Gadgetory

all right so let's see where do I start here my name is Jimmy long I was born in 1984 in the city of Rochester New York home of where Kodak once stood tall and proud it's still there today but that's pretty sparse now my parents both left Vietnam and after the Vietnam War conceived me and boy were they in deep trouble here my parents didn't have much money I grew up in the hood and went to an inner-city school drug deals and gunshots were literally happening across the street here from a house and being out late simply wasn't safe my dad was a chef at a Chinese restaurant and my mother worked in manufacturing nothing glamorous nothing close to be well-off here matter of fact day care like it is today it was expensive in the 80s and after my mother stayed home to raise me for the first three years or so I was then old enough to come to work with my dad now obviously I couldn't be around the cooks and the stoves so every day I had the corner of the kitchen here where I sat on either a bucket of soy sauce or a bag of rice playing with my toy trucks or coloring keeping myself entertained my mother would get out of work and pick me up at about 5:00 and my dad would stay at the restaurants work until 10:00 at night six days a week now as a kid it was pretty typical I rode bikes with my best friend next door pretending to be video game characters shoot nerf guns I even skateboard to for a year which I haven't done since I was six or so but besides hanging out with my best friend nearly every day I loved drawing and it loved building stuff with Legos now by the fourth grade my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said I wanted to be an artist you know when I proudly told my parents that idea was shut down pretty quick but by the fifth grade this is probably 1995 my father had seen all of his bosses at the Chinese restaurants the ones who had money basically behind their kids computers and my dad said that was the future I keep in mind we were still pretty dirt poor so my father had taken all of his credit cards and purchased at the time an Apple Macintosh computer and yes beckoned day was called in back in Tosh it didn't have a clean-cut name like MacBook Pro or so well in that computer bundle one of the very early versions of Adobe Photoshop was included and you can imagine where that led me to today but as time passed I think I went through the teasing and being made fun of phase during my middle school years and I don't want to make this such a sad story but being called Chinese like it was that negative thing on stereotypes behind it because I didn't have money I only had one pair of shoes for the entire year living in the hood at the time wearing tight jeans or faded jeans you would get picked on all the time so in an effort to make some of my own money to buy some clothes for myself and again I was again in seventh or eighth grade I started buying candy at the corner store and someone called the bodega and try to make a profit the next day I would do pretty well selling candy but by the end of the month you can imagine making 10 cents and profit on each piece of candy wasn't too lucrative so that didn't go anywhere so high school came around and with my best friend Brandon and Brandon if you're watching this what's up dude me and Brandon would walk through the hallways and throw stink bombs into classrooms we would street race behind the school for fun as a side hustle I used to bootleg CDs it was honestly complete 180 to what it was when I was a kid and probably Who I am today as well but with my friends it was seriously fun though but on the down-low I was still a total nerd I took up engineering and competed originally and won first place with my team I competed nationally at the u.s. first engineering competition and we didn't win first place but it was such a great experience we were sponsored by RIT when an all-expense-paid trip down to Orlando Florida and where we competed was in Disney World and it was my first time ever there was my first time really out of New York - it was far different from growing up in the inner city now while back home here and the very beginning of my senior year I eventually crashed my car but dad was furious and said I should focus on school instead of working like most Asian parents I would think would save that who knows well at 17 or 18 if you're not making your own money your mother is the one who picks out the clothes for you and the last thing I wanted to do was get picked that again but because I wasn't allowed to work I started focusing on what I'd love at the time it was cars and The Fast and the Furious movie the fur every one that just came out my senior year of high school and everyone was interested in cars at that time while I went to my local autozone I spoke with the manager and bought some neon or strobe lights in bulk at a discount and started listing them on eBay and with eBay I learned some basic HTML got better with Photoshop to make my photos and listings look good and this was my first I guess real entrepreneur experience the selling candy thing wasn't really a big deal but towards the end of that gig I was making about $200 a week which for a high school student was a lot but then one day some douchebag started listing the same lights for cheaper than mine and I was losing business the eBay gig eventually shut down so I was back to focusing on school and as much as I dreaded high school I dreaded math I hated reading yet I somehow graduated in the top 20 of my class so everyone thinks I finished with an engineering degree in college loving cars and loving to build things I also thought I was gonna get into mechanical engineering but by the end of college like I said I dreaded math I always was fond of the creative side of things and because of eBay and selling other things back in middle and high school and no I didn't sell weed or anything like that considering I was growing up in the hood and but I was really interested in business so I finished college with a degree in communication with a focus in marketing and advertising I loved learning why storefronts or laid out the way they are I love the psychology of what makes people attracted to a product a logo etc etc well fast-forward to right before I started youtube I had a combination of my own businesses and my fair share of working for corporate America I've worked for some of the biggest insurance companies in the United States I've worked for one of the top three banks in the nation I stayed at home for a year and day traded stocks and future contracts at one point I flipped a home I had a rental property and I also built my own house before too so it's been pretty trippy and don't get me wrong pretty exhausting but April of 2012 YouTube was not really mainstream at all and all I had seen was others posting his homemade videos of themselves nothing spectacular highly polished as it is today well soldier knows best or mark Watson was one the very first technique youtubers that I knew of and I was really inspired by him so I decided to post some of my very own crappy review videos just for fun and have no idea how but it did very well at the time I would post several more videos sporadically throughout the year never turning on monetization again it was just purely a hobby just for fun never thinking that this could be a full-time job so while working all these years in corporate America in the office setting in almost all of my twenties I honestly wasn't happy working for people they just hated corporate politics for God's sakes and growing up or you would think money would have solved all of your answers but I wasn't even doing what I enjoyed doing when I was growing up which was creating building things and business in general so September of 2013 I left my banking job cold turkey I was making good money and I said you know what I'm going to give you two the shot I finally committed to YouTube full-time that is on October 12 2013 and the first month I was literally making three dollars a day and keep in mind I still have a mortgage at that time I have you know grown up bills I guess you can say I said I pushed through for an entire year just to see how it goes and despite not making much early on I very much enjoyed what I was doing this was a 100% complete risk here but I said you know what after year if it doesn't work out I can always go back and go work for someone else from once again dreading it but in the end I love seeing people tell me my videos help them I kept feeling me to keep pushing more content and continue to help people every day and every aspect of their lives where the beat at I didn't review that home appliances I did reviews on some weirdo random stuff too but anyways today a few days away from October 12th today is what October 3rd October 4th or so my three years committed to this YouTube thing it's been amazing to look back and just say wow I'm doing what I love I'm helping people everyday and getting back to what I loved since I was like 5 or 6 it's basically I'm creating building things now I would love to get back into real estate eventually of course we had that real estate crash recently that's why I got out of it but I can that's another story but honestly guys I was thrilled to make this video not to show you my accomplishments but to prove a kid that grew up in the hood a kid that hated math that kid that you read in school there is hope after school there's hope if you didn't do well in high school in college it's okay and if I can leave you with something to think about and this goes for my younger audience out there I've learned I want money to be a byproduct of my happiness not happiness derived from money itself so the last thing I want to tell you guys and gals out there seriously is thank you for everything there is nothing else that is keeping Jim's room afloat that's you guys and if I could I would love to shake everyone's hands out there all 200,000 of you and with this video of course I'm hoping there's many more to come but with this video seriously I'm hoping that you guys have taken my life story so far that is or some insight that you guys can do it too and I'm not saying to make youtube videos and that everyone would be able to make it I'm not saying that everyone can be cut out for it I suck at sports I would never get into the NBA but I'm just saying do what makes you happy put your best foot forward dedicate yourself have high standards for yourself and just give it a shot in the end if I had never tried in all my endeavors in all of my risks that I have taken I'll be honest I would have never had known and with Jim's review room I would have never have known that it would be what it is today so guys thank you very much for everything seriously from the bottom of my heart you guys take care and I'll see you in the next one bye the whole and before I forget here guys that giveaway video for the 200,000 subscriber mark before you guys comment in the comment section furiously that giveaway video should be coming down in the next day or two this video was long enough I didn't want to squeeze it in here so that's it I'm getting off now off to the next video see you guys later bye