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I love ideation. I love brainstorming. And I have cool ideas.

My ideal role is to be the creative consultant. People ask me what I think, I tell them, they do it, and we all make a ton of money and make the world a better place.

To reverse-engineer. How can I become a highly sought after creative consultant?

1. Talk to many creative consultants. At least 10.
2. Job shadow them.
3. Exercise my creative muscles.
4. Built connections in the fields I want to be creative in.
5. Be creative in my own company
6. Do creative crazy things like building a VR / mechanical arm
7. Brand myself as a creative person whose ideas gets executed and the results are amazing.

What if I just do the first gig for free? Like, find companies who will give gifts in exchange for promotion, to flight travellers?

Who will be my other clients?

Smart homes –
VR – get into all the theme parks. Hotels. Malls. Promote at Theatres.

Will I be known as a creative collaborator? A creative marketer?

I feel that I just want to decorate the cake but don’t want to bake the cake. Just the fun and creative part.

Maybe if I have stake in the company.

First, let’s make Knot Theory HUGE by being creative!

How would I do it?

Rings will need to be cool. How can I make the rings cool?

TED:

Tech – add smart ring tech

Entertainment – worn by celebs that matter

Design – cool design, or team up with famous jeweller

A few things on my mind:

1. Not to bad mouth anyone
2. I’m still me after all this time. Still somewhat small minded, judgy, and not very generous. (Thinking about how I feel about Masha and Artsy.) I was generous at one point, but now I’m bounced back to old me.
3. Like more alone time now.
4. I’m 39. When I reach new heights with Knot Theory (e.g. 7 figures, automated), and I have saved up $4MM, I’ll be ready to start a new venture (second kid). There’s no time to waste! Wait too long and there’s no time to start a new thing!
5. Start learning as much about VR as possible. And combining VR with a mechanical arm
6. I want to move out. Have I learned what I needed to learn the past year? I don’t know. I felt that I could be more generous, loving, easygoing. But I also don’t want to be. One thing about having money is that it makes us less willing to compromise. I think about whether the world would be a better place if we don’t worry about money. I don’t know. We grow from hardship and we bond in lack. Why can’t we all just live happily ever after and showing only our best traits!
7. After moving out, I’ll make lots of friends by having dinner parties 🙂
8. I’ll triple my savings in 1 year. $4MM!!
9. This year I want to do really get by biz together, automate, clarify. Do it like how a smart person would!
10. I also want to remove my mercury amalgams, get a viome test, and do 5 to 7 colon cleanse.
    http://www.kestevendentalcare.com/
11. Get into Walmart, Target, Sportscheck. And more!!!

I feel normal for the first time since I got back from Burning Man two weeks ago!

Not super normal, but pretty decent. It’s 9:42 am right now. (I was waken up at 9am by Elena’s message. 7 hours of sleep. Feel ok.) We’ll see how the day goes!

Yesterday’s meeting with Alex was interesting. I feel good and bad at the same time.

Alex is doing better than me in business right now. I should be happy for him. Damn he is so young. Kind of jealous. But I’m also happy for him.

I think he is doing $700K to $1MM on his Amazon. Not sure if USD or CAD. I’m doing $650K right now. I think he is profiting at about $200K/year. I’m doing about USD $216K/year right now. So, we might be about the same here.

However, he also has Anime bae, and he is a Facebook ad guru! They spend $15K per month on ads, and their ACoS is 25%, so they are making about $60K/month just on the FB side. I’m guessing plus organic, they are doing $100K/month. Let’s say the business is making 50% profit, and he has half of the profit split with his partner. That’s $25K/month! So he is doing $250K here. Together with Amazon he is making about half a mill per year.

They hired 6 people and have an office, and the brand is growing, potentially to China! They are growing quickly.

—

Now let’s talk about me.

My rings are doing slightly better this year than last year. Since coming back last May, which is 16 months ago, our sales have gone up.

Right now we are doing about $37K in Amazon US. I guess last September was one of the worst months too. Overall we are doing

2018
Jan: $24.1K
Feb: $32.1K
March: $28.5K
April: $29K
May: $40K
June: $37K
July: $42K
Aug: $33K
Sep: $28K
Oct: $32K
Nov: $42.4K
Dec: $58.7K (rolled out Comfort Fit)

2019:
Jan: $41.5K
Feb: $47.5K
Mar: $48.8K
Apr: $36.1K
May: $42.1K
Jun: $38.7K
Jul: $40.1K
Aug: $44K (rolled out BCF)

According to Sellerboard, last year’s profit was $133K in US and Canada. Spent $66K on ads.

This year so far 3/4 of the way into the year, we are at $118K in US and Canada.

Last year so far into the year (September 17), we were at $96K in US and Canada.

So that’s an improvement! 18.6% growth.

It’s hard to say if we are more profitable in the US because we are spending so much more on ads. But, we are getting more sales overall, and we are getting more profit overall. So that’s good 🙂

—

Found a new supplier for rings the other day. Udoo. I didn’t mean to look for a new supplier, but was simply looking for a way to create metallic rings without flow lines.

But right now I’ve found the largest silicone ring supplier in China, who has a better price, smaller MOQ, better technology, possibly better quality (will check out samples), and some new innovations.

Come to think of it, Martin has really disappointed me. Bad quality the time before and we had to destroy all the rings. Bad quality control last time and we got 2 bad reviews right away. Now I think he packed the wrong rings into the shipment. His price is 2.5 times Udoo’s. I thought he was competent but he has been sliding more and more.

We’ll see. I’ll keep him for now and explore this new manufacturer.

—

Now let’s talk about the positives in the meeting with Alex
– I’m motivated to do better
– He is pretty funny. Taught me about “bruv” (bruh love).
– I got to help him with moda info, sent him Game Changers book, and he is inviting me to his biz party (which I can’t go but hopefully next time)
– I gave him some biz ideas! Facebook ad agency for anime companies
– He gave me some insights on FB ads. I think I need to get into it! I hope he’ll be there to teach me a few things when needed.

—

Advantages of my business:

1. Cheap product cost
2. Light weight product
3. Can be customized
4. Great margin
5. Many niches
6. Can be sexy

   If I were an 8 figure Amazon seller, what would be the top 3 things I recommend that Knot Theory do?

   1. Systemize churning out new rings
      – design, production, package design, shipment, QC, pre-launch, launch
   2. Automate with more VAs / manager who knows amazon
   3. Offer packs of rings
   4. Launch with passion – lots of budget, smart strategies
   5. Get reviews with passion – have a community of reviewers, update packaging to get good reviews
   6. Learn from the vitamin shops
   7. Set up many chat to engage customer
   8. A/B test prices, etc
   9. Expand to more marketplaces
   10. Add Walmart and other online market places

If I were Tom Bilyeu?
1. Create a loyal fan base – Have great marketing content on SM – interesting, entertaining, educational

If I were Gretta Van Riel?
1. Product Market Fit (does it apply here?)
2. Prelaunch and launch
3. Build a community
4. Strategic partnership

If I were Alex?
1. Run FB ads

If I were that Kathrin Zenkina (who makes $4MM from her community) selling courses to them?

What advice would I give to myself?
1. Sell to stores, different niches; hire a sales person
2. Sell to hospital network, mining companies, etc
3. Kickstarter: Biodegradable TPU rings (and bracelets), generate funds to get to stores
4. Better brand
5. Go to tradeshows (dominate with “ECO” ring tagline)
6. Better brand story
7. Authentic brand and website
8. Better imagery on website and SM

I feel so tired after Burning Man! It’s been two weeks and I’m not fully recovered. I don’t know if it’s worth it!

I was coughing for two weeks ever since the last 3 days of BM. I coughed and coughed. Was sick for 2 weeks. Got better as of less than a week ago.

All my aspirations were gone. I hate that!

Last week and yesterday I tried to masturbate, and I couldn’t orgasm!

Something is wrong with me

Since early July: Vaginal dryness and belly fat since I got back from Europe trip with Mom.

Since mid July: Ovulation spotting every month (relates to less estrogen)

Since early September : Can’t focus since I got back from Burning Man, can’t cum when I masturbate

Since…a while now, maybe before Peru: Needing to pee many times before bed time. (relates to less estrogen)

I think I have:

1. Adrenal fatigue
2. Hormone imbalance
3. Too much gluten and stress while travelling with Mom, or
4. Something in Peru (mold, etc)
5. Probably shouldn’t have taken certain supplements that Dave Asprey had suggest, or they were contaminated, etc. Current main culprit is Vitamin K2 and D3.

I can’t wait to feel better.

Do what my competitors do, but better.

Do what my competitors have not thought of doing. I’m super creative and innovative. I can think of hundreds of things to outsmart them.

We are also more agile than my competitors.

1. Be willing to spend more money this year, on building a
   1. great product and
   2. great brand and
   3. great team and
   4. better customer engagement / community culture and
   5. more marketing and
   6. more sales channel outreach, and
   7. track all performance with measurable metrics!
   8. Track progress in my planner! (design my own planner!)
2. How to build better, great products?
   1. Better quality control
      1. Hire someone on top of Martin if needed. Or ask him to hire someone. Extra layer of QC. But not hurt his ego.
      2. Track each iteration of production with barcode text (date)
   2. Better sizing to reduce return rate
      1. If CF needs a resizing, do it!
   3. Better inventory management to minimize OOS and delayed delivery
      1. Have in-stock inventory
      2. Have pre-packaged products
   4. Better silicone so less stretching out (chi xiang silicone)
   5. Always keeping track of what’s happening in the field. What are our competitors doing? We gotta keep up.
      1. Read their reviews
      2. Subscribe to their newsletter
      3. Visit their website
   6. Always keeping pulse on what people what. What do our customers want? What do our prospective customers want?
      1. ManyChat
      2. Email
      3. Email sequence for survey
3. Great brand
   1. Masha says: freedom, flexible
   2. Cyndi says: flexible, fun, stylish, unconventional
   3. I personally want to embody these values: innovation, excellence, better person, safety, love, quality, timelessness, contribution, community
   4. Possibly also: playfulness, creativity
   5. Who are my avatars?
   6. What brands do my avatar buy from?
      1. Lululemon
      2. Arc’teryx.
   7. Tell a better (founder) story, and put it everywhere. Website, IG, FB, our blog, interviews, podcasts, articles
   8. Always learning from brand case studies
   9. and growth hack case studies
   10. Not only learn from the best, but have the time, money, resources to execute what I have learned (or my team does)
   11. Craft a powerful hashtag and message. For example “We are..” “I am this moment” words: epic, timeless, better every day, gamechanger (great name for a collection), you are in my heart (collection name; shorter?)
   12. I want Knot Theory to have depth. To have a soul. To be playful, but in a smart way. To be lighthearted and funny, but in a brainy way. To be open, inclusive. Thriving. Inspiring. Brighter and more fun than Arc’teryx for example. More depth than Pura vida. (btw Lokai attracts youths. How did that happen?)
   14. Arc’teryx lessons:
       1. Amer bought in 2005, but started transforming in 2015
       2. Rebuilt company culture and brand story
          1. Most staff didn’t stay for longer than 3 years in its 25 years of existence, so they had to build the culture
          2. Brand story: #celebratewild. “I am this moment, this place”.  (too many messages but they are good)
             1. https://arcteryx.com/us/en/explore
             2. Branding agency for the brand story https://www.echostories.com/publication/arcteryx/
             3. This page is too long but has some good components
             4. Ideally should be very easy for our customers to relay the message and be our customers
       3. Specialize – can specialize rings for activities, comfort, etc
       4. Very recognizable style (because of logo also haha)
       5. Branched out to China
       6. Instead of having distributors in China, they took it over and marketed on TMall themselves. 20% growth yoy, but last year at 80% growth (http://gateway17.com/case-study-arcteryx/)
       7. Their growth strategy:
          1. “Growth comes from consumer centric product excellence, in store excellence, distribution coverage expansion and investing in brand awareness”, Wauters sums up.  (https://www.amersports.com/2014/01/arcteryx-growing-with-confidence/)
       8. Now has over 3000 storefronts since first store in 2006. Opening 4 stores in London, Vancouver, Shanghai, and Seattle in ~2014. Several hundred more stores / storefronts each year as part of their expansion plan.
       9. They are very aware of online growth. Also they partner with many athletes. They’ve been hosting athlete academies for over 10 years now too. But this last one is probably less of a growth hack.
4. Great team
   1. A team member is not expensive if they can generate more revenue than their salary
   2. Team must have pride in the company! How? Company is successful, direct exposure to customers being happy with product, pride in quality, and seeing growth.
   3. Will consider disclosing our income to Jay so he can be on more tasks.
   4. Transparency is good. Companies disclose their revenue too. It helps our staff know that we are winning. Especially if we share our income increase month over month, year over year
   5. Give team the opportunity to earn more, based on their personality. For example Jay loves to write. Should let him write about KT and earn a commission.
   6. Another team member might be driving more sales via IG referrals
   7. Or if they opt to not do these, still give incentive to perform well by measuring customer satisfaction level, returning customer rate, etc. Or give a yearly bonus based on company performance. This will be great incentive that is not toooo direct, so they won’t spoil the customer unnecessarily, but will have this higher goal of driving more sales and customers. (Make sure to not burn out my team, lose money by over-spoiling customers, etc.)
   8. Staff needs to have some control over sales and marketing, so they feel empowered to drive our revenue up! Repeat customers, etc.
   9. Is there a way to know the best way to incentivize a staff?
   10. Personality test on all staff I hire to test compatibility and to better understand how to lead.
   11. I don’t want my VA to lose the focus of their task, and dive too deep into spending their personal or work time trying out things unsuccessfully to drive sales. And I don’t want them to be too salesy, too commission driven. I don’t want them to destroy the brand with garbage articles or pushy customer service. And I don’t want them to not want to do the regular tasks because they are spending time making reports etc.
   12. Idea: Only on certain days they can work on driving more sales.
   13. Idea: customer care team is different from sales team. Do not share incentivizers. CC team should not be centivized by commission. Maybe just customer satisfaction.
   14. Need a VA who really understands Amazon so can deal with review / listing merge/split. Can potentially train Jay for this.
5. Better customer engagement and community culture. We want cult fans!
   1. Impact Theory University – learn how to build fan base
6. Marketing
   1. More stores
      1. Tradeshows or send samples?
      2. Which stores to target?
         1. jewelry
         2. sports
         3. police / firefighter / medical stores
      3. How to not lose the brand awareness while in these unromantic stores?
         1. classy brand packaging with strong brand image/message/story and with custom messages for the niche (e.g. use quotes from customers in this niche), or, even easier, amazing PDQ customized for the niche.
      4. Study the success and failures of Enso and Qalo in stores
7. Sales channels expansion
   1. Walmart (brand consistent?)
   2. Aim at big orgs. Hospital and more. We know them already. Firefighters, police, vets, army, etc.
   3. Be even more creative in finding new niches. Travellers, nomads, vegabonders, burners.
   4. Hire excellent sales people. Ask Laurent. Try John.
   5. Try sales people who belong to these specific niches.
8. Excellent wholesale program
9. Excellent referral program
10. Subscription program?
11. Study growth hack methods
12. Who can we partner with for growth and brand building?
    1. Influencers who are our audience and our fan
       1. e.g. athletes, moms, couples, relationship experts, people who work with their hands
       2. On our website promote the fact that we are always seeking partners
       3. On our website promote openness, inclusiveness, diversity
       4. Spotlight on our partners (stores, people, brands)
13. IG Growth:
    1. Hire an expert to revamp the account, come up with a strategy, set goals, and oversee the initial 3 months
    2. Have a guideline for aethetics of photos and posts
    3. Set up a way to always have high quality photos
       1. partner / sponsor influencers who already do high quality photos
       2. hire instagram photogs (e.g. from airbnb)
       3. work with photogs around the world
    4. Have milestones
    5. Have roadmaps and a continual, consistent action plan:
       1. influencer outreach
       2. giveaways / contests
       3. strategic partnerships
       4. community building
       5. growing and maintaining brand awareness on the account
       6. how often to post, what to post. e.g. Every Thursday post about excellence. Every Saturday post a cute animal.
       7. Measure response: engagement, conversion, shares, etc.
14. I’ve done this writeup before. Read what I wrote there too.

Today I was extra frustrated. Artsy was home and Briana was screaming while I took a nap. Atomic bike shop guy didn’t listen to me when I told him how to put the bike in. He ended up scratching the inside of my car. Fuck. It made me so mad.

Bunny was gonna call me when he was done skating, but he didn’t.

I talked to Mom on the phone and felt better.

Called him at 10:30. He told me that he called 3 times at around 8:40. Somehow I didn’t receive these calls. I was somehow more furious, because he didn’t try whatsapp.

We had a long talk for over an hour. I was mad at him and wanted to break up for real this time.

He didn’t really resist. He said if that’s what I want. He doesn’t want more anger in his life.

We talked more and my effort to make him feel less sad about his financial situation right now just made him feel even worse.

It was just all around terrible.

We said good night eventually. Not on bad terms, but, I really really need to break up with him this time.

I’ll want to change my mind, I know. But remember:

1. How lonely I felt when he came over and sat on the balcony alone
2. How unchallenged I felt when he does not reply with witty comebacks
3. How unfunny I felt when he does not laugh at my jokes
4. How uninspired I felt when he kept going in circles about his woes, can’t cheer up, rejected everything I said.
5. How stressed I felt trying to help his visual migraine problem
6. How angry I felt when he tells a “funny” story and it is about some car driver being an asshole
7. How unimportant I felt when he never wanted to hangout for longer than 3 hours, and always put skating and his friends first
8. How sad I felt when, nothing I did seem to help him feel better
9. How alienated I felt when he didn’t want to talk about the bad, and couldn’t communicate very well at all.
10. How unromanced I felt, when he didn’t remember our anniversary, didn’t celebrate my birthday, didn’t do anything proactive for Valentine’s Day.

This relationship is really not worth it for me anymore.

Sex was getting better, and he is very hot, butttttt

It’s gotten to a point where, I’m better off just masturbating and not have to deal with the other shit he brings into my life.

It’ll be tough, not having a Bunny to call at night. Not having reliable sex. Sigh. But I need to do this.

I hope his life gets better. I hope he finds a great girlfriend.

I hope I find a great boyfriend.

July 20, Johnny Bunny’s bday.

Boy, I’ve tried so hard to give him someone good. Hypnotist, psychic, etc. He is not interested in these.

We ended up going to Stem, Japanese eatery, for their omakase. It was quite nice!

But he is as usual quiet and hard to talk to. It was painful.

There were occasional fun moments, when we asked each other “would you rather” questions. He came up with some good ones. But overall, he was too quiet for me to hear. He was not responsive.

Every time we eat together, I want to break up immediately.

Sigh.

We came back to my place and had sex. The drive was hard for him because the lights were too bright.

Sex was fine. He came too fast so I had to finish myself off. Twice. Sigh.

I really really want to break up with him. I can’t take it anymore.

He is in such a dire state,  I don’t want to leave him high and dry…. he will need some major mindset shifts though.

My ideal life:

Live in a beautiful luxury place with views of water, with neighbours close by but I still have complete privacy. For example a high rise penthouse in Vancouver, with skylight, green house, indoor plants including trees, waterfall. Everything is grounded energetically. Have some grass. Modern and minimalistic decor. FIR sauna. Big balcony to host guests. Sea salt pool and hot tub. Shared, or, not-shared, but built in a way that I feel fine to use it even at night haha. Swim naked. Yes!

Voice activated smart house. drone servants.

Lots of anti-aging and brain-boosting devices. Like NanoVi, Cryotank, etc.

Private Chef. Personal Assistant. They live in the building!

I own 2 floors! One for office, one for home. Iron Man style.

Chef and assistant live in one of these floors too.

The next thing I visualize the most about is relationships. I have lots of cool friends who want to visit me! About 200. Like Tom Bilyeu and Dave Asprey have lot of cool friends.

They are interesting, inspiring, sincere people doing cool stuff.

To achieve this, it’s time for me to STEP UP!

Do amazing things.

Because of these friends, doors are open for me to try the latest, most cutting edge things. In beauty, in mind and body enhancements, in technology.

An of course, my health is excellent. I eat well sleep well, am happy, energized, and joyful. I laugh all the time. I have sex several times a week.

My boyfriend is my soulmate. He is smart, funny, and thinks the same of me. We are both successful, thoughtful, mindful, and we love each other. We both have the growth mindset so we are always learning and doing awesome things.

We live in such a big place, we don’t crowd each other. We both get lots of “me time” and “together time”. Love is wonderful. We are also best friends.

My ideal day is to wake up in this beautiful place, with my boyfriend in the place. We have amazing, intimate morning sex, or we cuddle furiously 🙂

We do our passion projects if it happens to be a “work day”. We are mostly concept people now. Others execute. We give the big, creative ideas and vision.

Sometimes we travel spontaneously!

At lunch, chef makes us delicious and healthy lunch, full of our favourite foods. We have hilarious conversations.

In the afternoon, we do some sports together, or hang out with friends together or separate. Or we work some more.

In the evening, it’s either a quiet night where the chef makes us dinner, or we invite friends over for a fun dinner, or we go to visit friends. Always enjoyable.

We wrap up the night with some cool mind and body enhancing tech. Sometimes we have sex. Twice everyday is too much, so we do it once a day, 3 to 5 times a week. We love touching each other. We love loving each other.

That’s it! That’s my ideal life. So simple! 😀

Great living environment, great health, passion project to work on, lots of socializing with cool sincere funny friends, loving each other with the love of my life. That’s it!

I truly think that there’s something relating to “charge” that can destress us. I feel a certain “charge” in me that goes away after:

being in summer air

being in the forrest

shower

green juice

exercise

swim

sleeping on soft bamboo sheet

There’s something here.

—

How do you know if you have high EMF or positive ion level or stress?

—

EZ water seems so magical.

I’m thinking:

natural wood flooring with grounding

something for the face – antiaging

something more powerful than IFR sauna and does not heat you up

does shower do something similar? negative ions

simulated forrest air. Ah…that must be what his device does?

blend tumeric, butter, and salt?

clothes, bedding, fabrics that help with this

imagine feeling that lack of stress, that lightness, always!