#119 A rather long weekly journal entry (08/09/2024)

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's journal! What did I do this week?

Meeting with another startup

First, this Tuesday, I was invited to meet and chat with the founder of a sleep mask startup in Hong Kong. Meeting and talking with different people is common in my work, but it's rare to have the opportunity to talk to someone close to my age. This founder is 30 years old, not far from my 26 , and we felt like we were close in age. Being in the sleep-related industry, it felt quite relatable.

New duvet cover

Another project we worked on this week was the "Re Cover." As the new sheets started to be used, some customers wanted us to introduce a duvet cover as well, so that the whole thing would be complete. That is, with a pillow, a duvet, and then a pillowcase, sheets, and a duvet cover to cover them, the whole bedroom would be complete. The reason we haven't made this duvet cover before is because we wanted to create a new design . Let me explain: what I mean here is not to force a perfectly good thing to change, to play " reinvent the wheel " (literally, to force a perfectly good thing to change). I think there are areas where the duvet cover needs improvement. After all, you can say I'm lazy, and I know there are other ways, such as turning the duvet cover inside out before changing it and then turning it back inside out. But changing a duvet cover is not an easy task, especially since you have to open it up and make sure the corners and edges of the duvet cover and duvet insert are aligned on such a large duvet cover.

New duvet covers will be released, hopefully before the end of the year. This is just great.

One thing about wind

So, this Thursday night , Typhoon Signal No. 8 didn't fall until noon on Friday. Around 6 pm on Thursday night, a colleague took a dark blue Hong Kong map bed sheet as a test sample to the 365 Laundry self-service laundry shop in Kwai Chung, near the company, to try out the dryer. However, the colleague accidentally pressed the high-temperature drying program for almost two hours, which took too long. With Typhoon Signal No. 8 approaching, if they waited until it was finished, they wouldn't be able to get home, so they left first, thinking they would pick it up when the typhoon signal came down tomorrow. But after just one night, no one should be able to take it away.

But when the typhoon signal came down today, the bed sheet was gone when I got back to the laundromat. Luckily, there was a staff member there, and when I asked him, he showed me a spot where lost and found clothes were kept. There were other unclaimed clothes, but I couldn't find the bed sheet on the map ... so it must be lost. There's nothing I can do but test it again next time. It's a bit of a shame, because this product hasn't even been launched yet, but it's gone just like that ... Next time something like this happens, I really shouldn't leave it in a public place for too long, because it might really disappear.

Two books I've been reading lately

I've recently been reading two books. The first is *Onward* by Howard Schultz , which tells the story of how Starbucks struggled to survive and turn the tide when it was at its lowest point between 2007 and 2011 and everyone thought it was about to go out of business. The second is *Never Give Up: How I Built the McDonald's Empire* by Ray Kroc , which tells the story of how he built the entire McDonald's hamburger fast food chain empire.

Both of these books are stories about the company written by the company's boss himself, and they are also two of my favorite books that I have read recently.

I can't write out all my reading notes here, but I'll talk about the Starbucks book because I felt a lot about it and have already finished reading it. I won't talk about the McDonald's book yet because I haven't finished reading it.

Onward by Howard Schultz is set between 2007 and 2011 , a period when Starbucks' business and stock price were both in a slump. As the company's CEO, Howard Schultz faced a multitude of problems: a poor economy meant fewer people were buying coffee, the expansion of stores made it difficult to ensure a consistent customer experience at Starbucks , the large company size made it hard to maintain consistent coffee quality, customer complaints that Starbucks was no longer the same as before, the entry of a new competitor ( McAfe ) into the market with lower prices to seize market share, the unpopularity of Starbucks' new drinks, and consecutive quarters of business worse than the same period last year . This book is Howard Schultz's account in 2012 of how he weathered this period, how he improved things one by one, and how he boosted the morale of the entire company . Of course, the most important part is how he ultimately turned the company around and became profitable again, successfully overcoming the difficulties.

Between the lines, you can truly see Howard Schultz's genuine love and dedication to his Starbucks . In fact, this kind of "genuine passion" is something you see in the books written by many company bosses: James Dyson of Dyson , Lei Jun of Xiaomi , Ray Kroc of McDonald's , Brian Chesky of Airbnb … I won't list them all here, but you understand what I mean. So when I'm talking to or meeting with other companies, observing their demeanor, you can also see whether they truly have this "genuine passion." You can feel whether they genuinely have a greater goal they want to achieve through the company, or when they talk about the products / services, you can feel the enthusiasm and passion within them. Of course, I believe that people get tired sometimes, and they may not show it to you when you meet them, but I think you can feel it when you read their writing . Sincere passion.

In this world, we actually need more people like them. Because these people will continue to improve and bring better products / services /apps to the world... I admire and am very grateful to them. Although Re Pillow Co. is a completely incomparable scale, and I'm just a kid playing around there, and to be honest, I haven't made any significant contributions to the world yet, I truly admire them, and I've seen their sacrifices and dedication. Because there are many ways to make money, the way they chose is to try to use their company to improve people's lives, and not to make very expensive products that no one uses (such as luxury goods), nor to just do what everyone else is doing, but to truly put their heart into doing something good. I hope I have the courage to try to do that too.