Being at the verge of explosion

As many of you may know, I have been an entrepreneur for over 5 years now. I’ve worked on a lot of different small businesses, some made cash for me, while others were just a great learning experience. However, I have constantly been moving into opportunities that are more scalable and more impactful. And I think I’m at that opportunity now.

My startup Viralogy is at the best shape we have ever been in a startup. Right now we have

1. An amazing team who are literally the best in my network of over a thousand people
2. A finished product that increases customer revenue by over 10%
3. Paying customers one month after launching
4. Validated with three competition wins, including 1st place at Jason Calacanis’ This Week in Startups – LA competition and TheFunded.com’s Juice Pitcher event

I believe Viralogy has bust through most of the technology and market acceptance risks, and we are in full position to expand our sales and grab more marketshare.

This is the point where you join our journey

Our team is completely passionate about eCommerce Personalization and have worked hard to get to this point. We used $30K to hit all our milestones in the last nine months, and now we’re ready to raise the next round of $350K via individual investors.

We want you to be part of it. As an investor, you will see how a startup grows and becomes a game changing business. I can’t guarantee that we will succeed for sure, but at this point we have an excellent chance of making it big and getting you to retire early

If you are interested in being a part of our exciting journey, here’s a video that explains more on what we do:

Hey guys! I haven’t been able to post much lately on my blog since I’ve been traveling a ton and busy launching our product. The good news is that we successfully launched our product Dynamic Insights and Grade Your Store site, converted a handful paying customers, and have been able to automatically increase their sales revenue by 15%. These days I’m working a bunch trying to do some fundraising. I’m going to try to go back to video blogging again soon though so at least I can be sociable with you guys again.

Anyway, last week I went to Los Angeles and did a pitch at the TWiST – LA event. I won first place out of 10 Startups and got the chance to chat with Jason Calacanis, who is very influential in the startup world and blogosphere, on his live show about Viralogy. Pretty awesome.

Well, just wanted to do a quick update on my life. For more details about the actual pitch, you can check out the post on the Viralogy eCommerce Blog

Even though I’m usually really busy, I’m always there for people who need my help in anything, so feel free to email me for anything, anytime!

Become powerful within your existing friends

There are many people who are not interested in becoming powerful and impactful in the world, but almost everyone wants to be influential and respected among their friends and peers.

However, the majority of the people do not become that, mostly because they are so comfortable with their existing social statuses in their groups that they don’t know how to make it different.

Here are some guidelines to help you become more influential within your circle. Your circle could mean anything from your small group of friends, your class, your department, or your entire organization.

1. Become the best

This is the most straight forward but most difficult way to become influential. It simply means being the best at whatever your group is doing. In fact, most respectable and influential individuals from a group are the ones that have mastered their skillsets the most, whether it be basketball, sales, programming, or just video games.

The way to do this is simply matching talent with hard work and becoming the best. Nothing fancy. Interestingly enough, a lot of people who become extremely successful later on in life still highly respect their childhood friends who were remarkable in a game they played, even if the friends are not very successful themselves.

One key to note is that the activity you excel at must be shared by all the people in your circle. If you are the best at chess in a chess club, you will be respected since everyone is doing it. But if you are best at sales but your circle does marketing and finance, then it doesn’t work as well. Finally, conduct yourself in a manner that minimizes jealously (elaborated in another post)

2. Become useful

If you don’t have the ability to become the best at what you do (by definition the majority of the people), another way is to become useful. This means that you are always there to help everyone out, and always have the right resources handy when it’s needed.

This is much easier to accomplished because you do not need to be the most talented at something. You just need to be the most prepared and most available out of all. If you are the one that brings something when no one else thought it would come in handy, or you remembered a piece of information that suddenly was needed, people will start to trust you. Eventually, as you are there for everyone and people start to rely on you more and more, you start to gain in respect and influence.

One key to note is that you want to make sure you don’t do it in a manner that suggests people can simply take advantage of you. You want to make sure you maintain a strong core and are only helping because you want to help so don’t feel like people can trample over you. Learn how to say no when you have to.

3. Become audacious

This is something interesting, but people usually respect others who can overcome their own fears. Most fears are not encountered on a regular social basis, but stepping out of the norm, being an uncomformist, and approaching new people in public is something that most people are uncomfortable with.

If you are always taking initiative in contacting people, organizing events/hangouts, talking to strangers in the group’s behalf, you usually earn a lot of respect from the group. It’s a strange social energy that displays that you are confident and know what you are doing. Sometimes this translates to charisma, which can be obtained without really being good at anything else besides being audacious.

Again, how you do this is essential. You need to do this in a very positive and sociable light. Anything else can make you seem weird, obnoxious, or creepy. Just like hitting on girls, there’s only a thin line between smooth and sleazy.

4. Become a maven

Another way to develop influence in your circle is to be the trusted advisor of this group. This means that even though you might not be the best at what you do, you are the most knowledgeable in the field and have a passion in sharing your knowledge.

To be a maven, you do need to be passionate about the topic and are constantly updated on the latest news and developments on that topic. You need to know a large amount of relevant information, it’s sources, and how it is comparable to similar products. Once you have that established, even the top performer will come to you for the best and updated information. Now you are respected like a coach, or Yoda.

5. Become a connector

Finally, the fifth way of becoming more influential in your circle is to become a connector. This is probably the easiest as you don’t need to have any skills of your own, but simply the enjoyment of making new friends and helping them out with your existing friends.

Whenever someone in your circle has a need, you know the friend who can solve the need, and you make a connection. The first helped person now owes you a little favor. You can then use this favor to help someone else, and that someone else also owes you a little favor. As time goes by, everyone will owe you a little favor and you have become very influential as your network grows. People then need to maintain a good relationship with you because you are their window to all the resources out there in the world.

If you have seen the movie, you’ll notice that the Godfather actually is not the best at any skill, he isn’t necessarily “useful” or a maven, he is not more audacious than many others, but he is a connector that everyone needs to depend on. His influence comes from his network and how he is able to leverage that for himself and his friends.

Summary: Be Remarkable, Provide Value, and Be Proactive.

Everyone has different styles, and not every guideline above fits you. If you do all of them, you are bound to be extremely extremely influencial in whatever circle you are in (charismatic and confident leader who is the best at what he does, shares tons of knowledge, there when people need him, and connects people to tons of others), but depending on who you are, sometimes you just need to do one and you will become more respected and influential amongst your peers. Most of them are not too hard. It just takes a little heart and a little action. Always try to Be Remarkable, Provide Value, and Be Proactive.

It’s time for you to share your ideas or destroy mine. Lets have a dialogue in the comment section below.

There’s always going to be people smarter than you and people dumber than you

Everyone wants to be successful in life. However, not everyone has what it takes to get there. Life is competitive, and to constantly keep up and excel over your peers is a tough and struggling battle.

Sure, some people believe that they can dominate everyone based on their natural abilities and intelligence, but you would be a fool to deny that there isn’t someone smarter and stronger than you out there (if you happen to be that one person who truthfully qualifies for that, email me and I’ll apologize to you personally). For most of us, gambling that you are the ultimate genius is a risky way of winning any battle.

The only way to win is to spend more time more efficiently on it

For everyone who is not the ultimate genius, the only way to beat the genius is to spend more time more efficiently on that activity. You’ll have to spend more time practicing, doing, failing, and learning than the born natural.

In his often-quoted book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell talks about how in order to become highly successful in something, one needs to spend 10,000 hours on that specific task. To put this into perspective, this is like practicing a specific action four hours a day, seven days a week, for seven years. (speaking of which, how many hours did your last “social media expert” put into his expertise?)

Needless to say, spending more time on something is not enough, as HOW you spend your time on it matters a lot too. I used to play chess on Pogo.com a lot (until Snow Leopard doesn’t support their java anymore…), and I’ve seen people who have astonishingly played 14,000 games but still plays like a beginner. These people lack the fundamentals of chess and a good player can literally beat them without looking at the board .

Obviously, if you practice the wrong way, spending more hours doing something will only make you suck more. If you don’t learn from your experiences every step of the way, you might as well not do it and die.

Take advantage of the Slacker’s Gap

Now the problem with spending more hours against others is that everyone has a limited amount of time on a given day. Since most people have to spend time sleeping, eating (and some even have friends and family!), whatever you do can only be highly marginal.

If your average competitor spends 4 hours a day improving himself, it’s pretty hard to three-times his effort and beat him that way. If you work your butt off, you probably practice 6 hours a day trying to get some kind of advantage. Yes, it works, and I encourage that if your goal is to become powerful in your field, but it’s definitely an uphill battle.

In that case, the best way to outcompete is to wait for what I call the “Slacker’s Gap.” Basically, this is a time when your competitors are taking days off and relaxing. When they are active, it’s incredibly hard to have a 40% advantage over them. But when they are doing nothing, you immediately gain immense ground since any progress you put in closes your difference by the same amount.

Am I telling you that in order to win, you need to be a workaholic and have less/no work-life balance?

I actually am. If you truly want to become powerful and influential in your field, you have to do more than what others are doing. Sure, there’s this thing about working smarter, not harder, 4-hour-work-week and all that. But to become highly competitive, you need to work smart AND hard. You need to do the 4-hour-work-week, 80 hours a week.

If you want to accomplish uncommon things in your life, you need to live everyday of your life uncommonly. If you spend your day like everyone else, you will end up like everyone else. It’s that simple.

Starting early allows you to stay competitive and become successful the easy way

But there’s actually an easy way to take advantage of the Slacker’s Gap. Lets say instead of working 50% more than everyone else, you started a year before everyone. That means for an entire year, your competitors are zero, and whatever hours you put in will be more than infinite times what they are doing. This is not just a Slacker’s Gap, this is a Slacker’s Valley. No one is there to challenge you until they realize they should start too.

Once you’ve had a head start like that, when your competitors start, they need to work their butts off, while you simply need to maintain steady pace to keep your lead. Life is easy and non stressful that way, obviously until some workaholic competitor surpasses you while you are in your Slacker’s Gap.

Three Steps to start early and become successful

Everything is easier said than done. HOW do you actually start earlier? If it was that easy than everyone would be doing it already! Here I lay out a few steps to help you gain an early bird advantage.

1. KNOW where you want to be, not where you are

Most people just focus on the present and their needs right now. You shouldn’t do that. You want to think about exactly where you want to be years from now.

Have you ever met people who are “lucky” because they knew what they wanted to do at a very young age? Most of them did not become “lucky” because they sat on their butts. They probably actively tried out a lot of things, got exposed to a variety of interests, and finally found out what they are passionate about.

In the same way, you need to spend a lot of time trying different things and really envisioning yourself 5 years later. Instead of handling the tasks at hand, really spend time figuring out what does success mean to you 5 to 10 years later. Yes, it could be daunting, but if you want to become successful, this gives you an immense advantage that is too precious to not take advantage of.

This is actually the hardest part of taking advantage of the Slacker’s Valley and requires a lot of initiative, speculation, outside advice and soul-searching. The rest is a lot more systematic.

2. Understand the metrics required to to get there

Once you know where you want to be many years from now, you have to figure out what are the metrics that matter verses the ones that don’t.

For instance, if you are a dental student who just wants to be a General Dentist, passing dental school is very important, but getting top grades is not (it is if you want to specialize). Of course you want to make sure you nailed down all your dental skills in order to treat patients well, but you don’t have to kill yourself over classes like Biochemistry or such.

However, what does matter for a successful dentist is how many people in your practicing city know about your service and thinks positively of you. A dentist’s success is not measured by how well how he did in school or even how good he is at dentistry. It’s measured by how many patients he can attract and retain to his practice. That’s why established dentists have an advantage over younger dentists, even if some of them may not have done better in school nor are they necessarily better at what they do.

This immediately means that networking and building a personal brand to a future patient-base is much more important for a dental student than getting perfect scores in school. It’s really important to identify what are the metrics that matter verses the ones that seem important at the moment.

3. Pursue the success metrics that matter in the longrun and go easy on the insignificant ones

Once you realize what metrics truly matter, you need to start preparing for that immediately, no matter how many years later would it start to matter.

Most dental students would only focus on studying and hanging out with other dental students when they’re still in school. The FD student on the other hand would spend time networking with others and establishing herself as a future dentist to all sorts of demographics in her target city.

That way once she actually starts a practice, people already know about her practice and would contact her whenever they or their friends are looking for a new dentist. Even better, while in school she should probably network with those that don’t have a personal dentist yet but would be looking for one a couple years later, like those still in other professional schools.

As you can see, in this example it is also very important for the dental student to know exactly which CITY she wants to practice, since for a dentist it only matters that people who are local know about what she does.

If the city the dental students wants to practice in is not the city she is studying at, what she needs to do is instantly network with people in that city via online methods. Use social networking sites and tools like Twitter or Yelp to establish relationships with people in that city while constantly letting them know she is an aspiring dentist might yield great benefits later on when you update them, “I’m finally a Dentist now and am opening a practice in Orange County!”

She can even start a blog that targets the local audience there like a food/restaurant rating blog (would need some research or a friend’s help) to get locals to read her stuff on a regular basis, while having a “About me” section that talks about how she will become a dentist.

All in all, when you know what are the future metrics that matter, you need to immediately get off your ass and start building that foundation while others are oblivious of this.

This “lazy” way to become successful is HARD!

Now at this point you might be contesting, “Didn’t you say that this was the LAZY man’s way of winning? This is SOO much work!” It’s true. In order to become powerful in your field, you have to put in tons of work. There’s no way out of it.

But some people spend their entire lives working hard and never get to where they want to be. This post is more about using a realistic and doable way to get an advantage over others without killing yourself.

Based on how ambitious you truly are, by no means should you really just get an early start and chillax from there. Remember that the difference between 95 and 96 is not 1. If everyone else is a 95 and you are a 96, you are the winner, and the winner gets all the opportunities. In a winner takes all situation, it’s the difference between 0 and 100. If you truly want to become the best at what you do, you need to start early and constantly make sure you are on top of your game.

What if I’m already behind?

You’re screwed. Haha, not necessarily. Since most people are still slackers and don’t take much action, you actually have a huge chance of catching up in most fields. All you have to do is after you read things like this blog or some other self-improvement book, actually convert it to action and DO SOMETHING. Most people read this kind of stuff just to feel good and agree with things, but only the 1% of the people who actually follow through and make it happen are the winners. The key to winning is not starting early, it’s being proactive in empowering your own life however way you can whenever you can. There’s a reason why “Be Proactive” is the first chapter of the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

Everyone else is still sitting in the sidelines. Be a winner and start now.

It is more blessed to give than to receive

Before I start to write about this topic, I’m going to assume that you are a good natured, helpful, and considerate person who is not trying to suck out the life blood out of everyone around him. If you think my assumption is incorrect, go back to the post where I talk about how Integrity, Sincerity and Optimism are the first three cores of FD Networking (out of six).

In order to level up in the game of life, you need to always be prepared to help others. When you are aiming to become powerful, you are not just yourself, but the group of people you have influence over. When that’s the case, peoples’ business is your business, and you benefit if these business are going well. You should always take others’ welfare to heart and strive to make the group better as a whole.

But sometimes you need help

I’ve always been the type that tries to help everyone and has a hard time saying no. My Cofounder, who is also my Classmate and Pledge Bro said that at UCLA, “Everyone knew [me] as the young entrepreneur who … would go out of his way to help you out“. It’s such a given that after awhile, when someone says, “Hey, can you do something for me?” I just immediately respond, “Yes. What is it?” (this usually surprises people a little) because I know that I’ll probably say yes at the end anyway, so might as well make it seem cooler than being persuaded at the end(another principle that I will touch on in later posts). I mean, common, if he says something ridiculous like ,”I need you to kill someone for me”, I’m sure no one’s going to pin me to my word if I then say, “Actually I’m really sorry, but that’s a little over the line.”

And up to a few weeks ago, I’m always the one connecting people to others, giving people tips and ideas, and occasionally fill in for some chore-like work. That made me happy. But as my company is getting into a stage where I need to raise money and get lots and lots of expert advice to stay on the right track, I realized I needed help. I realize I can’t do this by myself and I need others to connect me as a trusted source to potential investors and industry expert. Now that became difficult.

Getting past the emotional barrier of asking for help

To be honest,  I’m not used to asking for help. In many ways, it’s so much easier to offer help than to ask for help. One part of it is that I didn’t want to inconvenience other people. Everyone’s busy and I shouldn’t burden them with my problem. On the other hand, they might say no and make things awkward, even hurting the friendship. But I think the biggest problem of all (and I believe it’s the same for a lot of people) is pride.

Pride is the enemy of Power.

When you ask for help, you are humbling yourself and putting yourself at the mercy of others. You are no longer the person who has the answer, who has the solution, who understands. You are the person who has a question, who has a problem, who is looking to be understood. And taking that position is definitely not as fun.

It’s even worse when you have done nothing for this person. If you have done him a favor in the past, it’s pretty straightforward. But how do you approach an acquaintance and ask for help?

A man with pride has the power of one, but a man without pride has the power of many

The past two weeks has been amazing. I have received so much help from so many amazing people that I knew very little beforehand that I really started to see how beautiful this world can be. Some of these people are casual friends with me, some of them I met through the internet, some of them I bumped to at an event, and most of them I rarely speak to, but they all took a lot of initiative, went out of their ways and connected me to other great people as well as unbiased advice. Of course, I got some rejections too, but even that wasn’t as bad as anticipated.

I want to thank all the great people who has taken initiative to help me in more ways than I asked for: Jessica Mah from Indinero, Noah Kagen from GetGambit, Chris McCann from Startup Digest, Ray Wu at Fund Mojo, eCommerce Guru Jason Billingsley, Tracy Lee from LiveUmbrella, Hiten Shah from KISS Metrics, Dan Martel from Flowtown, Cina.org President Vicki Young, and Genevieve Kayat from Enthalpi Advisory. They all get my highest recommendations.

And again this is just in the past couple of weeks. I still am on a long journey that needs a lot more help from a lot more people, and I’m excited to see what great people I’ll connect to in the future.

Greater than Zero is greater than Zero

When asking for help, some people wonder, “why bother? The chances of this successful person helping me is so low it’s just not worth the effort.”

However, the reality is that the worse that can happen is that they say no, which is also the default result if you don’t ask. If you don’t ask, your chances of getting the help you need is zero. If you do ask, you have a small chance of getting the help you need. That should really be a no brainer, AS LONG as you appear sincere and do hope to help them too in whatever endeavors you can.

Sometimes asking when you know you will get rejected can be strategical too. If you ask someone a favor and was rejected not because of how much they like you but their inability to help at that level, often times they will be more prone to saying yes the next time you ask something that’s more manageable to them. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.

Your friends are there for you

If you have lived your life as a decent person, chances are you have tons of friends who are willing to help you out when you need it. They just don’t know when you need help and what kind of help you need. Sometimes after the fact they even get upset at you for not telling them about what you need earlier since they could have saved you from misfortune. Therefore, asking for help is not like being rude, invasive, or pushy, it’s about letting people know what you need and giving them an opportunity to help you.

If you have true friends, they’ll be seizing those opportunities whenever they get a chance.

What about you?

Have you ever had a situation where you had to lower your pride and ask for peoples’ help? How did that go? Would love to hear you share about your experience on the comments section below, even if it completely bashes what I say.

No one likes excuses…besides their creator

Often times when someone did their tasks incorrectly and it was pointed out to them, the person would blame it on their tools or environment. It could be pretty frustrating when you are working with people like that and their work/attitudes directly impact how you do.

When that happens, instead of just saying “That’s just an excuse!” and create an emotional response (these RARELY solve your problems and they’ve managed to bring you down to their level of negativity), I find it useful to ask, “I understand that. But is it humanly possible for a normal person to do this correctly, even with these obstacles?” If their response is “No! That’s not possible for anyone to do it!”, then either you should probably drop what your team is doing, or find someone else to work with.

But the chances are their responses will be “Yes.”

Making people understand is better than making people feel guilty

I then followup with, “Then is it possible for to you do it correctly, even with these obstacles?” At this point, most people would say yes too and understand that it’s ultimately up to them to overcome these problems and it’s pointless focusing on the obstacles and excuses. It’s humanly possible for non-geniuses to do it. You can do it too.

The non-excuse is on you

While we realize this is a good way to shut people up and stop them from complaining, it’s also a good idea to apply it to ourselves. When we face obstacles and failures in our lives, instead of focusing why we couldn’t do it, we should again think, “is this humanly possible for a normal person?” And if the answer is yes, stop the complaining and just get it done.

Being cautious can be useful for in life. But being negative creates value for no one.

My company Viralogy is working hard to help online retailers get higher traffic and conversions. Here’s a guide that can significantly improve the conversion rates of apparel sites. It would be awesomely amazing if you can forward it to your friends who run online retailing sites so they can learn how to improve their performances! Any feedback is welcomed!

Cold-Emailing is frustrating

Have you ever had the frustrating experience where you emailed someone you didn’t know very well, and never got a response? Feels pretty bad right? No one really likes cold-emailing, but in order to strive for more opportunities that wouldn’t regularly show up at your door (customers, mentors, advisors, investors, etc etc), you are often required to contact people you’re not already buddies with.

But what if they don’t respond? Should you email them again? But haven’t they already implicitly rejected you by not responding? Aren’t you annoying them? The entire experience can be very demoralizing.

A story of Yu-kai Chou RECEIVING cold-emails

However, before you give up hope, I want to share a couple quick stories. In 2007, I went to an entrepreneurship event hosted at the UCLA Anderson School called StartupLA. I signed up for the spontaneous 1 minute pitch at the event. After the event, I was catching up with a lot of work so I only made sure I followed up with a handful of key people that I had to meet.

However, I got an email from a struggling entrepreneur that the judges didn’t really like during that time. He said it was great meeting me and wanted to catch food/coffee sometime together. Being in my stressful catchup mode, I felt warm about the email but ultimately ignored it (I didn’t want to appear like an asshole and reject such a polite and sincere offer).

A couple weeks later, I received another email from him, saying that he knows I am busy, but it would be great if we could catch coffee sometime. I actually did kinda mean to respond to that, but it sat in my inbox for almost a week, and it felt a bit awkward responding with “Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier…” so I also kinda let it go…

LUCKILY, this guy had the persistence of the Uppercut (will talk about soon!) and emailed me again! By this time, there was no excuse for me and I was compelled to respond to him IMMEDIATELY. We then scheduled to get some dim sum together.

I’m so glad he sent me the third email, and that I responded to it. We became great friends afterwards and helped each other out in everything we could. Possibly due to his persistent personality, his company took off. Today his startup is extremely successful and making some good, scalable money for him (more successful than my company Viralogy…at least for now ).

As you can see here, if he got discouraged and upset from the first or second email “rejection” and gave up our friendship would have never happened.

A shorter story of Jun Loayza receiving cold-emails

Jun Loayza is one of my co-founders of Viralogy, and also the President of SocialMediaMarketing.com. At SocialMediaMarketing.com, he regularly gets a lot of service providers that want to sell them stuff. Needless to say, most of them are ignored or rejected.

However, there is this one firm that continuously contacted them. At the beginning, Jun was complaining how they were very spammy and annoying. But as time goes by and as they continue to politely request a phone conversation, Jun finally got hit by their persistence and decided to schedule a meeting with them. He was kinda annoyed by how they wouldn’t retire, but also respected how they stayed on target for as long as they did.

Now since that’s Jun’s business, I’m not sure how the talk went (and hence a shorter story). But hey, they managed to turn Jun from being annoyed to having a phone conversation, and that’s pretty impressive. Except, what they did involved no real “skill”, no real learning-curve, and every one of you can do it if you have the willpower and discipline.

The Secret of Cold-Emailing

Since me and many of the people I know have a lot of similar experiences like these from the receiving-end of cold emails, I slowly derived a conclusion that could be semi-insightful for highly motivated individuals.

Now a lot of people say that cold-emailing is a numbers game. You email 100 people, and X% of them would response. Once you tried that 100, you move on to another 100. Sure, there are concepts of doing a lot of research and changing the cold-email to a warm-email(which I definitely support if you have the time), but unless they already know you, it’s going to be lukewarm at best. Lets still include that as cold-emailing for now.

So the potential insight I had about cold-emailing is: the odds of your cold-email getting a response from someone you already cold-emailed before is often higher than the odds of cold-emailing someone new.

This idea is similar but in reverse to the fundraising concept of how people who have donated before have a much higher chance of donating again. This says that the people who have IGNORED you in the past have a higher chance of responding to you this time.

Now obviously this assumes everyone you targeted at the beginning is relevant to you. If they ignored you because you were trying to sell pads to old men, then you are ridiculous and my blog does not apply to you. Yes, even if you were trying to sell it to young men. And yes, even if you planned to sell pads in gift-wrapped form so men could give to women as gifts.

The One-Two Punch and Uppercut

So I call this cold-emailng “technique” the One-Two Punch and Uppercut. If you know a little bit about boxing, basically it means that the first email you send out is the weak jab. The second email you send out is the stronger right cross punch. And finally, that third email you send out is the Uppercut that can defeat most opponents.

Again, there is nothing special or skillful about this technique. The key difference is a change in mentality. Normally when you send out cold-emails, you take the first nonresponse as a failure. While you are a little depressed, you might muster up the courage to send a second email. Once that one is ignored, you are done and a failure in life. You are too insignificant in life and no one wants to talk to you, even after your carefully crafted email straight from the heart. And then suddenly some autumn leaf blows over your head as the sky becomes quiet and gloomy, I might add. Very depressing.

Well, in the One-Two Punch and Uppercut mentality, you want to defeat as many opponents as possible. Some opponents are weak-sauce and once you hit them with a jab, they lose and respond to your email (metaphorically! I fully encourage you to be these cool people who respond to people the first-time through). Some opponents are stronger, and you need to do a jab AND a forward punch before they are defeated and send you an email.

And finally, if your opponent sustained through the first two punches, then you must seal it with the uppercut, which is often strong enough to knockout most opponents. Come to think about it, I don’t think I have ever ignored ANYONE who tried to contact me three times. I guess I have never survived through an uppercut

When you utilize this mentality, you no longer see being ignored as a rejection. You just identify the person as a stronger opponent that requires the full-combo. In that way you maximize your chances of getting a response from them.

Jabbing 100 people once does not give you the most wins in cold-emailing

With this concept, you can easily see why cold-emailing a lot of people once and moving on to more is not ideal. If you found 100 opponents and jabbed each of them once very fast, I doubt you will have too many victories. Only a few noobs would fall and you will begin to think you kinda suck and get depressed. If you instead found 30 opponents to do the complete One-Two Punch and the Uppercut, you would probably defeat a lot more opponents and feel better about yourself.

What if the Uppercut fails?

If you have finished your combo but have yet to get a response, it’s completely up to you if you want to continue fighting or just give up for now. I would say that in most cases the odds of the fourth email getting a response is actually lower. If your opponent took your 3-hit combo and still stands firm, they just might be too high level for you. Like your 3-hit combo technique would definitely not work on President Obama as his level is too high. You can’t really damage him no matter how many emails you send.

In that case you’ll just have to first level up before you try again. If you become Bill Gates, Oprah, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, then you actually might have a good chance succeeding with the One-Two Punch and Uppercut on Obama.

And just remember, there is really no harm in trying. The worst that can happen is that you never talk to this person, which is by default the result if you never tried at all. Actually, the worst that can happen is that you make an asshole feel very good about himself, maybe brag about it to his friends, and ignore you like an asshole. It’s okay if you make someone’s day today. Keep leveling up, and one day you’ll knock him out.

Time for you to share

What about you? Have you ever had someone contact you three times and you still ignored them? What was the reason you didn’t give them a chance? Also, have you had any experience on being successful on the third attempt? Please share with me and fellow readers

Influential people are generally too busy with their emails, meetings, tweets etc

There are always benefits when more influential people know about you and think positively of you. If they like you, they are able to give you shootouts, advice, connections, and all that good stuff. However, it’s often very difficult to get their attention since they’re always bombarded with all sorts of things.

Twitter creates that opportunity for you to contact them instantly. But still, you’ve tweeted out to them before, and either they completely ignored you, or they responded back, made you feel great, and you know they forgot about you right after.

Engage your followers those you follow

Most advice out there tell you to engage your followers. I can’t agree more with that. However, if you want to get non-followers to know who you are (read: not to “follow” you), you’ll need to do more than that.

Based on some of my own experiences on Twitter, I learned a few things that can get peoples’ attention on it. With a bit over 20,000 followers, I’m definitely not a web celebrity or a big time influencer(they’re usually in the millions), but it is still impractical for me to really know everyone on my list. But there are somehow some folks that I’ve seen over and over again that I just feel I know them in some way, even when I know absolutely nothing about them besides they respond to my tweets or retweet me every once in a while.

These are people who go on my radar on a regular basis, although I don’t talk to them much. As time goes by, I become more and more familiar to them. It’s interesting, because I don’t even necessarily like them (some of them are kinda rude to others), but when they ask me for help, I usually follow through and do it for them. I feel like they are my Twitter friends, despite the lack of past communication.

A while ago, one of them for some reason stopped tweeting me. I didn’t really notice that he stopped when it happened, but after a few months, he retweeted me again. When I saw it, I thought, “Oh yea! This guy! I haven’t seen him for such a long time!” and so I tweeted him and asked how he was doing. We still don’t talk much, but I’m definitely part of his resources now. Out of all my followers, this guy was able to build implicit friendship with me with just a few tweets here and there.

If you are consistently and persistently there for someone, you can become his/her friend.

Getting tweets is not annoying because people are not EXPECTED to respond

A lot of people would ask, “Well, wouldn’t it be really annoying if I keep tweeting them, when they don’t even want to respond?”

That’s sometimes true for email, but on Twitter as long as you are saying appropriate and relevant things, people don’t mind. The difference between Twitter and email here is that in emails, people are expected to respond to you. This creates some implicit pressure and annoyance when you are constantly sending them something.

But in Twitter, oftentimes a response to their witty comment or expression of gratitude does not give people this kind of pressure. They simply feel that their tweet is getting more responses from others and will probably feel good about themselves.

This is the same philosophy as constantly commenting on other blogs. If you do it once, it’s almost as if you haven’t done anything. But if you are always there commenting whenever someone has a new post, you will be discovered. Like right now Johann Ly can ask me any favor and I’ll probably say yes

So don’t worry about annoying people (obviously don’t tweet them 20 times in one day). Just stay persistent and good things will come.

Here are 7 steps to  become known by influencers:

Step 1: Make sure your Twitter Icon is distinctive

You should have nailed this by now. Most people on Twitter identify you as your little icon instead of your name. Your image needs to stand out from the rest so that people make no mistake if they have talked to you before. I purposely made my Twitter icon more “digitalized” with the white background so it’s easily recognizable when people see it. If you haven’t even nailed down this part, you should check out one of my most popular posts: How to Start, Settle, and Fall in Love with Twitter.

Step 2: Follow the Lists of people you want to connect with

This is the important part. Once you know who you want to meet (famous investors, programmers, retail company accounts etc etc), you should either put together your own “awesome people I want to meet” list, or go on sites like Listorious to find that group of people. Try to only focus on a handful of groups because the purpose of using lists is to narrow it down to a manageable amount of people that you can actually engage and build relationships with. Follow the list through Twitter so it can be piped into your apps.

Step 3: Setup the lists as columns in your computer Twitter Clients

Once the lists is added onto Twitter, you should create a column for each list in your computer Twitter Client such as Seesmic, Tweetdeck, or Hootsuite. They all offer tools that help you import lists and engage with them. Make sure that the column is at a place that you will easily see on a daily basis, instead of hidden somewhere so you’ll be reminded to do this often.

Step 4: Setup the lists as columns on your mobile Twitter Client

Besides setting the lists up on your computer, you also want to make sure you set it up on your mobile apps. I personally feel that Tweetdeck is the best on the iPhone(though I don’t like it as much on the desktop) because it allows you to store/view multiple lists very easily.

Step 5: Devote 15 minutes a day to respond to and retweet everyone on the list

After you have it set up on your Desktop/Web client, try to devote 15 minutes everyday to engage the people on the list. Retweet what they say with a few words before it (like “That IS pretty funny! RT @cow….”) , respond to things they say, and cheer them on when appropriate. The point is that you don’t even need to say anything intellectual. You can just say, “Good luck with your meeting!” or “Wow, that’s pretty amazing!” “Thanks for sharing the link” and that’s all fine. The point is to get them to see you icon on a regular basis, even if they ignore you.

Step 6: Engage your Follow Lists through mobile whenever you are waiting for something

Do the exact same thing when you are outdoors waiting for something. If you are waiting in line, on the bus, at a meeting where the other person is late, just take out your mobile phone and tweet away. You want to be there as much as you can. I actually never feel bored anymore when I’m waiting for something since I really just tweet away (even when I’m waiting for food to be served in a fast-food place). Before doing this, I would only tweet out once, then respond to a few @ messages, maybe check out a few interesting trends or keywords, but really most of it is just finding something to do but not necessarily productive. This makes life more interesting.

Step 7: Do this continuously until the people recognize your name and start to respond to you

After you do this for awhile, people will start noticing you. By then, when you actually need some help, you have a good chance of receiving by just tweeting them, “Hey, I was wondering if you could help out and share this” or “Hey, I have some questions regarding ecommerce sites. Is it possible to ask you some questions?” If they actively remember you retweeting their stuff and responding to them whenever they are sharing their feelings, you have good odds of this going through.

Ultimately, you want to think of them as real friends instead of “targets.” However, since you had no chance of becoming friends naturally, it’s useful to apply strategies to build genuine relationships. When a guy’s pursuing a girl, he’s looking for a genuine relationship, but he’s also gotta be a little tactful and shrewd to stand out from all the other men who are trying to get her attention.

What are other ways to meet people that are usually too busy to talk to you?

Have you ever tried out other ways to make important and busy people talk to you besides the typical cold email or getting referrals? It would be awesome if you can share it in the comments so everyone can learn.

Your Core is your driver

It all starts here. Your Core. Without your core, you are easily swayed by others, you become a product of conformity, and you cannot be a leader. Your Core is what stops you from being an NPC (Non-playable character) and allows you to become the Hero.

Have you ever talked to someone and you instantly felt that there was something about the person that made him/her respectable or even intimidating? And that person may not be very physically large, particularly good looking, and he hasn’t said enough things for you to truly conclude that he is highly intelligent. Nevertheless, it seems like he is really smart, knows what he is talking about, and you can really rely on him. That is usually because he has a strong Core. He believes and trusts in himself, and that conviction spreads to others.

My own story on discovering the Core

When I was little, I moved a lot (I still do). Whenever I get into a new environment, it’s usually an uphill battle in all aspects of my life. I don’t speak the language, I’m behind in school, and there were cultural shocks so people thought I was a jerk or a joke. And after I worked really hard and finally got caught up to everyone on everything, I would be moved to an entire new environment where I sucked again.

Now this process wasn’t fun growing up, but I learned a lot of things. I think it taught me a lot of useful lessons in becoming an entrepreneur, but in this post I specifically want to share what I learned about the Core and how it affects everything.

In the earlier days of my childhood, I’ve always been trying to be like others, always trying to fit in. I was coreless, and wanted to be accepted by the kids in that new environment. I soon learned that what’s polite and correct in what place could be offensive and rude in another. In my past attempts to become accepted, I’ve played the roll of the clown that everyone laughs at,  or the kid who doesn’t mind being bullied. It was not ideal, but at least I was accepted and played a part in that social community.

At one point in life (though a bit late), an epiphany hit me: “why should I try so hard just to be like others? They’re not necessarily better. Why don’t I just think up an ideal person I want to be, and just be that person?”

From that point on, I decided to live my life and behave not as how others would accept me as, but what I think is right. I wanted to be someone who is sociable, helpful, confident, direct, has compassion towards others, and someone with integrity.

Having a strong core helps you obtain trust and respect from others

After I made that big decision in life, something changed. I noticed that all these people that I tried so hard to be like in the past started to lean on me instead. It turns out that most people in society are not sure of themselves and do not know what to believe in. They are swaying within their own core, and once they see that you are solid and firm, they believe in you instead.

So things started to change for me. Once I started to really believe in myself, I noticed that more and more people began to trust me and respect me (how much of that is deserved is another thing). For most of the years, I didn’t understand this dynamic with the Core. I just thought, “Maybe I just look trustworthy or I look smarter than I really am…”

This is until I met other people with extremely strong cores. There are times when I meet “cool people who are confident about themselves”, which usually pretty popular folks. But then in rare occasions, I simply meet some “impressive” people who for some reason pounds my chest with a lot of pressure when I talk to them.

When I tried to figure out what they do to have this effect on me, I realized that it’s a very subtle thing, but just the way they hold themselves and speak instantly creates an aura that I have no choice but to acknowledge and react to.

After those experiences, I started to notice the strength of everyone’s core. Some people, when they talk, you know they are trying to get your approval, and their core is really a bit external of their bodies. While others you can tell that they are confident with their core inside of them, but it’s not particularly strong, so a person with a stronger core could easily influence them.

After a while, being able to pay attention to everyone’s core allows you to make decisions in how you want to interact with others. But most importantly, it allows you to discover, understand, and build your own core.

The Core is not just for show, but for essence.

Up to this point, I keep talking about how having a strong core can influence how others treat you, but in reality it’s something that gives you internal strength, instead of external benefits.

Having a strong core allows you to be more emotionally stable. Because you have full trust in yourself and are firm within, you won’t freak out and act irrationally to uncontrollable situations. You’re able to just take in information, process, analyze, and decide on the best action.

Also, having a strong core prevents you from feeling jealous of others or fall from peer pressure. You know your value, and you know there are things you can’t do. None of that should affect you as you continue to live on your life with value and dignity.

Having a strong core also allows you to pursue your goals, since you will be affected by less external obstacles like peer pressure and internal obstacles like fear and self-doubt. To be successful, it is very important to build that strong core.

How to develop a strong core?

So the question is really, how do you develop a strong core? Everyone can agree that having a strong core is good, and everyone wants to hold firm and believe in themselves, but when it comes down to it, how do you develop that core when you don’t think you do things better than those around you?

Having a strong core is an attitude, which means it one of the easiest things to do, and one of the hardest things to do. Easy because it doesn’t require any skill. You just change your attitude. Hardest because most people don’t know how to control their mentalities. After all, it takes good attitude to change your attitude.

The truth is that having a strong core doesn’t mean you have to be the best at anything. It doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. It simply means you are happy with who you are. If you are completely content with yourself without any insecurities, you will be able to develop a strong core.

And having a strong core is displayed not by what you say, but how you say it (or handle situations). Both people with strong and weak cores can say, “I am completely ignorant on this topic so whatever you say counts”, but the person with a strong core will say it in a manner that does not show insecurity nor helplessness, but as a best-strategy case, whereas the person with a weak core will be more unsettled. This dynamic is subtle in body languages and tones, and is pretty hard to convey through text on a blog, but hopefully you’re able to see what I’m talking about.

A Strong Core starts with Integrity

It’s really important to have integrity if you want to develop a strong core. In order for you to be happy about yourself, you need to make sure you don’t do anything you think is shameful. Essentially, integrity is important here because there’s always going to be people that are smarter and dumber than you, but you can be confident because you are able to say that, during tough times when difficult decisions need to be made, you can make the right decisions that other people won’t be able to make.

Similarly, the majority of the people around you don’t need to trust your abilities, but they do need to trust your character all the time. That’s why your character is ultimately what allows people to respect you, and what enables you to respect yourself.

Focus on good character, and you will have a stronger core.

Having a strong core is one of the fundamentals of my FD Power Coaching system, so I’ll elaborate more on that in later posts. For now, just make sure you maintain a strong character that you can be proud of.

What about you?

Do you have experience with slowly building up a strong core, or have met someone with a such a strong core that you wanted to follow them or were intimidated? I look forward to learning from your experiences!

Power Coaching: Life Coaching for highly motivated and ambitious individuals

For 2010, I am starting a series on Power Coaching. That’s basically teaching people how to become powerful in whatever fields they are in and things they care about. It is similar to the common Life Coaching, but more geared towards ambitious individuals who does not just want to live a comfortable and stable life but want to become the best in what they do and become influential and impactful in this world.

This would be an extension to the FD Lifestyle that I created in 2005. (Check here to see my presentation at Google on it)

Is Power Bad?

I first want to make a disclaimer that “Power” has a slightly negative connotation, as people say “power corrupts” and how the rule of nature is the “powerful exploiting the weak.” However, I believe power itself is neutral.

Power just allows one to make something happen, so it could be used to do extreme good, or extreme evil. In the context of this blog, Power simply means being resourceful and influential enough to create an impact in whatever you care about.

Finally, since I like to draw analogies from the gaming world to this world, Power is just a common phrase in being really strong at something (and isn’t that where a lot of passions lie? Many people couldn’t do what they want in the real world so they decide to be a hero in a virtual world).

Again, I am not teaching you how to gain “freedom” or create passive income that allows you to chill at the beach all day. Sure, these would be very useful in becoming powerful, but that’s not the end goal. The goal is not to let you live a “free” life but to let you live a “fulfilling” life. It’s the life of “With great power, comes great responsibilities.”

If you were playing a game and you had absolute “freedom” in running around, going to town, the fields, eat and buy stuff, but you don’t have a mission, would that be fulfilling? Probably not.

This blog will be about how to beat the game.

5 Ultimate Stats to Power Coaching

In my system, there are 5 Stats in measuring how powerful a person is:

1) Connections
2) Reputation
3) Influence
4) Resources
5) Ability

Often times, the steps to increase these stats are different in different fields and careers, but there are a lot of overlapping. I’ll be talking a lot about examples in business field, entrepreneurship, technology, and social media since I’ve been in these things for the longest, but most of these principles can be applied to other fields too.

Some past articles that relate to the FD Power Coaching

Here are some good blog posts that are good starters to for the FD Power Coaching Series.

For a Strategy Roadmap, these are the Four Steps to Power up in the FD Lifestyle

1) Determining the Game you are Playing (Find out the industry you are passionate about)
2) Determine your role in the game by knowing your initial stats and playing style (Find out your specialization from your strengths and your interests)
3) Plan out a Skillset Growth Road Map (Think about what skill set combinations you need to master to accomplish your goals)
4) Find Teammates that can help you along in your journey and conquer easy quests.

Outside the Comfort Zone: The Harmless Dragon (There’s nothing you can lose by taking initiative)

The 6 Cores of FD Networking (Integrity, Sincerity, Optimism, Confidence, Initiative, Persistence)

Persistent: Failing your way to Success

How to Impress everyone by just driving around (use your time efficiently and listen to podcasts)

How to become successful without an impressive image

How to Deal with Bashers (Fully engage them with full politeness and reason until they feel they are ridiculous themselves)

Today is the first day of a new decade.

Yes, some argue that 2011 should be the beginning of the new decade, but I don’t care. At least my bank uses the format 1990-1999 and 2000-2009 to determine one period. Perhaps if I failed on my goals this year, next year I will say “NOW is the beginning of the new decade. ROAR!!”

But lets hope not.

THIS is going to be the year. This is going to be the year where I straighten out everything in my life, where I finally launch the long-boiled fleet of Carriers, D-Web enabled Corsairs, handful of Arbiters, and of course a couple observers.

I’m not going to make a “New Years Resolution.” I don’t think they really get met much. It’s more like a joke that appends “expected to fail and renewed the year after” (and I do have high respect for those who actually meet their NYR for an entire year). Instead, I will create principles of how I should live my life in 2010, a “plan” or “strategy” on how to become a stronger character on my server, conquer harder quests, and beat the game of life.

Here are the things that I think are essential in 2010 for me to convert all the things that I have built up to into actual success:

2010 is the Year of Hustle

I like to think through a lot of things, contemplate how everything comes together, see trends, match personalities and parties, and analyze everything on each step while I am taking actioning. As a result, my execution might be slower than it could be. This is the year where I WILL improve my execution and hustling. After all, in our industry the first to market usually does not produce winners. It’s the ones that execute the best that are the winners.

2010 is the Year of Accountability

Since I run a virtual team of around 12 people, accountability can be an issue as small things might slip through without anyone making a big deal about it. This WILL change in 2010. I say this not only for myself but for my entire team that I am leading. Everyone’s action items will be very clear, and if it is not met, everyone else should know and the person needs to catch up with progress. Even if people are working for free, if they can’t stay accountable and reliable with their tasks, I would rather have a smaller team of consistent people than a large team of unreliable people.

2010 is the Year of Discipline

There are many things in my life that I need to be more disciplined for. My Faith, my relationship, my health, friendship and things I enjoy doing. I realized that the only way that I can have a more “balanced” life is to live more disciplined in my choices. I WILL spend more time in my Faith, optimize my time in my relationship, make healthy choices that does not use up more time, cut down on sleep but stabilize on the hours, help out friends more but hang out less, and cut down on unproductive entertainment that will not matter 5 years from now.

In order to afford being an entrepreneur, extreme discipline is required. I will live my life as a Productivity Artist, carving out a new masterpiece in the form of days that I cannot be more productive in, day by day.

2010 is the Year of Cashflow

As a startup, we’re always weaker on cashflow. In 2009, we have nailed down some good models and have cash streaming into the business. However, most people are still underpaid and most money still is poured into operations. In 2010, we WILL scale out our revenue and generate enough cashflow for everyone in the company to earn what they deserve and be able to produce more value for the company. In 2010, we will make both our fundraising and revenue goals and become a strong company.

2010 is the Year of the Visa

This is only my special situation. Being an entrepreneur is hard enough with many risks and limitations. However, the mere fact that I was born in a different country prevents me from creating the maximum value I can for my company. There are numerous ways I can “hang around” in the states, but none of them are ideal and they cost me an unfair amount of money.

When I’m in the states, my own company cannot pay me (besides the “returning” of the invested/lent money in the company before), but once I leave this country, I can get paid again. So in order to get paid by startups, foreign-born talents need to leave the country and spend their income dollars somewhere else. How does that make sense? I mean, 20 years ago when the laws were set, it was true that if foreigns aren’t around, you would pay locals instead. But nowadays you will pay high-skilled technology foreigners anyway, except they will not spend the money locally and local talents won’t get that extra income.

There are two ways that I see this happening. One is that Viralogy will be making so much money in 2010 that it can sponsor me and pay me a “competitive executive salary” (which for a startup is usually not a good business move). On the other hand, there seems to be a New Entrepreneur Visa that is being debated in Congress. If I get one of those, I am sure that I will be able to bring Viralogy into new grounds that change the industry while creating hundreds of new jobs.

Right now I operate from Canada and visit Silicon Valley for 3 weeks every two months. If I don’t resolve this issue in the next few years, I will need to return to Taiwan and do my military services, which would be somewhat unfortunate for an entrepreneur. Lets get this out of the way in 2010.

The Future for my Personal Blog Yukaichou.com

I have also been thinking about what to do with my blog. I’ve built many friendship through it, and even found clients, employees, and mentees from it. However, my schedule forces me to not update it as much as I had hoped. Unlike my co-founder Jun Loayza, I’m not very good at writing shorter posts. Somehow I have to elaborate on everything and leave nothing in the air.

However, when it comes to not writing at all vs spending less time for a shorter post regularly, I think updating the blog regularly is more important. I’m hoping that I can maintain a blog like Seth Godin, with 1-2 paragraphs of daily nuggets (except mine won’t be golden) to keep my readers engaged and keep a conversation going.

Also, I’ve been debating about the theme my blog will take in 2010. I’m stuck between three. For one, I would really like to give my analysis and “outsights” for my expertise in Social Media, since that is what my company does and would probably best align my personal brand with Viralogy. However, I personally am very interested in bringing out the potential of individuals and making them successful, so I would want to write about Power Coaching and help ambitious individuals master their lives in everything they do with lessons and analogies from Gaming. And finally, I also want to have a Gen-Y Leadership blog, talking about my experiences, lessons, and reminders for being a strong Gen-Y Leader, since it is a niche that I think should have more coverage.

I’m still contemplating which direction I should take, but I definitely feel a stronger focus on my blog would be beneficial. Either way, I hope the blog will continue to be fun and educational at the same time.

2010: the year of Legacy

I am committed to make 2010 a year where I make things happen. You know how people can recite the year of when historically significant events happen? 2010 is the best year to create something like that, if only because the year is a lot easier to remember

Anyhow, I will leave no regrets this year. Please make 2010 the year where you follow your passions too.

We have huge blindspots

Most of us want to become better at what we do or become a better person in general. The problem is that we have too many blindspots for ourselves to really find out what we really need to work on. When something goes wrong, we can think of a hundred external factors for that reason, but we genuinely cannot see our own faults.

And when it comes down to it, most people WANT to know their flaws that they don’t see themselves. The problem is, it’s considered impolite for people to tell you of your faults when it is not completely necessary. Most people are non-confrontational, and not everyone takes criticism constructively.

Use the magic mirror around you

The solution to this? Just ask. I have experienced and seen numerous times when someone randomly asks, “What can I do to improve myself?” And immediately, almost without thinking, people give the asker a very constructive list of things they can work on. It’s like they’ve been thinking about it all along but never felt comfortable enough to share it.

By asking this very simple question often, you will constantly find things you are blinded by and can improve on. This works especially well when you ask people who can benefit from your improvement (like being more considerate to loved ones, setting more accountability for the team).

For instance, if the Queen from Snow White had a magic mirror as good as the “straight-forward friend”, the mirror would tell her that her problem is not that she’s not fair enough, but “You are too vain, self-conscious, and jealous of others. You can never be happy if you can’t accept yourself. You should just be happy with who you are and love life.” I consider that an infinitely better solution than trying to poison an innocent girl to death.

Set up Mirror Alerts

Often times, even after we know we need to improve something, it’s never instant, and we usually make the same mistakes over and over without realizing it. So after you know what you need to improve on, a good follow up is, “Thanks! Can you remind me every time I do that again? Sometimes I’m not aware of it…” And now you gave people the permission to harass you whenever you screw up. Pretty awesome.

What straight-forward advice have you gotten from friends, or one’s you have given to friends?

Reading is good, but socializing is more fun! I look forward to your ideas and experiences in the comment section!

You cannot lead effectively if you worry about yourself

This week I was playing a game of full-court basketball with my father. Unlike my Co-founder Jun Loayza, I am not good at basketball because I never really trained in the basics of dribbling, manuevering, and strategies. As a result, everytime I am point guard, I don’t do it very well.

This struck me as a bit unusual. Wikipedia explains the point guard position as, “The point guard, also known as the “1″, is the team’s floor general and the best ballhandler on the team. In football terminology, the point guard is a basketball team’s “quarterback.” The point guard is essentially the team’s captain, and his job is to make his teammates better and to hand out assists.”

Growing up, my talents have usually been around strategizing, analyzing, coordinating, and bringing out the potentials of people. I led and coached a state champion chess team, and I’m usually the calm guy who is more emotionally stable in tough situations. In essense, I seem to be built to be a good point guard.

But I’m just not a good point guard.

Why? It’s because I suck at basketball so much that I end up worrying about my own stuff.

I’m alway afraid that someone will steal my ball. I’m thinking about dribbling instead of doing it naturally. I’m thinking about “what should I do next? What should I do next?”

As a result, I am unable to 100% focus on my teammates, which is what a leader should do.

If you are a leader, you should:

1. Make sure you know/do your stuff well enough that you don’t have to constantly be pinned down by your own stuff
2. You must put the team before all your personal welfare. You must elevate from taking care of yourself to taking care of the people you are leading. Leadership requires sacrifice (and followers sacrifice for great leaders too)
3. You must seize every opportunity to bring the best out of people. Your job is not to be the shark that shines in your ecosystem but to be the ocean that contains and nurtures all the sharks that will shine for you.

]]> http://yukaichou.com/business/leadership-lesson-learned-basketball/feed/ 2 http://yukaichou.com/society/save-economy-787-billion-stimulus-package/ http://yukaichou.com/society/save-economy-787-billion-stimulus-package/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:18:59 +0000 Yu-kai Chou http://yukaichou.com/?p=503

Here's another article that I personally think is pretty insightful, but long and boring so no one will actually read (and of course it could be obvious or foolish instead). I'll do my best to keep it short and digest-friendly though. I do feel this topic is VERY important since the economy is going to be entirely restructured in the next two years, and how it is done is extremely important. To start, the US government is said to be $65.5 Trillion in debt. For perspective, this is more than the world GDP for one entire year and four times the US GDP for one year. In other words, the US Government literally owes the world to other nations. Right now the federal government is behaving like its US citizens who borrow from tomorrow to solve today's problems. The US borrows money from other countries to help the irresponsible people and companies clean up the mess they made and hope to "one day" be able to pay it back. As you know, when the people couldn't pay back their debts, they go bankrupt, and the banks die along with them. If the US keeps getting more debt without promise of making MORE money back, it will end up bankrupted too. The other countries will then end up like failed banks and die too. Now I'm not a doomsday person, and I like to stick to positive and actionable steps, but I do want to emphasize that in this environment EVERY dollar must be spent to its maximum efficiency. I guess we could call it Stimulus Optimization.

What the government should do

Myles Bennett Dyson is my Hero

Most of the time, a person’s role model or hero from a movie is the main character, his/her master, or the loyal supporting character (and sometimes the Villain).

For those of you who have seen Terminator 2 (If you haven’t, I strongly urge you to stop reading this blog and go watch it. Not for my sake but for yours), you might be a bit suprised why I chose Miles Dyson as the role model. It’s true, in a film that is action packed with robots killing each other with big weapons, Miles Dyson does play the role of the wimpy scientist that is powerless and unrespected.

But if you looked deeper into his character, you’ll find that he is actually one of the most respectable people you may know.

Miles Dyson is one of the smartest and richest men with a heart

To start off, Miles Bennett Dyson is one of the smartest people on the planet. He is the one that would create the super computer that would later become Skynet and the Terminators. He has ultimate science authority in Cyberdyne, is super rich (you can check out his big house/pool in the movie), and is completely passionate about what he’s working on, much like most entrepreneurs.

Besides the brains and wealth, he is a man with a heart. There was shown a scene where his wife and kids wanted him to take them to Raging Waters, but he was glued onto his computer because he was “this close” to making the biggest technological breakthrough for mankind. After some loving patience from his wife, he was willing to stop working on it and take them out to play.

Now I know for most people out there, what’s so special about taking a break from work and hanging out with your family on weekends? However, some of you may know that when you are working on a project/problem/startup that you are completely passionate about, it absorbs you into a totally different world that makes you think about it 24/7, and it’s difficult to keep your hands off the project. Miles Dyson was able to take a break from it because he truly loves his family. He is a package of brains and heart, wealth and respect. Life can’t get any better.

Yea he’s a cool guy. So what?

Here’s the real story that makes me respect him. In the movie, Sarah Connor tries to kill him because she wants to prevent him from inventing Skynet in the future and destroying much of mankind. After being convinced of what she said was true (by seeing a real terminator), he IMMEDIATELY makes the determination that they must destroy his work. He tells them that they can’t just destroy his work at his house, they must go to the Cyberdyne headquarters and destroy everything there. He instantly makes a decision to drop his high status in society and become a criminal in order to save the future.

This ability to drop EVERYTHING and do what is right…THAT is respectable. He was just about to prove himself to be the top influential genius in the world with this thing he’s been working on day and night for over a decade, and once he realizes that this “could” destroy the future of mankind, he instantly decides to abandon all of it, including his life. That’s character right there.

In the movie, after being shot at and explained why they wanted to kill him, he said, “I feel like I’m gonna throw up. You’re judging me on things I haven’t even done yet. How were we supposed to know?” as if in this moment the biggest concern of his is that his character has been personally insulted.

And backing up that pride about his character, right after he knows it, he jumps to the conclusion: “There’s no way I’m going to finish the new processor now. Forget it. I’m out of it. I’ll quit Cyberdyne tomorrow…We’ll have to destroy all the stuff at the lab, the files, the disk drives and everything I have here. Everything.”

Being smart or attractive is not based on your own merit, but doing what is right is

If I have been working on a truly world-changing startup for over ten years, and was on the verge of finishing it, and then suddenly a crazy woman tried to shoot me and tell me that it will destroy the future of mankind, even if I was convinced, I don’t know if I would be able to just drop everything and destroy it.

Yes, a gun is pointing at me, but I might just pay lip service, or try to secretly keep a backup file for myself to use after this craziness. If anything, I would try to reason with myself, “the future was destroyed not because I invented this, but because it was put to wrong use. We can just stop the government from making the stupid decision on putting Skynet in charge of all the computers! Since I am the lead on this, I would be able to directly influence how it is used.”

Whatever it is, I don’t know if I could do it as thoroughly as Miles Bennett Dyson. I might still destroy everything, but it will take me much longer to get to that conclusion, especially when it involves potentially risking my life.

Toward the end of the movie, when the Terminator was destroying everything, Miles Dyson asked the Terminator to pass up the axe (that was pretty much his only demand to the Terminator in the whole movie) because he wanted to destroy the main processor himself. Holding the axe, he says, “I spent so much time on this…” And then he goes full force into destroying it. You could see his hardened heart shatter to pieces while he is doing it, like a person who is killing his baby knowing the baby will grow up to destroy the world. How many people can do that?

What about you?

Do you have heroes that are non-intuitive and whom might surprise people? I’d love to hear about’em. Please share them in the comment section!

Outsourcing Web Development to India creates the Illusion of Saving Money

A lot of people talk about saving money by outsourcing to India. However, my personal experience is that it actually costs way more than doing it in the US if you are a resourceful entrepreneur.

I’m sure there are some firms out there that are truly good and cheap. I also know that there are way more US development firms that overcharge, but if you can find the cost efficient in the US, the effects are much better than the good in India.

This post is not about how the miscommunication, off hours and what not could make development more expensive. No, I’m talking about pure projected spending at the beginning. Here are my experiences:

Outsourced Indian Firm I estimates 3x more hours than my in-house developer

There was one point where I seriously looked for an outsourced company as backbone developers for Viralogy. After looking around, I found a firm that seems really professional, has been around for close to a decase with dozens of engineers, and built all the websites for National Geographic in each country.

More importantly, their programmers charge $10-15/hour. Compared to a full-blown traditional development firm in the US, that’s a tiny fraction of what it would cost. It all sounded very promising (besides a tiny bit of that language barrier).

However, very safely, I asked them to do an estimate of a project that we were working on. My in-house programmer previously made an estimation, which was about 88 hours(which he didn’t exceed much afterwards). The Indian firm gave me an estimate too, and it was shockingly 350 hours.

WHAT?

How could it be so different?

After weighing the cost, we decided not to use them.

Outsourced Indian Firm II is by far the best out of a dozen Indian firms my friend worked with

Almost a year later, I was talking to a entrepreneur friend who seemed to have a lot of experience working as and with software engineers. He recommended me an Indian firm too. I told him about my last experience and I was skeptical about it.

He told me that it’s normal that most of the Indian development firms are terrible and not well trained, but sometimes you can find that one good one that is just smack better than everyone else. He said he worked with over a dozen of them and finally found that one firm that is reliable and substantially stronger than the rest.

I thought, hmm, well if a person has been through the trial and errors and found a good firm, then why not check them out.

They told me they charged $18/hr. More expensive, but not mighty terrible. But from my last experience, I asked them to do an experimental project first.

Outsourced Indian Firm II estimated a project to take 20x longer than my friend in the US

My friend wants to create a minimum barebones job listing site that is focused on startups called Mart of the Start, and asked me for help/reference. I looked at the screenshots and decided it was easy enough and could be finished within a week.

I then forwarded these screenshots to the Indian firm and asked them to first give me an estimate.

Now I rarely get astonished, but this number pretty much astonished me.

215 hours.

That’s 215 hours x $18/hr = $3870.

True, this is a relatively normal price for a full website, but like I said, this is a super simple website. I estimated this to take less than 5 hours for a really experienced web developer. The Indian firm told me it would take 35 man days.

OK, think that the project is harder than I believe it to be? After this Indian firm game me these numbers, I immediately referred my friend to another friend I have who I know is reliable and charges $25/hr.

After looking at the project, my developer friend in the US said that he would charge around $200-300 and finish it over a weekend.

The funny thing is, after I told the Indian firm this and said that I can’t work with them, they said, “Thank you for the response. We however would like to mention that a test project just to check our coding capability can certainly reduce the efforts by around 50%.”

Oh, now you realize I’m evaluating you and so your “efforts” can decrease by 50%? What is that? Also, even if they were 50% off, they were still ripping us off. And remember this is supposedly the good Indian firm that was WAY better than the other dozen that my friend worked with.

Still consider offshoring your development but be extra cautious

Again, I’m not saying all these firms are bad and would make you lose money. There are certainly firms in the US that charge $120/hr and would say it takes 100 hours to complete. There must be some good solid firms in India that would accelerate your business like no other.

However, I want to remind all of you not to get fooled by the hourly rate they pose. Just because they are working from Indian and the hourly rate is low, doesn’t mean they are saving you money.

Anyone else have experiences with outsourced development firms that you want to share (any country) so the rest can learn from?

5 Dominant Techniques to Social Media Marketing

After helping a variety of companies with their social media marketing campaigns in the past 2 years, I noticed that social media marketing narrows down to a few dominant techniques that work well and produce results.

However, a big problem in the industry is that most people just think about Social Media Marketing as one big technique, and without understanding what they truly want, they pay consultants(mostly self-proclaimed experts who have never driven an ROI for companies) to help them do this social media marketing thing that everyone says is essential.

The result is unsurprisingly disappointing because every company, every budget, and every goal requires different social media marketing techniques. If you are a low budget company looking to get tons of traffic in one month, you can’t make online video shows everyday like Gary Vaynerchuk did because even the great Garyvee took two years to make it big. If you hire a “social media expert” to run a blog and Twitter account for you, you will quickly lose faith in social media because they’re not going to get you 100K visitors in a month by just doing that.

Different companies with different goals should have different social media marketing techniques

This is a serious pain in the industry because social media marketing is something that truly works and can be very powerful, but most people(companies and consultants alike) have a lot of misconceptions regarding the different strategies and how they should be used.

In this post, I attempt to break social media marketing down into 5 Main Techniques. In that way, if you are a company, you can ask your social media experts to do a Social Media Targeting Campaign, instead of just a vague Social Media Marketing Campaign. If you are a consultant, make sure your client knows what you are doing for them and what results they can expect.

Technique 1: Social Media Brand Management

This is the most common technique that the “experts” promise to do. This includes creating and maintaining a blog and Twitter Account, engage people who are interested, share valuable things in your industry, and eventually build up followers, visitors, and trust. It might even involve maintaining a Facebook Fanpage (not effective if you DO NOT already have a strong brand established) or a LinkedIn group.

This technique is effective because it fully utilizes the SOCIAL part of social media. You are out there engaging your target audience. You are making friends with them and creating value for them. You are building your own popularity and trust. If someone knows what you do and thinks positively of you, when they need your product or services, they will not go on Google and find a random service they don’t know. They will buy it from you. If their friends are looking for services you offer, they will refer their friends to you.

The problem with Social Media Brand Management is that it takes time, patience and persistence. Since you are not out there to close deals but to build trust, you won’t see an immediate increase in sales or signups. It’s only when people really trust you and care about you do they start to check out your stuff, and that could take months to years to build.

Companies who consistently pressure their Social Brand Building workers to self-promote, get traffic, and get sales will hurt themselves in the longrun and fail in social media marketing. They clearly do not understand that this technique was not appropriate for their 1 month ROI agendas.

Pros
Really engages your target market. Builds trusts. Leads to sustainable success.
Cons
Extremely slow. Takes a lot of time. Need to truly care about your audience.
When to use Social Brand Building
When you have a longterm vision of your brand and social influence on the internet, and you can dedicate at least one longterm person who understands what it takes to be popular online and engage with your target audience.
End Result: Brand

2. Social Media Targeting

Social Media Targeting is where you find individuals on social media platforms one by one and engage them about your services. This includes finding and tweeting people on Twitter based on their description or keyword tweets, contacting someone directly on LinkedIn for a B2B sale, or commenting on a blogger’s post.

Social Media Targeting is probably the most direct way of social media marketing. In one sense, it is like sales. If someone tweets out “I need a plumber in vancouver…” you immediately tweet them with “We’re in Vancouver and would love to help you out!” If someone complains about your competitor, you tweet them about yourself. Twitter is usually the best tool for Social Media Targeting for B2C businesses. If you sell corporate solutions, you would utilize LinkedIn to locate the decision makers and approach them. This can yield short-term and effective results, depending on how much time you put into it.

The problem with Social Media Targeting is that, if not done carefully, it could be be seen as spam. If you contact 200 people in a day, and you are NOT being a hero to them by providing them exactly what they need, they will view you as a spammer. Yes, the spamming industry makes a lot of money, but once you are identified as a spammer, it would completely destroy the long efforts you have put in for Social Media Brand Management and ruin your reputation.

On top of that, your accounts might be flagged or get deleted. That’s why make sure your Social Media Targeting operator really understands how to provide what people are looking for, not overload them with irrelevant services.

Another problem to Social Media Targeting is that it is not as scalable. By nature of this technique you are contacting one person at a time. Even though the conversion rate and ROI is high for this, it is difficult to execute it on a massive scale without many dedicated employees just doing this.

Pros
Very direct. Immediate results. Measurable ROI.
Cons
Risk of being spam. Could hurt reputation. Difficult to scale.
When to use Social Media Targeting
When you are looking for short-term results while not being too concerned with longterm branding. You also need a dedicated person who understands social media etiquette in order to not become spammy.
End Result: Sales/Conversions

3. Viral Content Production

Viral Content Production is when you create your own viral content that usually indirectly promotes your brand or services. This includes creating a viral video, hosting a competition, or creating a novel site that’s just to get peoples’ attention. Some examples of those, respectably, are the T-Mobile Plaza Dance, the Viralogy Scavenger Hunt, and Compare The Meerkat.

The difficult thing about Viral Content Production is that it is usually a bigger-scaled campaign (hence more expensive), and the odds of it really turning viral are extremely low. Very few “social media consultants” offer this service (most blogposts lie in the Social Brand Building realm), as it usually takes an organized professional firm to coordinate the entire thing. This also usually needs to be accompanied with the rest of the social media techniques to create the full effect.

With Viral Content Production, if it truly becomes viral, you are able to reach millions of people. However, when people talk about it, they usually don’t talk about the brands but the campaign itself, so make sure the campaign connects to the company itself in one way or another.

Pros
Potential of reaching millions of people. Opens the door to the 2 other social media marketing techniques below. Creates more buzz that other techniques.
Cons
Larger-scaled. More expensive. Chances of being viral is slim.
When to use Viral Content Production
When your company has a deeper pocket and wants to create unique buzz in your industry. It’s also more appropriate for products and services that aren’t interesting/sexy by themselves.
End Result: Buzz

4. Social Bookmarking Promotion

Social Bookmarking Sites are services where people share resources via a reference URL instead of the content itself. These sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Delicious and dozens more. The goal for this technique is to get on the front page or get top ranked on these sites, driving tons and tons of traffic to your website.

In order for this to work, two things need to happen. One is that you have content or services that could go viral (so this technique follows the last one). Two is that you need to be able to get the power users of the bookmarking sites to endorse you. This could be a tricky thing to do and will often cost you money.

When you make a hit with social bookmarking sites, the traffic you can get is so high that it sometimes crashes your server (traffic from Digg that crashes your site is called the “Digg Effect”). However, a lot of the times the traffic itself is not very targeted (especially from StumbleUpon), so conversion rates are usually really low since no one is looking to buy anything.

Pros
Can drive tons and tons of traffic in a very short amount of time.
Cons
Slightly difficult to execute. Very untargeted traffic. Low conversion rates and time on site. Usually need to pay even if not successful.
When to use Social Bookmarking Generation
When you have viral content or services, have some cash to adventure with, and need to drive a lot of traffic in a short time.
End Result: Traffic

5. Social Media Influencer Campaign

This is pretty much having influencers who are popular bloggers, tweeters, video makers and such promote your product/services for you. This is probably the most effective and powerful ways of doing social media marketing. The biggest problem with Social Media Brand Management is that it takes too much time to build that trust with the online audience, ranging from months to years. In an Influencer Campaign, you are leveraging the engagement and trust others have built for months and years. This creates the strongest form of traffic because not only can it create hundreds of thousands of visitor, it also has a very high brand building and conversation rate since it is through a trusted referral.

To make this happen, marketers need to identify who are the top influencers in their niches and establish relationships with them. Some marketers pay the influencers directly to advertise or sponsor a conversation, some give out free units, and some just give out first dibs to new services. Whatever it is, make sure the blogger discloses the relationship to their readers to not get in trouble. Getting through this is a huge pain, but once it is executed well, it is the most effective form of social media marketing for making something go viral (think Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week).

Finally, your product or service must be viral or sexy for this to work well since bloggers are putting their reputation on the line and are not going to promote random commodities. If your product/service itself is not special, then be sure to create a unique and outrageous campaign that you want these influencers to write about.

Pros
Generates large amount of qualified traffic through a medium of trust. Builds a strong brand. Fast results.
Cons
Expensive or Time Consuming. Risk of influencers refusing to help or write negative posts about your service/product.
When do use Social Media Influencer Campaign
When your company has a budget, a sexy product or is launching a unique campaign/competition and need lots of buzz with targetted traffic onto your site.
End Result: Brand + Traffic + Sales/Conversions
(Disclosure: Viralogy.com, the startup I am working on, focuses on helping marketers do Influencer Campaigns, so my opinions on this may be biased).

What have you tried and what works best?

Out of these strategies, what have you tried in the past and what works for you? What doesn’t work for you? Are there any more techniques that you can think of? It’s time to leave a message in the comment section.

TrueTwit helps you figure out who are the spammers and who are the real people

Lately I’ve come across this Twitter App service called TrueTwit. This is a service that is meant to identify who are the real people who are following you, and who are the spammers.

It works pretty simple:

1. Someone follows you
2. TrueTwit sends a DM with your account asking the new follower to go onto their site and fill out a captcha and prove s/he is human
3. TrueTwit shows you a list of people who are validated to be humans and so you can safely follow them back.

TrueTwit’s big flaw

So far so good. Neat concept, and definitely trying to solve a pain that is in the Twittersphere. Now the problem comes with this rule of TrueTwit:

If you are a signed-up user of TrueTwit, you automatically pass the test and will not be prompted to prove you are human if you follow another user.

From a conceptual level, this is smart, because TrueTwit will get a lot more signups since people want to avoid the hassle of doing captchas over and over again.

However, here’s the problem:

1. Most real humans only follow a few people a day. They might need to prove they are human once a month from TrueTwit, which is annoying but not worth the hassle of signing up for a brand new service
2. Come on, no one REALLY needs to follow you that much. If you make following you a big hassle, they just won’t follow you and complete the Captcha. Some people I talked to even said they were offended by this request
3. Many spammers like to follow hundreds of people at short intervals. They have a high chance of suddenly seeing dozens of TrueTwit requests, annoying them the hell out.
4. Spammers will take an extra step to sign up for service you because they want to spam you. They’ll do anything they can to grab your attention
5. As a result, all the spammers will take advantage of the exempt rule and sign up for TrueTwit. Now they can follow thousands of people and pass the real human test without trying

Most validated uses on TrueTwit will become spammers

What this means, is that if you sign up for TrueTwit, your list of “validated followers” would consist of a few people who REALLY want to follow you, and a swarm of spammers who signed up for the service just so they can avoid the Captcha test.

In that sense, you’ll be following MORE spammers than if you didn’t use the service, and you would lose all the real people who are mildly curious about you but does not feel the urge to fill out a captcha just for you.

TrueTwit, I like your intentions, and I want the spammer problem solved, but you aren’t doing it in a useful manner. I look forward to you coming up with another way to solve the problem and make the Twittersphere a better place.

Besides TrueTwit, anyone else recommend a Twitter App service that helps you get rid of spammers?

Yu-kai Chou’s Presentation: Building Your Brand with Your Company Blog

Here are the slides for my presentation on Building Your Brand with Your Company Blog

Hummingbird604 made some excellent live notes on his blog. Definitely check it out!