For today’s episode, our guest is Bryan Clayton. He is a serial entrepreneur that has just recently exited from his first company. 

One of the two companies that you founded is named Peachtree. When did it start and how young were you when you started the company?

Peachtree was a landscaping business. It was a company that would mow people’s yards, plant trees, shrubs, mulch-- things like that. Bryan was 17 years old when he started the business.

Over 15 years, he grew that company from just being himself, to over 150 people. In 2013, he sold the company to one of the landscaping business in the United States.

When did that idea get into your head? When did you think to turn that into a business?

He realized that with the money that he was making, he might as well just keep doing this grass cutting thing instead of entering the job market.

Bryan’s dad never really thought that he would capitalize on this. His dad was proud that he put Bryan on to run his own landscaping business. He was one of the biggest influences in Bryan’s life.

His father taught him how to be a leader as he grew their company from 10 to 150 people. Bryan had to learn and apply how it is to be a good leader and manager. His father would be the one to point out things that he was doing wrong.

When did you realize that you had to hire more people?

Bryan realized soon in his business that he was leaving money on the table. He can’t get it all, especially when he’s starting a business alone. He did the marketing, the labor, the invoicing, he used to do everything.

Understanding that alone, he can’t get to all the work that’s coming his way, was enough to make him realize that by hiring someone, they can do so much more.

This sounds a lot easier than it is. In many ways, going from zero employees to one employee is as hard as going from 10 to 20.

That’s because you’re doubling your business and you don’t have the resources. It’s a leap of faith.

How did you hire during the time that you were expanding from 1 to 10 employees? What was your hiring process? What did it look like?

Nobody is going to do it exactly like what you want.

Bryan’s business started with his name under all of the roles mentioned. But as he started to hire people, he was able to scratch his name off that and put somebody else there.

He created a document that would be handed to that person so that they would know what is expected of them and the roles and goals of their position.

How were you able to lead 150 people?

Most of the people that worked for Bryan were older than him. That’s because this was when he was in his twenties. That experience wasn’t without any challenges. What worked for Bryan was to invest in the culture of the business. He made his business run like a family and less like a big company.

Why they did that, however, was simply because it would make their clients hold on to them. When the company wins, everybody wins.

One of the most fun things that they’re able to do was that every quarter, they would identify a project that one of their people wanted to do. If it’s approved, then they’ll provide an interest-free loan to their employees. Soon they were able to help fund the construction of multiple things such as a supermarket, a new car, a new home, even tuition fees! They’d talk about the progress, and if the projects did well, and it was a lot of fun for the company.

When the 2008 financial crisis hit the United States, it wiped out a lot of Bryan’s competitors. They were able to survive through it because of their strong culture.

Culture is going to be one of the strongest points that will make teams thrive. Particularly in this time of a pandemic.

Champions are not made in the ring. They’re made during training, in the locker room, while preparing for a fight in the ring. This is what Bryan did. He had a great culture and he communicated it every day to his team.

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Sam mentioned earlier the quote that goes along the lines of “you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take.

That leaves us to just take the shot and learn from it. Learn from the missed shot and recalibrate.

Sam had his own share of failures as well. He had his own startup projects that didn’t succeed such as a platform for photographers. He didn’t succeed in several of them, but it was still fine because those failures taught him a lot. 

He learned a lot of things about how he should build his next startup. He would have missed out on all that education if he didn’t fail at the others first.

For him, entrepreneurs and startups should build their own projects or their Minimum viable product as much as they want. If it doesn’t succeed, then you will be learning from it. It is something you learn that is more valuable than any university education. The lessons you take from it last a lifetime.

The same goes for entrepreneurship. It is a journey. It is not just a destination.

Entrepreneurship is like an infinite game.

One thing that I always tell my team in SEO Hacker. We are composed mainly of 20 to 30-year-olds with me being the oldest guy in the team.

I always tell them that this company is your university. I am the one paying for their tuition fee, I sponsor them. They are my scholars.

I allow them to make mistakes except for two kinds: Repeated and Fatal mistakes. Fatal mistakes are when you lose a client. Repeated mistakes lead to Fatal mistakes when you keep doing it over and over again. 

The same goes for entrepreneurship. We entrepreneurs are in our own university, we are our own sponsors, and the more times we fail, the more times we should learn.

What advice can you give someone who is afraid to fail?

One of the reasons why people fear failure so much is not because you have to repeat something, as is the case for college students, but rather they are worried about their own insecurities and what people would say. 

Entrepreneurship, by nature, is accepting the risk and moving ahead regardless.

One of the things that Sam mentioned is to introspect yourself. Why is it that you are afraid to fail? Is it because you care too much about what people are going to say about you and how they’re going to perceive you? Or will you choose not to care about what they say?

What advice can you give to people who are currently doing nothing amid this COVID-19 Lockdown?

Sam has two points of interest in mind. He highly recommends that people look into these two things: What they are good at and what they’re passionate about. When these two things align, they will create extraordinary results.

Whether it’s coding, design, or whatever, as long as you have that innate ability for something, then you should go ahead and learn it.

How do you know what your passion is? How do you know what you’re passionate about?

Sam never had to think about his passion before. He says that that is one of the signs.

Maybe you don’t have to think about it because it’s something that you do without looking at the time. You don’t even think about getting up for a meal or setting a reminder for it because you get so engrossed in that activity. 

What is something that you are working on and where can we find you?

You can find Sam Kamani via LinkedIn.

He is also currently working on his FinTech gaming product and building an esport product for trading and investments which is supposed to be coming soon. 

He lives in New Zealand. He is from India and he has been rejected 500 times but is now a serial entrepreneur, an author, a speaker. Talk about resilience. Talk about getting up. Talk about learning from failures. Well, we did learn today from Sam and we are better for it.

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You said failure made you learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t. What’s your advice to people who are afraid to fail?

Sam definitely experienced a lot of failures. It’s like this famous basketball quote that says “you miss all the shots that you don’t take.” That’s the difference. 

We have faced failure but we just move on and learn and grow from it.

For example, Sam has been in New Zealand for nearly 18 years. Over the course of that 18 years, he has applied for hundreds of jobs and he never got accepted to a single one. 

Everyone of Sam’s businesses and opportunities, he found through people. 

He learned that it’s not about what you know, but who you know, that works.

It doesn’t matter how technologically advanced civil society gets. At the end of the day, people work with people. 

Sam says that we need to work with people. We need to build relationships. We need to engage with people and provide value to them. Even bringing a smile to their face can be considered.

Sam used to do a lot of offline networking. Now he does it more online which is exactly how fate has brought us together. Whenever he has an idea to start up a business or do something of the sort, he would still leverage his connections.

He mentioned how he applied to almost 500 jobs, each with a unique cover letter and a unique CV, but he never still could get a job. 

And so he said, If you don’t get any job, start your own thing!

Can you tell us the story of how you got into the Pharma company and the esports company?

Among the 500 rejections, Sam only got two yeses that led to two exits. These were not advertised at all in job hunting sites.

He got into the first one when a mutual acquaintance introduced him to this Pharma company. Sam was doing consulting on the side, growing his brand and business passively.

When he was introduced to the Pharma company, he offered to work there for a month and if they liked what he was doing to their business, if he was able to show some growth, then they should give him a part of their company so that it’s in his benefit to keep growing it as well.

That’s exactly what happened.

Sam produced phenomenal results which gave him more and more stakeholder time in the company. The company became very reliant on him.

After he exited that company, he was essentially unemployable because most of the companies that he applied for said that he owned a business so he won’t last long.

The second company was one that Sam chose himself. He looked for the company and tried to contact the CEO through LinkedIn, Facebook, and email, but sadly, anonymous letters don’t usually receive any replies.

It was when he was able to meet the person physically, during an event that he was able to talk to him sincerely.

He pitched himself and offered to work for two weeks for free so that it would purely be the results that will do all the talking. Once again, he was able to provide them with great value. They also became reliant on Sam and overtime, he managed to gain a small stake in it, especially since he was assigned to become the Chief Operating Officer.

It’s very similar to my own story. I was virtually unemployable with 28 failing units right out of college. I couldn’t get accepted so I had to start my own business as well.

Sam showed guts right there and that’s what a lot of people today need. You have to have the guts-- the grit to keep doing what you’re doing.

Another thing that Sam wanted to add was that people should give up on worrying about what other people would say. Even with the potential negativity that your work gets, there will still be 10 other people that will find it useful. Do it for them.

Remember that when you do something significant, you will encounter opposition and there won’t be any opposition when you don’t do anything significant.

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Our guest for today is Mr. Sam Kamani. He is the CEO and co-founder of Product Done.

Product Done builds software for really early-stage startups for entrepreneurs and founders. A lot of the founders who come to them are non-tech founders and they have amazing ideas such as an SAS product or a mobile app. We just have them bring their ideas to life.

How much do you charge for, let's say a simple software as a service product or for a company who wants to digitalize their inventory ERP?

For software, it goes anywhere from USD5,000 to USD30,000 maximum. That being said, we have even helped some entrepreneurs build small concepts and clickable prototypes that they can present to their investors for funding. We have all sorts of stages and all sorts of budgets.

Tell us about these two exits. What are your first and second companies? Please let us know.

The first company Sam joined in 2007 dealt with herbal supplements and nutraceuticals. These were very similar to pharmaceutical products. At the time, everything was done offline. Their processes used catalogs, call centers, and other offline channels.

Sam, with his expertise in eCommerce, digital marketing, and growth hacking, managed to help the company grow nearly 500% in a span of a few years. This allowed him to buy in the company.

The next exit was with an esport company. Sam was once again head of growth. His stint in the position managed to improve the company from having 60,000 monthly users to 300,00 monthly users in only eight months.

This achievement and his other contributions led to him becoming the chief operating officer or the COO of the company. This exit was acquired towards the middle of 2018.

What led to your decision to join an esports company after being so successful with a nutraceutical company?

With esports, Sam and his team were able to do some very interesting things. The best part was that people from all around the world can tune in on streaming platforms such as Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook. It’s very easy to go from 1000 users to 2 million. it won’t take that long when compared to physical pharmaceuticals which might take years and years to achieve the same thing.

The feeling of scaling was what brought Sam back into tech.

When you exited the pharmaceutical industry, was it just you, or did all of the shareholders exit as well?

There was only one shareholder besides Sam at the time and they both exited. It is vital to have an agreement with your co-founder or the person you're running your business with. You should have the same vision in pretty much everything you do. Otherwise, it will be hard for you to get anywhere.

Now, Sam’s previous co-founder has already written 12 books, six of which are fiction. She is very satisfied with her life right now because she’s doing what she always wanted to do.

You also have a book of your own. Did your previous co-founder inspire you to write it?

Sam’s previous co-founder is probably in her early seventies now, but she has never stopped learning. She has this amazing discipline.

Because of this, he wanted to share all the stories that he has accumulated within the years, particularly how to grow and scale your startup. Sam’s book is called the 30-Day Startup

What do you want people to learn from your book?

Sam likens it to driving a car without power steering. It is very hard to turn a car that is not moving. But it’s easy to turn a car that is. The book encourages people to go out and build something. Stop waiting and start building fast. 

The main advantage that startups have is their speed and agility that is lacking in large corporations. Be it alone or with a co-founder, you should go out there and build something. Start promoting and get real feedback.

Sam’s book has been heavily influenced by Eric Rice.

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How do you build your relationships and write connections and how do you pursue those people when it comes to mentoring?

Building relationships should not be an artificial thing. It should be natural and casual, because millennials, especially the younger generation today, the centennials, can detect if you're fake about something if you're not authentic. 

I handpick the mentors that I want to learn from. And I am very specific in the things that I want to learn.

I just send them a message through Facebook Messenger or any available communication channel that they allow. Which is usually email and I tell them “Hey can I invite you for lunch or dinner on me, someplace near you and all I'm asking is for advice.” 

When they agree, I also put value on the table for them. It could be in the form of helping them build a website, or contributing to their digital marketing process as of now.

It's not complicated. Just ask. 

How are you going to receive what it is you want to learn if you don’t ask? 

Is there any specific person of influence whom you can say made an impact on what you have achieved both in business and your personal life?

I would say Pastor Dennis Sy right off the bat. He has mentored me for seven years. 13 to 19 years of age. He helped me with my morality, with my faith, with how I look at other people and how I look at myself. 

Pastor Joby Suriano helped me in one of my darkest times when I was 19, without whom I would still be in a very different place, I probably could not climb up that heap of failure that I was in, during that time.

Other people who have influenced me in business. Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey influenced me to be a better entrepreneur, to be secure about how I do things, and how to lead our people and build a culture. These are people who are not who I'm not personally acquainted with but have influenced me in how I think and do things.

Can you share with us verses in the Bible that serve as your guide in doing your business as a whole?

I have this verse painted on the wall of my dining area at home, and that is:

“Keep lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but only my daily bread.”

That entire set of verses is dear to my heart, because when I read that it's about contentment in the Lord because the writer was telling the people that you have to be contented with what you have, not too much and not too little, but not just for the sake of contentment, but for the sake of my relationship with God.

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Today’s guest is none-other than Ms. Jazz Rivera. She will be the one asking questions to me about leadership, entrepreneurship, and management.

What if I don't have the capital to start a business?

The thing is, a lot of people will tell you you have to have money to make money. I don't completely agree with that because I did have money, but all I had was PHP1300, which you probably have on you right now or sometime this week. It's easy for you to spend that.

You don't need capital. What you need is knowledge and wisdom. You get that through investing in yourself, by reading books, listening to podcasts, going to seminars, conferences, getting mentors. 

How many times did you fail and what were those failures? What did you learn from those experiences?

When I started a business, I failed so many times by starting up.

One of my failures was hiring. I hired some people who were not good, yet I trusted them. I've hired a lot of wrong people and the wrong people will make for the wrong team.

The wrong team will make for the wrong company. The people that I hired initially, I failed in the interview process because of my strength and weakness as an entrepreneur is that I trust them too much.

I learned from my failures, when you look back and people look at me now and tell me, oh, you're so high up the mountain, you're standing at the summit of your success.

This mountain is a mountain of failures and a lot of people get buried under it and just quit. But I was able to pick myself up and climb on top of it until I got to the summit. And still more failures are coming down on me. I have to have that discipline of just picking myself up and climbing up again.

What are your principles? What is the structure that you use to get people to work for you?

Other principles that I have would be mastery. You have to have 10,000 hours of practice. That's really how to go about it.

10000 hours is usually five years. For SEO Hacker, I went overdrive. I went for 80 hour work weeks and I would always consciously and deliberately improve myself in terms of my craft in SEO, writing, and conversion optimization. 

This is a culmination of deliberate practice. 

That's something that I want my team to also be able to do. And with all of these principles, we wrap them up into our core values. So we have Grit, Unity, Respect for Work, becoming a Challenger. You challenge the status quo. You challenge yourself. Challenge other people; having Clarity when you communicate with each other and with the clients; and being able to always try new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome, Experimentation. 

We have six core values that are the pinnacle of all of these principles that I have.

What is your personal brand? How do you think people see you?

I have been working at my brand for a long time already since I had the seansi.org website. At the start, it looked really bad.

It looked like all of my stuff was there because I intended for it to be an online resume.

When I was starting as a public speaker, a lot of my inquiries for talks would ask me for a résumé, which is weird now because no one does it now. 

But if you look at seansi.org now, it is nothing like a resume for me. It is about who I am and how I do it.

I am best known for SEO Hacker because it is a business that I started up. A lot of who I am still tied up with.

And, you know, for me to be able to build that, it took a lot of years and consistency. The thing about branding is you have to be consistent. If not, then it's a hodgepodge of different things. 

What can people identify with when they see you or when they hear your name? 

Mine is “digital”, “entrepreneurship”, and “author”. These couple of things, it's not going to reach ten items. It's just a couple of items that they can associate me with. 

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KC is the international executive property officer of SMDC. KC has been doing real estate for 4 years now. She has also been training brokers abroad for just about a year now.

What are your views on Real Estate Investments?

There are pros and cons to real estate investment.

The cons include the need to have a lot of capital to do it. If you’re going to loan from the bank and you didn’t get a good rate out of that loan, then it will be difficult for you in terms of the interest rate. You will be earning less than if your interest rates weren’t that high.

In terms of the pros, it’s very good because not only will you get dividends from the rentals; your investments are also growing because of the property value.

How do you manage your appointments when you also have a lot of other responsibilities?

You can’t make time. You have 24 hours a day. That’s how God created time. I don’t have one hour more than you, nor do you have one hour more than me. The best way to “make” more time is to prioritize. 

Before, there was no such thing as priorities. Only a priority-- it’s singular. That’s because you can’t have multiple priorities. If everything is urgent, then nothing is. If everything is important, then nothing is. You cannot have many priorities. You can only have one, maybe two. 

The rest of the things that you want to do, you have to delegate them. I always say “buy other people’s time”. That’s why you should have a team. 

How will you attract new clients? What are the most effective advertising techniques? Can you please explain how you can use social media to promote products properly?

With SEO Hacker, how we do it is by ranking first for the most difficult keyword in the country which is seo Philippines. It’s the most difficult keyword because all of the other Filipino SEO companies are fighting for that keyword. That is our holy grail.

The problem with advertising is that a lot of people, especially small to medium entrepreneurs think that since they pay a lot for it, they should get some leads from it. Advertisements are more about branding and awareness. It’s rarely about leads and ROI. at its core, ads are outbound. They distract people from what they’re doing. 

For example, when you go on Youtube, within the content that you want to watch, there are ads. You don’t want to watch the ads, but since they’re in the middle, you’re forced to watch, even if it’s skippable. Usually, people just skip them because they’re not interested in the ad. 

The ads that we have on Facebook are not for leads or sales. They’re for branding and awareness and honoring our clients.

Relating it to Ms. KC’s situation, Social media is not an advertising platform. You didn’t join Facebook because of the ads. You joined it for friends, relationships, and memories. Things that matter to you. 

If that’s how you want to use Facebook, wouldn’t it be the same for other people? It doesn’t have to be a Facebook ad to be an ad, it could be just you advertising what you’re selling. Some people don’t want to see that. 

How can I have that security from all the competitors I have since there are a lot of sellers and developers? How do you think I can manage that?

For you, always remember that there are some things that only you can deliver in a certain way. You have to make that known. You show people your style, be it an extra level of care, or your standards are through the roof. You are different from the rest. 

You have to make sure that the world knows that. Bear in mind that you are different from your competitors. In fact, you are all unique. What you do will never be the same as how other real estate brokers do it. 

You need to market the unique selling propositions that you have and that only you can do. If you’re able to see clearly what these are, then you will know yourself better. You should then market yourself that way.

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Ms. Leizel Obuga is the CEO of MSI Modelling. It’s an 18-year-old company that she started herself.

MSI Modeling started in 2002. They cater to students as young as 4 to 26 years old. They focus solely on personality development.

Their tagline is “Learning how to be a model without looking like one”. People can look like a model even if you’re not. 

She started MSI Modeling just after she was done with her modeling career.

So far, MSI Modeling is doing well and has produced many graduates that have pursued beauty pageants, modeling careers, and even become flight attendants.

Leizel thinks of her students as her own children. There’s a personal touch to our lessons. Coming from a mother, she knows that every peso is a big investment, especially in education. It’s this personalization that sets her business apart from the rest.

Do you think that we can still improve? What aspects can we still improve on? Aside from Facebook, we are very traditional with our advertisements.

Based on their post-event evaluations, there has been a decrease in students in the past two years. 

That is still not that bad, considering that the boom of the digital age here in the Philippines happened in 2010. 

Leizel is currently wondering where the increase of people went to since there isn’t any kind of shortage of people whatsoever.

A lot of models might not have had as many opportunities as they have today. Before, modeling would have been one of the prestigious jobs out there. Nowadays, there’s a slew of new jobs that are made available by the digital market.

The most relatable of which would be influencer marketing. It’s quite new in the advent of Facebook and Instagram since they didn’t even exist before.

Leizel should find a way to tap that market. 

My suggestion is that you start a campaign that circles around training people on how they can be effective and efficient influencers. This could be a good marketing approach.

I know for a fact that many young people nowadays don’t want to become a traditional model anymore. They prefer to have their own blogs, websites, social media profiles, etc. 

If they prefer to go that route, will you have a way of being heard in that arena? If not, then you’re missing out on countless opportunities. 

Bear in mind that they do need to learn how to pose better as well as how to act more naturally in front of a camera because you still need to be engaging to the audience. Otherwise, people will not engage with you as an influencer.

What Liezel can do is encourage budding influencers to be the best they can be from the get-go. That will be their advantage. Your students will have that edge against their competitors. 

It’s been our goal to open up another branch. What do you think we should do? How do you think did this happen to us?

If it’s going to be company-owned, you have to ask yourself what are the necessary things that you need in order to open one up in a certain location?

Identify all the essentials that you need to open up a branch.

You have created quality standards, you have to plan how and when you will charge a royalty, you have to plan how your franchisees will open up their own areas.

I would suggest that you first create controlled branches before you delve into franchising. It will be more work for you, but it will be worth it.

This is how the big franchises function. They open up controlled branches in good areas to show that they’re profitable, then when people ask to franchise it, they will be helped in scouting for a location that will ensure a good ROI.

You need to start with a controlled branch first before franchising because that’s how you will be able to franchise effectively. If you have a branch that doesn't have your physical presence, the problems will surface. Once you find them out, you can solve them, and make the franchising process more streamlined and effective.

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How Do You Conduct Appraisals like Evaluations?

We have what we would call the reverse annual evaluation. We don’t have an annual evaluation here. That’s not how we do it.

In the RAE or reverse annual evaluation, we ask our people to send us an email about everything they have outside of their job description. Everything that you did outside of your job description for the benefit of the company is valuable information to us.

Aside from that, we ask that they send us their growth plan, what you want to do, who you want to mentor and who you want your mentor to be, and your projected salary two years from now.

If it’s approved, we set a meeting with the person and we negotiate what the salary that they want.

We no longer ask how they’re doing because we do so bi-monthly with our fast feedback loop.

The fast feedback loop or FFL is part of Teamstrr, the software that we use to make sure we uphold unity in the team.

Two other notable questions we have there are the white ball and the black ball. The white ball is for someone that that person wants to commend, and the black ball is for someone that they think do not uphold the core values of the company.

If I do nothing about the feedback that we receive through the fast feedback loop, then people will think that it’s useless. That there’s nothing happening. But if they see that the management is trying to solve these problems and providing what they need, they will feel like the management really cares for them.

This will foster loyalty that will then create unity.

If we deny the RAE, then they can only apply for one in the following year.

We have it this way because I am sick with the annual evaluation. It’s a waste of time.

The feedback loop is automated, and the reverse annual evaluation is crystal clear.

Teamstrr is instrumental in fostering Unity. Do you have any other apps or programs that are instrumental in fostering unity?

Hallway management. I go around the office and talk with people randomly.

Another thing with Teamstrr is the Weekly Mirror Report. Here, we ask why I should be happy with what they’ve done during the week. This is work-related.

We also ask for their Highest and Lowest points of the week. The highest point is anything that got them elated, while the lowest point is the ones that really put them down.

This report allows me to feel the heartbeat of my people. It’s not all about work.

Aside from that, Teamstrr also calculates the sentiments of each team member. We will know if one of them feels happy, sad, or agnostic.

Because of this, I get a big picture idea of the sentiments of each team.

It’s more important for you to build good relationships with your team members.

At What Points Would You Realize that You’ve Made It?

I’m the kind of guy who, when asked how long you would want to live, would say as long as I can because I want to be doing what God wants me to be doing.

I believe God wants me to keep writing. I started with the God in You Blog. I realized early on that writing is my passion. I could do it for hours on end.

It’s just that right now, I’m an entrepreneur, I serve the people in my team, I’m speaking about faith, I serve others through this podcast, and so on.

To answer the question, I believe that I’ll make it when I’m probably going to meet my maker.

In terms of contentment, there are people that want more and more. For me, I’m happy with where I am. I don’t want more things. All of it is temporary.

The people who you helped, those that you made their lives more meaningful, those who I gave livelihood to.

This year, we are making plans to implement profit sharing. We’re close to making it a reality, where everyone gets a share of the profits, especially the leadership team.

If your question about “making it” is about being content with what you have, then I’ve made it. But if it’s pertaining to the work that God has called me to do, that’s at the end of my life.

How do you usually recover from setbacks?

First, I remove myself from failure.

Don’t say that “I failed”. Rather, say that it was a mistake and move forwards.

A lot of entrepreneurs personalize failure. That is the mindset of a loser. You will be buried under a mountain of failure rather than standing on top of it.

If you separate yourself from the failure and see them as lessons, then it’s inevitable for you to get better.

One of our core values is experimentation. We have a short excerpt there that I wrote: “We try new things in the spirit of having a positive outcome”.

There’s an implicit mindset behind it. That is to be courageous. Have the courage to try new things.

You also have to have the tenacity, the grit, the resilience in the face of rebellion, betrayal, and failures.

They’re heavy words because they happened to me, but I have changed because of them.

People who give up in the face of adversity will not succeed. You have to have the strength and will to win and keep moving forward.

That is what we see in most successful people nowadays. They all failed. Most of them failed in a big way, but they still got up.

Know that you’re going to fail. But you don’t have the strength and resilience to get back up especially in the face of adversity, then you’re just going to stay in the mud.

You said that you’re ruthless in your decision-making process and speech. Are you still struggling with these?

Yes. There is a part of me that it became instinctive. I don’t like being ruthless, but it’s now my natural tendency for me to say things that way.

There are times when I hurt people’s feelings. Sometimes people argue that it’s because of my Dominant personality. I don’t use that as an excuse. I know I have to improve on that and so I try to first delay my first reaction to every opinion that I hear.

I also tell the truth. Trying to be less ruthless doesn’t mean you should sugar coat your opinions. You have to be clear. You have to make sure that your message gets across.

That being said, there’s a difference between being ruthless because of your clear and being mean.

Being mean is personalizing the fault and blame. That’s wrong.

If you’re being ruthlessly clear, you might shut down some opinions, but that’s because you’re trying to prevent them from making mistakes and protect the company. All because I have been in their place.

There are ways to say things better. I know that I don’t lie and I’m not mean but people say that I’m ruthlessly clear depending on the people I talk with.

The people who get hurt by it will not tell me that they’re hurt, then probably spread gossip.

What else do you struggle with?

I think one of the ways we can improve as an organization is the reporting system.

Everyone is accountable but it’s not clear what’s really happening on a big picture perspective.

It could be avoided if we had a big picture reporting system.

Personally, I want to improve my sleeping habits. I want to wake up early around 6 or 6:30 in the morning. A lot of people are saying that it’s difficult, but it’s something that I want.

Again, for me to be able to rise to that goal, I need to fall back to my systems.

This is something that I hope I’m able to achieve by June this year.

Adjusting my entire lifestyle is difficult. I won’t be able to work on creative things at night, instead, I need to do them early in the morning. It’s better but I’m not there yet.

For now, there are two ways to go about it.

First, I will lack sleep every day until I am able to wake up early in the morning.

Second, I should force myself to cool down and sleep at a certain time. It’s healthier, better for my decision-making abilities, but is harder to do.

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