much more excited about this than about my actual job. I still did my job, but all I could think about was the website and how I could expand it.
Eventually the website turned into a collaboration tool for creators to find other creators. I was deeply involved and created massive collaborations that helped us share each other’s following and grow our audiences. Eventually I found that as I grew my reach, I was able to tell more people about The11thSecond. Again, I was not even thinking myself as an influencer, but focused mainly on growing the website – if I grow, the website grows too. And as I help other people grow, I help myself grow. It was a win-win situation. I dedicated countless hours to the project and Snapchat. It made me feel great, as if I was making something and contributing to a thing that was my idea, my purpose to fulfill – but I wasn’t making any money.
So I decided to make a career out of something that didn’t exist yet. Was it possible for people to make money on a platform that wasn’t even known for being something people could monetize?
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I started taking this more seriously, strategizing which celebrity to draw to maybe pull in more attention. Eventually an offer arrived; it was to draw a Snapchat for the NBC series The Voice. It was my very first gig.
So I’m writing this book because I wanted to share my story about taking an opportunity and creating your dream even though there’s no road to follow to achieve it. Never settle for something that doesn’t make you happy or fulfilled. We work to make money; we make money so that we can be happy. If you aren’t happy working, then that defeats the purpose of you making money to eventually be happy.
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Where did it begin? It all began in March 8, 1989, in Bacolod City, Philippines, where I was born. My mom saw a diamond-shaped birthmark in between my eyebrows when I was born, which isn’t visible now. People in the Philippines are very superstitious. My mom saw the diamond-shaped birthmark as a sign of greater things to come.
While the U.S. is the land of opportunity, the Philippines was the opposite, especially at that time. It was the land of very limited, almost nonexistent opportunities. After a person reaches the age of 30, it’s extremely hard to find a job. People with college degrees compete for retail and fast food jobs. Most people there become OFWs (overseas foreign workers), in order to provide for their families.
When I was 7 and my younger sister was 4, my mom had to think of something in order for us to survive. She had a land she’d been holding onto. It was small, but it was ours. We would daydream about what our dream house would be like. We’d spend hours drawing the exterior, then move on to picking out wall colors and furniture for the interior. It was our
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dream, our land...and we sold it. Our family was all out of options. We gave up one dream to invest in a
bigger dream - going to the United States.
There we were, in the U.S., terrified and alone. A single mom, two kids, in a foreign country with no family close by...but what came next was unexpected, fun, emotional, and wholly ours. We got a small apartment. Looking back on it now, it wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but it was what we could afford. We never played outside, or really ever even left the house. My sister and I would keep ourselves busy indoors; we never thought anything was missing. One of the main ways we entertained ourselves was by creating videos with my mom’s camcorder. We would act out and re-create movie scenes and create stop-motion films and dance videos.
My mom worked part-time at a retail store, while my sister and I babysat each other, making sure we kept very quiet and didn’t do anything too dangerous in the house. Babysitters weren’t an option. It was something that we never even considered. It wasn’t possible. Back in the 90s, you would sit down and watch family sitcoms on TV, and they never looked like my family. It was typically two parents, joyful kids, colorful sweaters, and a nanny. We were so not that. So the fact that we never had a babysitter in the formal sense is something that I now take pride in.
My sister and I grew up a little faster because of the fact that we were responsible for ourselves and for each other. This accelerated our maturity, I think, and was one of the first sparks in creating an entrepreneurial mindset in me. From a very young age I felt the weight of even the smallest decisions and their possible ramifications. There truly isn’t any replacement for life lessons.
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I saw how hard my mom worked. Even at a young age, my sister and I knew how she worked to
provide for us, and we did our best to make it easier for her. Seeing my mom work hard motivated me to push my limits and try my best at everything. I dreamt of going on vacations, visiting Disneyland, having a two story house with a wraparound porch and a fish pond – and I knew I needed to do everything I could if I wanted to make that happen. So I became what you call an overachiever. I started second grade at a Catholic elementary school. I made straight A’s, was on the honor roll, and was the undefeated bi-annual art champion from second to 8th grade.
I even won a few science fairs. My fascination with and talent for art really developed in school, even though back then, I thought I was going to be
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anything but an artist. But winning many art contests and being asked to create a design for T-shirts to be sold to the whole school really encouraged me to keep doing art. I graduated from elementary school in 8th grade, as the student of the year, almost equivalent to being valedictorian, but for middle/elementary school.
I decided to enroll in a magnet high school. One of the magnet areas was visual arts; I took my talent for art and really focused on it. I won statewide art competitions and racked up medals for my artworks. I also had my art showcased in an exhibit at the airport and in a permanent display at a bridge in downtown Little Rock. My art even gave me an opportunity to attend Central High School’s 50th anniversary as a VIP. The event was significant in that Central was the high school the famous Little Rock 9, a group of students that made history books, had attended. I won