A Train Ride

So I’m sitting here on the train to NYC and I guess I wanted to just take some time and recount my thoughts on what has been going on because I haven’t said anything on here for a while. Things are vastly different from the last time I wrote, and I have an hour were I can just write and not worry about any other distractions.

For one thing, I am no longer with Renata. Things didn’t work out, and we went our separate ways. That’s the end of that.

For another thing, I graduated and got a job – a real one. I’m a biologist at Merck. It’s not exactly exciting work, but I am fortunate to have it even though on some days all I want to do is just quit. It gets the bills paid, and I’m happy about that. I know that I was thinking about grad school and going into finance and investment banking, but a lot of that didn’t play out the way I was planning.

And I guess there are good reasons for that too.

The biggest change in my life since the last time I wrote was that I have actually started up a company called Barik Army. So, I guess you can say my title is CEO or Founder or whatever, but in any case, it’s been a wild ride. Barik Army is dedicated to bringing car enthusiasts together in order to help people who need it the most. It does so in a couple of different ways.

First off, we distribute aftermarket parts from nearly 200 manufacturers. These are all manufacturers that provide top end parts for cars, including ones that get shown at SEMA, Tokyo Auto Salon and other shows worldwide. It’s crazy because when I was growing up, I would draw the logos of these manufacturers in my notebooks when I was doodling. I was always into modifications and companies like HKS and AEM could be found drawn in my notes. Now I can proudly say that I deal with these companies on a regular basis and I distribute their parts. This was a dream, and something I never thought would have happened even a year ago today. I offer the best prices, and recently have secured a partnership with Amazon in order to distribute through their online store. That part of the business has only been live for a little while, but in the time that it has been live, I’ve already seen a significant hike in sales. As a test run, I only put one manufacturer up, just to see where it would go. And so far the results have been amazing, and I wonder what will happen when I get the other manufacturers online as well. The income would be enough for me to actually quit my day job and pursue this venture with all of my time and resources.

The other facet of Barik Army is what the company was started for. “Barik” is actually derived from the Thai word for donate, and essentially it is an “army” of people that donate. That should give you an idea about what we do. I started the company in order to be able to help as many in the world as possible. In July, we went to Washington DC and fed over 100 homeless a whole meal. DC was the place where everything started about two years ago when I went there and saw the insane amount of homeless people that were there. I was inspired to help as many of them out as possible, but didn’t really have the means at that point. When I started Barik Army, I finally had a way to do so on a large scale. We made a video for it, and it got such a great response. Just recently we had a huge fundraiser that brought in over $2,200 that will be donated to a guy I went to high school with, who was involved in a very horrific motorcycle accident.

I can confidently say that I have found something that I truly love doing. I feel alive with Barik Army, and the way that it helps people has been one of the things that I've always wanted to do since I was a kid. I think that this is something that will go a long way, and I have many people that believe that there is huge potential in it. The fact that I have an investor who believes this has the potential to take off is just enough to know that something like this needs proper management and marketing, and it will be something huge. I need a team of people that will be able to take this to the next level and I am working on that right now. In fact, that is the very reason I am on this train to NYC – looking to build a team, and I need to meet with my investor to come up with a solid strategy.

In any case, I am almost there, and I need to put the laptop away. I’ve been meaning to update this for a while, but I often found that I would lose my fire while writing, and I wanted to keep it as authentic as possible – so instead of forcing myself, I would abandon those little ventures. Today, it all flowed – I didn’t really have to think about it, it all just sort of came out, and I’m glad because sometimes I need to do this in order to help keep me sane as well.

Here’s to hoping I’m not crazy.

But the people who have changed the world are the ones craziest enough to think that they could.