In high school, I was a loser. 

I hated studying, my grades sucked, and to top it off my first girlfriend had just dumped me. Feeling hopeless, I wanted to drop out of school. My parents didn’t know what to do, so as a last-ditch gamble they sent me on a flight to Beijing, hoping that travelling alone would fix me. And it kind of did.

One morning while strolling through a hutong (Chinese alley), I stumbled upon an old, dimly lit coffee shop, stuffed with books and little trinkets. The place had a warm smell of toasted nuts, and a quietness that made time feel slow to a crawl. Nothing would disturb the peace here except the odd fly that would enter the room, tapping against the windows. 

In this tiny corner of the universe, everyone was doing their own thing, living their own lives, yet there was an invisible thread that wove through each of us, tying us together - the teenage lovebirds reading a book, the old man talking to his dog, and me, 16 years old, feeling for the first time like I belonged.

Watching how people could exist so peacefully made me think that perhaps I wasn’t too late. All of a sudden I felt a sense of hope, inspired by the environment and those inside it. 

From that day on, exploring cafés became my new motivation to study. I studied hard at every cafe I could find. Days blurred into nights, weekends into holidays. And before I knew it, I had studied my ass all the way to Harvard.

After graduating, I took on a six-figure role in finance, before realising how much I hated it. So I quit my job, packed my shit, and spent the next year travelling across 50 countries, sleeping in rental cars, and showering at gyms. 

To feed myself, I tutored English online for $25/hr. With only one student, I taught like my life depended on it, because I’d probably die in bum fuck nowhere if he cancelled. Thanks to my desperation, the kid got into Oxford. Word spread. Then one student became 50, and 50 became 500. At 22 years old, I started my first company, and within a year we became one of the largest education providers in the country.

I made a bunch of money, and life was great for a while. On the surface, I bought fancy clothes, ate at expensive restaurants, and drove around in supercars. But deep down, this wasn’t really the life I wanted. I never meant for tutoring to become this full-time thing, let alone a giant business. I was kind of just swept into the hype. I began feeling lost and unmotivated, like that loser kid in high school again.

The only thing that kept me going was that little coffee shop in Beijing. Memories of it kept coming back, again and again, until one day I decided to turn one of my classrooms into a mini-cafe. I called it the Study Bar, and my students went crazy over it. Before long, it had become this trendy after-school hangout for kids all over the city. And it was motivating them to study, in the same way that little coffee shop had once motivated me.

For the first time in years, I caught a glimpse of that magic again - the same invisible thread weaving through the room. And I knew it was time to part ways with tutoring. In the end, what I really wanted was to build my own cafes - giant, magical cafes with the power to motivate millions of people.

To fund this vision, I sold everything I owned and put in every cent I had.

The first O3 opened its doors in Auckland, New Zealand, only half-built. We ran out of money before we could finish the other half. On the first day we sold exactly 7 cups of coffee. But things worked out anyway.

I believe we can do amazing things when we have a place to belong and an environment that motivates us. Never have I felt more motivated. As I write my story, the magic inside me glows a little brighter, and I can feel its warmth travelling down my chest to my wrists to my fingertips.