by Brian Wong
Exclamation points are also a great way of pushing your point across! But first, you really, really need to have a strong point to make, and you need to be very clear about what it is. Emphasis offers clarity.
For example, when I say, “I think we should go with Designer #2,” I might be saying anything—or nothing. I might mean that I think Designer #2 is the lesser of two evils. I might mean that I just can’t remember Designer #1’s name. I might mean that Designer #2’s business card happens to be sitting at the top of the papers in my trash can, staring at me.
But if I say, “I really, really think we should go with Designer #2!!!” it can only mean one thing: Designer #2 is the best person for the job. No question. That cuts through the ambiguity, especially when you’re delivering your message through the cold, often expressionless format of print.
And on top of all this, when you use a well-timed exclamation mark, you can even convince yourself of something you might be ambivalent about. It can change your mood—just like how science has found that when you smile, the physical activity of smiling actually has immediate, positive effects on mood and attitude.
Even if you’re laid-back, understated, sarcastic, tired, or all of the above, using or seeing an exclamation mark can wake you up and get you out of bed.
One caveat: use the exclamation mark, but don’t abuse the exclamation mark!!!! People don’t like that, even when they’re not sure why. But if you’re waiting for me to tell you exactly how many exclamation points is too many, sorry, you’re out of luck. Like porn, we all know it when we see it.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the drab, sterile, could-be-anywhere airport lounge, getting these thoughts down while waiting for my flight from Taipei to Malaysia, where I’m speaking at an event this evening with members of the Malaysian government. Then I’ll be taking the last flight out in the evening to Singapore, where I’ll arrive on what (I think) will be Tuesday there, and stay until Wednesday. Then I’ll head to Jakarta on Thursday, where I’ll meet with some potential investors, and then take a six-hour red-eye flight to Shanghai. I love red-eye flights. I can sleep in the same time zone as the people I’m visiting, and get a full day’s work done when I wake up.
The point is that while I may live in San Francisco, I work in the world—like, the whole world. The world is my office. Today, that’s nothing special. Everybody experiences some degree of that these days, and if you don’t—if you only see yourself as working in one small slice of the world—then you’re probably only leveraging one small slice of the opportunities in the world as well.
But to fully understand the world, you have to get out and be in the world. You can’t leverage the full range of opportunities out there in the world until you’re thousands of miles from your comfort zone. Part of the reason I travel so much is just because I like to see the perspective of our business from the outside in. I like to seek opportunities and also let them find us. But in order for that to happen, you need to be out there—regardless of what your business is.
When I go to Singapore I’m going to see people that I haven’t actually spent time with in two years, but we’re going to catch up like old friends because we’ve kept in touch. They may not be necessarily relevant in that moment to what I’m doing with the company, but I am flying across the world to spend time with them because I know they’ll have interesting perspectives that I’ll learn from.
Smart people don’t think about globalization anymore, because it’s the default. If there’s one thing that weaves together tens of millions of millennials, it’s that with a tap of your finger you can send information around the world in a split second. It’s something we grew up with that no generation ever before did.
As a result, many millennials—including me—consider themselves to be citizens of the world. This is particularly true in the technology industry, because the tech world is the very essence of a boundary-free environment. I’m the perfect example. I’m a Canadian citizen, with parents from Asia, who now lives in America, and I’m privileged to be able to travel very extensively. So to me, being in another country is more like being in another neighborhood. The world, not San Francisco, is home—and I feel at home almost everywhere.
But even though it’s never been easier to keep in touch with people you know all over the world, whether through Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp (a chat app very popular outside the United States that sends instant, cross-platform text, image, video, and audio messages anywhere in the world), or anything else, there’s still no substitute for actually going somewhere and seeing the sights, hearing the sounds, and smelling the smells.
There’s a saying among politicians: “Half of politics is just showing up.” And that’s true of business too. Realistically, it applies to just about every element of life that’s governed by human connection, and it’s never been more true than now, when so many people depend on virtual media.
It’s easier, of course, to stay in the comfort of your own cocoon. And it’s easy to rationalize staying at home by focusing on your e-relationships. Of course, there’s no place like home. But that also means there’s nothing like being away from home.
When you suck it up and hit the road, your world view grows—and with it, your consciousness.
Try it. Just show up.
This is how serendipity works: Either you hope it happens or you make it happen.
When great things seem to fall out of the sky, sometimes it’s just pure luck. Even though successful people don’t like to admit it, most of them were lucky in one way or another, although sometimes the luck they had is hard to recognize. Maybe their luck was just not having bad luck. Lack of bad luck is truly one of the great blessings in life.
Even with luck, though, great things usually come because you’ve structured your life to put yourself in the path of opportunities, and sooner or later one comes your way. When it does, you’re smart enough to grab it. Then once you’ve got hold of it, you make the absolute most of it, and create even more opportunities.
If you do all of that just right, some people—especially those who make no effort to create serendipity—may ascribe a beloved but scorned quality to you: just plain lucky.
Some people are insulted by that: “Me lucky? Like hell I am—I made my luck, and I’m proud of it!”
Don’t bother to be insulted, or to try to sort circumstance from striving. Just take what you’ve got and keep your serendipity rolling downhill like a snowball, getting bigger and bigger. And keep your fingers crossed too, because shit happens. While you’re crossing your fingers, though, it’s also smart to create some contingency plans. Luck happens too, and it’s just as important to prepare for good things as for bad.
A couple of years ago I was at an event called the Digital Media Exposition Convention, or DMEXCO, in Cologne, Germany. It’s one of those global events I love to attend because you meet a lot of “lucky” people at them, and “luck,” as you may have guessed by now, has the tendency to be contagious.
One guy I met was Charlie Crowe, who was the founder of the insanely important Festival of Media Global that I mentioned in Cheat 37. When Charlie saw me speak at DMEXCO, he was impressed. In my speeches I give everything I’ve got—and it pays off. So he comes over to me and he’s like, “You should participate in the Festival of Media.” The Festival is held at various venues all around the world, and Charlie set me up at two of the biggest, in Singapore and in Rome.
As I mentioned in that cheat, I gave the keynote in Rome, and killed it. And as luck would have it, my performance there snowballed into bigger things, including more business for Kiip.
Part of the reason it led to more good things, though, is because I kept looking for more good things. I look at every event I go to as a possible springboard to more opportunity. I never do something thinking that it’s an end in itself.
If you look at something as if it’s going to be a one-off situation, it will be. People with a shortsighted approach think, “Well, I lined up the f
ucking thing, so I’m gonna go in there, do my shit, be mediocre, and bounce.” Then nothing comes from it, of course, so they think, “I knew it was just bullshit.”
The moment you decide to be mediocre, you lose every follow-up opportunity that can come from it.
No matter what kind of presentation I’m giving—even if it’s a private session with some businesspeople, or a quickie interview on television—I’m thinking about something I can get out of it, and that something usually happens.
The person who approaches me may not have something I really want, but so what? Maybe later on they will, or maybe they’ll mention me to somebody else. Just being approached is flattering, good for motivation, and a sign I did something right.
The key is to be patient. If you expect an immediate payoff from everything, pretty soon you’ll be doing nothing.
When you do line up something big, you gotta double down and give everything you’ve got, plus everything you’ll ever have, even if you have to pull it out of your ass. It’s amazing how much impact you can make with nothing but adrenaline and a big smile.
The takeaway: Make it your mission in life to aim for absolute excellence in all situations, because you never know what can come out of it. That is the essence of creating the snowball effect.
First you’ve got to know what the big moment is. That means research, studying your universe for opportunities that no one else sees, with risks or work that no one else wants.
Then you’ve got to hustle for it. Nobody serves opportunity on a platter. You’ve got to email people, then follow up, call them, follow up, see them, follow up, and stay tenacious until the doors finally open.
After that, you’ve got to go wherever that opportunity is, whether it’s halfway around the world, in the worst part of town, or in some Podunk place in the middle of nowhere. Those places are—for your purposes, at least—all the same. They are where serendipity happens.
Then you grab it by the throat and don’t let go.
Before you know it, you’ll be rolling downhill with the amount of speed and mass that define major momentum, and everything will fall into place right before your eyes.
It’s a sweet moment—so electrifying that you can’t even know how good it is until you’ve experienced it. It’s like you’re in a movie, playing yourself in a role that you wrote.
The people who don’t want to see you succeed will jump out of the way as your snowball rockets down the mountain. The people who want to share your success will jump on. Everyone will ask, “How’d he do that?”
Somebody will say, “He was lucky.” Somebody else will say, “He worked his ass off.”
They’ll both be right—and good luck trying to separate the luck from the work. Once the ball gets rolling, you can’t.
You’re one of the luckiest people in the history of world commerce.
I am too—we all are—because we were born into this rare and amazing window of opportunity, in which an intangible phenomenon has occurred that in most eras would have been impossible.
Here’s the phenomenon: Ideas now drive money, even more than money drives ideas.
Think about it: There have always been people with great ideas, and many of them made great fortunes, but the deck was always stacked against them. Those people and their ideas weren’t driving the action; money was. More precisely, the people who had money were driving the action. The people with money were kings, warlords, robber barons, tycoons, royal families, or political hustlers, and they were all ruthless. They used money as a weapon.
Then one fine day the Internet was invented, and the playing field was leveled in a way that had never been thought possible.
The day of the common man dawned.
This window may close—maybe before you even notice that it’s closing—so this is no time to kick back and wait for better days. The advent of computer technology and the Internet have created a vast frontier of incredible economic opportunity, and for once the power resides more in the individual than in the megaliths of big government and big business.
The historical tendency is for big guys to squeeze out little guys. Today it’s the little guys who reign supreme. This balance of power may shift again—maybe even before you realize it’s happening—but it hasn’t happened yet, so saddle up! Find an idea and ride it.
The clearest economic indicator that Big Money has taken at least a temporary backseat to Big Ideas is that in the current structure of technology, especially in the Silicon Valley, there seem to be more investors than there are people with good ideas.
What this means—and bear with me while I take you back to that boring Economics 101 class—is that investor dollars are now in low demand but large supply, while ideas are in low supply but high demand. This puts the power in the hands of the idea generators, rather than the now dime-a-dozen financiers.
Yes, it’s hard to crack open a new idea—but it’s something anyone can do. It mostly just takes a brain, some balls, and a computer. Seriously, good ideas can come from anywhere. There are even great business ideas coming from a group of inmates in San Quentin prison that I’m working with through “The Last Mile Program” (if you’re curious, Google it—it’s amazing, and one of my investors started it), and the inmates don’t even have access to computers.
So how do you come up with a great idea? There are no real guidelines; most are just a matter of common sense. There are a few mini cheats that can help, though. First is to avoid what I call the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang trap.” You might remember the kids’ movie in which they built a totally sick car that could fly. It’s something every kid fantasizes about. So why not build a totally sick flying car?
Because nobody needs it. Too complicated. Too expensive. You could sell about twenty of them, but you’d never get the capital to build even one, because there’s zero market demand for them. Keep it simple, Simon.
Another mini cheat is to excavate the graveyard of undeveloped ideas and see if you can find some life in a concept that seems to be dead. Sometimes a person will come up with a great idea, but when they try to build their prototype, they think they’re building Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and so they throw up their hands in defeat.
People get rich following up on those ideas. Sometimes all it takes is a little more work. Or a lot more work. The harder the work, though, the more it’s going to scare off potential competition. So challenge yourself. Take a shot. Go to the graveyard of great ideas, dig one up, and see if you can be the Dr. Frankenstein who brings it to life.
Another cheat is to do something that’s so simple that everybody in the world wants to slap themselves for not thinking of it first. Like Uber. Or Airbnb. Those ideas were not rocket science. Sometimes the best ideas are the most obvious ones.
The big idea of this cheat is simple: We’re in the golden age of ideas, a time when any individual—rich or poor, young or old—can rise up, seize a life-changing opportunity, and live the life that other generations could only dream of.
Wouldn’t you like to be one of them?
Because technology changes so fast, we all see change as a constant these days. And in truth, it is.
Some things don’t change. Find them, and you can make a fortune.
Yet focusing solely on change is a trap that catches a lot of people. People today are obsessed with finding “the next big thing.” But there aren’t that many new big things.
One version of “the next big thing” is to take something that exists and update it. However, the competition to reinvent the wheel is fierce—and sometimes pointless. The wheel already works pretty well.
People who drop out of the new-new rat race and focus on what won’t change have a huge advantage.
This is something I learned from observing Jeff Bezos. When he came up with the idea of Amazon at the advent of Net commerce, he was thinking along the same general lines as a lot of people: “Shit’s going to change. Like crazy.”
But Bezos looked beyond the New and asked himself:
“What isn’t going to change? Two things: (1) customers are going to continue to want the best possible bargain, and (2) they are going to continue to want it delivered as fast as possible.” The corollary to this logic was, “The only way I can go wrong is if people (1) start wanting to pay as much as possible and (2) insist on slow delivery.”
His brilliance is almost comical.
It’s no wonder that Bezos doesn’t worry too much about immediate profitability. He’s the whale in a sea of constantly shifting forces, sitting securely on solid ground in an essentially unglamorous business while everybody else tries to stay afloat on the choppy waters of change, racing each other to the new new, and capsizing every time the wind shifts.
If you’d rather be like Bezos, sitting pretty on the beach with an umbrella drink in your hand, look for classic, constant needs; classic styles; classic destinations; classic modes of expression, transportation, and communication. Tap into existing patterns of behavior. Classic will still be there long after the new new is old.
But look for the old classic with new eyes. Don’t see the trees; see the forest. Don’t see now; see forever. Don’t see countries; see the world.
Then start looking for how to make that world just a little bit better.
Let’s say you go into a meeting and you’re trying to sell something. What you’ve got is pretty cool, and you feel cocky because your thing is better than your competitors’ thing, so you expect a warm welcome. Only instead of cheers and applause, you get a big yawn or a politely phrased “fuck you.” What went wrong?
Most likely you didn’t tie yourself to a grander vision.
If you want to get people excited, don’t go in there just talking about your cool new product. Go in there with a universal problem, like traffic: “I know you guys hate traffic. So do I. I’ve got a solution.” That ties your cool new product to a problem they have.