Alas, 2006
What matters is not what lies behind us, nor what lies in front of us. It's what lies within us.
The first thing when I woke up in the morning is to open Stephen Covey's "The 7 habits of highly effective people". 2006 has been a year that I took the first step to control my own destiny and in search for the person success and happiness. In the past two days after Michael called me, I more and more realized that there is no secret source about success (duh!). While it's insightful to interview successful entreprenuer about their first success, deep down, it's about how we are being proactive and believe in ourselves and walk the walk. It's vision plus hard work. It's personal plus interpersonal leadership.
2007 is coming, 9 years ago, I was in Times Square celebrating my first NYE in America, when I had was excitement landing on a strangers' land. It's no more strangers' land today. The ball was raised and ready to be dropped for 2007. I am excited, motivated as ever before, open my loving arms for all the possibilities we can bring to myself.
P.S. I have opened up a new blog on wordpress to record working progress of groupmingle.com; the URL is groupmingle.wordpress.com
Taxi driver
You are partly truth and fiction, a walking contradiction.
That is what Bethy told Travis, the taxi driver Robert DeNirro portrayed.
Travis said he felt connections when he saw her and that gave him the courage to walk in and talk to her. For people who are friends and may even live, work together, they may not have connection whatsoever, there will be nothing happening between them.
It's beautiful to be able to feel the connection with another individual.
What did I do in such a windy day
It got really windy since last night. I reparked car so it won't be hit by the falling tree branches, which fell a lot.
Power was out. And only our block are out of power, where there are lot of trees. Wind caused the tree branches falling on the electricity wire lines. So, whenever it gets windy, we are out of power, and because there are only 7 houses in this block, PG&E does not usually act fast, it's fairely common for us not to have power back in a day, only when this happens, I deeply feel I am homeless. Without power at night, I have no where to go, nothing to do, no friends to hang out with. Even though I do have quite a few real good friends. Guess what I did, I went to watch movie "good sheperd". It was good, but not too good. I think Angelina Jolie usually wouldn't take a trivial roll like this, she is probably just curious how it feels to kiss Matt Damon.
Harry Porter
http://www.jkrowling.com/
J.K. Rowling started her writing of Harry Porter, the literature miracle of 20th century, when she was only 25 yrs old.
ABC's story opens my eye.
Blood diamond
Today Bo and I went watching blood diamond, it's a brilliant, moving movie that I have not come across for a long time. Leolardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounson were deeply touching; My all time favorite, dream girl Jennifer Connelly was beautiful as she has ever been; I think Hounson and DiCaprio will be Acadamy Nominee for the heart breaking story.
Happy with new groupmingle
New groupmingle.com homepage came up on time on Friday morning. Although there was a stupid database bug hidden somewhere causing youtube embeded video mul-functioning, I am overall happy with the look and feel, especially the perception that this is no longer an online dating site, even though it renders the same idea. Sometime, subtlty is priceless!
Heavy rain
It has been raining heavily the whole day, I did not step out of the house at all, stay warm and dry. I have been looking around for podcasting tool since I wanted to launch a tiny podcasting to discuss with successful people about their first gig. I am always interested in knowing how an entreprenuer took his first step that led to the success. That is the most important, I want to interview people on regular basis and bring that to broad Internet audience.
I came across this site: http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com by searching "how to podcasting" on google. It came up as top 5 results. The author is very knowledgable on podcasting and his step by step tool is very easy to follow. However, I listend to his podcasting at http://www.gothamcast.com, it's a bit too long, too diverse on subjects, less exciting. Maybe that is why it is not doing well.
Sugar (she needs to change her name btw) send me the article she wrote about me and groupmingle; I am surprised to see she writes really well and got all the important points I communicated to her during the interview.
Google contacted me for an interview on Jan. 4. So is Ben who promised me for $75/hr consulting rate for his project, which is not too bad. It's time to find some work to do while continuing my venture.
Newpaper/radio station interview
Today Chinese newspaper/radio station interviewed me for groupmingle.com. I think I got them excited. In fact our way to approach meeting new people through event is very exciting and has unlimited possibilities.
Google called me for good news that they are interested in interviewing me further for three positions within platform group. My phone has not stopped for 2 days after I posted my resume.
I have decided to start a pod casting pretty soon to discuss the first success of entreprenuer, look out for that.
Job hunting
is necessary now. And I may learn something. Since submitting resumes yesterday, my phone has been ringing whole day. Through which I have come to learn yet another great company, although not my cup of team, truely impressive, especially its 27 years old boyish looking aussi founder, the 2006 winner of entreprenuer of the year by earnst & young! Everyday I am discovering a few new capable people. I got to know it through a very cool company called vinfolio.com in San Francisco which uses JIRA to track product developement. JIRA is the system developed by Atlassian, the company I mentioned above. Ever since I dated Lidia who was Aussie girl I have a thing for Australia. It's a great country with engergetic culture (unlike Canada), growing economy, Olympic power house etc, and only 20 mil people with cute accent (ladies only).
Mike seems to be into web2.0 social network as well, as indicated by his latest shoewave.com idea which is quite funny. http://blogs.atlassian.com/rebelutionary
Everyone has a flickr, youtube, myspace (not as often) in the industry, a blog. This world becomes more and more interesting. And my sense of urgency keeps growing.
Renkoo's founder CTO
I am surprised to know that Joyce Parker, 37 years old CTO founder of event social network renkoo (with 3 mil funding) is the one fired from friendster for blogging! Renkoo's blog http://renkoo.wordpress.com/ does not have much entries yet but it's very insightful in that it shows how to approach media (very subtly). It also featured an interview with Ramit Sethi at http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/archives/2006/12/friday-entrepreneur-joyce-park-of-renkoo.html;
The reason I mentioned these links here is for me to approach these bloggers when we have new release. It worthes the learning.
Lazy Sunday
Chat with Dennis Yu a bit on Gtalk, knowing him had a great trip to bay area, met with Chris Downie of sparkpeople (although I have never heard of it). Chris D mentioned the most important skills are leadership skills. I find that is terribly true. For one thing, it's extremely important to stand tall and provide insight and directions to team members. While many of my friends are extremely smart people, very few of them have great leadership skills to be successful entreprenuer. That may be the reason that my friends circle is full of middle class, intelligent people, but not super star.
How I searched and read the news
It's valleywag blog that started my search. I went to stirr's winter wonderland and saw a few familiar faces. Valleywag's site posted a few photos shot by a friend of mine, I am surprised to see Larry Chiang's photo cuz I have no idea what he did in the past although we did chat in last Stirr's party in Nov. He told me a few startup tips: 1, never make decision alone, 2. always have a mentor 3. never diverse, always focus. I searched his name, which led me to his Amazon profile/blog, where I found he actually published a few well sold books and "mentor marketing" is his new book or theory. From google's search results, I also found his profile on upcoming.org, which has high alexa ranking due to yahoo buyout. Then I saw Angie Chang, the founder of dying mint page. She is everywhere.
I started to wonder, remembering Dennis Yu's saying that you have to get the words out, is it necessary to crash every party I know, set up profile on every social network out there? Is it about marketing or is it about the market needs for the product you develop?
I think the fundamental is the useful product. Thinking back the crazy week when I spammed 30 US metropolitan CL and tons of blogs, it's not a problem for me to be virtually everywhere; I can do that again and will certainly do so once we release our new homepage/feature site this coming Moneday/Tuesday. But I see no need to overspend the time on these things. Real entreprenuerer spend time thinking and fine tuning product than partying.
There are too much noise and it's important to filter them while marching forward.
Stirr's winter wonderland
To be honest, It's the exploratorium that truely wowed me, which I did not expect. I thought the party itself would be fun enough that people forgot about the location. However the place is too big, most of people were dressed, really, semi formal, in suits. I parked my car right on presidio which is my ultimate favorite place in San Francisco. One day I will miss San Francisco so much when I moved out of this city. I paused, thought if I should wear my cowboy hat to such a party. I eventually did and never felt so good. I think I have to let up my free spirit in order to be happy. I did so, I thought people may just threw cold looks at me. It's just opposite, everyone loves the way I appeared in the party. Emily the new blonde girl came to me saying I am the best dressed man tonight. We talked a bit and she said she has not found the heart at this city, and still searching. The female photographer shot my cowboy photo, guess what, she is the girl I "hired" for our fashion party this March. It's been 9 months! I got an iPod portable speaker, in fact, I stumpled upon this tall dark black dude who happened to have a red heart Ace, somehow I remembered it, and I had the same card. By the time they announced the game rule which is to seek the person holding the same card, I raised my head, suddenly he is just by my side, that is effortless and this is the best and only lottery award that I have ever got.
Maybe that means something for 2007.
Mallory pinned me at about 9pm which is her 6am, and she just got back from a party!!!
I thought # of visitors to groupmingle would continue to decline because of our temporary pending release, it actually increased! Not sure why. Another good sign.
Hi5
I actually visited Hi5 office in downtown San Francisco.
Danial Wang is visiting the city for an academia conference. We met and briefly discussed what he is working on. I am just surprised to see his full focus is to finish his much needed phd degree. I think he is fullfilling his childhood's fantasy or mission to (have to) finish a phd. To me, if opportunity presents, I take it and build a business, not getting a degree. I am happy with Stanford degree already, no desire for any other since I know how to acquire the opportunity and knowledge.
Earlier, Mallory pinned me on gtalk, saying she is a bit tired, I told her I had a nightmare. It was actually the disgusting feeling that I had after watching "underground life of swingers". I have no desire to be a swinger and the thought that any of my attractive friends maybe married swingers itself disgusts me. However, on the other hand, I am ok to swing before commiting to a relationship.
I was thinking to make a load of money in 2007, then produce a travel program with someone attractive and likable, who could be that person.
Drop "singles"?
Ok, we will drop "singles" and "dating" words on homepage because people don't want to sound desperate when they visit an event site. What is strange is meetup people do not worry about that, they still join my club. Then it maybe due to its local orientation.
Groupmingle.com will not have "singles" words on its homepage. The tag line will be "the smart way to mingle".
If we do that, the site will come across as yet another event site. How do we differentiate ourself from other folks like eventful, heyletsgo or minglnow?
I think all these three sites do not really provide an offline opportunity for people to mingle. They are event aggregators. Groupmingle is not event aggregator. We want user come to the homepage, wow our videos and "mingling in a group" idea. It does not matter what other events are happening, what it matters is groupmingle people decide to mingle in a group offline.
With that in mind, we should focus on letting people "start a mingle" and find "fellow mingler" easily. We do not list junky fake events or some junky DJ's spining party on our site, we want simply let user say "hey, I want to meet a few people this saturday, who are with me?"
From that sense, matchactivity is closer to us, but it's model is 1-on-1 activity, ours is group activity.
So maybe "I want to mingle" is better than "Add a mingle".
With that being that, the real threat comes from meetup.com; it almost does everything and better when it comes to letting people meet offline. Yet, the perception is, not many people go to meetup to mingle, they go there to meet up. Mingle has a flavor of "flirting" and is good for singles.
Groupmingle should be a brand that people can think of when they feel like swinging a bit, just checking out people, being flirtatious, a bit of meetup for the sexual purpose, even that can be really subtle.
The msg shown to the left side of vlog and entire homepage should contain that flavor.
Homepage impression
Mallory and I have concluded that our homepage has big problem. 400 visitors and no one sign up. The msg we are delivering through homepage is either uncool, desperate sounding, or the design itself turns people away. We need to fix that problem.
1. Logo color: purple is not really favorite colors.
2. Tag line: The smart way to mingle
3. Remove all the "singles" talk so that people don't really feel they are desperate to join the site because they want a date.
400 uniques today
My CL campaign last nite immediately sees the result. Today we got almost 400 hits! What is average today? about 100 to 160. That is a triple.
But no one signed up. I was wondering if putting sign up page link (as opposed to homepage) would work better?
My event on CL has not generated any inquiries. I was wondering why?
The best hiring ads ever
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mar/246912411.html
THe content is below, the title is pathetic but they obviously know exactly what they are doing.
Title "Desperately Seeking Internet & Guerilla Marketing Genius (potrero hill)"
We are looking for a ruthless Internet marketing savant. One who understands the power of persuasion and finds fascination in the ways Jehovah’s Witness and Christian Scientists acolytes find their crazy fanatic converts. I want someone who is dumbfounded yet curious enough to study how a nasty tasting German herbal drink that’s meant to be drank warm turns into the hottest alcoholic drink. You have to be able to explain what made digg, flickr, YouTube and other upcoming Internet icons successful. Further you have to know how to create your own category.
The person needs to be very web savvy and loves design, music and technology. He/she has to be a disciple of Kay ~ “ …best way to predict the future is to invent it!” The person has to be ruthlessly creative with connections that are the best in what ever they do. You must have no fear of calling or emailing anyone they need and getting their attention. Perhaps hampered by ADD but smart enough to overcome it by putting everything on Treo/Blackberry.
You definitely must love the the Internet, the Consumer and have a record of massive social engineering. Your notion of the alphabet begins with the letters SEO and ends with PR. You are going to join a company that is on a mission to hack the future to become the way we want it to be. No wannabes this time, please! We need experience and a string of successes. We are also interested in your failures and how you have recovered and flourished from the lessons you've learned. You see a goal and you go all out, take no hostages and finish off the success with a nice cold one.
You see yourself doing another YouTube-like phenomenon, defining the lingua franca of a new internet market and pushing the everything to the edge of insane success. You must know the tipping point and know how to get there with a bit of shrewdness and wit. The Internet and the media is your tool and it does what you want it to do! You have to be the type of person that people want to be with. You don’t need a large linked-in group made up folks you've never really met or a collection of small brained myspace friends but must have a powerful directory/list of connected persons that will take your call, return your emails and do things for you, willingly and wholeheartedly!
Finally you have to have heart and the compassion to see yourself leading others to do great things for society.
A serial entrepreneur and a gang of equally successful partners lead the company you’re joining. We are not some knucklehead company trying to build another blog crap, video sharing site or community. We are the long tail of our business.
We don’t care for titles but we value achievement and experience. We’re not looking for someone who will tell us that we need new colors on the web site or we need to buys lists to spam folks with our products. We need results and we expect you to deliver.
Tell us what you did and what you want to do. Show us the mother of all marketing campaigns that you have executed.
If you’re the right person, we will make it difficult for you to say no to us and we'll do it immediately. We’re just that good.
Pantyhose and Spanx
Lin called me at night to "discuss" the business opportunity of manufacturing Pantyhose (hoisery). I have no idea what that is, but the opportunity sounds like one. However, I am a bit worry about her as an entreprenuer cuz she does not have much operational experiences at all. If it were someone experienced I'd be more interested.
I did stop by Norsdrom today to check out what the hell pantyhose is. It took me about 5 min to find out it's women's wear and top brands are wordloud (most expansive), dana something(bigger size), spanx(accurate size), calvin klaine (size tends to be small). Of course, it's Spanx's colorful (all red) packaging and sexy name caught my eye. Here is founder's startup story:
http://www.spanx.com/pls/enetrixp/!stmenu_template.main?proc_to_call_in=&this_object_id_in=772184&proc_this_object_id_in=772184&this_object_type_in=cat&proc_this_object_type_in=cat§ion_id_in=477024&proc_section_id_in=477024&template_name_in=stmenu_template.main&proc_template_name_in=stmenu_template.main
Just finished
Posting group date with groupmingle.com link to 22 cities' group on CL.
After doing a bit of researching done in previous blog entry, I don't have high expectation for the outcome. I have an extreme sense of urgency. I want to reach 100 members by the year end. It's a MUST. 500 by Valentine, a MUST. We must do that and ensure people actively use the site for posting group date activities. It's a MUST.
CL strategy
I tried long tail strategy yesterday and it brough one guy from Jersy to the site and I am expecting more. By posting to groups at CL in all US areas, I am expecting to reach out to at least 1k people, (see P.S.) If 10% join the site, there 50 more people after this campaign. Not good enough but it actually gets us started. Our first goal is to hit 100 by New Year.
P.S. I am posting to 50 areas. Hopefully, avaragely there will be 20 people review my ads, that is 1000 people view my ads.
1 yr anniversary for Alice's 05 winter wonderland
Suddenly, a year has passed by since Bo and I went to Alice's winter wonderland at Masonic center at Nob Hill. A year!
Today is very stormy, I don't quite remember any other stormy days this year. But 101 north was slow all the way from Palo Alto to San Francisco, made it impossible to arrive on time for the first meetup for professional group mingle. Janice is a member in my group and she called around 6:30 pm saying she was stuck in the traffic and could not make it. So was I. I eventually arrived at catalyst about 7:15pm, no one was there, at least not from groupmingle. It's not surprising. I just want to be sure I am there in case someone shows up. A stormy day like this is not good news for party.
Mallory and I spent nearly 2 hours in the afternoon discussing the marketing goals and tasks. It was very informative to her. I drafted a informal contract for her to see the flavor of it, mainly discussing the equity distribution.
I have been thinking about the "long tail" strategy. The leading event sites mostly are based in San Francisco and Boston area, where they tend to take care only the major metropolitan area's events, which makes sense. Bigger better events happen more often in these cities. However, dating event is different story, singles are everywhere, there are probably equal, if not more, number of singles in small to mid sized towns than that of metropolitan area. Who is serving them? Certainly not these event sites. Maybe that is where we should put our partial focus on. Immediatly, I posted 8 ads on 8 mid sized local town's craigslist, surprisingly, all of them were posted without being flagged. I'd like to see how that played out in terms of getting traffic and people to register. I think that is a smart use of "long tail" theory.
Video Blog
It's too little, too late. No, it's too much , too early. I am stuck, I thought I had a pretty good material going on to write about. Starting from her being a nanny, then go on and on. When I came to the point of two kinds of people in the world: Morning and not morning person, suddenly I don't know what to talk about...I sat, I turned to the TV, comedy, soap opera, still nothing is going on.
A job site for hiring manager
Why no one starts a job site for hiring manager? It's not often that job seekers get first call from hiring manager, which I did this morning. The first thing he told me is that he is the hiring manager so he is THE guy a job seeker needs to talk to, no bs. I am not really looking for a job. But that posts a question and an interesting topic. He has a clear idea for whom he wants to hire, he can almost instill the core requirement into one sentence.
There is also another idea for a job site targeting at alumni graduated from same department. I think both of these two ideas can be combined into one site that connects hiring manager to job seeks that are most relevant through keyword matching and alumni department matching. On the other hand, job seekers can do the same search. No one in the industry is doing this.
Women 2.0 meeting today
Presence of women in a tech setting does draw a big question mark, as I stroll into 420-20 at Stanford quad today, a few "stripper" looking blonde and brunnet completely surprised me: am I walking into a whore house? Am I paying $10 to see these people? Where are our typical smart panty looking silicon valley entreprenuers? Who the hell is that balding guy with a stupid european accent and what the hell is that black shirt, black haired pimp looking guy doing on our Stanford campus? Who the fuck is San Jose State? That is fucking ghetto and joke!
I am being mean. But it at least felt a bit like that.
As it turned out, I am mostly surprised by Amy Anderson, the blonde with mini skirt who runs an offline matchmaker called LinxDating.com, which connects eligible silicon professional male to San Franciscan female, at least that is how she started. She started out by doing matchmaking for people for free, then she got asked by singles who want to have a "gurantee" that he will meet someone. She was amazed to see people are willing to pay for that. Everything else falls into place after that.
I found her comments on some of the blogs, actually quite brainy! Surprise surprise!
My point is, it's hard to transfer a traditional image. If only she could dress a bit conservative, getting her hair colored to black, or brown, people's view may change. Oh well, why the fuck she cares? She is making the bucks!
Liz the writer girl from GigaOM is only 23, she can be really sexy, but she is a real laid back girl. I am telling people, guys, have a tendancy to hire pretty girls, this is the case for Liz, also right for Natalie from TechCrunch, not only looks, even chest size works. Remember Amanda from Rocketboom? Now look at Natalie, and even Liz. Nobody says, but everyone knows, and that plays an important role. Sad and pervert as it sounds, you can ask Michael Arriton or Andrew Rocketboom for their thoughts;)
Comes to a stop
There was a bit of progress on offline events. I am trying to grow the site through offline events where people could spread the words around. Finally I found a rental home that is perfect place to host such organized event. Amy is gearing up for taking the first shot for her vegetarian class for singles. I posted a babyboomer singles class on craigslist, only found the ads was flagged by some losers and taken down? But why? Is it the wrong place to post or a few links in the posting itself? I am puzzled. The other channel would be Vflyer which submits flyers event to a few listing companies and search engine.
What kept me awake at night
I actually woke up to worry in the middle of the night. It's not a pleasant feeling. You got something going on in your life but it's not moving forward, onward. Then it must move backward. I am to the point where I have to probably take a job to continue doing what I do. Ben's email is ridiculous asking me to discuss with him the sales strategy. I am not into sales with high paycheck, let alone a virtual "position" with no investment upfront. What is he thinking?
There are up and downs, lately most are downs. It's hard to keep up the spirit. Going to Emily's class makes me realize life can be so much more enjoyable.
I took the Monday afternoon jogging around the Stanford foothill, where I got a call from ebay asking if I am interested in working with them. I really don't like San Jose and anything south of Mountain view, seriously.
Mallory again
Mallory today cracked me up! She asked me in Skype: I have to ask you. :Are you a pervert who con girls into porn video? I asked my parents and they want me to be sure." That is sooooooooooo funny! The first day we talked, I disclosed myspace page where I have 188 friends most of whom are gorgeou girls. Then I throwed a few x-rated very artistic photo slides. She said her parent's warning plus my myspace profile raised a red flag.
That is hilarious.
To be honest, I wish I am the man behind major porn movies. At least they are making something useful to other people. On the contrary, that does not mean I want to be such an entreprenuer.
All that being said, I introduced Google doc/spreadsheet to Mallory where we both can edit brainstorming session in real time. It's excellent idea. My creative juice spring was not flowing too well when talking to others. But I hope to get a bit of real flow out to her by writting some kick ass script: that does not mean there ain't gonna be grammer problems.
Emily's cooking class
Emily Dellas is getting a bit of fame through hosting her cooking class. Today, I finally got to meet her for one of her classes. I have to say her house is AMAZING. But that is probably her parent's house. That is a typical multi-million dollar San Francisco rich people's house that I have never been to before. I think her parents' support to let her hosting such class on DAILY basis is just AMAZING. It's long hours, it gets kitchen pretty oily and dirty, and the kitchen is not really built for such class with wall facing counter and stove. I think I can pull off much better event than hers, just to be honest. She is a bit of Rachel Ray's type of girl, only a few years younger, and a blond hair, blue eye version, She reminded me Mindy, the first girl I got to know the first day I came to United States. I love sunny looking girl. She has more work to do to catch Rachel Ray's personality, but I can tell you she has this sharp business mind. When it comes to cooking skill, I am really not impressed since the dish is no where close to be like What Susan cooks, and I can cook better tasty food than her. She is cute, girl next door looking definetely plays a major role for her personal business' success. But I can host much much better party/event than she does. Anyway, that being said, I feel pretty good to keep going down groupmingle.com's path.
Noah Kagan (http://okdork.com) emailed me tonight telling he loves groupmingle.com's idea and would like to interview me for entrepreneur27.org; Awesome! I think my simple homepage revision paid off. It delivers idea very clearly, obviously. Or how the hell did he know what groupmingle.com does? I've never disclosed that to him at all!
What is more?
I am in contradiction. At one hand, I kept receiving good signals from market that group event for singles is right direction to go, on the other hand, there are not enough signals from market that people will do it from groupmingle.com; I have set up a meetup group on meetup.com, and getting 10 memebers already within 48 hours of creation. I am paying $19 monthly to meetup.com to maintain this group, while my goal is to use that to guide people to groupmingle.com and using word of mouth more effectively on our site. However I have to say that meetup.com's event feature is much more powerful than groupmingle, the only reason that I think groupmingle will win is its focus on singles market, maybe that is the only reason good enough to be the winner. I do have that feeling.
There are major differences between meetup and groupmingle on event feature.
1. Business model: meetup charges organizer a monthly subscription fee to organize a meetup group, which may have offline event; Obviously, this won't encourage everyone on meetup to create a group. Groupmingle wants as many people as possible to start a dating event, so we don't charge organizer for creating an event; there is no concept of creating an event group. Anyone can start a paid or free event; Our platform enables singles to apply to paid event through paypal. To be honest, I don't know if this feature will keep user away. Meetup also has payment built in, but it's an option for user either pay through paypal online, or do it offline at the event. I need to think more about it.
2. Promotion tool, I have to say that meetup has terrific promotion tool that groupmingle does not provide. So far, I only allow user to invite friends and people nearby. There is no other web2.0 feature such as embedded code;
3. Speed of people joining groupmingle group on meetup is faster than that on groupmingle.com itself. I am using the discounted pricing strategy to attract people to our site; But, without a good event, this has not worked.
Speaking of good event, I finally got a few very position replies from people who own fabulous home dinning room and kitchen, party area where we can host our flagship events. We have a few people in both SF and LA area ready to roll. I hope we will gain some attention through this strategy.
All being said, it will be a longer journey than I hoped. With the end of free supporting, I will need to have funds to continue the effort. No one said the first venture would be easy.
Mallory
Mallory found my job posting on doostang. She emailed me asking if this job has to be based in bay area and I said it's not necessary. Then we arranged a skype call for 1 hr and 11 minutes! She is a USC girl who just graduated this summer, majored in art history. Currently she is in contract with opare(spell right) serving in Germany as Nanny while having opportunity to travel around europe. I am not sure if she has all the background or talent needed for such an unconventional role, but I have a good feeling about it. I think we can at least try to brainstorm something to work on. A few story line and format for a video blog would be the first thing to think about. She said she will spend 3 weeks in the States for Christmas, maybe she can arrange a time to visit bay area to shoot a few videos. I have not mentioned so far her unusual beauty. She is probably the most pretty girl you can bump into out of everyday life. A white/asian mix. Thought I have to mention that.
I have to mention the hair cut
Having a haircut has never become such a fun thing to look forward to. But I have been looking forward for two and a half months. The old man on Emerson street of downtown palo alto rents this little store front operating his barbar shop: it's hard to imagine some tiny store can survive in the heart of Palo Alto! He hardly say anything to his clients. He spent at least half an hour on each client charging only $16 and he does not care how many people are waiting. The strange thing is people not only wait for him with no complain, and they keep coming back. The first time I was waiting there were 2 people in front of me, and he went on a break after finishing cutting a peron, kept all of us waited for 20 min while no one is in the shop!
Why?
Only when I actually had my haircut done by his non-stop scissor action and miracle massaging session had I realized what a steal this haircut deal is. I left $4 for tips without thinking twice. Why? With his skill and service, he should have decorated his store a bit and charge a lot more. I can't keep up with that many instruments he used to cut my hair. He treats you like a real gentleman, using his old fashioned razor to deliberately cut every single beard hair growing outside the shape line he wanted for the client. And I have to say, I love my side beard shape everytime.
Surprisingly, there were a few hispanic construction worker popping in his store to say hi, and he erupted with non-stop lecture like spanish for about 3 min! Man, I have never heard him talk so much! I think he is a culture-introvert man who does not feel entirely comfortable with America. But he found home in his decades of hair cutting experiences and his mother-tone. It's only the 3rd day after I have my haircut. But I am already waiting for the next one in the new year! As he said, I will see you next year!
