Snowboarding Entrepreneur Extraordinaire

It is a Saturday night on the first really hot summer day of the year, a time when most people are taking their holidays or relaxing for the weekend. Yet, during the course of this one evening, Yuho Sekihara, age 27, receives several phone calls from investors interested in her new company, Gauge, a women's athletic clothing line, as well as several frantic phone calls from her father seeking advice on the sale of his home. He wants to accept the first offer but Sekihara insists he counteroffer for more money.

Depending on the caller, the young Japanese-Canadian communicates in fluent English or Japanese. Regardless of language, she speaks with the confidence of a person twice her age.

"[Making] a deal is really exciting whether for one cent or a million dollars. I just like it, the transaction and feelings of accomplishment, even if it's just [getting] five dollars off at the flea market."

Self-described as an Asian-Canadian oddball, Sekihara has not taken the conventional route in life. She grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and in grade 10 became addicted to snowboarding while riding the local mountains with current Olympic-level Burton rider Natasha Zurek. Knowing that her daughter became depressed if she didn't go riding, Sekihara's mother would write notes excusing Sekihara from school.

After high school graduation, Sekihara moved to Whistler, debatably North America's best ski resort, to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder. At one point she lived out of a truck, working two jobs with a broken back. Almost ready to give up, she bumped into a good friend on his way to Korea to give a snowboarding demonstration. At the time, the sport was relatively new to Asia and Sekihara convinced her friend that the best introduction could be made by representatives from both genders. Two weeks later, after quitting her jobs, she was on a plane to Asia.

Although Sekihara ordinarily did not compete in the half-pipe event, while in Korea she placed third in the boy's category (a girl's category did not exist). Most snowboard keeners would have thanked God for their good fortunes at that point and returned to Canada proud of their achievements. Sekihara went a step further by approaching the Korean event managers and proposing her ideas about how to develop the sport of snowboarding in their home country.

"I always saw the business side of it. I had a voice and decided to use it. If they decided to listen, great. If not, too bad."

The business savvy Sekihara has returned to Korea six times since, taking with her the Canadian riders whom she was asked to handpick as coaches for Korean snowboarding hopefuls. She has since developed the Korean team's fifth snowboard world tour schedule and has spent time coaching their national team.

Upon return to Canada after her first trip, Sekihara was finally sponsored by Option and placed on their A team.

"I went straight to the A team. Usually you go from C to B to A. I faxed in my resume and portfolio right away and they were like 'What? This kid has a portfolio?' I was so on it. I'm not the world's greatest snowboarder but I impressed them. I managed to negotiate a contract that was bigger than Natasha [Zurek] had ever got during her whole career at Option."

Sekihara competed worldwide for almost two years and won fourth in the World Cup. None of this success came without a price. During the course of her snowboarding career, she suffered seven concussions, broke her back two times, and dislocated her shoulder fourteen times. She participated in the 1998 Olympic tryouts with her whole arm taped to the side of her body. That was the first year the Winter Olympics included snowboarding, so the pressure was on her to qualify.

"It felt wrong but at the time, I wasn't thinking about it. I was told to do it so I did it. Sponsors were really pushing."

Unfortunately, the demands of her career took a toll, and Sekihara ultimately burned herself out -- something not uncommon among professional atheltes. Always searching for the best opportunity, however, Sekihara did not let this be her downfall. Sick of moving from place to place and the high Whistler rents, she used her earnings as a down payment on a condominium in the Whistler village. She renovated the condo and created a hostel for Japanese snowboarders spending their winters in Whistler.

The Whistler real estate market was and still is hot. Sekihara eventually sold the condo privately and used the profits to put a down payment on a house in Whistler almost six times bigger than her first location. She did a great deal of research and was able to buy her new place at a 7,500 square-foot value, though the property was actually 11,400 square feet. She again renovated and rented. Since that purchase, she has also bought another rental-type accommodation at Sun Peaks, a Canadian ski resort four hours north of Vancouver.

Although real estate is her current passion, Sekihara is still highly involved with the sport of snowboarding. She does snowboarding consulting, which involves negotiating better sponsorship and incentives for pro snowboarders as well as helping them get incorporated in order to save on taxes and immigrate to Canada. She writes snowboarding articles and sells her photography to magazines and websites, she teaches kids and adults at Whistler's snowboarding "Camp of Champions," and most recently she has invested in her friends' company, Gauge, using her industry contacts to attract investors.

Considering most of this businesswoman's friends are still struggling to make rent and figuring out what they are doing with their lives, Sekihara's accomplishments are more than impressive. Parents do not typically ask their children for advice on business transactions, after all.

Sekihara states, "In the last few years, I decided that I will never work for less than $100 a day. I've passed a lot of jobs by because of it but it has worked out in the end. This freed up a lot of time for jobs that paid $1000 a day."

In day-to-day life, being so involved in the business world usually takes a person away from her families and friends, but in Sekihara's case, having more time with family and friends is a prime motivator.

"I have a lot of time that I can give to my friends and the people around me, things I enjoy and like. I can do that because I have set myself up to be financially independent." Sekihara says over and over, "Time is the most important thing. Money is just a tool."

In keeping with her philosophy, Sekihara decided in her late teens that by age 30 she wanted to retire or have the choice to retire with a minimum of two million dollars. Today, at age 27, she is very close to achieving that goal.

"Until you, as a human being, can be self-sufficient, you have the inability to help others on a mass scale," she explains. "I look at the bigger picture. It's better to donate multimillions to a corporation that can do a lot than to volunteer every day."

When asked what she will do if she does retire at age thirty, Sekihara says simply, "Be married and have kids. Play with them."

After a couple moments of silence, she admits, "I would still have my passive income and investments, my rental properties. And I will always travel around 'nowhere BC' to check out a property that is way too cheap for what it is. I think that is what's going to be interesting and fun."