PPB October 2020

I learned from it is that I am a person of routine—I love my routine—and goal setting. There were strength and fitness requirements that I couldn’t do, but I know that in business, if you have a big goal that you consistently work toward and perfect, over time you will be able to achieve those goals. For business, I always tie my interests into business. I am also a runner; I’ve run marathons on behalf of a nonprofit and I use that as leverage to help the nonprofit with fundraising. I have a lot of fitness clients that want to target the fitness industry so by telling them I am a certified kettlebell instructor from StrongFirst, The School of Strength, then I don’t appear as another salesperson, but an expert in the fitness industry. By having those experiences myself, I become an expert as well and I also test the products, too. PPB As a Chinese-American, what advice do you have for other minorities starting off in this industry? Ho As a company, we are a certified DBE (Disadvantage Business Enterprise), SBE (Small Business Enterprise), WBE (Women Business Enterprise) and MBE (Minority Business Enterprise). These are all certifications we’ve got from government and state agencies. Why is that? People think being small, woman-owned and minority-owned is a disadvantage in doing business. A lot of the time it is, however, I found early on that there are a lot of organizations that [purposely] do business with minority-owned, but you have to have the certification. We end up winning bids because we have these certifications. And for state and local governments and even some big businesses, they have a mandatory goal annually to work with small businesses with certifications. For example, in Los Angeles county, we are certified as a small, minority-owned business and if we go into a bid for a $1,000 project, we actually have a 10 percent preference. So, if we all come in at $1,000, our bid will come into them at $900, but we still get paid $1,000. Even if you are a big company, I have a 10 percent advantage over you. This is a huge advantage and a lot of people don’t know that. Don’t be afraid to let people know that you are a minority, woman-owned or a small business [if you are]. There are a lot of businesses, more than you think, that will reach out and do business with you. Kristina Valdez is associate editor of PPB. Diversity In Promo | OCTOBER 2020 | 95 CONNECT