What You Don't Know About Me

so this video is gonna be a lot different than most of my video this channel has grown so fast so quickly in the last year I just wanted to kind of stop and say thank you so in this video I'm gonna share a little bit more about myself answer some of the questions that you use the ass in the comments section just kind of like share my life how I got to Japan how the YouTube channel started all the questions that you guys wanted to know that I never really answered in my previous videos this video may be a little bit boring because it's all about me I generally focus on topics about Japan but I guess this is for the people that are like generally interested in and want to know more about me so I'm making it for you guys this is kind of my way of saying thank you so much for being a part of this channel I kind of wanted to do this video outside I don't really like doing videos inside plus I feel like it's a it's a better way to show you Tokyo and show you Japan when I'm outside as opposed to be inside yeah so this video is gonna be done all outside but I do apologize for the sound if it's just terrible and I apologize and I'm sweating because it still is really really hot in Tokyo I'm actually in the yoga park it's actually one of my favorite parts in Tokyo some of you might already know I live in Shibuya so it's just right next door so why not do the video here so let's start with this so as of earlier this year I'm completely full-time on YouTube meaning that I quit my consulting job I also closed down my other company which was kind of like an app business so basically I'm full-time creating content on YouTube now it's been quite the transition but I don't regret any of it at all in fact I don't do this channel all by myself some of you already know that my Co my wife almost who does this channel with me most of the times you don't see here because she's behind the camera but she's very much part of this channel but it is a bit kind of scary that now this channel is our how to say our main source of revenue our main source of income and we kinda just need to figure out how we can produce content for you guys as well as kind of like earn a living and the thing is that Michael and I really love making videos we love going to different places trying out new food and it's just kind of one of the passions that we've kind of grown into over the last few years basically we just need to find a way to make it so that we can continue doing what we love and who knows you might be starting a family down the road so it's kind of a bit overwhelming but also exciting at the same time so one of the things we're thinking was to introduce memberships if you guys aren't familiar with memberships it's kind of something new on YouTube the reason this idea came about is actually from you guys a lot of you just want more access so one of the things that we were thinking of doing is providing those people who sign up and support the channel with memberships access to behind-the-scenes footage additional information on some of my secret spots and Tokyo live chats and just in general more access that you wouldn't get normally in my videos probably before this video releases or shortly after this video releases we'll have memberships set up so for those of you who want to help support the channel then those are kind of the ways to do it but I should also say for those of you oh gosh anyway it's getting a little bit too windy here let's try to find a place that's less windy and for those of you who aren't able to support the channel no worries the channel still stay the same I released the same content every week it's just with those of you who want to help support the channel now the option is available and look there's a festival going on at the park today so this is a little bit better than the park there's less wind less birds of squawking and yeah feel a little bit more comfortable for some reason oh there's the wind I guess we couldn't get rid of the wind and another thing I wanted to talk about the channel of direction since the channel is getting larger there's more of you guys watching these videos I kind of wanted to stay a little bit more focused so probably moving forward you'll see a lot more Japan focused videos for you used to see techies to see let's go into Vietnam the Philippines Thailand I know this channel started off as a Japan vlog but it wasn't that popular unfortunately and the construction started to shoot I guess we got to move on to the next spot I really like I really like this spot too anyways so I've actually sat at this spot before does anyone know which video I was sitting in this exact spot so just continue where we left off one of the ideas I've had is I kind of want to start a second channel to be able to share with you guys kind of the stuff that Michael and I are doing on a regular basis maybe some of the trips we go on kind of outside of Japan less edited less curated more real more raw just kind of like us living our daily lives and having kind of our regular adventures as opposed to kind of a curated very focused topics on this channel I think we're gonna kind of share them over our lives and kind of like what we're doing and who knows maybe in the future when you have a little run around they'll also be on the channel I don't really know the name of it it could be something like Tokyo zebra or D Guzman's from Tokyo I don't really know maybe you guys can let me know what you guys think also I don't even know if there's actually a real interest in people wanting to see that channel so what I'll do is I'll leave a link in the description as well as the link to that channel in a pin comment so you guys can see it and if you do get enough subscribers then we'll start another channel if not then maybe we won't create the channel it's just a really up to you guys if you want to see it let me know so one of the questions that I often get is how did you get to Japan I actually came here as an exchange student I was going to school in LA at a school called Pepperdine University and my third year of university I decided to apply for the Japan exchange program I just kind of had a fascination of Japan the culture and especially the technology before coming to Japan I did a semester in Florence and I kind of got this travel bug and I decided that it was kind of a little bit too late because usually go overseas your sophomore year or your junior year you can spend your senior year and graduate in the class I didn't actually do that I was kind of late decided to go and it was already my senior year so I ended up not being able to walk with my class but I did decide to apply for the exchange program and I was expected expected I was accepted one thing that I remember though is right before maybe a couple months before I was supposed to fly to Japan I was offered an internship for a software company in Santa Monica which is which is in LA and at that point I was kind of torn whether or not hey I should take this job and perhaps kind of develop a career out of it or should kind of I risk it and go to Japan but I thought about it for some time and I just realized that I may never get a chance to seize Japan and if I did get to see Japan maybe later on in my career after maybe having a house a family and all of that it just wouldn't be the same I wanted to experience a pan when I was young kind of have that full experience of Japan so I packed my bags and I headed to Japan man when I first arrived in Japan I was so excited everything was so interesting everything was so new my whole world was kind of blown away and I just fell in love with this place but at the same time I was pretty lost but that's kind of like the magic of everything is discovering a whole new world here and when I make my videos today I try to remember me back in that time how confused I was all the things that I wanted to know all the things that I had questions about and so when I make those videos I'm kind of talking to myself back in the day hopefully I can help that guy out because he wasn't so so lost so luckily my university had change program and their sister school was actually Sofia University but just here in Tokyo which was really really convenient I even had a homestay family for the first year so it made everything really really easy I didn't have to worry about rent I didn't have to worry about board it was kind of all included all I had to like really worry about was just my like living expenses I only had about two to three thousand dollars if I remember correctly in my bank and that was kind of enough I didn't really have to worry about all the different costs I was going to school and that was enough for me to be able to get by initially though I was able to find an English teaching job just like a part-time job for a couple hours a week I would teach the kids of some family friends I think at the time I was making about $30 an hour and so then someone asked me to teach a group of kids English after school I think was about to enough hours for one session once a week they paid me like a hundred and twenty dollars then I picked up another job teaching English I was working a few hours a week and I was making $300 in pocket change and that was just kind of like enough for me to get by plus by 2 to 3 thousand dollars I had saved up for the first few months in Japan I didn't really worry about cash too much as far as language goes I kind of studied a little bit right before I came to Japan but I mean I just like kind of news I'm here to Ghana maybe handful of words but it wasn't until after I went to university I started learning a lot more and then using it here in Japan with the homestay family as well as friends and well you'll learn with the second language is you just never stop learning so in general life was pretty good hanging out with friends discovering new places making okay money for a college student at the time obviously I was on a student visa I initially got a 1-year visa but as I like started to like Japan more and more I decided that you know I'm gonna figure out a way to kind of stay out here I think it was a good idea for me to come here as a student first to kind of figure out whether or not I liked it and I started trying to figure out a more permanent way to stay here in Tokyo I started by just looking for jobs I think I looked in some magazines at the time to see if there was any jobs available and if I could recall correctly I interviewed with two jobs the first job was a miserable fail the second job I actually ended up getting first job was for I think a magazine for one like an Account Manager and I went in there and my new I was still in college hidden so has never had like a real professional job before and in high school I work for Safeway bagging groceries but I never had a professional career I remember going in to that interview and I think one of the first questions they asked me is how do I manage my schedule I pretty much told him I don't really have a schedule to manage I just go to classes and I hang out with my friends I think they were probably expecting me to like show them like the calendar system I use or something like that but obviously I didn't have that those skills at the time so that interview didn't goes so well but the second interview I went into was for an IT firm I was a computer science and business major and so when I went into the interview I was able to answer basic questions about computers how things work say just say I got the job with IT firm they hired me on as an associate engineer it was more on the systems and infrastructure side of IT but I I really really liked it has a student in Japan you can work I believe I believe 20 hours a week so once I got this job then I quit all the English teaching job which actually worked out really well because after my second year of university ID firm just hired me on full-time they sponsored my working visa here in Japan and I worked for them for several years I started off as an associate engineer went to engineer and then eventually became a project manager and during those several years I learned a lot about Japanese business culture it wasn't uncommon for me to work 10 to 12 hours a day I worked a lot of weekends but luckily the company I was working for had kind of more of Western culture so I did get paid the overtime for my work which was nice there's a lot of projects going on at the time overall it was a great experience I busted my ass learned a crapload then after several years working as a project manager ended up leaving that company and then I was hired on by a software development company in the finance industry and I did that job for a couple years I'm also making more friends picked up snowboarding as young I was in my 20s I had money and a snow burning it became a huge part of my life I was doing it every weekend until I had just a major major snowboarding accident which kind of changed the whole direction of my life here in Japan but let me tell you more about that story I'm defining a new spot because my butt's getting kind of sore so where was I oh yeah major major a snowboard injury basically I ended up at the Nagano emergency room I broken-down rig I broke my hip I had an aneurysm I crushed my long and just like a whole slew of injuries I spent about a month at Nagano ICU yeah so pretty much I almost died just a lot of stuff that happened I ended up having to get open-heart surgery which then led to me losing my voice for a year so I was in and out of the hospital for I would say over a year it was a pretty intense experience I just I remember when I first got into the ICU waking up and I was intubated they had like tubes inside of my lungs I couldn't speak to nurses that were above me and I really just wanted to talk and I couldn't at the time I was like still kind of shook and I wanted to write down what I wanted to say but I couldn't read any kanji on like a board to tell them what I wanted to say but I think I just cried and I think I passed out but like in hindsight I could have probably just written in English because I couldn't think of anything other time so it was just a very like frustrating and intense to say the least the fortunate thing was was that all of that hospital care was covered under my health care in Japan so I was actually quite lucky I didn't have to end up paying a lot in fact I did an entire video on that it's called how much I paid for Japanese health care link is in the description as always I think overall the experience was kind of a wake-up call for me kind of realize that life is I could just be over just like that and somewhere between staying at the hospital and all the long hours that I ever worked in Japan I think it was just time for me to do something on my own and the snowboard accident just kind of like kind of forced me out of that routine I ended up quitting my job I started it on my own thing and I tried a few different businesses I had some money saved up from all of the work that I had done for the last several years so I was like I was okay not having a job right away I was sitting in the park in fact the park that we were at earlier I was sitting in the park with a friend and we were just talking about her previous jobs and I told him how I liked when I first came to spend I taught English it'd be cool like kay we're kind of free right now how cool would that be if we could be in the park and someone was able to just find us and have a lesson meet us in the park have a lesson for an hour and then we'd be on our way we don't have to like call them or organize it or like have it like a set schedule gotten the ball rolling and I was thinking hey that there might be an idea there I thought about it a little longer and I think that day I went home and I started actually working on a way to solve that problem the most important thing for me at the time was just to start and when I came up with was basically a gps-based matching platforms for English teachers and students here in Japan you can kind of say the app as a hybrid of Airbnb and uber meets English teachers and students in Japan within I would say a couple weeks to maybe within like a few weeks I had like the plan all fleshed out I was interviewing developers and I like devoted all of my time to trying to build this app because I thought you know how cool would that be again to just be at the park and someone to contact you have a lesson and then be on your way he just messes them all through your mobile device you can turn it on you can turn it off you can have it here and Tokyo then maybe if you went to Osaka you can do lessons there so long story short I I did I built an app it was called a chi whanau a Kiowa meaning English conversation here in Japan now being like now you can have a lesson so a kimono made sense at the time had a small team in Tokyo I was funding it all myself and it was just a crazy learning experience all the stuff I had never done before granted I was in software development I was doing IT infrastructure project management which is nothing like building your own software building your own company starting your own company all this was a completely brand new hiring was new the finance accounting marketing software development all of it was new to me but all the project management skills I had in the past I learned I was able to put it into this new project I learned a lot I would make mistakes I learned from them and then I'd fix it the next time around he just keep on making changes every time around and mind you this whole time I'm funding all of this myself so I was taking on 100% of the risk probably not the smartest business choice but again I wanted to do everything on my own I didn't want to have anyone owning any part of my dream tell the sauce how I saw and in order to for like fund this stuff I pretty much cut out a lot of the partying hanging out with friends expensive meals I pretty much didn't spend any money and the only money that I spent was to throw back into this business because I mean it was that important to me I wanted more than anything for this to succeed and in order for me to do that I knew I had to sacrifice some of those things I love but I think one of the coolest feelings in the world was finally getting it published shortly after that was having someone actually use it and book a lesson and actually like a payment to go through that was kind of one of the most saddest moment some of the important things I learned from this whole software development app business starting my own company was one software development is endless it just never stops - as much money you spend on building the app you're gonna have to spend way more in marketing I think three is more than anything you're gonna need a lot of capital to fund this yeah so I needed more capital and in order to do that I needed to raise funds 100 percent on my own so I wanted to kind of raise the funds on my own I didn't want to get investors at the time unfortunately I got offered a private consulting job I paid quite well it was in the finance industry and so I took it now I was not only building my hub company but I also was working in finance as a consultant at the same time which was okay because at this time I just needed the developers to develop it so basically I would just take the money that I was earning from the consulting position and I was just move it to that business actually around this time just right after I took on the consulting position I met Michael my wife now we hit it off right away I told her what I did and one of the things was she was completely supportive from the beginning I remember I had to hand out flyers at the park she went in and help me hand out flyers I wasn't paying her but she came in and helped me so I was like wow this is actually pretty cool why I guess and what do you do when someone's that supportive I hired her full time before that she was working in the fashion industry as VMD she was working for a top international brand she liked it but I don't think she liked a manager and I said hey why don't you come work for me and obviously there's just there's a lot of risk in that but I think she saw my dream how passionate I was she became a full-time marketer for a chi whanau is this for like about a year or so and then one day we were just talking about YouTube and I said hey why not let's start and so if you ever see my first video I'm riding my skateboard Michael is behind the camera which at the time was my iPhone we didn't really think too much of it and we just started going the first software we used was free software on the Mac but I movie so all of it we started with no money at all we just decided to start and from there started uploading content that we like and we would read the comments at the time there was barely any comments but we would read those comments and then we just kind of make changes along the way and then the channel became what it is now based on like your comments all the feedback the most important thing again was just to start we just worked really really well together and at the time I was really into Casey nice dad I think what was so attractive with Casey for me was that his videos were so simple it made it look like anyone could do it but then he started trying to do it it completely failed and we weren't doing it nearly as well in fact we're doing horribly but again you learn along the way and to be honest with you guys I'm not very much of a camera person in fact again in my first video like a super shy in front of the camera hey it's Paulo check out my vlog over time it gets better and you learn so now we're doing the YouTube channel but I'm also doing the private consulting and we're also doing the a car whanau business just super super busy and I think this year the channel kind of turned a corner and just started to really grow mainly all because of you guys and all of your support so again thank you pretty much changed our lives and I was able to start youtube full-time quit my consulting business I shut down econ one now and now we're just doing YouTube completely if you guys have watched the channel you know that Michael and I also got married at the beginning a year what a lot of you might not know is that I actually proposed her and recorded it on video and uploaded it to YouTube I don't think a lot of people saw that but it's actually an on send video it's called a private Japanese hot spring hotel tub you guys want to see Mirabeau some aegyo then check out that video and what was clear to me then and what's I mean now is that this whole thing would have never happened if my Co didn't take a risk on me who would have never built this YouTube channel we needed to have that opportunity to work together and the fact that she saw something in the dreams I had for a chi whanau at the time really meant a lot and that's kind of like something that I I don't wanna cry [Music] feeling kind of emotional right now well anyways um let's finish the rest of this video somewhere else all right I'm lucky to have Michael and I'm just kind of looking forward to the stuff we create moving forward for this channel for you guys and I'm just happy she took a risk on me and decided to work and help me with my dreams and now we're creating our dreams together which is pretty awesome and I think that pretty much answers most of the questions oh there may be a few more questions for those of you who watch the earlier vlogs you already know that both of my parents are Filipino I was born in the Philippines in Khe Sanh city but when I was 3 I moved to the States first to San Francisco and then later to the Seattle area in a little city called Redmond maybe not so little now growing up mostly in the Seattle Redmond area and then I went to university in LA and although I eat a lot of food in my videos I usually try to work out five to six times a day not 5 5 to 6 9 that's a lot I try to work out five to six times a week it helps keep the fried chicken cut down and I guess that's pretty much it but I think one thing I wanted to share or I wanted to kind of leave it all of you guys with is what I've learned at least for myself the last few years and living here in Japan if you're stuck in something that you're doing that you don't want to do you have a passion for something else you have a dream that you actually want to pursue I think the best thing to do is just start one of the questions I often get asked is how do I start this new job how do I start this new business or even how do I start a YouTube channel my answer is to just start I don't worry so much about whether or not I can or can't do something I just start doing it and I learn along the way you just gotta like go and like see what happens and although hey Kyle WA now that business was never as successful as I wanted it to be her and I spent a lot of money into it it's been a lot of time I was able to take all the stuff I learned from that experience and move it over to YouTube so whatever you do even if you fail or even though it doesn't work out the way you want it to work out just as long as you're able to learn something experience it's always gonna be a positive so with that all said thank you so much for joining me on this journey so much more content to come and if you do have something that you're looking to do don't worry about what's gonna happen just art because you never know what's gonna happen catch you guys in the next one

Channel: Paolo fromTOKYO

Views: 628,873

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Id: fP6bUgfe2ig

Length: 25min 39sec (1539 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2019