harsh—a challenge for Chinese people, whose nature is to speak louder than most Westerners.
“Okay, but what happens when someone is rude to you at the third level of rudeness?” asked the editor, as if putting us both through a ballistic defense exercise.
“Keeping your dignity after being insulted depends upon how you react,” I added to the text. “Nothing is lost by taking the higher ground, and many times the best solution to being insulted is to not confront the person who has been rude.”
It was at this point that I had to admit to myself it was easier to write such a thing than to do it.
Each of us has a different threshold of tolerance when it comes to the rudeness of others. I react to rudeness by being a model of politeness myself. This reversed equation of behavior equips me with verbal tools to attack aggressive rudeness with sarcasm and provides me with a benefit of doubt when bearing witness to casual rudeness. I have been known, however, to frighten people when my patience has been entirely expended, especially when it comes to business matters.
It is not much of an exaggeration to say that I am impossibly obstinate when my unyielding determination refuses to listen to reason. But it also must be said that, unattractive as it is in an unvarnished state, tenacity is the thing entrepreneurism is made of. It was my unattractively willful self that enabled me to consider launching a magazine in L.A., never having lived there and with absolutely no experience in magazine publishing.
PART FIVE
The Cost of Doing Business
He who has never been cheated cannot be a good businessman.
—
Chinese proverb
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
R obert deferred his legal bills, which made forming Buzz Inc. possible, and I left New York with barely enough seed money to launch the magazine in L.A.
A year of nonstop work produced impressive results: newsstand sales, subscriptions, and advertising revenue performed better than the figures driving our business model. But in business—as in life—timing can hold success hostage. The day we entered a second stage of financing, the stock market plummeted five hundred points and our funding disappeared. More time was bought by collateralizing ad revenue already committed from the magazine’s multi-issue contracts in order to borrow enough money to publish two more issues. Sales continued to climb; still, no funding came.
After months of trying to finance the magazine, I was prepared to give up when we realized we couldn’t pay for the rented office furniture anymore. Then the one remaining phone rang. It was an unknown Englishman calling from Bangkok.
“I’ve been on holiday in Hawaii, where I came across a copy of your magazine,” explained the Englishman, who introduced himself by name only.
How on earth did a copy of the magazine end up in Hawaii?
I wondered.
“Is the company that owns the magazine private?” asked the Englishman.
“Yes …?” I said, more question than confirmation.
“I represent the proprietor of a major media company based in Bangkok who’s looking for investments in the United States, preferably in L.A.,” was what the Englishman told me.
THE PRACTICE OF eighteenth-century Thai monarchs to take daughters of wealthy Chinese as concubines created two distinct advantages for the Thais: it established political connections in China, and it encouraged Chinese merchants to infiltrate trading houses in Thailand, which kept the Europeans in line.
Sondhi Limthongkul is a Chinese Thai, which makes him an entrepreneur by nature and design—one who had multiplied a single business publication into thirty more and a personal fortune.
I flew to Bangkok to meet him.
Travel without your family is a different kind of travel. Enrichment comes by what is experienced from what you—and sometimes only you—know of yourself. In fact, some of the best moments in travel lose their moments when, afterward, you are forced to describe them anecdotally to someone
“Okay, but what happens when someone is rude to you at the third level of rudeness?” asked the editor, as if putting us both through a ballistic defense exercise.
“Keeping your dignity after being insulted depends upon how you react,” I added to the text. “Nothing is lost by taking the higher ground, and many times the best solution to being insulted is to not confront the person who has been rude.”
It was at this point that I had to admit to myself it was easier to write such a thing than to do it.
Each of us has a different threshold of tolerance when it comes to the rudeness of others. I react to rudeness by being a model of politeness myself. This reversed equation of behavior equips me with verbal tools to attack aggressive rudeness with sarcasm and provides me with a benefit of doubt when bearing witness to casual rudeness. I have been known, however, to frighten people when my patience has been entirely expended, especially when it comes to business matters.
It is not much of an exaggeration to say that I am impossibly obstinate when my unyielding determination refuses to listen to reason. But it also must be said that, unattractive as it is in an unvarnished state, tenacity is the thing entrepreneurism is made of. It was my unattractively willful self that enabled me to consider launching a magazine in L.A., never having lived there and with absolutely no experience in magazine publishing.
PART FIVE
The Cost of Doing Business
He who has never been cheated cannot be a good businessman.
—
Chinese proverb
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
R obert deferred his legal bills, which made forming Buzz Inc. possible, and I left New York with barely enough seed money to launch the magazine in L.A.
A year of nonstop work produced impressive results: newsstand sales, subscriptions, and advertising revenue performed better than the figures driving our business model. But in business—as in life—timing can hold success hostage. The day we entered a second stage of financing, the stock market plummeted five hundred points and our funding disappeared. More time was bought by collateralizing ad revenue already committed from the magazine’s multi-issue contracts in order to borrow enough money to publish two more issues. Sales continued to climb; still, no funding came.
After months of trying to finance the magazine, I was prepared to give up when we realized we couldn’t pay for the rented office furniture anymore. Then the one remaining phone rang. It was an unknown Englishman calling from Bangkok.
“I’ve been on holiday in Hawaii, where I came across a copy of your magazine,” explained the Englishman, who introduced himself by name only.
How on earth did a copy of the magazine end up in Hawaii?
I wondered.
“Is the company that owns the magazine private?” asked the Englishman.
“Yes …?” I said, more question than confirmation.
“I represent the proprietor of a major media company based in Bangkok who’s looking for investments in the United States, preferably in L.A.,” was what the Englishman told me.
THE PRACTICE OF eighteenth-century Thai monarchs to take daughters of wealthy Chinese as concubines created two distinct advantages for the Thais: it established political connections in China, and it encouraged Chinese merchants to infiltrate trading houses in Thailand, which kept the Europeans in line.
Sondhi Limthongkul is a Chinese Thai, which makes him an entrepreneur by nature and design—one who had multiplied a single business publication into thirty more and a personal fortune.
I flew to Bangkok to meet him.
Travel without your family is a different kind of travel. Enrichment comes by what is experienced from what you—and sometimes only you—know of yourself. In fact, some of the best moments in travel lose their moments when, afterward, you are forced to describe them anecdotally to someone
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