- WTF is he yapping about. I gotta give what?! -

 At a restaurant, you’re nicer to the server, you get better service. You help a friend move, he happily helps you back. You take care of your clients, they keep doing business with you. It’s a GIVE and take, not a take and give. I always find it so interesting how the way people conduct businesses is so correlated to how people treat relationships. So many of the subtle nuances can be transferred interchangeably between the two at all stages. I had a mentor when I was at Business Objects and he always preached that in order to be truly wealthy, you need success in both work life and personal life, a perfect balance of both with neither defining who you are entirely.

- WTF? I have to master both?!?! I’ll NEVER be happy! -

No you chump. The secret is to master one and see the similarities between the two. Follow one set of rules for both work and personal.

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. During the past 10 years, the company has grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, driven primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth. Below is an excerpt from Tony’s book that describes how Zappos approaches vendor relationships. I’m going to put an * next to the nuances. Make the connections as you see it.

This goes to show that any relationship you carry whether it be professional or personal, can be as successful or as horrible as you wish it to be with the Golden Rule.

The typical industry approach is to treat vendors like the enemy. Don’t show them any respect, don’t return their phone calls, make them wait for scheduled appointments, and make them buy the meals.

It’s a wonder people don’t realize that business doesn’t have to be done this way.

Ultimately, each party is out for the same thing: to take care of the customers, grow the business, and be profitable. In the long run, it doesn’t behoove either party if there’s only one winner.* If vendors can’t make a profit then they don’t have money to invest in research and development, which in turn means that the products they bring to market will be less inspiring to customers, which in turn negatively affects the retailer’s business because customers aren’t inspired to buy. People want to cut costs and negotiate aggressively because there’s a limited amount of profit to be shared by both sides. As a result of this “death spiral,” most retailers fail.*

We wanted Zappos to be different. We decided to create collaborative relationships in which both parties shared the risks, as well as the rewards.*We found it much easier to create alliances when partners aligned themselves to the same vision and committed to accountability, knowing we’d all benefit from achieving our goals. Not only does this approach get both sides pulling in the same direction, it creates an environment and culture where people are inspired and passionate about what they do.*

We implement this partnership mentality in many ways at Zappos, but it all begins with the Golden Rule: Treat others as you’d like to be treated.* When vendors fly to visit our offices in Las Vegas, they are greeted at the airport by one of our Zappos shuttles. If it’s their first time visiting our office, we give them a tour. We offer them drinks and snacks to make them feel comfortable. This is all far from industry standard, but if we were in their position, I’m sure we wouldn’t mind being treated this way.

Lets dance for a while

Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies

Hoping for the best but expecting the worst

Are you going to drop the bomb or not

Let us die young or let us live forever

We don’t have the power but we never say never

Sitting in a sand pit life is a short trip

The music is for the sad man

Forever young, I want to be Forever young

Do you really want to live forever? And Ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1nbvplgElw&feature=related

The poster in my gym

He found another place in short notice though. This new place was 2 buildings down and was higher and larger. It was leasing for a great rate so there were multiple applicants for the condo. Being a landlord, when multiple people apply to rent your condo, you want to look for several differentiating factors such as: will they pay you on time? Will they trash your place? Will they stay for the term of the lease and not bail early? Applying for a place to rent (or buy) is like applying for a job. You put your best foot forward and hope the interviewer/landlord/mortgage broker likes what they see and deem you better than the rest. As a landlord and manager though, one thing I rely on more so than what the applicant tells me is what their references and experiences tell me. People will often lie for themselves, but other people are less prone to lie for other people.

My friend had 3 references on his application. The first reference was his company which he owned. It’s a franchise company and he’s been very successful at building and growing the business to a thriving, self-sustained enterprise. The 2^nd reference was a friend whom he’d grown up with who was now an RCMP and his 3^rd reference was me. Needless to say, the landlord never made it to calling me as a global company with franchises worldwide and a police officer was good enough. He had enough credibility to beat out the competition and he’d spent a lifetime building that credibility. On the opposite spectrum, I had a friend who wanted to purchase a condo this past month with his girlfriend and was turned down because his credit was horrible; because he didn’t do what he said he would do and pay back the money loaned out to him by the banks. Now, 7 years later like that little Italian kid you used to pick on, it’s come back larger and stronger and kicked his ass.

When you tell your friends that you’ll do something, do they believe you? Do you come through? What about if there is a deadline at work? Do you deliver? Your ability to say what you mean and do what you say. Personally I always do what I say, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. If I’m unsure if I can deliver, I’ll say nothing first until I’m sure. Everybody has that friend who says “I’m going to start a business!” or “I’m going to do this or that!” and never end up doing it. Like the boy who cried wolf, people will eventually tune you out like the bathroom fan that stays running all day. It’s a simple enough principle and one that has been drilled into our heads since we were young but why is it that it’s such a hard concept for some people? I notice that a lot of monkeys will say what they say in the heat of the moment and worry about the consequences later. The thing with credibility though, is that it takes a lifetime to build. Each and every action that we take and every word that we speaks increases our cred meter, both personally and professionally. All we have is our reputation and once that is tainted it takes a long time to build it back so be good with your actions and words, you never know what references you’ll need in the future.

Parking Secret No. 1. If there’s one place you should make sure to plug the meter, it’s in the 800-block of Hornby, right in front of the Law Courts. That’s because parking officers are testifying in traffic court and often write a few tickets on their way in or out. The Starbucks at Helmcken and Howe is also a danger zone: it’s right across the street from parking headquarters and where many parking officers go for coffee. I lived upstairs from this Starbucks for 5 years and watched the Yellow Jacket gang ticket every car even when they’re off shift.

Parking Secret No. 2. If you’re running into Future Shop at Broadway and Pine and figure you’re safe in a permit spot for a minute or two, think again. More people receive permit-related tickets in the 2500-block of Pine than anywhere else. That’s because a resident calls parking enforcement about three times a day to complain about illegal parkers. Other blocks under the constant watch of irate residents include the 2400 blocks of Bayswater and Trutch and the residential streets around Langara College.

Parking Secret No. 3. For parking-meter tickets only, every driver in the city is entitled to one “courtesy cancellation.” If you call 604-257-8732, and ask nicely, the city will usually waive your fine. Each licence plate gets only one free pass over the life of the vehicle.

Parking Secret No. 4. The worst day of the week to park illegally is Wednesday. Parking officers work a nine-day fortnight and the one day virtually all of them are on shift is Wednesday. Not surprisingly, it’s also the day the most tickets are issued: 20 per cent more tickets, in fact, than on a typical Monday.

Parking Secret No. 5. The riskiest time of day to park illegally is in the afternoon, between noon and 4:30 p.m., since that’s when the various parking shifts overlap. However, there is a slight dip in ticket-writing between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m., when many parking officers are on their lunch breaks.

Parking Secret No. 6. As long as you’re not blocking a rush-hour route, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. is “Happy Hour” for illegal parkers. Starting at 3:05 p.m. every weekday, parking officers from all over the city converge on routes such as Robson, Davie and Broadway to hand out no-stopping tickets and order vehicles towed away. As a result, enforcement of all other offences — such as expired meters and permit zones — drops off considerably for about an hour.

Parking Secret No. 7. Enjoy your Sunday brunch without fear of a parking ticket. The first shift of parking officers doesn’t start on Sundays until 11:30 a.m., much later than on other days. There’s a proposal before city council to move the start time to 8:30 a.m. but, for now, your chances of getting a ticket before noon on Sunday are slim.

Parking Secret No. 8. Night owls can rest easy. The first shift of parking officers starts at 6:15 a.m. and the last clocks off at 10:30 p.m. There are some exceptions for special events, but for the most part there is little to no parking enforcement overnight. However, this could change: a report has gone to city council proposing a new shift that would run until 2 a.m.

Parking Secret No. 9. A five-minute grace period exists in most no-parking areas, such as permit zones and commercial loading areas, so you’re allowed to stop briefly to pick someone up or drop them off. That also means a parking officer has to observe you sitting in such a spot for at least five minutes before writing you a ticket. Be warned, though: no such grace period exists for areas where you’re not allowed to stop at all — like rush-hour routes or bus zones — or for spots with a meter.

Parking Secret No. 10. All parking meters are not created equal. Downtown, where there are dedicated meter-checking foot patrols, the typical meter is usually checked by a parking officer at least once every two hours. In contrast, the meters along Commercial Drive and in Kerrisdale don’t have dedicated foot patrols and so may be checked as little as once a day.

Parking Secret No. 11. If you’re going to park illegally, don’t put on your four-way flashers. It provides no legal protection and just draws attention to your offence. “What it says to me is: I know it’s illegal, but I’m only doing it for awhile,” said parking officer Sherry Wevill.

Parking Secret No. 12. Just because there’s no chalk on your tires doesn’t mean you’re necessarily safe in a two-hour parking spot. Instead of chalking, some parking officers log the position of each car’s tire air valve in their hand-held computers. If the position hasn’t changed by the time they come back around, they know your car hasn’t moved. Other officers put a small stone on top of each tire or check tailpipes for signs of condensation.

Parking Secret No. 13. When the time runs out on your parking meter, you always get a two-minute “grace period”, regardless of whether you paid for four minutes or an hour. During that grace period, the meter will display a solid “000” instead of a flashing “0000” and you will not receive a ticket. However, the grace period also means if you tell an officer the meter just ran out, they know if you’re lying.

Parking Secret No. 14. You can get a ticket even if your meter is fully paid. Along several rush-hour routes, such as Robson, a meter will accept your change even though you’re not allowed to park there between 3 and 6 p.m. Stickers on each meter warn parkers of this fact, but dozens of paid-up parkers are still ticketed and towed every weekday.

Parking Secret No. 15. There are no parking enforcement officers working on either Christmas or New Year’s Day. Vancouver police will respond to complaints about serious safety violations, but your chances of getting a ticket for anything else on those two days are virtually zero.

Thank you everyone for supporting and donating to the BC Cancer Foundation. We all got together and raised over $2200.

It’s funny. In the past couple of weeks I’ve talked to so many friends who have gone through or known someone close to them who have had cancer. A mother, brother, aunt, sister. My dads friend of 35 years. Some have beat it, some unfortunately not. Everybody had a story and when we told them, everybody felt instant empathy for one another, understanding. It’s amazingly scary how this is such a common tale, how we all know someone who was affected by Cancer. This speaks to how wide spread it is and how we need to beat it.

Please keep supporting any way you can. I will be! If you would like to pass around the link or donate to the fund yourself, please click the link below. Thanks!

http://bccf.convio.net/site/TR/Events/General?pxfid=7540&fr_id=1250&pg=fund

My Next event: The Underwear Affair! For cancer research below the waist.. a 10k Run/5k walk in your underwear. Come join me!

 It’s weird how much you notice something when it’s right there in front of your face. It’s not just in front of me now though. It’s screaming at me aggressively, dangerously close. I try to flinch and move away but I can’t, I’m stuck in this spot, this position and I can’t move. It’s like my feet are encased in solid cement and there is a heavy fog around me. I can feel it lurking just beyond my reach, snarling and growling, but I can’t see it and I’m helpless against it. I was scared and angry, emotionally drained. I can’t even begin to imagine how she must feel.

She’s the strongest person I know. She’s travelled around the world by herself and with friends and family and been to places I could only wish to visit one day in the far future. She talks about countries and experiences that are so foreign to me as if they were the neighborhood grocery store, with such familiarity and enthusiasm (yes she talks about food with the same excitement). Her career as a teacher drains her on a daily basis. She uses her talents and unending patience to teach special needs children and comes home with stories of her work days that would make my very worst days at the office seem like a tropical vacation on the isles of Hawaii, sipping on MaiTais and watching hula girls in grass skirts. She has 3 degrees and is almost finished her Masters program at UBC and aspires to become a student councilor, selflessly devoting her career to helping kids find their way in life. Even now, in the face of one of the most deadliest diseases in the world, she still smiles and jokes around, her soul full of spirit and the very example of a brave soldier. I admire her so much.

She’ll get better, she will. Her first treatment of chemotherapy was yesterday and she’ll have to undergo 5 more over the next several months. She’ll be weak and her immune system will be Hiroshima’d, but she’ll be strong again, well again. She’s too strong of a person to let a little thing like cancer bring her down. It’ll never happen to me, I once thought. I never expected it to happen to my sister, my family, someone so close to me. I’d donated to cancer funds before, ran in the Underwear Affair to help raise money for cancer research, but always was just doing those things for faceless strangers. As much as I don’t want it, I now have a face to run for, a name to put on my “I’m doing this for…” tag. My sister and I were reading a book on cancer last week and it stated 1 in 576000 will be struck by lightning, 1 in 67 people will die from a car accident and 1 in 3 will have cancer. Well, now I guess she doesn’t have to worry about being struck by lightning or dying in a car accident. She’s already paid her dues to the odds and she’ll beat it, all the while with a smile on her face and friends and family by her side.

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think
about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell
my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize
you’re wrong.

-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going
in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going?
But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from
which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or
phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no
one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching
directions on the sidewalk.

-I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was
younger.

-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know”
feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to
be friends with?

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix
the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to
fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just
figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than
take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- LOL has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to
say”.

- Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I
hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

- How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and
smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?

- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up
to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’
examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot.
Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and said “Yes that’s
G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and i nstinctively
swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person
died.

-I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

- Bad decisions make good stories

- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every
year?

-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring
would probably just be completely invisible.

-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go
around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly
nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be
a problem….

-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work
when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything
productive for the rest of the day.

-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t
want to have to restart my collection.

-There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are
going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

-I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me
if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I
swear I did not make any changes to.

- “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this
ever.

-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people
watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will
they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t
watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and
leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello?
Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and
goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone
and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not
seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

- As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers,
but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
-Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still
not know what time it is.

-I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they
drive behind obeys the speed limit. — THE ANSWER IS YES!!

Others play hard now with the thought to work hard later, only to come to the crossroads and realize that they’ve been left behind. 

The best mix is to play hard now and work hard now, to enjoy life if all of its different stages through the years 

With no sacrifice to yesterday or tomorrow. 

-me 

~~

The most successful people are the ones who have failed the most. 

No matter how many times you’ve failed, it won’t be your last. What’s the worst that could happen? Nobody ever died from failure. 

It’s the lack of action after failure that kills people. 

-David Needleman, ex CEO and founder JetBlue Airways, part of Southwest Airlines, WestJet, Azul, and Open Skies – 2002 

~~

The reasonable man adapts to the world. 

The unreasonable man makes the world adapt to him. 

Therefore all progress in the world rests with the unreasonable man. 

-George Bernard Shaw 

~~

Don’t just find a job. Find an opportunity. 

A job is just a job. 

But an opportunity can make you rich. 

-Simon Lu 

~~

Don’t get caught up being too much of a pleaser. I will try my best to keep others happy, 

So long as it doesn’t compromise my own happiness. 

-Brian Budd – Mentor 

 ~~

The international billion dollar corporation has a CEO. 

The beautiful model has a boyfriend. 

The international best selling novel has an author. 

This home has an owner. 

There is no goal that you want, that someone else has not yet achieved, deeming it possible. 

There is no goal that you want, that is unattainable, only perhaps in your mind.

Somebody’s gotta do it. Why not me? 

-me 

~~

New parents sometimes puts so much emphasis on being a good mother or father. 

They forget about being a good wife or husband. 

That’s why there are so many divorces today. 

You need balance. 

-Shannon Hamilton 

~~

Yesterday is History. 

Tomorrow is a Mystery. 

Today, today is a gift. 

That’s why it is called ‘Present’. 

-Sifu – Kung Fu Panda 

~~

Time is all we have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think. 

Randy Pausch (1960-2008) – Author: Last Lecture (Professor diagnosed with pancreatic cancer) 

-one of the best books I’ve read.