Eli Hong

Recently, I decided to pick up a Rubix Cube my kids brought from the in-law’s house. Apparently the cube is older than I am and for years I’ve wondered if I could ever solve a Rubix cube.

That curiosity and apart from seeing my kids play with it and not solving it sparked my interest, taking it into a weekend project of my own.

So as I picked up the Rubix cube, after a number of hours and tries, I found myself failing to solve it. While I was able to solve Stage 2 out of the 7 stages, I followed everything to the T and still failed.

I decided to hop on to Shopee to buy 2 Rubix cubes as the current one was hard to move and after using an app to analyze the cube, somehow the stickers are mis-matched.

My new cubes arrived rather quickly and, I went on to YouTube, Google and my rabbit hole began.

With so many content creator’s showing their own “algorithms” as they call it, from sellers to official guides, the world of Rubix unleashed. I went on to search for guides and even ended up reading University research papers.

Given that I had limited time and I needed to be efficient, I decided to find algorithms that I can remember and only practiced a couple until I could get it all.

All in all, it took me about 3 days of practice, on and off whenever I had the time to solve the cube.

The whole process involved trying algorithms that were confusing, finding new algorithms that I can remember and replacing whichever that was bad to simpler.

Given that I’m a complete newbie, I underestimated the amount of time it takes to learn something new but as I am well-versed with creating systems to increase the chance of success, I took it upon myself to piece a few of the best algorithms from a couple of YouTube videos and made it my own system.

Having an end goal compared with a system makes the process faster, more palatable even when times get tough.

Well, this blog post isn’t going to be about solving a Rubix’s cube (for the record I was only able to solve it in 6 minutes while I’m mind-blown that 3 year old kids have solved it in seconds.)

That aside, more so than ever as the blog title is above learning curves, I’d like to explore how we look at problems in business?

From underestimating the learning curve of implementing and execution, from theory to practical moves.

Yet with people that I meet, they come with great ideas but when it comes to realistic execution, their learning curve will be a big mountain to climb.

It certainly depends on a mix of experience, capability, skills acquired and readiness to perform.

From my personal experience, executing good-enough ideas quickly have yielded better results than overthinking and taking months to figure out something then only execute.

There are book titles like: ready fire aim vs ready aim fire.

There’s no perfect time, perfect planning or perfect execution.

Only action and getting it out there makes the game happen.

More often than not, that’s the spark needed for a boost in momentum giving a person enough data to determine whether something is worth doing or then pivoting when required.

But will a person’s learning curve deter them from progressing?

Possibly. A lack of information is the cause for a lack of progress in anything in life.

This is the reason why a Rubix cube is often times just an unsolved toy left in the dusty shelves.

Fact is only 5.8% of the world’s population really care enough to complete the puzzle and the fact that 450 Million UNITS of Rubix cubes have been sold world-wide.

This statistic is a shocker and yet it is not surprising as most people do not take action or take the first step and or are determined enough to complete those steps.

These numbers could apply to any number of things that happen in life.

But another number is true, why do most people prefer to watch a lot of YouTube, which I covered in my other blog post here: https://elihong.com/consumer-vs-creator/

I help educators, experts and business owners create profitable offers that sell online and offline using a proven process and system that I’ve painstakingly refined for hours on end.

Marketing is a lot simpler with the right offer to the market.

I’m regularly running online and offline events, previews for clients, and have refined this system to near perfection.

It’s super hard work and at the end of the day, nothing replaces hard work despite what is being preached out there in the market.

This is a fallacy and if it is so, then why Elon Musk works so hard running so many companies and is the richest man on the planet?

He would be tweeting (he’d probably be doing it now that he’s the Chief Twit Officer) on the beach, sipping cocktails all day long.

I choose to be smart about work, creating processes and systems and making sure that those things are in place so that there’s a higher chance of winning in the game of business and in life.

My wife wanted get a new stand fan as the current one is a little old and one of the blades broke.

And I happened to receive some email marketing updates from Harvey Norman which I tend to visit on occasion and things were on offer (Or it seems to always be.)

So after lunch, we took a look, shopped around for some fans and found out that most of the stand fans were sold out and we had to go to another store 20 minutes away to get it.

Clearly, that wouldn’t be too fun to do so we just went to a smaller store somewhere nearby and the price was about 30% lower for a stand fan in its category and brand.

I had a criteria given that I wasn’t too keen on lugging all that weight.

As it turned out, what caught my eye was:

1. The box, was 60% smaller than every other stand fan boxes, even a kid could carry it out of the mall. Compact!
2. It’s weight was about 6.5kg compared to others which was above 9kg (at the same price.) Way lighter than carrying my kid.
3. It has an additional speed setting for its price range.

With too many choices and brands to choose from, this fan was a winner… among all other known brands — it was also an unknown brand beating all its literal heavy weight brands.

I guess, they did their research and carved their niche in a hyper competitive market. I have a feeling they will be overtaking the market in this category in 2-3 years.

Not too long ago Huawei wasn’t such a big brand in the smart phone category, I recall buying one of their flagship phones when they were a nobody but had the most RAM in the market an insanely competitive price against the giants like Samsung and Apple.

And before you know it, they started to lead in terms of android phone sales and inspiring copycats which lead to market confusion and dilution.

Wait, I was talking about stand fans right?

Yeah… it looks like a company with a strategy can beat giants by being a niche and providing insane value – without being a big brand, I have a lot of fun watching and supporting such companies grow and expand.

In fact, I consult with many such companies that have carved an edge over giants in the industry, often known as disruptors. Rebel and contrarian companies.

I’m always impressed with content creators on YouTube, the amount of ideas, execution and production that goes into creating stuff, I think sometimes it’s easy to underestimate the amount of work, time and effort that goes into doing something like that.

It’s not my style to create videos as I’m more of a person that enjoy writing more than creating videos despite the fact that I do have a film degree and have spent enormous amount of time editing in my early days, which I do enjoy occasionally but other skills take priority nowadays. I’m more of a producer and a show runner giving direction behind the scenes of which I thoroughly enjoy that process.

I also have been running a monthly marketing show for about 4 years for my inner circle and I’d be safe to say a few of them have gone on to build huge agencies and are even raking in the big bucks.

I’ve also have a separate regular Bi-Weekly Friday show that I do in another industry.

If there’s one thing that works for me is that is to have a blend of creating just so you have a life to live and having an impact so that the lives you transform can make a difference to others as well.

I was watching an interview with one of a top Youtuber interviewed by Logan Paul on his (IMPaulsive) Channel, Lele Pons which has nearly 20M subscribers and she said some wise words about why she do what she do in the past 7 years or so, creating videos daily without fail — she said while she doesn’t have a “life”, she emphasises that you’ve got to have that passion and interest to do so.

Logan then chipped in and said that it’s incredible hard to do that, even for a creator like him doing some insane PR stunts on WWE and Youtube.

Side note to how this blog post came to be: I was on a YouTube rabbit hole watching Adam Waheed on YouTube, which was something my kid used to watch before I started consuming his content and by some weird turn of events, I tuned into a show called Encounter which lead to me being curious about Lele Pons’s collaboration with Adam W, then seeing Anwar Jibawi(Which I do watch and thought he was pretty funny until Adam came into the picture.) being a guest judge on that show.

Oddly, they were the most serious judges there as compared to their usual funny/comedic style giving their professional thoughts as content creators.

To me, that is what stands out from being a creator and a consumer.

I try to gather lessons that I can takeaway as a consumer watching creators grab attention on YouTube by using crazy stories and pulling emotions.

At the end of the day, there’s a formula to it and the formula isn’t quite a formula either, there needs to be a creative process, combined with the right message to the audience (market) and executed with near-perfection.

Being a Youtuber can be unforgiving as well, as some succumb to mental pressures, the difficulty of creating content daily and even comments from audiences that demand more from their creators.

Will there ever be a balance? I think in this age of consumerism, it is never going to be enough and people will be hungry for more.

What’s feeding into this hunger?

The need to escape, to fantasise and to fulfil the needs of the amygdala, as Seth Godin puts it –the Lizard Brain. Our human kryptonite if left unmanaged, will lead us to a path of — well a Matrix movie like situation.

Yet creators create to activate this very part of the brain and YouTube as a whole monetizes this process, rewarding creators for doing a great job turning emotions into a multi-billion dollar industry and creating aspiring wannabe Youtubers and a generation of people inspiring others to live off their YouTube incomes — which are incredibly substantial.

Okay, I think I’ve gone into another rabbit hole altogether. I’ll stop right here.

I don’t agree with the statement above.

That’s why I believe NFT art is somewhat decent as it verifies the authenticity of the artist.

In my marketing and advertising career, I’ve modelled great ideas but I avoid plagiarism.

However, in my years of working on social media ads, copywriting or ideas, even website design ideas, there were days where my work were copied.

While I think copying my work looked awesome to me but doing so without permission can be costly to the business that the copy was written for.

Unfortunately there are no laws to prevent copying and it is rampant in the design industry as well.

My work has been copied quite a number of times that in two instances it became a nuisance to the client’s performance.

Fortunately in one case, the client had more bandwidth to outlast the competition. They had a deep funnel and had a better strategy.

Unfortunately for the other, the one who stole the campaigns outperformed the client by 10x and that’s because they had a better strategy and resourcefulness.

What a world we live in. Dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest.

In good times, smooth days, when everything rolls according to plan, that’s fantastic.

It is only when times get tough, hard and unexpected things happen, is when we either rise to the occasion or fall and crumble.

How do we then prepare for times of crisis?

I run many online and offline events and I’ve seen good days and days where things could go possibly wrong and many times what I’ve learned is that we have to prepare for everything that could go wrong vs things that could go right.

Today was that very day, one of my online events had a meltdown. But I’ve visualized this meltdown for the longest time and when it happened, I was definitely terrified for about 1 minute before I started to come up with a plan to mitigate the problem, rallying the team around and recovering, coming up with action steps to reduce the problems.

My biggest takeaway is that it’s not about preparing for what’s right, it’s about massively preparing for what could go wrong and when that day happens, we are ready to rise and overcome adversity without having to panic.

This post coming fresh from an online event that I’m doing now.

On another personal note, my family has been down unwell. On these occasions I try everything to mitigate and recover as the man of the family, while that’s working, the rest are down and the world continues to spin regardless.

In times like these, a friend messaged me and said, these times will pass.

Comforting words? Perhaps. Reality is such, that some things can be solved immediately but some things will take time and will eventually pass.

Recently, I took a trip to Ipoh, a city famed for its food, tourist attractions and tin mining history.

This is a lunch experience at a hawker food court somewhere in Ipoh which I won’t be revealing as this is not a food review blog.

Having lunch there two days in a row, I had some wonton noodles but its BBQ roast pork was sold out.

I accepted eating just wanton noodles and wanton soup.

The next day, I ordered chicken rice & roasted pork rice for brunch.

Not too long after I was done, at about 12:30pm, I saw another stall started to open right next to the chicken rice stall and it sold just roasted pork exclusively.

To my surprise, a long line started to form, rather quickly.

It appears that many people were waiting for the stall to open.

Before they were officially opened, a few bags of roasted pork were sold within minutes!

Just pure meat being sold.

It pays to be a specialised store vs a stall that is selling everything.

Every other stall at the food court had average customers and even some customers that walked in were lost for choice as some of the menus per stall were extensive.

We live in an age of indecision and options.

With too much options, we can’t decide.

But with one thing alone, we can make decisions and that’s an easy choice.

How does that apply to sales?

1. Keep to a maximum of three choices.
2. But 2 of the choices being a comparison and 1 being “the choice”.
3. Or just sell 1 thing and keep it simple.

I’ve tested several types of call to actions in a sales presentation and often times the 1 choice option out performs that multiple choice option.

A nice book to read on choice would be Predictably Irrational by Robert Cialdini. It’s a fascinating book on psychology of buyers.

But I’ve also found ways to do multiple choice in a call to action effectively without affecting sales but that would be for another blog post for another time 😉

I recently had a client who worked with me where I had everything (DFY) Done for Them for a few months and then decided to go with a (DIY) Do it Yourself approach.

Mainly this is due to budgetary concerns.

Which is totally understandable.

What intrigued me was that they were going to “go online to learn” how to do it.

That’s the thing about not understanding marketing and having crazy expectations or wishing for a magic bullet.

Running ads is just clicking here and there and walla.. your ads are up and running.

But will it convert? Is the offer clear? Is the copywriting hitting home?

Do they know how to comply with rules?

Will they get banned?

They are going to make mistakes and learn from it.

But at the same time, they will burn more money and waste time.

Just like my clothes dryer repair man blog post here:

You can choose to hire experts or figure it out but I’m quite sure figuring it out is going to be more painful than working with someone with experience.

Sometimes it’s just better to stick to the plan, give it time and let it come to fruition.

But impatience, not having a clear direction / goal or plan will cost the business.

I’ve seen a number of businesses constantly changing their marketing strategies just because something doesn’t work for 24- 48 hours or a week.

The disease of Marketing ADHD

But if time and money is not on your side, then running a business will be really stressful because you have neither time or money to test and grow the business and psychologically you’re just trying to push for sales and customers will know when something is being shoved down their throats.

Fog-pportunity, yes I just made that word up and this post is inspired by the fact that there are many, numerous marketing schemes, ploys, disguised as real but as a matter of fact, only serves the one who masterminded it.

It’s 2022 and what’s in the news? Job scams, life being taken away from young abled men full of potential, at least in Malaysia and in other SEA countries.

The intentions are good for these young folk, wanting to earn more but falling into schemes due to a lack of due diligence, wisdom or even maybe their desire to earn more.

The world has become a place where human trafficking, love scams becoming prevalent.

All these scams hook the main human emotion “desire”.

Desire is a very powerful emotion. It creates passion, ambition, ideas and dreams that move people to do something.

It ignites a fire and often times creates a smokescreen, a fog that puts a jam on a rational mind. Creating irrationality.

There are also other types of crafty marketing schemes out there in the digital world. I call them sellers of “shovels”.

These modern day shovels are disguised as “platforms”, site-builders that promise great returns, sometimes with the word “funnels” or “crms”

Not all are bad but most are really bad. These shovels are merely tools disguised as money makers.

Some appear to have leaderboards, only enriching the syndicates that promote it.

High front-end commissions, recurring commissions etc.

You’ve got to be able to discern the good from the bad.

Do your necessary due diligence and really see what’s the catch.

A lot of these opportunities start you off with a small commitment, leading to bigger ones.

Be sceptical and be on your toes when an offer is too good to be true.

Most of these opportunities come with long winded training, lucrative commissions and bonuses.

Each of these schemes also come with different complexities and a lot of set up required – despite it being sold as “turn-key”.

By the time you know it, time will reveal the fact that the opportunity stinks and time wasted on it… is not something that can be replaced.

These guys are pretty good at selling dreams.

I’ve personally had my fair share of such experiences, indirectly or directly and I’ve come to one simple conclusion when it comes to such opportunities.

Creating my own opportunities.

Being a creator means, you’ll have to build from your own ideas, work at it, develop skills to promote, disseminate and leverage marketing platforms to become known online and offline.

Know what’s out there, offer something valuable, solve a pain to an existing market in return for money.

As a marketer that has served hundreds of industries, every market has its own potential, work smart and hard within the industry and excel accordingly.

I’m typing this just after lunch and there are two stories that I feel that’s worth telling and that caught my attention.

For about a week now, I had trouble with my clothes dryer, after asking around, I had to resort to good ol’ google.

So I googled clothes dryer repair and a couple of ads came up. I picked whoever was the easiest to contact and within the next day he came over to repair it on the spot. Oddly, in Malaysia I couldn’t even find a repair person for clothes dryer on sites like recommend.my which is my go-to place for such things.

Now after chatting with him, what’s interesting is that he’s run Google ads for over 10 years now, spent thousands and has 5-10 inquiries a day about breakdowns. And boy the repair wasn’t cheap either, setting me back a few hundred bucks.

But he mentioned the fact that he has to open up every screw, have the right tools and equipment to do so, keep stock for parts and that justifies the cost versus the cost of transportation, delay in repair for a week, offered to clean the machine etc. Brilliant salesmanship on that part. He’d also use the current retail price over the cost of repair.

These sort of repair ads are urgent ads, something that needs fixing asap. I’ve had similar stories for car batteries and even being locked out from my room/toilet as well.

Now for the second story, it was today’s lunch.

I went on to have some chicken rice, expecting a pretty ordinary and uneventful day, and I ordered some sweet and sour vegetable soup along with it. I was the first customer dining in for the day.

The second person that came in, ordered take-away and started looking at what I ate and ordered the same soup.

The boss was thrilled and excitedly interrupted my meal…while I was eating he spoke to me saying that I became his advertisement for that soup because no one really checks the food menu.

Some takeaways to learn here:

1. A customer is your best referral. (Soup example.)
2. People are lazy to check the menu, they want something they see it and order it on a whim. It becomes more real when it’s served on the table as they are probably hungry.
3. On my broken dryer. I needed a solution fast, looked for it via Google and in return, have it solved a.s.a.p.

The pain of a hungry stomach and the pain of a non-working dryer.

No elaborate, fancy funnels or copywriting required for these sorts of niches.

I hope the boss will do something about show-casing his soups/meals. There are many ways to make it more appealing and aware, not just relying on a dine-in customer and luck.

It could have been more systematic and this can be a learning point for improvement. That was an extra 15 bucks which he wouldn’t have earned.