The thoughts inside my head

[donny273-blog]

merry Xmas to those who should not be forgotten

Yesterday was the day before Xmas. I was on the way home from town and on the bus an older gentleman, maybe aged around 80 made his way on the bus and seated him next to me, well dressed, immaculate and polite as he was dressed.

After making friendly eye contact, and exchanging standard Xmas pleasantries,the conversation then moved naturally towards Xmas plans and he expressed his rundown of his day in which he said it was such a treat was to spend a day in the city where he had previously lived for a significant period of his life. He appeared tired from the day activities, as one would, but his eye contact suggested a deeper yearning for more interaction, or a return to a lifestyle in the city . I had noticed previously when he sat down he opened is iPhone 📱 and opened the LINE App to perhaps communicate pleasantries to his friends and family. There was also a deep sigh as he also mentioned it would be unlikely to see his children (who he mentioned was in their 50s) and grandchildren perhaps due to the nature of technology and “people living their own lives”. The deep sigh and exasperated moment communicated a deep sense of loneliness and a yearning to return to the “good old times” where human contact was more frequent and we both came to an acknowledgement that human contact and interaction was irreplaceable, and the ultimate characteristic that makes us human. 

Overall the interaction was short, brief, but made an impression for me, but I am sure for him as well. I hope he finds that interaction from his family and loved one in this Xmas period and return to “the good old times”.

So for all the friends out there, reach out to the parents and grandparents, and quench that thirst for human contact that we all desire and need, and let no one be left behind. I don’t know this particular gentlemen’s family history or background but I know everyone needs to be loved, and reached out in this time of family and celebration! We all will age one day so never forget about the parents and grandparents!

[donny273-blog]

inspiration and pressure

The two most inspirational male figures in my life.

Past, present and future.

One inspires me, drives me, educates me and puts pressure on me and has been doing that for the last 34 years of my life or even longer.

The other one inspires me, also drives me at times, allows me to look at myself and everyday and learn something, and despite not yet able to communicate constantly leverages me and puts pressure on me at all times suddenly without warning.

Just like anything in life, the question is do you get tired of the pressure and let it bind you or inspire you.

The choices is yours, life happens to you but it is how you choose to interpret the incidents that happen and ultimately respond to the pressures and inspiration that makes you.

Either way, the decision is always respectively yours.

[donny273-blog]

The year was 2010, I was in my mid 20s running by educational enterprise with my older friend, brother/father figure, a Greek Australian in his 40s with around 20 years age on me we had been through thick and thin over the last few years. I remember clearly, when he burst in the office one afternoon, presumably after a line of stressful events and blurted out “Fuck I must of run over a china man today”, I could hear him blurt on the phone. No explanation, just a causal comment, before some other information which hasn't registered in my memory, and he repeated the phrase.

I looked at him funny, and then  he closed the door and said the same thing, slightly oblivious to the reaction he had. This was the same person I saw as an older brother father figure, a Greek- Australian who in his words “ was conceived on the boat’ as his family fled worn torn Greece to Adelaide in the 1960s as boat refugees and came with nothing and built a family from scratch. Later in life, with help from his older sister together, he relocated his own Anglo-Greek family from Adelaide to Sydney and did everything to put hid kids into the best schools.

As a Taiwanese who grew up in a family where the “Chinese” word was a big red dot in our vocabulary, whatever the language the word was expressed in, due to the independence issue, I didn't immediately feel offended, but undeniably the link the Chinese culture personally put me off. I know the dictionary states this is a putative Anglo Australian superstition which dates back to the 1920s where Chinese were considered the yellow peril especially during the gold rush of the 1880s and killing them brought upon bad luck. It is also noted china man is no longer considered appropriate except persistent on this expression.

Was it racism? I don’t thinks so. Later in his life, I found out he actually has yellow fever which was quite inherent. For someone who was children of immigrants, he did all the the right things for hid kids, pay the best for their education and kept all his tradition ( they insisted the rest of the larger family, despite married to Anglo-Saxon Australians, learn Greek cooking at home and celebrated Greek Easter with the whole lamb on the spit and red egg tradition, and really help me form my first exposure to European family culture. Based on that he would inherently understand retaining the culture of ones ancestors, even though he hadn't been to Greece until his early 50s a few years later. He would of perhaps been taunted and faced the same challenges I was growing up as the only handful of Asian kids in my school to assimilate into local culture as a ‘wog kid’ growing up in Adelaide in the 1970s and 1980s.

The reality is, mainstream culture ( whoever the main groups are, are generally culturally ignorant) and create these language and terms to keep the outsiders out. There has never been a better time to be an outsider as now because people are thriving in culture. The reality I believe is not to take these attacks from mainstream culture too seriously but see it as a process in the journey. All good things take time, and just understand as whole we are moving all in the right direction, but definitely never suffer in silence, and correct people when they don’t get it.

[donny273-blog]

Significance - it can be your undoing

When I was growing up, unaware of the surroundings and intricacies of the adult world, one playful question question the adults would always throw at us would you be “Would you be rich or famous”

Depending on which culture and your mentality, both are two points in life, like a holy grail in this quest of life that we were going to search through our life trying to get close to, or attempt in trying. 

In a time before social media, getting famous didn’t seem plausible and it was something that had to happen to you due to a variety of incidents (special kill, good looks and luck) but in a place where opportunities was available, the latter was. When I first started building business a decade ago, I believe both were important and significance came from moving up higher in the social chain and being respected, appreciated, or even feared or looked up to was a good trait. Now I really don’t care ( in my own words I would say I don’t give a flying fuck) because I see it as a personality flaw, this thing they called “face value”, or ‘significance’ is really temporarily.

Why, because in reality in this lifetime, not many people actually get to know you. Friendships as children are the most pure, and henceforth we all like to go back to our friendships before as its so hard to find real friendship in a time where relationships is all about chasing those with certain attributes, whether is power, looks, sex or money. And there is nothing wrong with fair exchange but, and its rapport building, and this is something we all do daily, but it takes a lot in this day and age for people to develop real genuine friendship.

The reality is, when we strip away at all the assets of ‘fame and fortune’, around us, how many people around us will still be there for us. Money and fame comes and goes and a lot of is personal interpretation and it would be absurd to anchor ones personal value of oneself based on that as your internal dialogue and values is far important. Often money is a better indicator of success as it teaches you to be low key and stop chasing the fame as it brings attention that you don’t want, and if your internal dialogue is correct and built, the money will come and go but always come back through time.

The ‘fame’ isn’t as lasting unless you can reinvent ideas and concepts that are concurrent with current times. Too many people in this world who are ego driven like to take credit for stuff that is not theirs not to begin with, or use a bit of success to leverage other groups of people into stuff that is off course due to their concepts of their ego. Both are cases which stems from the case that one is insecure and needs validation from others to satisfy their own hunger of significance. Both are early signs of the downfall in ones character and time to steer away.

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The Choice of Reaction

There has been a quote that has been going around which has been paraphrased by many speakers, coaches, in which the logic goes something like this. - “Things happen to you in life but the outcome is 10% what happens to you and 90% is how we interpret the situation and choose to react to it. This is very true. The Choice Of how one one reacts to a situation is a mentality of mindset, and also a state of their mind of pragmatism or optimism. What I have learnt from the years is that in a world where people and their relationships with each other also so closely intertwined incidents, missed expectations and events are bound to happen in an time where self entitlement or individuality and self expression is the focus more the general public consensus, and in the case of every ‘tragedy’ one can have two interpretations - “that I am the victim, unfortunate one and why does this happen to me”, or “this is a situation I have to face with and this is a challenge I have to overcome and I have all the resources to go through it and a part of the journey” The more the difficult the situation, the deeper one has to dig deep into ones personal character reserve to deal with the situation. Both are illogical standpoints as one usually is overcome with emotion in a time of crisis, but the latter disposition is a better one to approach a situation pragmatically. The most logical thing is to stand logical ground things happen. Same with when extremely good things happen, the key is not to interpret it as “lucky break” or I am full deserving and that is when the ego gets involved.

After Careful consideration though, a lot of what happens to us in life is a story. For example, two immigrant kids can have the same experience of being bullied at school due to race, or put into a dominant cultural experience and after 30 years as an adult, one can choose to relate everything back to this incident with the framing “it was unfair for me to be bullied and I will spend the rest of my life getting back at people” or a more pragmatic approach would be “this has happened to me, I am going to show these people who didn’t treat me fairly on what I can do in my life” No second guesses on which approach on in life will have more success later on in life.

To conclude, its all a choice we make. So my logic is, make the best choice for you.

[donny273-blog]

The new Platform

A few months ago I thought since the the Airbnb Market was getting more competitive, and after 5 years of hosting, I needed a different challenge and thought to myself, what else is it I could create that would give consumers the same experience of when I used Airbnb for the first time as a host and also as as a guest and feel that same sense of value by getting a WIN WIN for all parties. After 6 months and partnering up with the Airbnb community this is what me and some fellow Airbnb hosts came up with. We all need to travel. We all need to sleep, and we all need to EAT and food is what connects people. I came up with this and love to get your feedback as hosts

[donny273-blog]

Product and Experience. And positioning.

I went to the famous Sydney noodle market today to do a bit of market research and try the stuff out tonight out. It's has been years since I have been there, and my memory was jacked up prices and a lot of crowds (two things I don't like) and quickly I was reminded why I didn't like

As an experience, it was fantastic. A great way to show Local and tourists the best of Sydney foods. Great experience

As a consumer, the amount of logistics and labour involved in the spectacle (coucil grants, high cost of food, licensing , set up and security and labour involved meant obviously it has to work into the cost of the experience. I paid close to $18 for a small bowl of rice with some beautiful BBQ pork (the stand did its marketing well by having a crowd of 60 people waiting for it to open. From a marketing concept, this particular stall was brilliant in using the sensory smelled to build up to a anticipating crowd which was dying for the product as soon as the clock ticked 5 and they were ready to trade

After going to an event later in the city, I was still hungry so I went on the food wastage app and got a healthy big dinner box for around 40% of the price of what I had paid at the noodle markets (and around three times the volume). Without sound cheesy and trumping my own horn, it just tells you it's all about supply and demand and marketing and positioning. We all buy an experience in the same city for vastly different value propositions according to timing and premiums are indicated. Considering the noodle market was less than 1km to where I got the big box was it shows the difference between an food as an experience and food as value.

[donny273-blog]

the last frontier

Putting your flag everywhere... in this day checking in everywhere

As a part time professional tourist, airbnb host and someone who grew up this land I am about to conquer and venture into the last state I have never crossed into-WA. This has lead me to feel a quiet sense of achievement!

Something about the human conditioning means that we feel we have achieved when we have stepped on the soil of a foreign land, a final frontier in our consciousness of achievement

It is the same drive that has create wars and dynasties in history, and could be the psychological drive from,the early British and Dutch explorers colonialising the New lands of America and Australia and Asia, to Marco Polo becoming a cultural ambassador between the east and the west.

Even in today where there is hardly ever a stone left untouched in this world, and where ever we go our WiFi networks and our smartphones and devices keep pampering our social media urging us to "check in" to fulfil our own sense of achievement, we still do it as it's new to us. A new environemnt, a new frontier, a new place. And this is the same thing why we keep wanting to travel. It gives us a natural high, an experience that is new and something I believe closest experience we can have in life like being born again. Something new, something exciting and outside our comfort zone which can also scare us, but something that grows us in our own experiences

[donny273-blog]

Circa 2006

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A snapshot in time before social media

#memorylanetrigger 

Today I woke up with an whatsapp message from my ex business partner and mentor..

It was an photo from 10 years ago.. from a birthday party around the same time we had started our business..

I remember that was one of the few times when we had taken photos other than random snaps as this before smartphones and social media became mainstream

As I saw the photo, I saw the clothes I was wearing (even recollected I bought them from the same retro market. I also starred and saw the faces and remembered the people in the photo and the moment of fun we had in that photo. I also remembered that at 23 years young, I thought this was it. It's funny we focus on the sensations and feelings that are introspective to us at the time. My thoughts at the time was that this would be the project that would define and be the vehicle to take me to where I wanted to go. However, I was in reality at the beginning of my journey.

Obviously through that last decade has changed but one thing I realised is the moments we shared in that snap are not lost forever. My first introspective was to focus on that moment. I hope all the people in that photo are well. Life moves on but moments don't. The reality is in life things takes many twists and turns but always have a gratitude for the people you meet you life and the moments you share because the moments make you who you are. So treasure those moments and live life to the moment as it's moments that we take away with us as emblems and landmarks in our journey called life.

Love to share your snaps and stories here!

[donny273-blog]

The Psychology of Contact

To put myself through university and early life, I put myself through sales. All types. B2B, B2C, Call Centre, D2D, MLM. It was all considered all a part of my “real life business degree”, I thought. And it was also in this process where I realised since I could product more output then the average person doing the same job, irrespective of age, or sex, race or experience, then being paid for result rather than paid per hour was a better route for me, which led to my path of seeking self employment.

The Path for me leading into my deciding to starting my own business and registering a company when I was 22 had started in my teens. I put myself through university falling into a job quite accidentally doing shopping centre promotions. The job entailed having a stand within a shopping centre and approaching and stopping passers by that looked they were in the age group to have children going to school, and ask lock in questions and start completing a form to qualify them into a sales funnel and process to potentially provide an educational program for them and their kids. Essentially it was lead generation at its best- Face to Face, creating rapport with strangers and finding commonality.

In this process, the more ‘completed’ forms the better as the business was paid on ‘per lead’. Essentially there wasn't much product demonstration on the stand but pretty much the individual there and their ability to connect with the potential prospect. I became quite good at the job as it was giving me a full time income whilst doing university full time, and ended up being a fully fledged business. Hence the art of the cold approach has always intrigued me.

Factors that led to increased output were pretty much the usual traffic:-

*Individuals on the stand and how driven they were, how they felt on the day, and how they felt throughout the day

*Group dynamics of the individuals on the stand

*Traffic and Activity of the Centre. Saturday being the busiest day was the traditionally.

*Number of people pitched to, which alludes to former factors, and back to the ultimate golden rule of sales which is : SALES IS A NUMBERS GAME

* Dynamics of the day, when did staff arrive and when did people approach or look at the stand.

The GOLDEN RULE IS THE  PSYCHOLOGY of the environment on ‘the stand’. Was it competitive, passive, and were people driven despite getting rejections or feeling a lack of progress?

* Other factors were events, when there was events, especially when attendees had paid, or whether we had visuals on the stand, ie a Chocolate Wheel where kids were drawn to the colours and had a chance to spin, or whether there was event next to the stand,

However, most importantly I BELIEVE WAS THIS.

HOW YOU MADE PEOPLE FEEL. 

HOW THE STRANGER EXPERIENCED YOU. YOUR ENERGY, AND THE REAL YOU

Were you confident but not intrusive, insightful but respectable, understanding but not overly passive. There was times when you had people stop and talk for hours about off topic subjects, which meant a 5 minute questionnaire which took much longer.

So I believe the most important thing is to think about how people feel you, despite their beliefs and prejudices can feel. People can feel when you are just a number or survey or questionnaire or a lamb being driven to the slaughter, or are you someone who is genuine, showing interest and maybe showing something of interest to you?

People all have an experience of you when they meet you, what is the real experience. Is it a packaged experience, or is it the REAL YOU?

[donny273-blog]

Breaking of the Fast

I had an opportunity to meet with an International friend in Auburn, the heart of the Muslim community in Sydney in the early evening where the breaking of the daily fast during the period of Ramadan was observed. 

There was a local Afghani bakery which had a line outside similar to a release of a concert ticket or the latest smartphone release from Apple- presumably for the Muslim population as they get their bread for the day.

The line was long and filled with Muslims from all ages and backgrounds of Asia and the Middle East, and I quietly observed by 25 minute wait for the bread.

Without going into detail, we live in an international world where opinions value all the time, and social perception is judged continuously on different groups of people. But my point is, if people are willing to wait and observed quietly in ordered lines for bread  without anyone pushing in and also respectful for bystanders walking by despite the hunger they are obviously feeling , much more orderly then some other situations i have seen in life where much less was at stake, there is something spiritual and orderly to be respected there.

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Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

Aside from the basic economic principles of what this represents in any business subject to market forces and the fundamental cause of what buys and sells, I would like to play a game and let people think how this works in consumer choice.

So here is something to think about. When it comes to a purchasing a product, we as consumers are more on influenced by two facts - our desire of the product (need/want) which is translated as demand and the supply of the product (availability of the product).

The Price which meets becomes a culmination of the two points and also a combination of other factors (cost of good, fixed costs, commission and tax and supply) and where a margin is the profit to make. The profit is what the seller is after and the buyer whats to reduce it.

From a service provider, where the “experience” is marketed, the margin can be a lot greater, and the buyer would be less focused on getting the price lower as it affects the service,

What if we can be in a market where when we buy a product/service, and pay for the main product, for a portion to cover the cost for the service/product provider, and then a 2nd portion as a disapprortinate margin to vary based on the conditions or timing of the service. 

Example.

Product A costs $5, and out of the market of the customers, there are the following:-

20% who want to pay for the best and first choice and want to pay a premium for the best service and fastest and delivered to them. They want it NOW and they want it FAST and DON NOT MIND PAYING up to a 400% margin for it- Up to $25 (GROUP A)

30% who want the choice but don’t mind picking up the product in the shop. They would be comfortable paying a 200% margin - Up to $15 (GROUP B)

30% who don’t mind the choice but just want the lowest price possible, but don’t mind waiting for sometime, as long as they get the product within a week. 100% Margin Anything up to $10-$15 is okay for them (GROUP C)

20% don’t mind paying a less version, demo product, or damaged product, knowing it does its job. Anything with $5-$10 is acceptable for this market and they don’t mind waiting, as long as its cheap (GROUP D)

Say there are 10 of these customers, and without shipping

2 GROUP A :$50 3 GROUP B: $45 3 GROUP C $36 2 GROUP D:$10

What I mean is a certain segment of the market who buy the product, lets say 30% are service orientated, who don’t mind paying for good service, and pays for a product which is cost, and add on such as delivery/shipping as long as they get it now, We should take care of those customers first as they are the most profitable ones and on the spreadsheet, and group B and group C is where the market is. Group D is your loss leaders and customers they call in the 80/20 rule to fire, as they are the ones who generate no profits and people call tyre kickers. They can also be the ones that complain the most as they have the lowest capacity to pay generally.

What if we can turn these people who have less choice into raving fans but also allow them to cover the cost of your business?

I am on a mission to use disruptive market forces and use the “bottom feeders” or “bottom 20%” into raving fans and the biggest assets for any business!

[donny273-blog]