallydon't listen to a lot of because you
know, as you know, mytime is crazy, and I don't listen
to a lot of shows, butI do listen to yours because you just
have some amazing way of getting informationthat's really serious topics in a way that's
(03:17):
very comforting and you know, laidback style. It's not, like,
you know, just too hard tolisten to. So it's great. Thank
you so much. Oh, thankyou, Victoria. Really appreciate your kindness.
So, Victoria usually restart out atthe childhood, and I know that
you have a really warm story andinspiring story about your family, So can
(03:44):
you share with us. Yeah,it's it's a tough one. Um.
So I started. I was bornin South Korea and we had a decent
you know, like a middle uppermiddle class lifestyle. It wasn't like a
really fancy or anything. But welived right coastal city near Pussan, which
is the second largest city, andat the time, it was a sleepy
little village. You know, Ididn't know anything, and I was just
(04:09):
curious because we were we were ona very tiny little island, so I
read a lot just to see whatthe world outside of this little tiny village
was. But one day my parentscame and decided that they're going to move
their family to America. Was consideredto be like a dreamland for a family
that had four girls. At thattime, in South Korea, girls were
(04:31):
not encouraged to go to college,and if they went, some very elite
families would send their girls to college. You know, they were allowed to
major in things like home economics.They weren't really encouraged to be anything other
than you know, I guess husband'sshopping put it that way. So U
(04:51):
my father had bigger dreams. Hehad four girls, and you know,
decided to come to America. Andonce we got here, we found out
that all the money that he savedand sent over was frozen, so he
didn't have access to that money fortwenty five years. So the first day
he realized he had thirty dollars inhis pocket. So we lived in East
Los Angeles, and I know,you're in the East Coast somewhere, tough
(05:15):
neighborhood. You know, kids wentto school with switch blades. There were
gunfights or police cars almost every dayat my school. So, you know,
I was thirteen years old and Ihad to help my parents raise my
younger siblings. I was the oldestof the five, so you know,
it was a tough, tough,tough life. But from that start,
(05:38):
I got to a point where Ididn't believe in the American dream anymore.
You know, I just I wantedto just go back home, but we
didn't have the money to go back, and I had nothing left except my
ability to hope for something better becauseI kept thinking it can't. Life just
cannot be any worse than this,really, So it was a real inspiration
(05:59):
for me and motivation for me tostart working towards my own future. And
that future for me was just beable to afford my own apartment. There
was seven of us. Um,my opinions, Philodras in a little boy
that was just born. I meanhe was like a month old, so
um, I studied hard. Youknow, I did all the white things,
made a ton of mistakes, butI eventually built an amazing business that
(06:27):
you know, because I felt likeDyvia, I was never going to make
a whole lot of money. Iwas never going to be rich. So
yeah, yeah, you mentioned thatI did not believe in American dream,
right, So when did that shifthappen? Because I know you've been very
successful, so as you are growingup, you mentioned that, you know,
(06:48):
my first thing was to get myown apartment, So tell us about
that journey. Yeah, so I'mwanted to get my If I thought,
if I could just get my ownapartment, buy myself a used car,
that would be my American dream becauseyou know, until then I had to
share. I mean we had oneroom a Murphy bad for family of seven,
so that was kind of um Butthen I did go, you know,
(07:12):
to UCLA undergraduate there, went toMBA at USC I had to get
scholarships because you know, my parentscouldn't afford anything. So and I worked
thirty hours while I was at UCLAthe whole four years. And then I
worked fifty hours a week while Iwas going through my MBA program, And
(07:32):
um, so I got out andI climbed the corporate ladder for a couple
of years, and I realized thatall I was doing was just working my
ber Endolf in exchange for some money, and I was absolutely miserable. I
didn't enjoy my work and I didn'tsee I you know, even though I
(07:53):
grew up in that culture of youknow, like you would think that I
would hate motherhood and all that becausethat's what I was born into. But
once I had once I got married, I really wanted to have children and
I wanted to raise them in away that I wanted to be raised,
which is parents being home. No, that is that is very important to
(08:13):
have that because a lot of timespeople may have suffered through or gone through
some tough situations and then they wantto avoid it. So what I'm hearing
is that you wanted that. Sothere are a lot of how should I
say, there are a lot ofinner city schools. A lot of kids
are there, and when they gothrough this type of trauma, it leaves
(08:37):
a mark and we have to acknowledgethat. But that said, you did
turn around and you said, like, you know, for you American dream
was to get an apartment and acar and that was enough. So you
were grateful for that. I wasthere a lot of people in that situation.
What would you tell them? Howcan they get out? You know,
(09:00):
how can they create their lives?I mean, yes, all the
odds are stacked against them. Youknow, I'm going to be a contrarian
my and I'm sure you come fromyou come from a very similar background that
I do. That belief system ina lot of Asian or immigrant families is
that you go get all these degrees, you go become a doctor or a
lawyer, you got a job,climb the corporate watter, you have job
(09:22):
security. My parents kind of reallyput that in my head and so I
did all that. And the problemwas I was an artist. You know,
I loved art and that's what Iexcelled in when I was back home.
And then when I couldn't speak anyEnglish. I mean I've spoke not
a single word. I mean allI knew was hello, and I didn't
(09:43):
people talk back to me. Ididn't know what to say. So in
the first two years I had toactually draw to communicate I'm going to go
to the bathroom, or you know, I'm hungry, or you know,
stuff like that, So I becamebetter at expressing myself with my drawings.
So I would just say to anybodywho and I trust me, if you're
(10:05):
listening to me right now, Ihave lived the inner city life. I
mean, we had to like cutup an orange into eight sections, and
you know, my dad would givethe two sections to the youngest child.
And that's how poor we were.But you just have to know that you
weren't born on this earth to starveand suffer forever. You just have to,
(10:31):
you know, keep one figure outwhat you can do for yourself,
just that one moment, what youcan do for yourself for that day.
So for me, I realized,even at that young age, my parents
were both you know, already goingto work at six o'clock in the morning.
The one thing I thought I needto do right away was to learn
to speak English, and going toschool. Waiting for the English to improved
(10:56):
wasn't going to work out all thatworld for me because you wasn't working for
the first month. So my dadactually got a English to English dictionary and
he would just randomly circle because hedidn't speak English either, so he would
randomly circle these words, and Imemorized about two hundred fifty words, and
so I'd have to look up,like in a while they were at work,
put my younger kids to band.I would look up, like you
(11:18):
know, it would say something likeconfidence, for example, and then I'd
have to look up the definition ofit. And when I look up protection,
and you don't speak English, sothere's like six other words. You
didn't understand what that what that isright in the definition of itself. So
I did that every day, andwhat I realized was that American children at
at you know, at age twelve, for example, thirteen, they kind
(11:39):
of survive on twenty five hundred wordsvocabulary. That's it. So I learned
that pretty quickly. In fact,because these words were chosen randomly, bibocabulo
is actually much more superior to mostkids that went to school at that age.
So it's just an example of youknow, things that you could do
for yourself, don't relying on anybodyelse, you know, and for you
(12:03):
for people who are living in innercity right now, that English may not
be the thing. It may besomething else. It may be learning to
count it, maybe you know,learning a skill, or just controlling your
you know, your emotions. Imean I suffered from depression, suffered from
low self esteem. I suffer fromall that, but I still looked even
(12:24):
to today, I look for theone thing that I could do to help
myself, because once you do that, then you're in a position to help
a lot of other people. Andnow the information is more readily available.
Yeah, for sure, this isgreat that what you're talking about. Look
for one thing, one thing youcould do for yourself and yourself like,
(12:46):
rather than depending on anyone, whetherit's going on YouTube, searching Google.
Right, because I remember we hadto go to the library. Oh yeah,
I remember, so let's not datourselves. You remember those microfish things
you have to, you know,go to figure out what actually which starction
to go to the library. Thatwas yeah, and then even through the
(13:09):
I still remember like having those Britannicaencyclopedias and going through that, okay,
and then putting the pieces together andright, and of course that builds critical
thinking and other skill sets right.And similarly every generation brings their own new
skill sets which we may not beable to do it, but the basic
(13:31):
fundamentals remain the same. So Ireally like that transition. Yes, no
matter how of the odds are outof the situation is whatever difficulty you're facing,
find them one thing and do itfor yourself today. And I'm sure
that you know, as you've continuedworking through a dictionary and growing your vocabulary,
(13:54):
it was the consistent practice that broughtyou progress. Well, not only
that once you do that, onceyou actually start to you know, whether
it's first one hundred words, evenit gives that child a confidence that I
was able to. You know,there's this dictionary that I can rely on
that it gives. It gives you. Your confidence grows as you accomplish the
(14:15):
smallest little things, so you know. And the other thing I would say
is nobody's perfect. When you're inthe inner cities or when you're in any
you could be in a nice suburbwhere you just have low self confidence because
everybody else is driving nicer cars oryou know whatever. You just have to
understand that, you know, nobody'sperfect, everyone's fighting their own battle somewhere,
(14:39):
and that if you, you know, you just got to be the
best you can be at that pointin time, because, like you said,
consistency matters. And you know,I have built a business that's just
amazing, and I look back atmy journey of you know, now,
it's like seven hundred and fifty milliondollars worth business that I've done on my
(15:01):
own brand that I never actually dreamtthat, I never wanted it. It
was just like, once you buildthat business, it's just kind of it's
kind of like a snowball effect thebusiness. I got to the point where
the business growing by itself almost.You know, that's great, So let's
talk some more about it. Soyou mentioned about that you were right here,
(15:24):
you wanted to have kids, andthe corporate job was not working on
for us you at that time.So it looks like, folks, we
may have lost our guest. Hopefullyour guests will join the us back in
the meantime, let's let's talk aboutwhat we were. Let's just pick up.
(15:46):
Let's say all the odds are stackedagainst you, how do you know
what is that one thing that canhelp you find your passion? What is
it that you like to do?And then based on that you can pick
(16:06):
a skill or if you are feelingthat there is something that is of necessity,
because as they say, necessity isthe mother of invention. If there
is something you need to do andthat will help you grow in your career,
(16:30):
whether it doesn't matter whether you're workingat Starbucks or so. Let's just
take an example recently. What happenedwas that here's one of the persons that
I'm mentoring. And as a result, what happened was, like, you
(16:56):
know, the person came to me. They were in star Box and they
were thinking like, okay, whatis this job good for? Like I'm
just behind the counter, I'm serving, and you know what happened. What
happened was that they had not openedup their doors of mind. So once
(17:21):
you open up the doors for mind, she climbed the ladder. And not
only that, but she got thescholarship from Starbucks to get a degree.
So you can find your ways toget that degree, and once you have
that degree or whichever way you aregoing, you can make that life for
(17:41):
yourself. And now she's in avery good place. All right, Victoria,
do we have you back? Yeah? So what I was going to
say to you is that earlier wherewe left off was nobody's perfect. And
one thing I guarantee you, whetheryou believe in whatever your American do,
we you know your dream is you'regoing to continue to make mistakes. I
(18:03):
make mistakes every day today, afterI've done all that business, both in
business and in my personal life,because you're not perfect every day, you
can look back and go, youknow what, I could have done this
better, that better, or ifI only had done this, I could
have been a you know, onehundred billion are like Oprah Winfrey. But
you just have to, you know, embrace all that life has to offer,
(18:23):
because all that good stuff happens afteryou make those mistakes. You know,
like if you show me a skierdownhill skier, like Olympic skier that
has never fallen, I would sayyou're a liar because it's probably not possible,
right, and I don't use thatword there. Yeah, it's not
possible. You know, if youlook at any like weightlifter who's never dropped
(18:48):
the dumbellum, that's not possible either. So in business, I mean talk
to authors, I mean most authorsthat write books. I mean, you
know, even Stephen King, who'ssupposed like the godfather of all writing,
some of these books actually suck.I'm gonna tell you right now, I've
read all these books. I cantell you it doesn't happen. So you
(19:11):
definitely make a great point, isthat without mistakes life, there could be
no success. Yeah, that couldyou not success. So when you make
your mistakes, like if you're inthe inner city, you make all the
mistakes, you know, you becomefriends with all the around people whoever get
it out of your system. Butthe most important thing is you have to
learn from that. You have tolearn from your mistakes because you and I
(19:34):
both know people who make mistakes whojust blame other people just move right on.
That's that's not good. That doesn'thelp you much forward towards your goal.
Right, So coming back to youtalked about that, you know,
you wanted to be in a placewhere you could have family, have motherhood.
(19:55):
So tell us about that transition fromcorporate to business. So I was
actually climbing the corporate world pretty wellbecause at that time, back in the
early eighties or a very few peoplewho had MBAs that were female. So
we were the first generation of peoplethat had job titles like marketing director.
You know, we weren't vice presidentsyet, but we weren't receptionists anymore.
(20:15):
Female as you know, female workers. So I was working about fourteen hours
a day, and I was committingan hour and a half each way to
work. And I thought to myself, you know, my parents left me
as as a basically I was justabandoned. I mean they weren't. They
didn't want to, but they hadto work every day from six am to
(20:37):
almost midnight every day. They eachworked two jobs. And I was doing
the same thing. And I thoughtto myself, when the only difference is
I had choices. So my parentsdidn't have a choice, but I had
choices, and I was making thesame mistakes that they were making. So
I thought to myself, I'm justgonna have to cut that out right away.
And I didn't see any reason whyI could have a simpler life,
(21:00):
like just have feed my children,make sure that they have enough of an
education so they can, you know, chart their own waters. And I
thought I could work half the timeand make half the money. I can
still make that work. So andI also thought, you know, I
wasn't making a huge salary. Iwas making a decent salary, but it
just want to pay for rent andeverything else. And I thought, you
(21:22):
know what, as long as I'mdoing this, I might as well at
least enjoy my life. Because Iwas miserable doing all the financial stuff and
list going to meeting after meetings.So I quit my work. I quit
my job. And here's the mostimportant thing that I want everyone to understand.
This is when I quit my job, I thought to myself, Okay,
how am I going to make thiswork? How am I going to
(21:44):
start my own business? Have mytwo children, and you know what's my
plan? And I thought, youknow what, if I could just make
two thousand dollars a month, thatwould be enough. Because I was still
living in our apartment, that wouldbe you know, because my car is
paid off, and I bought likea several years old Pinto that used to
(22:06):
blow up like catch bag. It'sjust pretty bad. So you know,
I have my excesses were low,and I thought I just needed to make
two grand a month and that wouldbe enough for me to you know,
accomplish my goal. And so whatwould it cost? What would it take
me to make the two grand amonth? And so I figured out that
if I just had you know,just a few customers, I don't need
(22:27):
need a huge number of customers.So if I just had a few customers,
and then, you know, Ilooked at in those days, they
had like like the norm, whichis when you do a direct mail,
because this was before the Internet age. When you do a direct mail,
you get like a like a fivepercent open rate, and then of those
people who opened the open your mailum, you get about eighty percent v
(22:51):
JAC rate. Okay, and youget about ten percent of these people.
World was kinder about those days,So you get about tencent of the people
that will kindly tell you we don'twant this for whatever reason, and then
you get about ten percent of peoplesay, send me more information. So
I thought, okay, if Isent out fifty highly qualified letters a day,
okay, and I got you know, so many people coming. So
(23:12):
I did the math, and Ithought, so I was very disciplined about
sending. You know, you hadto type it on the IBM S electric
and M, so I typed them, and I was very very careful about
not making it look like it's ait's a mass mailing type thing. So
I would say something like, youknow, dear Mystiva, you know I
checked out your collection at Neiman Marcus, and you know I loved it,
(23:33):
and I loved this, this,this, and I think I could help
you you grow your business kind ofthing, So, believe it or not,
I got I didn't get a wholelot of success. But what I
did do was when my kids wereyounger, I had to drop them off
at seven thirty seven forty five toleave at seven forty five. The kids
off by eight, so I gotup like at five am and five am
(23:57):
to seven thirty or seven o'clock orso. It's you know, it's like
a mid day in London. Soyou know, that's the only people I
could I could actually contact. Soand in the old days also it's like
I would send it by a factand whenever you send the facts, it
would actually come to somebody's desk,you know, instead of like a random
(24:18):
email. It's like facts is backthose days were kind of FedEx packages,
right, So I'm dating myself.So luckily the parents London, you know,
they're so polite. The British peopleover there are so polite. She
would um call me and say,you know, thank you so much for
sending me this you know, thirtypage facts or whatever, but um,
(24:38):
I'm not interested, you know orwhatever. And then as soon as I
get that you know, facts backor a phone call back, I would
call her. That's what I wouldcall and I would thank her profusely for
rejecting me and actually sending me arejection that because nobody even did that.
And I would ask, you know, what would it have taken for me
to, you know, pique yourinterest? Can you give me? I'm
(25:00):
brand new, I mean this businesslike for no reason whatsoever, but I
just need some information from you andso I can improve myself. And so
when they give you critiquing of youknow, this, look, I can't.
At that point, They're just kindof more polite. They're like,
oh, you know, I kindof like this floral, but it looks
too big, it might be tooexpensive. So I would work on that.
(25:22):
By the time I communicated with thisperson the fourth time, they've kind
of designed the whole thing for me, so I would at least get a
shot at it. So the pointhere is, you know, just be
persistent central goals. Break it downlike I did. I broke it down
to how many you know, directmail emails, I mean packages. I
(25:45):
had to send the other thing too. Is the only reason I sent it,
by a fact, is because whenI would get on the phone in
those days, it was like fourdollars a minute in national calls. If
you sent it by a fact,it goes in six seconds per page,
so I could you know, youknow, you'll be heard, you'd be
seen, right, you don't haveto explain anything, and I would only
explain. I would only waste thefour dollars a minute once they actually got
(26:08):
a response, right. And Ialways responded to, you know, just
being kind to people, like whenthey reject you. Instead of saying,
oh, she's a she doesn't knowwhat she's doing, she's you know,
she thinks she's hot or whatever,I would actually thank her, you know,
for I would just you know,I would just say, you know,
thank you so much for sending me, you know, this kind rejection
(26:30):
letter. And um, so thatwas that was sort of you know,
so I had a global business before, you know, I was in Galleries
Lafe yet all those paces before andthen Nim and Marcus called me one day
and said, you know, whoare you and I'm like, well,
you know, check me out.I went over there to Dallas and so
I was there as well. Imean it was just you know, incredible
(26:51):
journey. Oh that's beautiful. Soyou mentioned that, you know, your
business definitely blew up, so tellus about that as Yeah. So,
um, in the beginning. LikeI said, I went all of the
above. You know, back innineteen eighty nine is when I started my
business, was a financial meltdown.Back then, it was it was the
(27:11):
you know, economic eighty seven wasthe Black Monday, and then eighty nine
was horrible. So I thought atthat time, like, who's still spending
money these days? And um,so I went through. There was a
travel agency downstairs and they had thesegiant books of you know, hotels and
the you know, the gift shops, the airlines. So I contact,
(27:32):
you know, I remember I wassending fifty letters a day every day.
So I did some um you know, duty free leisure, some department stores,
you know, like Herod's Galleryes Lafayette. And it turns out I actually
did open. I was the numberone duty three, um you know,
on all the airplane in flights.I was on thirty different airlines, duty
free gift shops as well as allthe major department stores. And then one
(27:56):
day I got a call from hsnUM and you know, the whole TV
shopping was just beginning. At thatpoint, I didn't even know who they
were. I had never I don'thave time to watch TVs. I never
even watched them. So they callme. And you know, when I
first turned it on, I said, you know, no, I don't
want to be on TEA. Firstof all, I don't want anyone to
know who I am. And secondly, there was ninety nine percent chazz I
(28:18):
to fail because I'm just not anatural talker. And lastly, you know,
I'm just very uncomfortable doing this.And besides, like you're like a
Grandma shopping network. I don't youknow, That's not what I do.
So you know, one thing,you'll know, I'm very honest. I'm
just like I tell people, Look, I'm brand new. I have no
idea what I'm doing. I justneed some help. You'd be amazed when
(28:41):
you let people know that that youare not perfect and you're trying to learn,
and you, my customer, potentialcustomer, have the power to help
me. You cannot believe how manypeople just want to volunteer all this information
for you. Yeah, I've hadpeople like when I went to Sacks and
Nemon's on Wilshire and Hde'll draw,I just went with the sketchbook because I
(29:02):
couldn't even afford to make a samplelike gold and silver takes a lot of
money. So I would just youknow, I sketched them out. I
went to them and I would say, you know, is there assistant manager?
Because I would not ask what themanager because manager is usually busy.
I would ask the assistant manager ifshe can just take a look at and
give me her opinion. And Iremember the Sax Avenue buyer was like,
(29:25):
you know, it's just a manager. It's like, oh my god,
like we have all the movie starsand they would love it. Can you
leave the book here? And Isaid, well, can you sell it?
She goes yes, and as youwe haven't asked me the price of
anything, and she said, itdoesn't matter what the price, they'll they'll
buy it. And so I actuallyhad a bunch of things sold, but
just to offer sketches, so justyou know, like I would say,
(29:45):
if you're right now listening and youare discouraged, or maybe you're not that
discouraged yet, but you want to, you know, sort of do your
thing, have a balanced life andstill can dream. You can do all
that. You just have to thinkoutside the box. Don't listen to experts
out there that really hasn't accomplished awhole lot. Tell you why they're experts
(30:08):
really, because one of the blessingsI have is I never had time to
listen to you know, like TVor experts or any of that. I
just had time to kind of usemy grit and persistence to get just a
few steps ahead every day. That'sbeautiful. So what a journey. It's
(30:30):
very inspiring, Victoria, what youhave accomplished. So if people are like
thinking about it, what's your brand'sname? So my jewelry is titled Victoria
with Collection. And what I'm doingnow is I've had a twenty five year
live TV journey along with all theother department stores. You know, I've
(30:51):
sold products in like fifty countries.What I spend my time doing now is
mentoring other other man, especially youknow, young entrepreneurs like my daughter's age,
who are sort of lost because inthis information age, there's all this
conflicting information about following your passion,doing what you want to do, and
then some people say, don't followyour passion. You know, that's a
(31:14):
stupid thing to do. You know, they're very contradictory information. I try
to give them a realistic view oflife. It's not easy no matter what
path you choose. It's not easyat all, but there is a way
you can learn from every mistake.And you know, this is America.
I do now believe in the Americandream. As you can see that my
(31:37):
dream have, you know, definitelyexploded at some point. I think you're
three, I was doing life tenmillion dollars, you know, after I
started my company. I do thinkthat everything is possible at any age.
I mean, in America, youcan be a drug addict, you can
be a high school dropout, youcould be you could have been in prison.
I mean even you can wake upat age sixty and still achieve everything
(32:01):
you ever wanted in life, becausethat's what the opportunity today, you know,
gives you. I mean, lookat people like I find this interesting
if you look at the people thator the brands that control our lives,
you know, Apple, Amazon,Google, Most of these people except for
(32:21):
Jeff Bezos, everybody else Facebook forexample, everybody else started their company with
less than five thousand dollars in theirgarage and they failed multiple times. When
when you're looking at Amazon, forexample, do you remember, if you
have, when Amazon Bezos was comingon CNBC every quarter talking about why he
lost you know, one hundred milliondollars that quarter, and I remember everybody
(32:45):
was celebrating when he finally broke evenafter twenty years. You know it's true.
So you know, just believe inyourself, be realistic. I just
say as a as a last thingI will tell you, and I just
want to give it give you ananalogy. Every year, Americans decide they
(33:05):
want to lose weight, you know, New Year's Resolution number one. All
the retails are selling fitness equipment,diet plans and whatever. And every year
seventy five percent of Americans say theywant to lose weight get healthier, and
every year they get heavier. Okay, it's because their goals are very vague.
Okay, So if you say Iwant to lose right, I'm gonna
get healthier, that's a good goal. But if you said, you know
(33:28):
what, I've already done all that, so I just want to lose ten
pounds this year, okay, justthis year, And then you break it
down and say, if I haveto lose ten pounds and I lose two
pounds a month, I'll be attwelve pounds, right. And if you
say two pounds a month and youthink to yourself, then comes down to
like cutting out three hundred calories orcutting out one hundred and fifty calories and
(33:52):
moving one hundred fifty like walking downthe block. Now, if you did
that and you say, well,if I have to lose one hundred fifty
calories, what I have to docut out a piece of bread, cut
out a glass of wine, orwhatever you're doing for the whole day.
And if you did it every dayand you didn't meet your goal, you
only lost you know, let's sayeight pounds, and you know whatever,
(34:12):
six months or whatever, you're stillbetter off because if you do it again,
you see, you know what I'msaying, So you're better off.
Then if you didn't do it,you're better off losing six pounds and you
know six months, then gaining sixpounds six months because you didn't really have
a concrete plan and so having theyou know, being realistic, like starting
(34:34):
your own business, that doesn't meantomorrow morning you're going to be successful.
You just have to kind of likebreak it down and figure out what you
can absorb and just be consistent aboutit. Because if you, like in
that example, if you lost sixpounds a year even because you didn't quite
make it to twelve pounds. Threeyears down the road, you're eighteen pounds,
you know, lighter, that's abig deal. Yeah, you know
(34:58):
you were. You're right on themark about out making those goals very specific
and very clear. And you talkedabout, like you know, how you
mentor people. So if you're reallyreally passionate about something, then you bring
your passion into it. And seeyou also bring in some of that realism
because going back to your story,what you did was you used doodling or
(35:22):
your artwork right will be the partof your business. And as you said
that, like you know, youwould leave those you're right art with people
and then people would say, yep, you know the stars will buy it
and will purchase it, so they'renot exclusive because a lot of people think
like, oh, if I havepassion, I cannot be realistic. If
I'm realistic, I cannot have passion. So it's important as to whatever information
(35:45):
you're getting from anywhere, make ityour own whatever works for you, because
you are unique, your experiences areunique. Yeah. And the only other
thing I would say too is whenyou whether you're working for a company or
whether you are starting a business ofyour own, the only way ultimately that
you become super successful is if youunderstand how you and your skills add value
(36:12):
to someone else's life, to alot of people's life. Right So I
wrote a book, like I said, we do you know, I'm mentoring.
And I didn't really want to writethe book either because I don't want
to give false hope to people.I don't need the money now. But
during COVID, I was giving alot of free webinars fore seminars, and
you know, people kept asking forit, and so the whole series of
(36:32):
webinars actually became the book. Andthe book is called Million Dollar Passion,
and it's how you turn your passioninto a million dollar business. And it
just gives you very realistic view ofwhat it's like to be an entrepreneur,
an a mom and and I don'twant to use this word karma, but
(36:54):
I believe in karma. My parentsjust always say karma comes back with interest.
Good karma comes back with interest.Bad ones too, So just be
careful about what you do. So, you know, I was very careful
about making sure that in my bookthere are some really concrete examples that people
(37:15):
can apply to their business right now. And it's designed for people who what,
and you know what it's designed forpeople who don't have money want to
start their business with like five thousanddollars. Okay, but even if you
have the money, pretend that youdon't have the money because you don't have
to spend an absolute fortune. Thefact that I didn't have money helped me
(37:36):
really shape my business. You know, for example, when I was drawing.
When I'm making drawings, for example, it just cost me sketch pad,
which was like, you know,I don't know, two dollars at
the time and a number two penciland if they say didn't like this,
I can read sketch it. Buttoday a lot of entrepreneurs, you know,
go and look for manufacturers that's goingto make your a prototype and all
this stuff, and they're spending ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars on a
(37:59):
sample that they don't they don't knowwho's going to buy it, right,
So why you know, when Iwas on TV, we uh one of
the reasons why I built that,you know, the Maga Monster business,
which was a fifty million dollar yearbusiness that's per year annually for twenty five
years. We always tested, youknow, even so for example, if
(38:21):
we find out for example, youknow, they'll flash up some canary yellow
diamonds, they'll flash up some pinkdiamonds, and they'll flash up whatever.
At eight o'clock in the morning,they get a nice little read and say,
let's say that, you know,canary yellow sold and the pink diamonds
sold, but the emerald didn't sell. My producers are like, you know
what, a lot of your pastelspring colors are you know, selling,
(38:44):
but the deeper colors are jewel tonesaren't selling. So in the afternoon would
actually tweak it and make sure thatthose things that they're responding to. So
by the time we got the primetime, we got it completely fixed up.
Now, the reason why the emeraldwas there because they had a reason
to believe from the last show,last much show the pastels should sell.
(39:04):
But just in case things are turningaround, may they put that emerald to
see So emerald was almost like asacrificial lamb to see if it's actually gonna
work on that. So that wasa test material. They will actually look
it up. Yeah, what I'mtalking about is the product market fit,
seeing their idea, like you know, whether it's a course or anything.
Putting it out there, you know, just seeing like are people going to
(39:25):
say yes to you for what valueyou're providing into them and testing it out
before spending thousands of dollars. Sogreat point, Victoria, Where can people
find you? As we rep upthe show, you can come to Victoria
week dot com. You can findall my jewelry there. My two books.
I actually wrote a science fiction afterI left HSN in twenty seventeen.
(39:49):
And also the Million Dollar Passion.It's not going to be expensive and it's
gonna it's gonna it has got endorsementslike crazy from people that you know are
pretty impressive that are endorsing this book. So and it's made for like I
said, for anybody who's already now, if you're already in business and you're
you know, trying to get tothe from a million dollars or ten million
(40:12):
dollars, that book is really readyfor scaling doing all those things. Just
like we were talking about testing,ten years ago, you couldn't test it.
You didn't really have an easy wayto test and get instant results with
very little money because you have tobuy this information from focus groups or whatever
from marketing companies. But today youcan do that it's just that you have
(40:35):
to learn how to do it sothat you're getting real reads. Right.
So it this book has everything init and you can come. I do
free webinars once a month for andI don't sell anything. There's you know,
I don't need to sell anything.I don't sell. You're just going
to get free information from somebody who'sbeen in business for thirty five years here
on my own So Victoria Wok dotcom, wi eck dot com. Well,
(40:59):
thank you, Victoria, because it'simportant that we build entrepreneurs and we
help people to step into entrepreneurship becauseentrepreneurship is so powerful. Not only it
builds your character, but it alsohelps you build other people and create more
jobs. So thank you for whatyou're doing, and thank you for joining
us. Thank you for inviting me, and we'll talk to you soon.
(41:21):
Absolutely, Bell listeners, thank you, thank you so much for joining us
because you are the life and soulof this show. So let us know
what expertise and what stories we canbring you so you can live the life
you deserve. And we will seeyou on next Tuesday. And thank you
(41:45):
one for making the show technically possible. Be well and take care. Thank
you for being part of Beyond Confidencewith your host, Devia Park, we
hope you have learned more about howto start living the life you want.
Each week on Beyondidence, you hearstories of real people who've experienced growth by
overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Divia Park shares
(42:08):
what happened to her when she steppedout of her comfort zone to work directly
with people across the globe. Shenot only coaches people how to form hard
connections, but also transform relationships tomutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live
the life they want. If youare ready to live the life you want
and leverage your strengths, learn moreat www dot dvapark dot com and you
(42:30):
can connect with Diva at contact atdvapark dot com. We look forward to
you joining us next week.
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