Kevin Ham Editorial in DnJournal

New, great story by Ron of dnjournal

Dr. Kevin Ham – everyone in this industry knows the name but only a handful of people really know the man. When you run a domain business that reportedly generates well over $1 million a week from various domain-related ventures and a portfolio of approximately 300,000 names, it is easy for the statistics to overshadow the human being behind them. Especially when that person is as humble and self-effacing as the 37-year-old Canadian doctor from Vancouver. Like many of the other great entrepreneurs who have blossomed in the domain business, Ham’s drive and work ethic were tempered by circumstances dating back to his childhood. He grew up watching his parents create something literally out of nothing to make sure their kids had a better life than they did. Their values became his values. When Kevin’s dad, Dalsik Ham, was in his 20’s, he was a hard working farmer scratching out a meager living in the Korean countryside. Realizing that his lot in life (and that of the generations that would	Dr. Kevin Ham Founder, Reinvent Technology
follow him) was unlikely to improve unless he made something happen, he pulled up stakes and left his homeland. Dalsik took a job as a miner in Germany but that life was no less grueling than the one he had just left, so in 1969 he moved on to London, Ontario in Canada where he met
Kyung-Sin and Dalsik Ham with their new son Kevin	Kevin’s mother, Kyung-Sin, who had left Korea as well so she could train to be a nurse. Not long after Kevin arrived they moved west to Vancouver where his dad started up a dry cleaning business – but their struggles were not over.Ham recalled “My father came to Canada with empty pockets and I hardly saw him as I grew up because he went to work before I awoke and didn’t get home until I was asleep.” Because of that hardship, Ham, who now has four children of his own, made up his mind that when he had kids he would spend time with them and watch them grow up – something his parents did not have the luxury of doing.”My mother did graveyard shifts as a nurse and slept a few hours, then helped my father in his dry cleaning business, and after that attended to household duties,” Ham said. “She had such a very strong will to make sure that all of her three boys turned out to be good people. She engrained in us manners, a reserved personality, and a desire to make a difference in this world. I am forever indebted to my mother for bringing us up with the proper values, and being such a strong foundation for our family.”