I managed to read another chapter earlier before I start doing all the new years eve stuff today. This chapter was titled “Passion, Passion, Passion!” As the title implies, it was mostly about doing the things that you love to do in life first and foremost as the money will come afterwards. There was also a lengthy part about being able to handle pressure where Trump talks about how he owed banks billions of dollars in debt during the real estate crash in the 90’s which was one of his ways to prove that he could perform under pressure.

He then dived a bit into relationship building and how even though he owed the banks a lot of money, he treated them well before and as a result they weren’t as hard on him as they were to others. He used an example of a person who was the opposite and had a very pompous attitude towards others including the banks. When the person was in trouble and needed a favor from the bank, they were more than motivated to not help him.

Trump used an interesting quote that I haven’t heard of before stating “Be careful who you step on going up because you meet the same people coming down”. How true is that I thought as even from my experiences it’s just funny how the people you have met in your past often play a role in your future as well. Trump also talks about learning from other people’s mistakes as it is a lot faster than going through it yourself as well as having that never giving up mentality.

It was interesting afterwards as he talked about that Apprentice candidate Michelle who decided to quit the show as it was evident that she performed poorly on a task and was more than likely to be the one who was going to get fired. This made him talk about quitters and if young people today have what it takes. He references a psychologists study on how young people nowadays are more narcissistic and self-centered as a result of being fed with too many compliments and in his view this is a big reason why many people grow up with an entitlement mentality and that they always quit when they don’t get something right away.

The whole message in the chapter I thought was basically do what you love to do and learn to respect and appreciate things in life.

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The title of this chapter is “Do You Have What It Takes?”. For the most part, the chapter discussed about how the top 2% of the people in the world all share a similar trait and how you can’t see life in a fairy tale way, so to speak. Trump is pretty blunt on how it’s tough in the real world as people are going to cheat and steal from you and that you have to be prepared to fight back. He then devised this little quiz that you could take to see if you fit the mentality of a person who has the right attitude to succeed in his view.

For the most part, the best answers with his system seemed to be a fairly straight forward way of thinking from a business point of view anyways. There were two questions that caught my attention though. One of them asks “What is your attitude towards people?” with one of the choices being “I believe people are generally good and would never lie, cheat, or steal from me”. That caught my attention because this year there is a situation where I thought there would be an exception to that and so I did put my guard down by a lot more than normal. Sure enough, it did happen eventually in a big way and fortunately I did not get knocked down cold over it while being prepared to fight back.

The other point talked about marriages and the use of a prenuptial agreement. Obviously with Trump’s personal experiences, he would consider that as the right/smart thing to do. I’m guessing this one would probably generate the most controversy as I’m sure there are a lot of people who would say something along the lines of you shouldn’t even get married if you can’t trust the other. Touchy subject for a lot of people though. Afterwards, Zanker throws in his bit about how one needs to be persistent in order to succeed.

Overall, I was surprised at how blunt the message was in this chapter in terms of the possibility of getting hurt is large and how you have to develop the plan/attitude to be able to rise from the occasion. It wasn’t done in a negative way but rather from a realistic point of view which I thought was great.

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So I decided that I am going to start reading the book “Think Big and Kick Ass In Business and Life” that I received back when I attended that learning annex event as you all may recall. It’s been awhile since I blogged about a book too, so I figured the timing is appropriate.

The authors of the book are Donald Trump and Bill Zanker who is the founder of The Learning Annex. Not really sure what to expect personally, but as usual learning from other people’s experiences can be a great way to help you achieve more.

The Introduction mostly focused on Zanker and how he built the Learning Annex from a measly $5000 in funds. After meeting and acquiring Donald Trump’s services while incorporating his way of thinking, he mentions that his business has been booming ever since.

The interesting detail for me was how Zanker mentioned that at first he couldn’t get through Trump’s secretary as his pitch to get Trump to speak at his event for one day was $10,000 which was immediately disregarded. He then mentioned how he remembered a saying from Tony Robbins on how if one wants to make it big in life that you have to push yourself beyond your limitations to a point of extreme adrenaline. As a result, he went crazy and told Trump’s secretary that he would offer Trump one million dollars to speak at an event for a day. Evidently, Trump responded to him personally in regards to that afterwards and the rest is history.

I guess that answers one of my questions before where I was wondering how much Trump got paid to speak at those events. That’s definitely a very interesting example of risk taking in life too.

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People have been informing me about a situation that they have experienced in trying to buy a laptop on boxing day through various Future Shop stores here in BC. Based on all the information I received, it seems like the company advertised a Toshiba laptop that was being sold with very limited quantities at a low price of $499. However, people are complaining that they were forced into buying a $99 recovery disc of some sort as a mandatory add on as they were told the laptop would not work without it.

I then contacted some of the people that I know who would have inside knowledge of this to try and get a better understanding if this was a corporate decision or simply one bad management decision from a store level on a case by case basis. From what I was told, there were instructions given that about half of the laptops were to be pre-configured in an attempt to get people to buy the $99 add-on although some stores got greedy and made all of them as such. I guess that is certainly a good reason for people to complain about false advertising.

The senior vice president of the company did issue this statement on the company’s web site forum:

Dear Customer,

Future Shop is committed to delivering great customer service and honouring all of our consumer policies

In an effort to make customer shopping experiences in our stores faster and more convenient, especially during high traffic days like Boxing Day, a percentage of laptops and desktop computers are pre-configured with set-up and recovery CDs.

If you feel you were not given the option to buy a laptop or desktop computer without the pre-configured package on Boxing Day, we apologize for this inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us to request a refund. Contact us at your convenience either in-store, at 1-800-663-2275 (select language option and then select 2), or send an email to service@futureshop.com.

We are deeply committed to ensuring our customers are satisfied and that their interactions with our stores, web site, and call centres all deliver that promise. This is of the utmost importance to the Future Shop team.

Sincerely,

Moe Amirie

Senior Vice President

I was asked what recovery discs were too. Generally speaking, it is simply a tool used to start up your computer in situations such as if you downloaded a virus and your computer won’t turn on properly anymore. So it is no way a mandatory requirement initially and you can easily create one yourself for free.

One thing that was kind of shocking to me though was how apparently a store technician had to actually open the new laptop in question to create the disc as well as essentially having to sign the End User Licensing Agreement for the customer. Granted no one usually reads those, but it sure places the business in a sticky situation.

As mentioned above, you can request for a refund if you were one of the people who were forced into buying the $99 disc. Would this be considered as shady business practices you say? I personally wasn’t there so I can’t really comment on whether or not they were simply trying to profit off the less technically savvy crowd who were in that shopping frenzy mode.

One thing that I do know is that retail is an extremely low margin business and very often people resort to misleading others to make a profit. Although to be fair, sometimes it is a result of ignorance from the person serving you. May as well save your money by getting a refund if you are one of the people who feel was tricked into buying that recovery disc.

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I have been seeing signs pop up recently on how there will be a fare increase for people who use public transit in 2008. I remember a few years back when there was a fare increase that any old unused tickets that were still in circulation would be honored.

As a result, many people began to buy stacks of transit tickets to save money for the next year and I’m sure that may be a good idea for some next year as well. Of course, if you are one who uses it extensively then it still makes more sense to just buy a monthly pass.

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