Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Treat Every Day Like It's Your First Day as an Intern

On March 28, 2012, I landed in Hong Kong and Mary's good friend, Christi, met me at the airport. Then, we went to Mary's place where she had a glass enclosure on her rooftop.  That was where I spent two months, most of my trip. Her glass room was actually quite spacious by Hong Kong standards. Hong Kong usually has a whole family of four or five crammed into a 500-square-foot apartment if they’re lucky.  I had almost 200 square feet to myself on the roof and the only issue was that during the day, it would become a greenhouse and by 7 a.m. in the morning would be so hot that I would suffocate and sweat to death if I tried to sleep in. So, I had to wake up at 7 a.m., which meant going to bed really early to get a good night’s sleep. That proved to be impossible for the following two months.

When I landed in Hong Kong, I was ready to take on Asia and learn everything my mentor Mr. Princeton knew. My first day there was uneventful because I landed and he just told me to rest. Next morning, he told me to be at his hotel by 8 a.m. I arrived there the next morning at 7:55 and waited for him. When he came down, we went to a nearby cafe. He lives at Hung Hom station at the Harborview estates, where a tiny little cafe is attached to the condo. There, he pulled out a pen and started writing down what my goals were for the trip—what my goals really are in life. He asked me "What are you looking for? What makes you get up in the morning?" So I told him that I was looking to be retired by 30.  I needed to figure out a strategy to get me to that point where I have automated income by 30. One solution I saw to the problem of automated income was to get two million dollars and put that in the bank and that would generate a little over 100 thousand a year at a 5% interest. I told Mr. Princeton that was what I wanted to accomplish.  He said OK, and asked, "Why?" I told him I really want free time to innovate and invent in a field about which I care.  The field I really care about is renewable energy; I want to take that money and spend the time to create a renewable energy company. Then he asked me why, again. I saw this goal as a way solve the world’s energy problems.  I felt that there's abundance around us and people just don’t realize we are surrounded by abundance. I want to bring this abundance to the world.  He asked me why again, "Why does this matter?"  I said I want to leave a legacy; I want to be known. I know eventually I'll die, but I want the world to remember me for doing something important.  At the time, I didn't realize Mr. Princeton was using the ‘Five Why's’ approach to teach, used by Toyota lean manufacturing.  He wanted to really understand what drove me, what made me tick.

We ended up having breakfast together and he took me to the very first meeting, at the main LoyalPlus office, which at the time was in TST (Tsim Sha Tsui). It was a beautiful building called Number 1, Peking Road and I believe the LoyalPlus office was on the 12th floor, overlooking a beautiful harbour view. The rent was easily several hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars a month and it was very impressive.

Our first meeting was very intense. I was introduced to LoyalPlus, a loyalty program similar to AIR MILES or Aeroplan.  Their model is similar to the North American SPC program. Instead of targeting students, it targets Chinese customers coming into Hong Kong. LoyalPlus takes the role of being a tour guide who tells you about all the best spots.  It introduces people to stores or services, and these merchants give them a discount. How LoyalPlus makes its money is by taking a cut of the discount. For example: The merchant offers $10 off a $100 dollar purchase as an incentive to LoyalPlus members. LoyalPlus takes $3 of the $10 as a fee, then passes $7 in savings to the members. LoyalPlus already has several hundred merchants signed up. The secret is that the loyalty program is basically an MLM. You actually could become a franchisee and you can have franchisee promoters and also members under you. So you actually can buy into the program as a franchisee and then sell points or sell membership cards or give membership cards away to your individual members and they go and spend. You, as the franchisee, get a cut of every transaction that happens under you. Essentially, it’s a multi-level marketing reward program, so it was actually very interesting seeing this model.