We need to become babies
Everyone wants to be successful. Unless you are sick and perverted, you do not like failure. However, in order to grow and learn, you must not only be tolerant of failure, you must welcome it.
And when you do fail, you must learn to pick yourself up as fast as possible and [...]
In most people’s minds, the hardest part about being an entrepreneur is starting. That’s actually not true. Starting is the easiest part and it just requires you to get off your butt and start doing things. You only think it’s the hardest part because that’s the part YOU are stuck on.
For that reason, here’s a [...]
The Age of Transparency: Never Mess with a Blogger
Because of social media, the whole world knows whenever you are flaky, shady, or screwed someone over. Uphold your integrity at all times, and never screw with a blogger.
Focus – Flashlight vs Laserbeam
You will never win a battle if all you have is a flashlight and your enemies have laser guns. Focus.
5 Tips to making a successful Social Networking Site
1. Users must feel part of the group – start niche
2. Create small actions that easily connect to one another – avoid the “now what moment”
3. Always notify users of changes – keep things fresh
4. Have Community Managers – make it social
5. Pay attention to [...]
What’s the deal with the RTs?
Every once in a while on Twitter, you will notice that at the beginning of a tweet, there are the letters “RT” before the actual comment or link. If you followed the advice on my last post about starting and becoming a master on Twitter and have downloaded TweetDeck , [...]
Most people agree that the FD Lifestyle philosophy sounds appealing, but they have no idea where to start. This post will explain to you how to begin your quest of greatness and fulfillment. Each step isn’t very easy (especially when it deals with understanding yourself better), but nor is playing a game the first time eh? 
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First and foremost, in anything, you need to figure out what kind of game you are playing. What are your life goals, what are you passionate about, and what do you want to achieve? Are you playing a game where you try to make an impact on this world by utilizing your skills and resources around you to solve world problems? Are you playing a game on reaching the top of your organization in the shortest amount of time, try to accumulate as much money(points) as possible, or try to pick up as many girls as you can?
You have to think very carefully on what you care about and what accomplishments would make your life meaningful. Choose a game that you will feel worth it when at the end of the day (or your life), you will feel good because you accomplished meaningful things and have beaten the game with a high score.
Once you have identified the game you are going to play, you need to figure out what role you will play and what are the skill sets or resources you must have. Lets take my Game of trying to make as big of an impact in this world as possible as an example. Once I have determined that my end goal is impact, I need to figure out what is the best way to get to that goal.
That’s when you look at your “initial stats.” What are you innately better than the people you grew up with? Were you always quick with math? Were you the sociable leader? Were you more creative than your peers? I turn out to be better at creating connections in my head, establishing deep and meaningful relationships fast, and analytically creating systems that make things better. I am also extremely emotionally stable and can stand high stress.
Finding your initial stats is actually something extremely difficult to do, but you can only do it through a lot of self-exploration and TONS of trying out new challenges. Lets just say there’s no meter to tell you your stats, and you have to kill enough monsters and get hit enough times to figure out the actual numbers. Being a NPC in town doesn’t help.
After you have determined your Initial Stats, you then need to think of the occupation you want to be in. Don’t just pick something your stats point to, find something that you love doing as a lifestyle. I personally hate being a sorcerer where most of the time I’m hiding, hitting, and running, even though I could potentially become very strong with it. Sometimes the easy road is not the most fulfilling. When you think about your occupation, deciding how you can use your initial stats to beat your game (the ultimate goal) in a way you enjoy doing is key.
OK, this step takes ages, and most people never do it before their midlife crisis. But that’s why so many young people don’t know what they do, and so many older folks hate their jobs – they don’t spend enough time on this. The first build of a character usually turns out crappy unless there’s guidance.
Back to my own example, I feel that since I am good at leading and dealing with people, have a strong balance between random creativity and systematic analysis, and can stand a lot of stress and uncertainty, my occupation will be an Entrepreneur. I can create new systems to improve the world in a creative and interpersonal manner, while withstanding the stress of things-gone-wrong that a business faces all the time. My systems creation talent and my passion to help others grow also suggest a side specialization of a Consultant or Coach.
Once you have decided on the Game you are playing and your Occupation, its time to plan out a “build.” If you have done the past few steps correctly, this shouldn’t be too hard. Knowing who you are and where you want to be is far harder than how you can get there. When you envision yourself accomplishing your goals in the future, what are the skill sets you need?
Whatever the skill sets are, make sure you focus on those, and don’t spread yourself thin. Sure, you can have unrelated skills as long as you can see how they can work together (for instance, Bilingual in Chinese and English, Leadership, Finance, and Sustainability Knowledge can work out well if you plan to become a financial leader of a sustainability firm that will spread to Asia). Putting 2 skill points in sword technique, 2 points in spear technique and 2 points in axe technique does not make a strong character when you can only yield one weapon at one time.
After you know your occupation, stats and planned skill points, the only left is to build alliance and conquer smaller quests that give you experience to level up and beat the game. So holistically, to play the FD Lifestyle game well, you need to have good Occupation, Stats, Skills, Alliance, and Quests. Each of these things I will have separate blog posts to elaborate more and get you to live a fullfilling and successful life. My goal as a powercoach is to help you level up and become the strongest player on your server. I hope you find a successful and fulfilling life through the FD Lifestyle. If you have any questions or need some guidance, feel free to comment or just send me an email at yukai@fdvirtualworld.com
Throughout my career, I have been leading people who are older than me. In some occasions, these people can be more than a decade older. It wasn’t always like that. When I was a younger, I was the kid who everyone makes fun of while I worked my butt off to try to become accepted by people. The process had to start all over again whenever I moved, as South Africa, Taiwan, Kansas, and California all had very different cultures. The turning point was when I started a chess club in high school, and during my sophomore year, was elected President. With a new sense of responsibility, I realized that the whole organizations success was dependent on my shoulders. I spent 4 hours a day making sure the young team is growing, and a culture of participation is maintained. And eventually the team became State Champions in my Junior Year (the team maintained the title for at least 4 years afterward and finished strong nationally). From that point on, I have been leading groups of great people, and accomplishing exciting things that make a difference in this world. After all, it’s all about making life more meaningful.
Leadership is, almost by definition, not something everyone has. It is like good writing: most people know how to write, but only few people can do it professionally. Most people know a little bit about leadership, but only a few know how to do it professionally. Some of the most intelligent people in the world are not good leaders, but merely fit to be advisors of the leader. Robert Kiyosaki says that, to be an entrepreneur, leadership is the only skill you MUST have. Being very young like I am, I cannot say that I am anywhere close to being the best leader I could be. However, I have put in a lot of thought into the issue, and have boiled down good leadership into 3 Pillars.
Before I dive into the 3 Pillars, I want to clarify that these are not the first 3 steps in being a leader. I believe the first step in being a leader is to feel comfortable about it. If you can’t even convince yourself that you are worthy to lead the group, how can you convince others? The second step in being a leader is being comfortable with others leading you, even when you are the leader. That means you need to trust peoples’ core competencies, be able to delegate, and believe in your team when you are the only person who supports a plan. In my opinion, a cohesive team with the second best plan will always beat a broken team with the best plan. Alright, now that your eyes are already tired, lets go into the Three Pillars.
1. A Leader must have vision, and an unwavering conviction towards that vision. A leader must know what direction the team is headed towards, and what is the absolute goal people want to achieve. It is essential to have a strong sense of certainty because as long as you are doing something difficult or complex, team members will become lost in an ocean of tasks, distractions, variables, and uncertainty. This is when they look to the leader to bring them back to the big picture and understand where the group is headed towards. This also means that the leader must be very logical and be able to see the big picture. Members will challenge you with whatever they are uncomfortable about when they feel lost, and if you do not have the logical skills to justify everything the group is doing and connect it to the ultimate goal, you will fall apart too, let along convince the team. Finally, if the leader is not the most adamant and passionate person in the project, no one else will be. If the leader has a conviction of 10 towards the vision, his team members will have 8-9, and people working under them will have 6-7. If the leader has a conviction of 7, then the whole group falls apart. Know where you are going, and be sure of it.
2. A leader must have empathy towards the team and be able to connect with all the members. As a leader, you must emotionally and psychologically connect with all your teammates: what motivates them, why are they doing this, what do they care about, what are they insecurities etc.. You wouldn’t dare market and sell a product if you didn’t understand the demographics and psychographics about your target market, how could you lead a team if you don’t have the same information? When you sell, you understand the customer so you can effectively persuade them do something – buy your products. When you lead, you need to effectively persuade your team members to do thousands of tasks HAPPILY (bitter teammates are bad teammates), so there’s even more reason to know every little detail about them. With that knowledge, you can create the right culture and environment where everyone does things the best with the highest morale. The leader’s job is to make everyone else better. The best leader’s job is to make everyone make everyone else better. The environment is so essential to a productive team. I have seen extremely competent people become unmotivated and perform poorly because of the environment, and I have seen otherwise weak performers become highly competent in the right environment. Some people just need a “good job!” after some hard work, some people are interested in non-monetary incentives, and some people just want to tackle the hardest problem they can find. If you know how everyone feels and thinks, you can have everyone do what they want to do in the way they want, resulting in better productivity. At the end of the day, when your teammates know that you care about how they feel and what they think, they will give you their work, trust and loyalty. The smartest math genius in the world might be able to solve the most complex equations, but still have no clue how to please one person without pissing off another. You as a leader must.
3. A leader must know exactly what needs to be done to get the team towards the end goal and make absolute sure of progress. Now that the leader understands the far vision and knows everything about the team members, the final pillar is to get the team moving towards the goal. The leader needs to be the person who is accountable with execution, driving the group forward. In Good to Great by Jim Collins, Collin states that the best leaders (Level 5 Leaders) are usually not the charismatic ones, but often are very humble and non-exciting people. That’s because the charismatic leader always wants to do new projects and get everyone motivated and excited, but the Level 5 Leader keeps saying the same things over and over until it gets done. At the end of the day, if you don’t have stuff done, it doesn’t matter how great the plan is or who is participating, everything becomes meaningless. A lot of people have a tough time building a bridge between goal and the status quo. Many Y-Gens I know care about their career greatly, but never seem to understand what does it take to get them to their career goals. As undergrads, many people neglect getting good grades, internships, and self-development due to games, parties and the fun distractions you can find everywhere. As professionals, many people do the least they can do with a bad attitude, and become bitter when their “over-achiever” co-workers are getting all the promotions. Bridging reality to goal is not something everyone knows how to do, but that’s something a leader must master in order to become effective. Getting things done and focusing on action items is one of the concepts that don’t have libraries of how-to literature on, primarily because it is so simple and straight forward. Make sure everyone is accountable with their tasks and start executing! It’s that simple.
A lot of leaders out there possess 1 or 2 of the three pillars here, but VERY few of them have all. Some leaders are extremely passionate about the vision, connect well with all the members, but drive progress very slowly. Some leaders understand the direction very well, and are very good at driving progress but sometimes at the expense of pissing off team members. Fortunately, this is the type of leader that still produces results, but may not be the most effective in the long run (as people are not motivated both in work and commitment). Finally, you have the leader who connects with each member well and can drive progress, but has no longterm vision of where the group is going. These are often elected leaders who are simply picking up the past leader’s inertia.
Again, I am no where close to mastering any of these three Pillars of Leadership. However, I understand them enough now that I can continuously look at my own life and focus on improving these skillsets. Collins emphasizes on recognizing the Brutal Facts, and a leader must understand himself well in order to constantly improve himself and the group. Lets include “understanding him/herself” in Pillar 2.
