Hello, my name is Lesley.
I’m the girl behind Woodyoubuy! I thought I should introduce myself to our followers on Facebook and Instagram (almost 4K of you) after my husband did his introduction. So here we go…
- I call 3 countries my home - Philippines, Singapore, and Australia. I grew up, studied, and worked (a few years) in the Philippines. Then I moved to Singapore in 2007 to work. I also met my husband there. And in 2013, we finally migrated to Sydney, Australia where my family now lives!
- I graduated from Ateneo De Manila University in the Philippines with a bachelor's degree in Management Economics. So my background is mostly in business.
- In terms of my career - I worked as a Product Manager in IT distribution companies in the Philippines and Singapore. I really enjoyed this job as I got to travel to different countries. Then I moved to this multinational consumer goods company and worked in customer service and administration. The learnings that I had from my career life are becoming very beneficial to my small business now.
- I have two older siblings who I am very proud of! My sister is a VP of a big multinational accounting firm while my brother is an associate director at an international Architectural firm. They have been helping me as well in the business - my sister helps me with all the financial and accounting stuff (I sometimes call her very late at night to get some advice). And my brother has been helping us ever since with design. He has been sending me a lot of designs which some, we already made and the rest are in progress (because we are too busy!). I am super lucky to have them!
- I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum (a severe type of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy) when I was carrying my second child. This is the worst sickness ever and probably this is why I decided that we will just have 2 kids. I don't want to ever endure this again.
- I'm so obsessed with photography before! I would wake up at 3AM just to get a good sunrise shot and would spend hours and hours creating and editing photos. But it was good as I had several of my photos on billboards, magazines and websites around the world (thanks to Getty). I've seen one of my photos plastered on the buses in Sydney! I was also featured on the Canon website. Nowadays, I only use my camera to take photos of our products.
- I got redundant from this multinational company here in Australia when I was 5 months pregnant with my second child (while I was having this Hyperemesis Gravidarum sickness!). It was hard to deal with at first but finally learned to accept it. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it helped me open up our shop!
- My parents have been very supportive of our business. They would fly out to Australia during the very busy season (Christmas) to help. My dad has been helping me with the painting, oiling, and packing while my mom takes care of the kids as well as the house. I couldn't have survived the past 2 Christmas seasons without them. Also, when I receive some rude emails from customers, I would share it with my mom. And she's the one who feels so sad about it. I always tell her that I am not affected by it as I am so used to it with my previous role in customer service.
- I love listening to music. My favorite artists and bands are Snow Patrol, Coldplay, Pink Floyd, Dream Theater, Collective Soul, Keane, Eric Johnson, etc. And if I really need to focus, I listen to loud Hip Hop music (haha, this is so weird right?).
- I like strategy games like Chess and those computer game ones like Command and Conquer and Civilization. When I was in my younger years in school, I got to compete in this inter-school Milo chess competition and won gold for our school! And when I was a freshman in high school, I beat all the other competitors in the higher years and won first place for our batch. Now, my husband always beats me in every game that we play and I HATE it!
- I am a crammer, always late, and very messy with all my things. I submit things on the deadliest deadline (BAS, yearly tax, payments etc). My husband abhors this! But I quietly find it amusing haha!
Whew, that’s it! You can find out more about myself and what we do in my Instagram posts and stories.
Ok so now let’s hear about you! Share one interesting fact about yourself!