Charles Lee had planned to apply for law school after graduating from ASU this spring, but money was so tight he had to pay for the LSAT with his credit card.

That was about nine months ago. Then Lee, a 23-year-old finance major, read a New York Times article about miracle fruit parties, or “flavor-tripping,” that same month and his curiosity was piqued.

“At that point in my life, all my time at ASU amounted to living and breathing finance,” he said. “I [didn’t] see much of a future there for me.”

Lee started devoting the bulk of his free time to online research, finding out as much as possible about miracle fruit itself. The berry is popular in Africa and Asia for its ability to make sour foods taste sweet after consuming it.

To pay for school, Lee decided to start his own business, My M Fruit LLC, a company that markets miracle fruit products in America.

He also found a manufacturer in Taiwan called Sen Yuh Farms that was struggling to expand their market to the west.

Within three months, Lee became the worldwide, exclusive marketer for Sen Yuh Farms with the approach to “tailor the product to fit the lifestyles of Americans,” he said.

Lee has since established wholesale retail contacts with about 15 companies, he said, mainly online retailers such as www.ThinkGeek.com.

His company has gone from selling 200 to 10,000 packs a month since starting about a half a year ago, Lee said, and his company plans to launch a new brand identity and packaging for Sun Yeh Farms’ product in about a month.

This professional, driven enthusiasm is characteristic of Lee, said Damian Madray, creative director of DepthSkins Design Studio, who designs products for My M Fruit.

“He’s a born entrepreneur,” Madray said in an e-mail. “There are some people who do it for the money, but there are those who [are] entrepreneurs, because they have vision and crave success in the most innovative way possible.”

Lee is a unique entrepreneur for reasons besides his business model. He was the victim of a violent crime in his hometown of Los Angeles about five years ago. He said he didn’t want details of the circumstances published, but the incident caused him to permanently lose use of both legs.

However, Lee said being a paraplegic does not detract from his ability as a businessman.

“The wheelchair is an inconvenience, but it doesn’t say who I am,” he said. “It doesn’t reflect my thought process or say what I can do as an entrepreneur.”

Overcoming hardships in his personal life has, in fact, given him a rejuvenated sense of motivation and resolve in his professional life.

“It gives you that resolve that’s necessary to do business because you will have competitors, and they won’t care about what sort of barriers you have to overcome,” Lee said.

Sally Woelfel, an English faculty instructor who taught Lee as an English 302 student, said his focus on achievement rather than impediment is typical of Lee.

“I’ve known him several years now, and I’ve never heard him speak one statement of self-pity,” she said. “He’s already shown himself to be a successful entrepreneur, and he hasn’t even graduated yet.”

Marketing and wholesaling miracle berry tablets may not have been the plan when Lee began college as a finance major, but he has no plans to quit in the near future.

The success has led him to rethink the law school plans he originally created his own business for, he said.

“I was going to take the LSAT last week, but I’ve pushed off law school until at least another year,” he said. “If you were to tell me that this is what I’d be doing — selling berries — I wouldn’t have believed it.

“But now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.