My son asked why we weren't richer. Then he stopped waiting for the answer.
“Mommy, I’ve broken $10k since the start of this year.”
I stopped what I was doing. Something in my chest shifted.
This is my son. My baby. The one his teachers used to pull me aside about at parent-teacher meetings.
“He’s too timid. Too quiet. He needs to speak up more.”
That same boy just made $10k in five months. From a business he built himself. Alongside a day job. Before university even starts.
I’ve been sitting with this all week.
It didn’t start with a business plan.
It started with art.
He has always drawn. Sketched. Created. It was so much a part of who he was that he got into his secondary school through the Direct School Admission programme accepted on the strength of his art.
Then came photography.
First astrophotography. Staying up late to capture stars. Then shooting for a school friend’s clothing line. Then our family holidays became his material, some of those photos ended up in his final IB exhibition.
The skill was always there. Quietly building. Year after year.
He just hadn’t pointed it at income yet.
Then came karting.
He fell in love with it the way he falls in love with most things. Completely. But karting is expensive. At $200 for a 10-minute session, my husband and I had to be honest with him.
We couldn’t do it. Not at that price.
He was frustrated. Really frustrated.
“Why aren’t we richer?”
I remember that question he asked.
I didn’t have an answer. What we had was a conversation about starting from where you are. Using what you have. Finding a way forward that doesn’t require waiting for different circumstances.
Then he figured it out himself.
He was already going to the races. Already had his camera and already loved the sport.
So he started photographing the races and offering the photos to drivers.
No elaborate setup. No business plan. No waiting until he felt ready.
He just started.
Within 24 hours of each race, drivers had their photos. That turnaround became his reputation. The reputation became referrals. The referrals became $10k.
One evening in Macau when we were there for the IAME Asia Series, I suggested we go out for a nice dinner on the last night. A small celebration.
“No, let’s eat in. I have to get these photos processed”, he said.
We got takeout instead. And he worked into the night.
As a mom, I watched him and felt a pang. Surely this was the hard part. The sacrifice. The tedious slog that comes with building something.
But I remembered something he had told me once, in an earlier conversation.
I had asked him, “isn’t the processing the hard, tedious part?”
He looked up. “No. I enjoy it.”
That was my limiting belief, not his reality.
I had assumed that building something always involves a kind of painful grind. That if it isn’t hard, it isn’t serious. That hustle is the price of progress.
He showed me that when you love the work, it doesn’t feel like any of those things.
Here’s what I kept coming back to after he told me about the $10k milestone.
He didn’t acquire a new skill to solve his problem.
He looked at what he already had, years of photography, a love for the sport, a reputation for reliability and he directed it at something.
That’s it.
I work with women who are sitting on decades of experience, skill, and knowledge. Skills they use every day without thinking that others would genuinely pay for.
But they don’t see it. Because when something comes naturally, it’s easy to assume it has no value.
My son didn’t plan to become a karting photographer. He just kept doing what he loved. And one day, someone was willing to pay for it.
The skill was never new. It was just finally directed at something.
And that boy his teachers said was too quiet?
He walks up to drivers now, strangers, and says: “I’ll be at the race this weekend. Do you want me to take photos for you?”
Not everyone says yes. But enough do.
Turns out, asking for what you want doesn’t require a different personality. It just requires deciding that what you have is worth offering.
If any part of this felt familiar, if you’ve been sitting on something you haven’t yet directed at anything, reply and tell me about it.
I read every response.