Posted on June 14th, 2008 by Chris
When I was 12 my Dad’s business went bust and the mortgage company rebosest our lovely house and put us into one of the worst state run flats in the area. The area was disgusting, an area no parent would want to raise their kids in.
My Dad grafted every hour of the day in the spare room starting a new business, to get us out of the shit-hole we were in. He partnered up with a guy who was based in Manchester, which meant Dad was traveling up and down the country every week. I clearly remember when he let me come along for the ride during school holidays - it was great fun. I can remember one particular trip when my Dad didn’t have enough money to get a hotel room, so we slept in the office on post sacks - I’m not sure if he enjoyed that night, but I certainly did!
Luckily the business took off to become a multi million pound turn over company with 600+ staff and it wasn’t long before we moved into another great house - where I would spent the rest of my childhood with my parents.
I’m lucky that I got to see my Dad turn around his, and my familes life around - from living in the worst area of London to building relationships with Britain’s most successful businessmen - and the great thing was he took me everywhere. At 16 I remember sitting in one of the most impressive offices in London, it was located on the top floor and I clearly remember the guy had a very sexy PA who handled everything - got the coffee’s, sorted out documents and generally took care of all the time consuming jobs - I wanted the same there and then. That guy was Stan Myerson, the CEO of the Express group. I was just a spotty teenager at that time but Stan took a good hour chatting to me about what I wanted to do with my life and threw in some good wisdom as well. The value of learning business at such a young age taught me many things, in particular the true value of sitting at the top of the tree.
One thing for sure is that when I have kids, I’ll be teaching them about business as soon as they can talk and encouraging and explaining about everything I do.
Thanks Dad.
Posted on June 11th, 2008 by Chris
I went to open up a bank account with UOB this morning. I am currently with Bangkok Bank which I’ve not had any problems with, the only reason for the change is that the BB always has ques since installing a ticket machine, while UOB is always empty.
Anyway, I go in and tell them I want to open up a personal and business account. I couldn’t open the business account as I need to hold a meeting in person with all my shareholders… WTF! Most are based outside of Thailand.
I then filled in the forms for a personal account and the lady asked how much I wanted to deposit. Understanding that most Thai companies are poorly run and wanting to make sure the account was fully set up and working perfectly, I told the lady 1,000b
She turned around and said that the minimum is 50,000, I explained that I wasn’t prepared to deposit a large sum until I know everything is working perfectly. Anyway, she calls the manager over… he recognized me as I go into UOB weekly to withdraw funds from my credit card. I get the 50,000b initial deposit down to 2,000 because he says he knows me. Now what happened next made my jaw drop…
Just before I went into UOB, I had gone to Bangkok Bank to withdraw 200,000b cash, which was rolled up inside my jeans pocket. In order to get 2,000 out, I had to get the whole lot out. I tried to be discreet as I could but the manager saw the money and then started haggling with me to give him more. This went on for at least a minute. I got to admit, I was offended.
I was then offered a credit card. I’ve never heard of a Thai bank issuing foreigners credit cards on personal accounts so my eyes lit up. I asked what the interest rate was and she replied 40% 
No wonder why UOB is always empty!
Have you had any rememberable experiences with Thai Bank’s?
Posted on June 9th, 2008 by Chris
Now I have the Juice Mag under control, we can afford to start working on a few side projects. The first is, Girls On You Tube
A simple idea and relatively easy to get going, Girls On You Tube provides video’s of girls from the popular video sharing sites. We started this blog a while ago but neglected it when working on Juice Mag, but looking at the sites traffic last week, we are very eager to get it going again. As you can imagine, this particular niche has huge search volume.
The guy in the office who’s job it is to search YouTube and add the videos every morning was more than happy with the task I gave him 
What are your thoughts? Like the site? Any improvement ideas?
Posted on June 8th, 2008 by Chris
I very rarely cook at home which means I eat out in a lot of restaurants and at street stalls day in and day out. I’ve got a handful of restaurants (and street stalls) I visit regularly who provide good quality food consistently. I don’t mind paying extra for quality, although it’s worth noting that extra sponds doesn’t necessarily guarantee top notch food.
Maybe I’m a little fussy from the average joey and understand the difference between microwave meals, meals that have been prepared days in advance or meals cooked by with great produce by people who have huge enthusiasm with food. I consider myself to be a good judge of quality food and it’s a sad fact I’m disappointed more times than not. This is a not local thing; restaurants all over the world serve up shit and get away with it.
I’ve noticed a few patterns from the restaurants that constantly provide good food compared to the ones that don’t, here are a few that come to mind:
Clientele
This is a biggy - If the restaurant is centrally located or has been around a while and has no customers, you need to ask your self why.
Can you see the kitchen?
From previous experience, 9 times out of 10 food offered from restaurants that show case the restaurant engine offer good quality food. I always think it’s a great feature to a restaurant as well.
Location
Highly populated tourist areas are the worst: people in, people out: don’t come back for years. This is the only reason poor restaurants survive: location. No matter how their food is, if they have enough numbers walking past their door everyday, they will survive.
Menu
Is it just me or do you hate it when you see 4 different cuisines on a menu? Or worse, the menu is as thick as the Oxford English dictionary which means having to decide from 485 dishes? A restaurant needs to have an identity and only offer what they do best. Personally, I’m more than happy with a choice of 3 starters, 3 mains and 3 deserts if that means what I’m going to get is their best. The best seafood restaurant I’ve ever eaten at had this simple and light menu and I think it’s the reason why I rate it one of the best restaurants I’ve ever eaten in!
History
I understand this may be hard for newly established restaurants, but time will provide good reviews and a history of cliental that recommends the restaurant. They say word of mouth is the best form of marketing there is, and that rule is especially true for restaurants.
So why do restaurants serve up shit and get away with it? They can? Staff lacking passion? It’s expensive? They want to appeal to the masses?
I know most people just eat to survive and maybe with this in mind, this answers my question. It’s cheaper to produce crap, it’s also easier and most people are happy with eating this stuff. However to me it matters. If restaurants provide good quality food on a consistent basis they win me over as regular customer, but the sad thing is they are becoming harder to find.
What are your thoughts? Am I just being snobby here or do you wish more restaurants serve up quality food?
Posted on June 7th, 2008 by Chris
On Friday night I was having a beer with a mate down a notorious street filled with naught bars (Soi Cowboy) here in Bangkok. The street I’m talking about is lined up with go-go bars which are a little like strip clubs you would find in the west, although in these particular bars the girls don’t strip (most of the time)… they just dance around some chrome poles in revealing clothes. Outside the bars there are girls trying to pull customers into the bars, some use force while others just scream out the rates of drinks and so on. Here’s an image of this particular road so you can get an idea of whats it’s like:
As we started walking down the street, I noticed what seemed like a family coming up from the other direction: a guy, his wife and 3 kids aged between 7 and 14. My first reaction was to think what the fuck are they doing bringing their kids down this area… but then I began to think some more of what I had just witnessed and started to question myself as whether it wasn’t that bad of an idea. As I type this I’m sitting on the fence.
I wonder what kind of questions they asked mum and dad? I also wonder what mum and dad replied…
Should kids start to learn how the real world works as quickly as possible or should parents do their best to shelter parts of real life and leave them to find out that by themselves?
Posted on June 3rd, 2008 by Chris
What’s Link Love? Link Love in my monthly round up of the cool content I have stumble upon (I missed last months due to work overload so am including last months links here) in both the traveling and on-line marketing space. Sorry there aren’t that many, it’s not due to the lack of great content I’ve come across in the last 2 months, It’s more of forgetting to save them! I promise I’ll try harder for next months link love report! Anyway, the following links are, in my opinion, real “gems”. Enjoy!
SEO Book gives us an insight into how much is a first page ranking is worth. From my own experience, it’s worth 80 to 90% of organic search traffic.
Want to know what’s the best time/day to submit your content to social media sites like Digg? Read here to find out.
How a good title and description can make a social media submission.
If you use a .com or .net domain but want to target users in a specific location, check out this video explaining a new feature in Webmaster tools.
A cool project I recently come across about a group of friends making a wish list, and traveling around the world to tick each thing of their list. It’s called The Buried Life.
Some cool holographic display technology let Cisco and Musion have a live virtual conference call - It’s like their standing in the same room! This really Wowed me as I started to think that it won’t be to long before A) I can chat with mum like she’s in the same room as me and b) poker! Check out the cool video here.
How many different brands do you use in a day? Jane organised a time line of all the brands she used in a day - a great idea! I especially like the half condom - check out the comments to find out why! haha
Keep and share notes up in the air! We have started using this in the office and it’s great!
Want to know how your website displays in all the major browsers without downloading them all? This free tool can help.
100 Blogs every entrepreneur should visit.
Some great analysis on the top 100 domains that rule the net!
For more great links and content, check out March Link Love and Febuary’s Link Love.
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by Chris
A while ago I asked a member of staff (her name is Alitta) what she would do if she was in my shoes running the company. My aim was twofold, to have a better understanding of how she thinks about business and secondly, to get feedback on what she doesn’t like in regards to how I operate the business. As I have always said, feedback - good or bad, is crucial to improve ones business.
I’m constantly reminding myself that I’m working with people that don’t share the same culture and to a fair extent, values as myself. This means it’s even more vital that I get feedback. I do find it difficult. One of my biggest worries is that one day I’ll loose my cool - I’ve been lucky so far in that I have gritted my teeth when I’ve wanted to bite someones head off. The consequences of loosing my cool, in my opinion, would be servier. Working in the UK, it’s normal for people to get angry, have arguments and generally disagree about things. I really miss that working environment, in particular the high pressure working environment.
When I first asked Alitta what she would change, I could tell she didn’t want to speak up. After making her feel comfortable she started to open up and gave me some great ideas. I was very impressed. I could tell she didn’t enjoy it but I learnt a lot from what she said.
The reason why she didn’t want to express her thoughts and opinions is because of a common trait amoung all Thai’s - It’s called Gengjai. In Alitta’s words, gengjai means:
Krengjai’ is a common habit of the Thais who dare not speak out or do something since they care and are afraid it could hurt someone’s feeling.
That sums it up pretty well.
Later that night Alitta sent me an SMS apologising for her openness. I replied telling her that without people telling me the truth, I could not improve myself as a manager. I also thanked her for the opportunity to learn how I can improve myself.
Today myself and Alitta exchanged a few emails and Gengjai popped up (our chat in the office happened a few months ago) and promoted me to write this post, as I wanted to publish my reply:
It’s not that I don’t like gengjai - in a lot of situations is a very good thing for people to be gengjai. The thing I don’t like about people being geng jai is that in the business world, it can stop ideas flowing because people are worried what the boss, or other people think. I also really believe in being “straight” with people - what you see with me is what you get. Being gengjai can put a cover on true feelings, which is bad for business in that people worry about the problem rather than trying to solve it. If there is a problem I prefer people to face it head on rather than sit and think about the problem for a long time. I need people to have this mind set for business, which will ultimately let people (and the company) grow as they can speak their mind.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love how Thai people are, which is why I choose to make Thailand my home. Which is why I think covering Gengjai outside of business is for another day. However I do acknowledge that it isn’t easy for Thai’s to switch. It is a hard nut to crack!
Was I right in making her doing something she was not comfortable doing? I think so, she choose to work in business and in business you need to be direct. This incident also shows me that she is willing to learn new things and adapt to new environments. Not many people are willing to do that, which is why I respect, and value her on a very high level.
What do you think? What are your thoughts about Gengjai in the workplace? How do you handle Gengjai? I’ve got a lot to learn!
Posted on May 30th, 2008 by Chris
Before I give you the details on what the magazine is about, I’d just like to take a few seconds to thank a couple of people that have left comments, offered help or who have gave me encouragement via this blog over the last month or so.
A special thanks goes to Andrew at Bangkok Bugle (you’ve been a real gent!), Martin at Truepot, Duncan at Phuket Review, Sip at Cheap Thai Travel, Tajim and Denis at Cigar Inspector
Okay, now onto the Mag details!
The magazine that myself and 6 others have been working on for the last 2 months is called Juice Mag - Juice Mag is a Men’s lifestyle mag with no censorship, aimed at non-savvy male internet users based in the UK.
Instead of going into the features that are already on the mag, go and have a nose around for yourself Although we are only launching the mag with a few features,I thought it would be best to just get something out there that we can start promoting rather than waiting forever, we have a lot more features in the pipeline.
Here are some of the projects that we have already started working on which will hopefully make an appearance on Juice Mag over the next few weeks:
- Allowing anyone to have their own blog on our domain- i.e - myeggnoodles.juicemag.co.uk
- An amature model database - Females can add a profile and receive feedback from our users, along with a chance to win some cool prizes.
- Product reviews - Gadgets, toys, web sites etc. etc.
- All 670 models will have their own individual blogs up-dated on a daily basis
- Interviews - Both textual and video
- Juicy Lucy - Our in-house sex expert!
- Juice TV -I’m sooo excited about this project, but will keep the seal closed for now!
- A huge project for the Premiership football season!
- Additional articles (Tens of Thousands) from our in-house writers and niche experts
- A Store - Selling swag, stickers and that sort of thing
- Live coverage of UK and worldwide events guy are interested in
If you have not commented on this blog before (with over 400 daily uniques and a 60% return rate, there’s a lot of you that don’t!) I ask you to break the routine, head over to Juice Mag and leave your valuable feedback here. I REALLY appreciate feedback, good or bad - it ’s the only thing that I can use to actively improve the business/mag. Also, I’d love to hear feedback from my regular commenter’s as well
*We haven’t tested the site in all the browsers yet, but after a 12 hour day (It’s 9pm and were all still at the office) it’s time to get our whistles wet!
Posted on May 29th, 2008 by Chris
In 7 hours we will be launching the magazine to the world! Stay tuned…
Posted on May 29th, 2008 by Chris
I flew out of Bangkok Saturday morning after only getting 2 hours sleep due to a heavy one in Bangkok, arrived, got some food and then got ready for another heavy night on the town with some great friends from Chiang Mai.
The Chiang Mai locals are soo friendly! Actually, I think that Bangkok (away from the tourist areas) has a lot of friendly people, but going outside the big city makes you realize why Thailand is also known as the land of smiles.
Got some lunch in Dukes - never again. Fucking greasy shit hole served me some apple pie that come with a free pubic hair, I told the waitress and after declining her offer for another piece I was given the “you snob” look. 2 minutes later I get up to go to the toilet and on my way I notice that she’s putting my slice of apple pie back in the display fridge! Dirty fuckers.
I stayed at the Sira Hotel and can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve stayed there 3 times now and will definitely stay there again.
The friends I went to see were the best hosts anyone could wish for. True diamonds. They took me clubbing then onto get some Chiang Mai cuisine, which included a curry that tasted just like Masaman and some Chiang Mai sausage - Good stuff.
If you were to ask any Thai bloke where the best looking girls come from, 8 out of 10 will say Chiang Mai. It’s true.
I love the street food in Chiang Mai, for some reason I thought the karts were more clean and they served bigger portions than I regularly get in Bangkok!
All in all it was a great trip and I can’t wait to return!
