Going to China — Studying Chinese Again For Business

January 24, 2015 by admin
Categories: About Us | Leave a comment

Since I was eighteen, I longed to be involved in international trade. My country of interest was China although any country interested me. I am forty-six now and still interested. I studied Chinese in college. I became semi-fluent while living in Taiwan. But, I never mastered the language. I got busy with work. I started an online directory which became very successful and zapped up a lot of my time. Years past. I was living in a Chinese part of California teaching English for a few years. But, I got tired of lazy students and rude school administrators. So, that is when I undertook the Notary career and a few years later started an online Notary directory which gets a million clicks every 43 days or so — amazing. From rags to riches in only a few years of backbreaking work, luck and solid business strategy.

So, now my business is mature. It still needs a lot of my time. But, I have some time leftover now. My psychic keeps telling me I’m going to Dubai to meet a wealthy businessman who will hire me to do his bidding in China. But, my Chinese language skills need to be top notch, and I need to impress him with my skills in social media, business and other things as well.

So, part of the process is to continue learning Chinese. I am studying at home, watching television with an online dictionary by my side. And I’m going to China probably sometime this year. Shanghai is my city of choice, although I’d like to visit Beijing. But, roughly 50% of the international business that goes on in China happens within 100 miles of Shanghai. There are dozens of large cities driving distance from Shanghai, and my psychic advisor told me to get to know the area well. He says my strength in business will be my ability to read people and analyze business situations and scrutinize. After living in India briefly, I understand that you have to watch everyone. The minute you stop watching they pull a fast one!

So, that is my plan. I’m excited. And I’m enjoying studying Chinese again. I’m visiting my old neighborhood near San Gabriel to enjoy amazing Chinese food. I have to drive from my current residence in Los Angeles which is about 18 miles away. But, the neighborhood has changed. It used to be more Cantonese, Shanghainese and Taiwanese people in the San Gabriel area. Now there are people from Beijing, Tianjin, Shan-Dong, Xi-An, Xin-Jiang, Sze-Chuan, Yun-Nan, and many other parts of mainland China that never used to be there in such large numbers. The minority became the majority and I’m trying to become and expert at their food. Spicy cumin lamb sandwiches are a favorite. But, I’ll pass on the beef tripe and frog stew.

So, wish me luck studying Chinese and see you in Shanghai!

Today was the best day of my life!

January 23, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest, Software Development | Leave a comment

We all have good days, but today was the best day of my life in many ways.

I had a migration that I had tried to do since January of 2013. Every programmer I put on this task failed miserably. One couldn’t connect with the server and couldn’t function communicating with the server company. The next one cheated me and never finished the job leaving me with a huge and unreasonable bill. I had other programmers offer to help me, but they all left me high and dry. One programmer charged me a deposit and then didn’t finish what he was working on. Finally, I found a programmer I liked, but he was really busy. He finished the migration, but he was on the project for five months. My old server was getting slower and slower, and I am relieved that nothing horrible happened to it otherwise my data might have been compromised in some type of small way. Since I had multiple backups, we only would have lost a few weeks of data, but to me that is very serious. In any case, I am relieved that the task that haunted me is finally done.

To celebrate, I went to a very elite Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills and ordered some duck dumplings, basil sea bass, and quail. I wanted to get things that were different and boy were these different. It was a fun experience, and perhaps I’ll go back to Hakkasan!

Then, I had a massage which was very relaxing. The masseuse asked if I had smoked any marijuana since I was so happy. I said, no, but I was happy because two of my three largest recent problems had been solved! We had had a huge noise disturbance in my building with someone who played techno music 24 hours a day. I heard the bass and the boom boom boom of the beat softly in the distance and couldn’t sleep properly. What a nuisance. I had to talk to security seven times to get them to solve this problem. Why can’t they just fix things the first time around?

Sometimes I feel that all of the problems I have experienced in life are to prepare me for some future existence managing difficult people. Maybe I will die and be reborn into a business family and need to understand how to deal with complicated situations.

Last, I had a fun writing session with my writer and we created five new blog entries which are funny and entertaining with useful business tips integrated into the comedy as well.

So, today was a good day. I wish I could have more wonderful days. But, to have a great day, you have to have many troublesome days that are solved in that good day. I guess you can’t have the bad without the good. In any case, I want to take a nap and enjoy my relief! I’ll talk about my third unresolved problem later!

Alphabet — a collection of companies including Google

January 23, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Software Development | Leave a comment

There is a company which will serve as an umbrella company called Alphabet. Google will belong to Alphabet. However, Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be running Alphabet. It looks like a new structuring for an existing empire. The next bit of news is that Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Google. Sundar has been working at Google since 2004 and worked his way up to vice president of product.

The other departments of Alphabet will focus on Google contact lenses, driverless cars, drone delivery, robotics, and more. Alphabet will have several companies immediately under its umbrella which consist of Calico, Nest, Google X, Google Ventures, Google, Fiber, and Google Capital, while under Google’s authority will lie Android, Search, YouTube, Apps, Maps, and Ads.

The newer and independent companies will have more freedom to take risks investing in experimental projects such as driverless cars, etc. Google stock is up as a result and profits were healthy as well for Google.

Alphabet will trade under GOOGL, Tech30 and GOOG ticker symbols. But, this is confusing to me as GOOG stands for Google, not Alphabet in my mind. I think that Alphabet needs to coin their own ticker symbol — something like ABC for example?

Why you should hire a Bug Tester, a PM, and 5 programmers for a single job.

January 23, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management, Software Development | Tagged | Leave a comment

I just read an article that sums up my thoughts, but sums them up more eloquently than I ever could.

How to get the most out of outsourced programmers
http://www.forbes.com/sites/entrepreneursorganization/2014/10/27/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-outsourced-programmers/

I didn’t get it — at first
When I first started hiring programmers, I would interview, and then hire whomever sounded good. I was unaware that most programmers don’t follow directions, don’t finish anything on time, and don’t give a damn. The author of the above referenced author gets it.

The trick is not to hire “a” programmer.
You have to test them out and verify how good their work is. The trick is easy. You hire a project manager to watch the entire operation. How you hire a PM is not something I know anything around, but they exist. Next, you divide your task into small pieces. That way you can see if the programming companies you hire get anything done before committing to a large quantity of work. Divide the programming into pieces and hire separate companies to do the graphic work or other niche tasks.

Hiring a separate bug tester
That sounds like an intriguing job. “So, what exactly do you do?” “I’m a bug tester.” If you hire overseas programmers, most of them do sloppy work. I cannot imagine any of them doing clean programming work with great commenting. There is always a huge lack in refinement as well as high turnover. A programmer who is a piece of work will produce a piece of work. The next programmer who has to work on it will have to figure out what the commenting means and will have to spend hours trying to figure out how to adapt the code to remove bugs or add features. The first programmer will undoubtedly quit, and then the second who is hired to fix the first programmer’s work will quit in the middle of the project leaving you with a girl named Sandhia who will patiently work on the project until she gets pregnant and elects to stay home. You will play musical chairs with multiple programmers and end up with sloppy code. However — if you hire a separate bug tester or code evaluator from a separate company — preferably someone high paid who has a very good sense of what quality code looks like, you can see which company is giving you good coders (until the good coder quits or gets pregnant and is replaced by a bad coder.) There are companies in India that actually do have standards, but they are a small percentage.

Testing programmers out
You can give programmers small test projects and have the bug tester see if their work is up to snuff. If not, then don’t use them. The problem as I stated before is that programming houses often replace workers on a whim. If Rahul gets busy, then Vikesh might take over your project. Rahul has been tested, but Vikesh (who nobody informed you would be taking over) just screws everything up and doesn’t communicate.

Having a contract
If you deal with Indian or other overseas software houses, you have to realize that the quality of coding is generally very sloppy and could be referred to as “spaghetti code.” If your contract states that the company doesn’t get paid if they do a bait and switch with their programmers, or if the commenting on the code is not up to snuff, or if there are any bugs or serious issues, the company will be less likely to play tricks on you. Having deadlines that you enforce is critical too. In real life, you might have to kiss many frogs (who find that spaghetti laden ponds are their most well-suited environment) before you find your prince. You will have to fire a lot of the companies who work for you. So, make sure that they pay the bill for screwing up, not you! You will still be wasting your time working with irresponsible people, but let them pay for screwing up. After all, they are portraying themselves as “professionals.”

My advice
Don’t hire companies that charge $5-12 per hour for programmers unless it is standardized work like blog creation or shopping cart set up. Have contracts that state that you don’t pay until a project or part of a project is completed up to whatever your specifications are. Include specifications as to the “quality” of the code to get some assurance that the code won’t be a complete mess. Personally, I would not pay less than $22 for an Indian programmer in 2015. $20 is too much of a standard wage, and those who charge $15-20 are very run of the mill and often mediocre or sub-standard. I would not hire someone who can’t communicate intelligently over the phone in English. I would not hire someone with less than 10 years of experience, but experience alone is not good enough as many lie about how many years of experience they have. Others really do have the experience, but are incompetent in many ways. I would test people out with a few easy math problems over the phone to see if they can think. I would ask a few personality questions to see if they can talk (or mumble well.) And finally, make sure you give two test projects before giving any serious work. The first should be about three hours long and the second should be about fourteen hours long with a tight deadline or no pay! Compare bids on these projects and quality of the coding, how long it took, and how responsive they were. Really test these guys out because most of them are not worth their salt or their “ghee” as the case may be.

Weekly check ups
You absolutely have to check up on your programmers once or twice a week. Ideally, they should send you updates on schedule to let you know what is going on. The minute they start keeping secrets or not getting back to you, that is when you fire them. A programmer who stops being willing to communicate is one who will almost definitely screw up or not finish your project — or worse. You might get in a very bad verbal or legal fight with such programmers. Constant communication is a requirement that should be in your contract. The minute they try to convince you that regular communication is a “waste of time” or “not necessary” or that you should “just trust them” — just fire them! Immediately! No matter what!

The least efficient sized companies have 2-99 people

January 22, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Tagged | Leave a comment

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. There is a lot you need to know, a lot of adaptation, and a lot to learn. However, life is easy when you know that you can depend on #1 to “help you out.” The problem is when other people get into the picture. If you hire one other person, you can’t afford an HR department to replace them when they quit or slack off. You are dependent on that one person. In real life, that other person will not be as dedicated as you are to your baby (your business) even if they are an official partner. If that other person disappears, you will be left doing two people’s work yourself while you have yet a third job which is looking for a replacement. It is feast or famine! When you do everything yourself, you can be very efficient and reliable. But, when you have two, three or more people helping you (or letting you down) things are not as steady.

Large companies can have a hiring department. The people hiring can take analytics and weed people out very efficiently. Management can see how the track record of the new employees turns out to be. There can be twenty out o a hundred workers who are new and there just to be evaluated. If they do a good job, they’ll get promoted to a higher level, otherwise they’ll get canned. Companies with a hundred employees are in control. Companies with five employees are at the mercy of the employees.

One alternative is to have many part-timers. That way if someone quits, you only lose half an employee. Also, if you hire extra help, instead of paying for an entire extra person, you only need half a person which will only cost you 1 arm and 1 leg! Additionally, many employees at smaller businesses need to be able to multi-task since there isn’t that much of any particular type of task to do. Hiring part-timers allows you to have more individuals helping you who are highly specialized in what they are doing.

A good employee strategy model is critical. Rather than having all of your staff being at a particular level, it is important to have people who are very seasoned, and some people who are working their way up the ropes so to speak. That way if your seasoned folks quit, you will have someone to replace them with. Keep in mind that it isn’t always so easy to hire experienced people, so if you manufacture them yourself by giving them training and experience, you might get to keep them.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter exactly how many employees your operation has. It is how efficiently you hire, fire, train and manage them. It is often easier in an economy of scale, but a smart small company with experience and a philosophical mind or set of minds will figure out how to be efficient at leadership as well. So, good luck!

What is the best mix of business mentors you could get?

January 22, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Leadership | Leave a comment

If you run a business, you need advice even if you are really intelligent. But, what types of people are best to give advice? Sometimes it is not so obvious. The guy who hangs out at the bakery might give you good advice, but more often than not, you will need the types we are going to discuss below.

1. Someone who knows you
Someone who knows you well might not understand your business, but they know what makes you tick. They knew how you were as a child, and know what works for you and what doesn’t. Their input matters and you should consider it although they don’t know enough to make final decisions for you.

. Someone who understands business in general
It might be hard to find people who understand your exact industry or the current technology that you are using. But, basic business aptitude never goes out of style. Even a general from the 1400’s might be a good business coach for you as they know how to deal with soldiers which is a little like dealing with employees. Some with business knowledge understands hiring, firing, marketing, management, and a lot of other very basic types of business skills.

3. Someone who understands your industry or business
It is good to also get advice form people who know the type of business that you are in who did well. If you are in the plumbing business, someone older and more successful than you might be able to give you quite a few pointers.

4. Someone who understands parts of the technology you use.
If you need to focus on innovation for a year or two, that might not be the core of your business, but someone like Steve Jobs would be perfect to help you out assuming they were alive and had time. If you were doing more marketing with social media, someone who was a crackerjack with social media would be helpful to guide you along your way. Although those “specialist mentors” might not understand your business well, they could be very helpful with specific types of endeavors.

Having the right mix of mentors is critical to your success, so don’t overlook this. Additionally, having high quality mentors in all four of these departments is another huge issue. There are people who are shortsighted, in a hurry, or limited in their thinking. Those people will not help you see the bigger picture or isolate what is important to think about. You need mentors who can help you make two or three really important decisions that will change your entire business around. Sure there will be other decisions too, but it is the life changing ones that count the most. If you get the wrong mentors, they will suggest petty changes here and there, but your overall success will not change much.

The cost of being emotionally invested in your employees

January 22, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Management | Leave a comment

Do you know why dating your employees is frowned upon? The chance of sexual harrassment lawsuits is one. But, you create a conflict of interest by having a personal relationship with someone you work with. What about hiring your nephew? This practice was done a lot in the old days, but is less common these days as it is seen as unethical to give someone a leg up simply because they are family.

You will be biased towards an employee with whom you have a personal relationship, and this generally counts against you. On the one hand, maybe the employee will do better work because they know you. On the other hand, you will be less likely to fire them or punish them if you are emotionally invested in them. My personal opinion is that you need to get to know your employees personally to a point, but there also needs to be a line that you don’t cross.

Conversely in business relationships where you are both on the same level — for example you are both entrepreneurs of small companies — in such a case it is good to develop a personal relationship. In an outsourcing relationship, you will be treated much better if you have a personal relationship with the other party. Outsourcing companies are generally impersonal and often do horrible work. Knowing them can get you a lot of extra help, loyalty, and more.

The type of relationship you should have with your employees is one where you are ready to fire them if they start screwing up. This means that not only should you be emotionally detached from them, but you also need a long list of backups that can do their job. If you don’t have backups, you need to be very experienced in the art of hiring replacements, otherwise you don’t have the upper hand. And as a business owner, you must always have the upper hand! You might go twenty years without firing anyone, but you should always be ready like a Samurai ready to strike!

Comparing business blogs to profiling criminals & high school students

January 22, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

Which business blog is the best for you? You’d better hope the answer isn’t, “none of your business.”

I read many business blogs partly out of interest and partly to help generate ideas for my own business oriented blogging endeavors. I have found that each business blog out there seems to have its own style and identity. After a few years of reading, I learned that these blogs are so different in character that you could in a sense profile them the same way that law enforcement officers profile human beings. It’s a bit like high school too — there are the nerds, the jocks, the popular kids, the average kids, the fashion crowd, and the delinquents. With business blogs there are very intellectual blogs, popular blogs, and some quirky blogs too. Let’s take a closer look.

(Academic) Harvard Business Review
Its academic stature speaks for itself. This blog’s followers tend to include many serious thinkers, and high level business people. A scholarly yet surprisingly narrow focus, not to mention that they limit the quantity of blog articles you can read without having a membership. But, then again, Harvard always was an exclusive club. Although they incorporate a lot of valuable information and statistics, its practical application in the real world is sometimes sorely lacking.

(Popular) Entrepreneur
Their choice of topics is broad, always interesting, and performs very well on social media. Unfortunately, their articles often lack depth and are often just too short. Their article about five ways to reduce stress was all too predictable and could have included many stress reduction techniques that none of us had ever heard before. Maybe coming up with such content would have caused them too much stress.

(Well-Rounded) Inc.
Inc. thrives on a seemingly endless inventory of amazing article titles, and just the right amount of thoroughness and just intellectual enough without over doing it. Their blog titles do well on social media and I find them a pleasure to indulge in.

(Fun & Potent) Marketing Profs
Ann Handley delivers amazingly useful marketing & content creation tips which work for my business in real life. I actually discovered many of her tips on my own months or years (and derived tremendous success from them) before reading her articles which is why I realize how potent her secrets are. Her articles confirm a lot of the information I discovered by accident, and teach much much more. Additionally, she makes her articles fun, personable and digestible by including many references to puppies, snacks, vacation, childhood, and other feel-good and relatable themes which incidentally is a proven marketing technique to get more reader engagement.

(Delinquent & Philosophical) 123outsource.net’s Blog
This blog is written by yours truly. It is delinquent because I lack any formal writing training and make many technical writing mistakes including using the word “writing” one to many times earlier in this sentence. Like fellow delinquents, I’m not living up to my full potential. However, my blog has many very unusual looks at international cultural issues, marketing, health, stress management, lifestyle, politics, and business in general that you won’t find anywhere else.

(News Media) Forbes, Wall Street Journal & Bloomberg
These blogs are all typical of News Media. They are all very professional, and interesting. As far as being useful to a startup Entrepreneur, I cannot say. Additionally, the quantity of titles that these news blogs innovate is much more limited than some of the other business blog choices.

So, when people ask me which business blog I like best, I reply, “Mind your own business!”

No animals were harmed in the making of this blog

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

January 22, 2015 by admin
Categories: Innovation | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Steve Jobs made this very true statement. I have observed many outsourcing houses and I will tell you one thing. The boss is always a charismatic and innovative genius. But, the workers seem to be a bunch of thoughtless drones. Many bosses don’t want their workers to think. But, for them to do good work and communicate, they need to care about their work and think. They might even need to innovate from time to time.

It’s hard to innovate when you don’t care about your work. The seed of innovation is frustration with the way things are. If you don’t care, or are very tolerant of poor conditions, you won’t be a good innovator. You need to be passionate, stubborn, genius, and driven like Steve Jobs to be good at it.

But, can you teach your workers to be innovators. They have brains that only need to be woken up. And besides, do you really want to be the only person at your company who thinks? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were others at your company who could deal with clients, strategize and make sure things get done? In the real world it doesn’t work this way, but maybe the real world needs to change… I’ll leave you with that thought.

The Jew Klux Klan: A parody about a not so funny type of group!

January 21, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Humor | Leave a comment

I’m concerned about the rise of Jewish extremism in my neighborhood. If a black group gets together to defend their needs, that’s considered okay. But, if a white group dares assemble, that’s considered to be racist. Why the double standard? Well this group is a Jewish group that got away with religious intolerance so far. I wonder how much farther they will get.

MOISHE: Jewish Power! (raising his fist in the air)

ME: What are you doing?

MOISHE: Well, you know how the Ku Klux Klan burns a cross on people’s lawns when they are harassing them?

ME: Unfortunately I am aware of this antiquated practice.

MOISHE: Well, we are a Jewish group, so we burn a Star of David on someone’s lawn when we are harassing them.

ME: Why are you harassing these poor people?

MOISHE: You see, a Jewish guy just got married to a shiksa (non-Jewish lady) and moved into our neighborhood. We are outraged, and protesting!

ME: Oh, I see. That type of marriage is worse than murder.

MOISHE: To us, yes!

ME: Can’t she convert?

MOISHE: We wouldn’t consider it to be a sincere conversion under these circumstances. The marriage is cursed, and their descendants will be cursed for generations.

ME: Well, I’m offended.

MOISHE: You’re offended because we are committing a hate crime on someone’s lawn?

ME: No, I’m offended because you forgot to say “abrucha” (a blessing) on the Magen David (Star of David)

MOISHE: No, we didn’t. Hey Pinchas, did you say the blessing?

PINCHAS: No, I thought you did. Maybe next time we do this we should do the blessing together.

ME: Interesting. So, by the way, what is the name of your group?

MOISHE: Who us? We’re the Jew Klux Klan!

PINCHAS: Jewish Power! Jewish Power!

Thinking outside the box or the BPO in your business….

January 21, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Are you in business? Do you handle business decisions in some methodical way? In my experience, most business problems are very complicated, involved, and have many unknown wild cards. To solve business problems, you can’t just have some run of the mill way of thinking. You need to try out some unconventional thinking.

You might need to brainstorm different ideas. You should ideally think of many really wild ideas just to get your brain to open up. Incorporating trying things out into your innovation process is critical as your brain will come up with more ideas as you are testing things out.

Thinking outside of the box is a common American expression. Unfortunately, we have very few innovators in our country. It seems that India, the land of the BPO industry has even fewer creative thinkers due to the nature of the school system there which focuses on memorizing and not on creation.

Some types of thinking are just not taught at school, or are not taught enough. When I was at school, they did teach creative thought, but they didn’t teach creative thought in business. In my opinion, all of us entrepreneurs need to invest a lot of time in developing this skill within ourselves.

When I come up with solutions to BPO business problems, the list looks more like a list of ideas and then variations on ideas. It sometimes takes over a year to try all the ideas and during the process I often think of many more variations or refinements on ideas. The business thinking process is like this, and all entrepreneurs should become comfortable with all phases of the brainstorming, implementing, measurement and refinement stages of the process.

Good luck, and also it is recommended to meditate and bathe before making important business decisions for your BPO. Some very Hindu advice from someone not raised Hindu. (Ganga water not included)

What’s the difference between getting business advice from a millionaire & a billionaire?

January 21, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Of Interest | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Millionaires are not as smart as you think.
Most people I know don’t have the luxury of being able to get business advice from billionaires. Most people can’t even name a billionaire. In fact, most people I know are completely broke! I know a few people who have a million in assets. When they give business advice, some of it makes a lot of sense and some misses the mark. There is no consistency, and the depth of thought is very limited.

We look up to them, but should we?
Most of us look up to millionaires as they have a lot more money and perhaps brains than we do. However, our image of millionaires is heavily influenced by the media who is showing multi-millionaires who live in the lap of luxury. In real life, the average millionaire in America looks like an average guy, might drive an old car, wear ordinary clothes and behave in a very unpretentious manner. It is the new rich who flash their wealth and are living in the fast lane a lot of the time — and a few others who are pretending to be nouveau riche!

What’s difference between a successful person & a very successful person?
The difference between a successful business man and a very successful one is that the very successful one says “no” a much higher percentage of the time. The difference between getting a reasonable deal and a very optimized carefully thought out deal defines your success as a wheeler and dealer! To be really successful you have to make ideal choices on a regular basis.

We channeled the consciousnesses of various billionaires & other individuals.
My psychic has the uncanny ability to communicate with departed spirits and also with the consciousnesses of living people. I have always dreamed of communicating with Warren Buffet, but I can’t imagine him being interested in talking to me for more than two or three minutes which would not be enough for any meaningful discourse. So, my psychic was able to tune into his consciousness and get really high quality answers to business questions.

Buffet consciousness’ advice on the long-term optimization of employees won my heart!
I asked many people for advice on hiring social media help. The advice from successful people was normally to hire intelligent high energy people. The next level of advice was to verify the track record of people I intended to hire by seeing if they had been published on a regular basis by respectable publications. The billionaire advice focused not only on verifying if they applicant was published regularly, but on slowly optimizing my pool of helpers over time. Buffet’s consciousness had a long term philosophy of gradually refining my pool of outsourced social media help until they are just absolutely perfect. Buffet’s consciousness understood that perfection might not be a possibility all at once, but is attainable in time!

Which programmer one would you let your daughter marry? Tapping into Hyundae consciousness.
I asked many people for advice on hiring programmers. The standard answers were to hire someone with experience, or who you like. In real life this is the tip of the iceberg. Then when I told people that programmers typically quit in the middle of projects, they suggested complicated projects and test assignments. The problem was that there needs to be specific input as to how long a test assignment should be or what it should emphasize. After asking many people, we tuned into Hyundae consciousness. I wanted to know how successful Koreans think as their nationality is on the up and up these days. The results were surprising and sounded more like Hindu Brahmins than anything else. Hyundae consciousness recommended hiring people from “good” families. Nobody had ever said that to me before. My first reaction was to ask, what do you mean by a “good” family? Just because your parents went to good schools, does that make you a “good” person? In traditional society it does (to a point)! Then, I rephrased the question in my mind. If I had a daughter, which programmer would I feel more comfortable marrying my daughter to? Then, I had a eureka moment. Then I knew the answer. I knew which programmers to hire and which not to in an instant! Bingo! If you are hiring a programmer for a long term project, you need someone you can trust in the long run. Your intuition might tell you more about that than a resume or even having experience knowing the quality of the individual’s work.

Tapping into Coca-Cola consciousness
My psychic also tapped into Coca-Cola consciousness. Coca-Cola is a huge multi-billion dollar enterprise that has been around seemingly forever. It is run by a huge number of higher level executives. So, when we tap into their consciousness it is more of a collective consciousness of the big-wigs. We asked their consciousness the same types of questions we asked everyone else, but the answers were completely different as these were billionaires we were dealing with.

Give them the illusion that they are in control
We were instructed to have complete control over the programmers, while giving them the illusion that they are the ones in control – a fascinating psychological approach from a leader in soft drink marketing! The next piece of advice on hiring social media help was also completely different from anything I’ve heard before. I was instructed to hire people partly based on what their income was. I was instructed not to hire people who made below 50,000 per year as they by definition would lack work skills. Ironically, I was instructed not to hire people about 100,000 as they might be too full of themselves to be helpful to me.

The information from billionaires was vastly more sophisticated
My psychic and I did a lot of interviewing consciousness(es). It sounds pretty bizarre, but it is actually the most helpful thing I have ever done for my business. Each individual or organization we interviewed had a different take on hiring and business management. But, the most valuable piece of information I got was that the quality of business information I got was vastly more sophisticated and helpful when it came from people who were billionaires rather than run of the mill successful people.