How I Became A Millionaire Doing Nothing
Yup, it’s true. I am now about to become a millionaire. According to an email from Felix Ahmed, the only Son of late Ahmed Bello, I am now in the position to make 15% of 10.5 million dollars. Do the math and that is $1,575,000.00. Not too bad for doing absolutely nothing. Well, I should take that back, I still have to send Felix my bank account information and social security number so that he can transfer the money over since he can’t take out the money and deposit it himself.
How?
By now I know what you are thinking: How did I run across such luck? Very simple actually: doing pretty much nothing. Felix did all the work. Felix spent many hours gathering email addresses and picked my email out of the hundreds and thousands and decided that I was going to be the lucky one who gets nearly $1.6 million dollars. All I would have to do in exchange is give a little bit of information. Now I realized that he did all the work and that I would get all the rewards so I decided to write him an email back thanking him. The correspondence is as follows:
Failure: Why Are People Laughing?
If you have ever used Twitter, you may have come across the infamous ‘fail whale.’ While you may wonder what the fail whale actually is, it is quite self-explanatory. When their is an error or an overload of users on Twitter, users will find themselves staring a whale being carried over water by tiny birds. With so many errors on Twitter and users finding themselves staring at a fail whale so often, one would expect angry and annoyed tweeples. Instead, it is quite the opposite.
The fail whale has become something of a phenomenon in that what was just supposed to be an error page for Twitter, has now become an iconic logo. Originally created by Twitter user yiyinglu, the fail whale has made ‘failure’ profitable and also amusing.
Enjoying Others Fail
So what is about the fail whale that makes failure acceptable? Most would agree that failure is a disappointing and it would be shocking to hear someone say that they take pleasure out of seeing someone ‘fail.’ Still, it is a growing trend that is making failure become laughable and amusing.
The biggest reason for this growing trend stems from the direction that television shows and most recently the internet have begun to dip toward. For the last 19 years, America’s Funniest Home Videos has been bringing laughter to families across the nation. While shows consist of dogs doing tricks and kids saying funny things, it does include segments where someone ultimately ‘fails’ and gets hurt. This has been AFHV’s bread and butter. Without it, they wouldn’t be the same. Audiences watch because they want to see failure. Not only do they want it, but they almost demand it.
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Help! Technology Stole My Childhood
Whether it’s texting a friend or downloading the newest song off iTunes, being a kid has changed drastically. Gone are the days of waking up for Saturday morning cartoons and in are chatrooms and spending hours watching YouTube. It can be argued that technology has made our lives easier and enables us to accomplish more, but to say that technology has improved life all around is far fetched.
Do you remember when you would wake up Saturday mornings and watch The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or go over to your friends house for a sleep over and get excited when you could stay up past your bedtime? You may not remember all the details, but you do remember how much fun it was to be a kid. As a kid you worried about when you would lose your next tooth and whether you would get the ‘nice’ teacher at school. Nowadays, kids have different priorities and different agendas.
To give you an idea of what kids know and do now, I asked some 11 year olds the other day if they knew what “Monopoly” and “Jenga” was to which they responded no. When asked if he knew who Britney Spears and 50 Cent were, they knew immediately. 11 year olds don’t know popular board games, but do know pop sex idol, Britney Spears, and rapper 50 Cent. Do you see something wrong here? Kids are growing up too fast and technology has a huge part in this.
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Don’t Move Out of Los Angeles & Expect To Come Back
Whether you’re into sun tanning at the beach or into shopping on Rodeo Drive, you can do just about anything in Los Angeles. With so many great options, outsiders may wonder why people even think of leaving Los Angeles.
When I graduated college, a few of my friends mentioned to me that after college they wanted to get out of Los Angeles. While I respected their choices, being an LA native my whole life I had to question their reasoning. Perhaps it is just my biased opinion, but LA is unique compared to other cities. No where in the United States can you find a city as large and as diverse. Yes, you can make the argument that other cities are just as diverse, but not only is LA diverse ethnically, but it is diverse in its personality. LA is known for having the ‘glitz’ and ‘glamour’ but it is more than that. Living here my whole life I realized when I visited other large cities that LA has a personality unlike any other. LA has a sort of swagger to it. Perhaps it is the laid back nature of its citizens on the weekends and the intense workaholics on the weekday’s that give LA such a unique balance of work and play.
So what makes people leave?
While it may not be the million dollar question, it is a question that has many possible answers.
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You Are A Superhero
Do you work 9-5, have a family to take care of at home and feel like the world is on your shoulders? If so you might be a superhero. Don’t believe me? Well I don’t know if I would either. As a child I learned from watching Saturday morning cartoons and reading comic books that superhero’s were these ‘god-like’ characters that would save the girl and defeat the bad guy. They didn’t have families, they didn’t have jobs, they were just superheroes.
In the 2004 Disney blockbuster hit, The Incredibles, we are introduced to the Parr Family. The Parr’s are a reflection of the average American family in that they face many of the same issues that family’s face. From the struggle to spend quality time with family to money issues, The Parr’s resemble a ‘real-life’ family that most people can relate too. As we all know though, Disney puts a twist to it all. The Parr’s are actually superheroes trying to fit into society. The movie may seem like another made for kids movie, but it has a deeper meaning to it. While its messages may not be as obvious as such movies such as Crash, it is able to connect with society based on its stereotypes and social messages.
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The Global Startup
One of the hardest things you can attempt to do is to turn a startup into a successful company. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say the startup I am part of is a success, we have made significant strides toward it. I have heard that startup companies fail for many reasons. From poor leadership to lack of funding, the odds are against you, but that is how we like it.
Aside from the common obstacles that most startups face, we at Future Delivery have a unique obstacle that most other startups don’t encounter. While I wouldn’t call our obstacle a problem, I would say that it poses a wild-card element to the startup life. Over last 2 years our company has gone through many changes. The biggest of which is the relocation of our CEO and the addition of new members to our team from different parts of the map. With 2 core team members in Los Angeles and 2 in Silicon Valley and several others in different parts ranging from Texas to Turkey, we are not just a startup, but a global startup.
Our CEO, Yu-Kai Chou moved to Silicon Valley in a move that he felt would make the company stronger in terms of being able to network with tech savvy individuals in that area as well as meet investors for our company. Currently, Jun Loayza and myself are here in the Los Angeles area working primarily on marketing. With such a great distance between us, the question is how does this affect us? Now it would be a lie if I said that everything is fine, but in all honesty we would love it if we could all be in the same area working together. This past week I was able to meet up with Yu-Kai and spend some time working along side him as well as getting to know him better.
It’s Nothing Personal, It’s Just Business
For almost a decade, John Calipari led the Memphis Tigers Men’s Basketball team to multiple NCAA basketball tournaments, several Sweet 16’s, was named the Conference USA coach of the year four times and most recently was named the Naismith College Coach of the Year. With a resume like that, it makes you wonder why people now consider him a ‘traitor’ and ’sellout’ after all that he’s done for the University of Memphis and its basketball program. While there are obviously two sides to every story, what happened between Memphis and John Calipari leaving for the University of Kentucky happens everywhere.
John Calipari saw an opportunity. Not just any opportunity, but the opportunity of a lifetime. The opportunity to coach one of the most revered college teams in the NCAA and one marked with tradition and full of history. When the University of Kentucky came calling, John Calipari packed his bags. In the perfect world, coaches would fall in love with their schools and never leave, but as everyone knows, nothing is perfect. The University of Kentucky gave John Calipari a chance at something he so desperately wanted: a Championship.
In the business world, most everyone can relate to John Calipari’s situation in one way or another. When a job opportunity comes your way that pays better and gives you a chance to put yourself in a better situation, instinct says you should take it. If that is the case, then what did John Calipari do wrong? He will make more money and with a bigger name school and John’s name on the Mens basketball program, getting recruits to come to Kentucky will be simple. From the business perspective, John made the right choice in leaving, but from the fans and others views, he is simply a ’sellout.’
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