It was June 14th, 2003. I was un employed for about 4 years and looking after a young son. With my last savings left in my hand, I attended the Gem and Jewelry classes at Asian Institute of Gemology.  I attended the classes but having no idea where to apply my new knowledge, or where to sell and find my customers.

During the lunch break, a friend of mine pointed a company across the road of our institute, “That is ThaiGems.com, it sells big on eBay, it practically grow out of this online business.”  As I am an electronic engineer, the word online and eBay strike like lightening to my mind.  I talk to myself I should find my path this way.

At that time in Thailand, internet is at the beginning. I have never access internet and browsed on www!  But I desperately wanted to have a business online. I bought an internet package.  It cost about 100 Bht and the available time is about 50 Hours through a dial up connection to the ISP.  When I reach home, I got myself connected and in my browser, I type in www.ebay.com.  I was very excited.

Signing up to eBay is free. I could sign in as Guest also, I felt a bit queer feeling in my mind, I was very unconfident. So I just browsed eBay as guest for the first time. I tried to browse through eBay’s many categories and items.  It awed me, I saw millions of items.  On the first day I access eBay, I cannot find ThaiGem.com because I was too new to eBay and not yet familiar with all the features and pages of eBay.  But I browsed through eBay for every day till I became familiar with all the search options.  There I found ThaiGem.com; the listings were very professional with java script animation and so on. I felt a bit sad to see such a polished and professional competitor.  How could I compete?  I was overwhelmed by lack of knowledge and fear of competition.

But I have firmly decided that becoming a seller on eBay is my path of chosen profession. However, the fact at that moment was; I have no knowledge of internet and no spare money. To encourage myself, I tried to get reference from some self motivating books.  I look around my home and found “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.

I have bought “Think and Grow Rich” about two years ago and had read one time but rarely apply any principles seriously before.  I decided that this is the time I start myself out seriously.  So I note down all the chapters.

There were a total of fourteen chapters.  I decided to read and apply one chapter per day so that all those principles are strongly and seriously embedded in my mind. I dropped the story book reading approach, read the whole book in one day and nothing happened after that.

When I have a strong and specific desire to go online, I have no knowledge or any experience of internet and eBay. As a busy housewife, my savings were few and time was not on my side.  However, I decided to start my journey without having any physical support.  Only abundance I could find in myself is my mental energy. My journey on online business should be started and supported by correct mind set and persistence efforts to try my best every day.