New Year, tough road ahead

Working on your own takes strong nerve and discipline. Great that partner team is forming up, and publishers are being contacted to discuss proposal and contract.

Need to think of scalability and fairness of deals with publishers. To some point, direct reach out to authors may be needed at certain point, now is still too early for that.

Keeping sanity, health, fresh mind are as important as hard work. Think out of box, and think big. These will lead you to where you want to be. Trust and gain trust from your partners. Don’t let them down.

When making errors or mistakes, don’t punish yourself or punish people around you for them. Get up from where you tumbled, and move on. That’s the only way you will get to your destination!

Happy New Year, and march on on the tough road. You will get there!

First Month

One month went like a blast. Find myself a little risk averse to try think bold and out of box, since it will certainly slow down the implementation. I think it is okay to start small, and learn from the actual customer feedbacks, and grow from there. However, the idea shouldn’t be so small that it starves off any reasonable chance to succeed in the time window you get. After all, you can only go wageless and fundless for so long.

Digital books are picking up wave with multiple devices growing more and more competitive. Check the compatibility requirement of these devices, book licensing and plan to be part of the digital book distribution business. After all, this will present a major opportunity for downloadable books, and new comers can change the game by offering both audible and digital content at low price any established book sellers – online or offline – unwilling to go. Explore more here.

For the ethnic audio books idea, continue to implement, it fulfills unmet demand.

2nd week in new role

2nd week in new role, I feel that being able to focus and persist is a blessing. Window of opportunity is short, both from business and family support perspective. So need to have greater clarity and move fast to get product, partner, and practical knowledge (PK). Working to have a launched business/product to attract investors is good strategy. Attract any funding unecessarily early will make equity sacrifice. However, being able to validate ideas with experienced and influential angle is going to be valuable, and the doors angles can open for you are also important. Accountability and descipline any external partner bring are healthy for startup, too.

New Challenge

Tomorrow another journey starts. Be prepared, be brave, be wise, be happy. The experience will be as good as great results. Embrace the ordeal, fight for your success, live a full life.

Let your family and friends be part of the journey. They need you to stand up and be strong. Together, you will sail through the challenging but exciting ocean.

Sail along the coast between nearby and familiar docks first. When you learned more skills, think more soundly, and have bigger ship, you can try sailing farther and farther.

Always try to find your ship crews. Be their family, their friends, and win their respect by knowing what they don’t, thinking and acting ahead, hardworking, genuinely caring, and being brave. Love your crew.

Find new ways, new goods, new service. Always think out of box. Don’t take no for answer, always be mindful of the smart advice that can be bogus. Sounds good is not yet real good. Decisive tone and good presentation has nothing to do with right or wrong.

Be alert, be aware, be panamoid!! Now you can’t fail – others depend on your success! Take control of your destiny, don’t let it drift.

Work is not all. Stop, smile, smell the roses. Make it a healthy and happy journey for yourself and everyone with you on this journey.

Money is not all, nor is fame, nor is pride, be prepared for the worst defeat and be ready to come back stronger and smarter.

Be ethical, abiding by the law, separate business and personal properties. Be fair to people that you can’t cooperate -they are making a living too in the 2 to 3 decades. Treat your competition with respect. Treat your former employees with respect. They shared part of journey with you.

Last, have fun creating your own business.

Train to Florence

Aug 28, on Train from Venice to Florence. Leaving Venice and heading to Florence, a city neither Vivian and I am familiar with, and didn’t have time to do much research before the trip, we are just relaxing and expect to quickly learn about the city at a high level in 2 days we expect to spend there.

Venice was a really short stay, but I enjoyed the small streets, its quiet traffic even though it’s busy right outside your window. You hear boat stwards greeting each other when Water Taxi’es and Gondolas met. Taxi and Gondolas stwards are handsome and passionate, full of Italian energy…we had a blast riding water taxi from our hotel to the train station. In the small velly, the navigation of the motor boat is just as good as thiner but equally long Gondola. Out in the sea, we power through the open water that gave us frontal view of quite some unique Venice landmarks and typical scenic buildings. I took more pictures in 10 minutes than whole pass 12 hours. I did regret we have to leave too soon. Maybe next time?

First volunteering

Matthew today followed me to pick up garbage scattered around grass. He picked up discarded paper, food wrapper, bottle and cupboard and put them into his small basket. He collected three baskets full of them. After a while, the grass, which Matthew termed “almost messy grass”, turned much better. I can see Matthew is enjoying doing the good deed. He didn’t want to stop, and said, “if I do more, others won’t work too hard for this”. Good 4 year old

Taekwonto

Ten good deeds

Matthew is practicing Taekwondo. He needs to finish 10 good deeds before he can earn his first belt – white belt. Oh boy he is motivated. He now prepares dog food, washes his face, brings dish to kitchen after meal, shares good food with parents, practices music, and is very polite…, always checking “does this count (as a good deed)?”

It is such a good idea to have kids working on getting something they yearn and will be proud of.

Taekwonto

Mother’s day

Today is the first time I celebrated Mother’s Day with Mom. Bought a small gift, a necklace for her. She is very happy. She is also very proud, and talked with Matthew that he should buy gift for his Mom when he grows up.

Matthew today starts to half knowingly summarize his appreciation of my hard work . He points out that “Dad, you work so hard. You need to work, send me to school, buy things for me, and bring me to Six Flags”.

– Post May 10th, 2009