Brian Keng

  • Beyond Relationship Selling

    I remember the good old days (I really shouldn’t be using that phrase, I’m way to young), when I’d scavenge campus seminars for free pizza, free pop and the occasional free t-shirt. Back in Waterloo, the first few weeks of every term was filled with co-op employer information sessions. This meant, every day, you could get campus pizza, pop and cookies for free! If you were lucky, you went to one of the good info sessions, like Google or Amazon, where they’d give out pens, t-shirts and even Nalgene water bottles (although I guess those aren’t so popular now).

    Although I’d like to think I’ve outgrown those days, one thing I like about still being in school is having access to all these free seminars. Occasionally you come across a seminar where the free pizza and pop isn’t the best thing about it. I happened to be at an open house event organized by the University of Toronto Engineering Toastmasters (UTET). The event modeled a typical Toastmasters’ meeting except fancier. Everyone was more dressed up, roles were explained in more detail, and we had a guest speaker. This last point was the interesting part of the event.

    The speaker was John Rich who, among other things, is a distinguished Toastmaster who does professional consulting work in sales and related areas. His book Beyond Relationship Selling was the topic of his presentation (I give him a plug here mainly because he gave me a free copy and I liked his presentation, although I haven’t read the book yet). His presentation was entertaining and the information was a good overview on the importance of relationships in sales. However, the most valuable part to me was the brief conversation I had with him afterward.

    To preface this, John Rich has had a very successful career as a captain in the Canadian Armed Forces, started numerous companies and had accomplished many outstanding personal achievements such as completing several triathlons and marathons. I’ve always been interested in successful people. One thing I’m very interested in is how they became so successful — the formula that they use to create consistent positive outcomes. To summarize some of John Rich’s points:

    1. Keep learning. Every day should be spent learning something new lest you waste it.
    2. Look upon failures as learning opportunities. For each failure he encounters, he debriefs himself, examining what went wrong. Were the goals unrealistic? Was there a lack in preparation? How can this be corrected next time?
    3. Join Toastmasters.

    I had a great suspicion that he would say the first two points. I’ve heard this by many other very successful people including Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, so this was no surprise. The third was also expected since he is part of Toastmasters.

    Even though I’ve heard these points said again and again, it’s important to keep hearing them. It’s too easy to get stuck in a rut and forget about these rules to success. They’re not hard, they just require being proactive. And there’s the rub. It’s so much easier to sit back and do nothing. That’s okay though, because while others are falling into this trap, it creates opportunities for people like me. These constant reminders keep me from falling back and keep me moving in the right direction. And in case I forget, let this be a reminder.

  • York Strike

    You’re in your final year of school. Graduation is just a stone throw away. You wake up at night hopeful, nervous and excited about the possibilities that lie ahead, only there’s one problem. Your school is on strike.

    If you live anywhere in Toronto, you have probably heard about the York University strike. Teaching assistants, graduate and contract faculty are all on strike demanding more than York is willing to offer. Now, there’s been a lot of rhetoric going around about who is right and who is wrong. I find frequently, just watching the news doesn’t really give you a good picture. Most news sources have some sort of bias, or leave out vital facts that really are needed to make an informed decision. I’ve tried to collect some information that I think is necessary to make a reasonably informed opinion. As far as I can tell there are three main issues:

    1) Length of the collective bargaining agreement
    It seems the union wants a 2 year contract instead of a 3 year contract, so that it ends at the same time as similar collective bargaining agreements at other schools. I don’t think there is any contention from either side that this demand will give them better leverage to bargain a new deal in 2 years.

    2) Length of contracts for contract workers
    Apparently, contract workers (e.g. lecturers) are only given a 8 month contract (I think one school year of teaching). If they want the same job they have to re-apply again the next year. The union wants a 5 year contract length.

    3) Wages and Graduate student funding
    York is offering 9.25 over 3 years whereas the union seems to want wage and cost of living allowances that adjust to the cost of living. They want total graduate student funding to not fall below the the minimum in Toronto ($22,653). I found this post on Facebook outlining the facts about graduate student funding at York.

    I think this information should give you a better idea about the issues than most newspaper articles.

    One comment I hear very often is that the unions are not doing what’s best for the students who can’t go to school. I find it amusing that anyone would think that the union cares about anything more than the benefit of its members. The union’s purpose is to reach the best collective bargaining agreement they can for their members. Let’s not kid ourselves here, if they can get a million dollar salary for all their members they would — regardless of how it affects the undergraduate students. But what do you expect them to do? This is their purpose. Unless they thought that there was a chance that either York would fire all of them or go under, they probably wouldn’t settle for anything significantly less than their demands.

    On the other hand for York, it’s not clear that they are doing what’s in the best interest of the school. Their job should be to provide the best schooling to all of their students in the long term. On one hand, this means getting students back to school as soon as possible — even if it means meeting the union’s demands. On the other hand, if they give in to the demands of the union, it may take away resources so they can’t provide top quality education to their students. This would be much more clear cut if it were a corporation whose sole job is to make money for its share holders. York as a quasi-public institute has a blurred role.

    So by now — probably regardless of the facts — you have formed an opinion. I have one too but I don’t think it really matters. People like to form opinions and try to convince you that they are right. The real question is how we can get these students back to school with a high quality of education. I haven’t heard any constructive solutions. I just hope the students can wake up at night being nervous about tripping on stage at convocation instead of whether or not they’ll graduate.

  • Studies

    My friend recently sent me a link about how a new “study” shows “Hormones drives sexy women to infidelity.” Of course I clicked the link to find out what all the hoopla was about. The idea is that women who have this hormone are more likely to be attractive and thus more likely to “trade up” to find a better partner and commit infidelity.

    My first reaction was to consider the possibility that this was true. So I imagined a ravishing woman with long dark hair wearing a classy low-cut dress, hair flowing freely in the wind, walking seductively down the street. She stops, flips opens her phone, “We’re done, I’ve found someone else.” All you hear on the other end is a grown man sobbing pleading her not to leave. She casually hangs up. Walks over to the corner, gets into a red Ferrari and drives off with her new boyfriend.

    Then I come back to reality. I realize I’m sitting at my computer, staring at my monitor with my legs crossed wondering how I veered off my original train of thought. This is when I asked myself: why was I just imagining a poorly written movie? Something was off here. My intuition isn’t great but it usually steers me in the right direction. There had to be something wrong with this article. I quickly skimmed the article to find exactly what I was looking for — they only used 52 women.

    Well, that’s not even the flaw in the study exactly but it’s part of it. More than likely, the women were not picked “randomly”. If you want to get a statistician excited, just start talking about things being random, because if they were truly random (assuming that’s possible), 52 samples would be more than enough to justify the sort of conclusion they make. But even then, what population does this represent? All women? Women aged 17-33 (the range they used)? Women applicants they had to this study?

    Besides the obvious flaws in sampling, their methodology for determining the likelihood of infidelity was to ask the participating women questions because people never lie about things. Just ask 52 people what kind of coffee they want (hint: the answer would be “I want a dark, rich, hearty roast.”). Now wouldn’t it also be possible to draw another conclusion from the study? Women who are more attractive are more likely to lie about how often they would cheat on their partners. In fact, this may even be a more plausible explanation.

    To be fair, the original authors of the paper most likely did not make such strong conclusions that the author of the article inferred (I don’t blame the author of the article, he did a good job in writing something interesting — albeit misleading). Still, I bet a lot of people believed what they read without thinking because it was a “study”. It seems like that could get you into trouble — to not think carefully. But then again, I was surprised when I found out that 1 out of every 8 adult women in America is a prostitute. Go figure.

  • Facebook

    You’d have to be living in a cave for the past 5 years to not have heard of Facebook. With over 150 million users it’s no wonder that practically everyone you know is already signed up (except for those abstaining, much respect for missing all those Facebook invites). Many flock to this popular site in order to “socialize” and fill their inherent need to connect. You can view your “friend”‘s (I use that term very loosely) profiles, send them messages and bare your soul to millions of people who are in need of “socializing” just as much as you are — at least that’s what we’d like to think.

    That last point is interesting. Who really wants to share their sorrow, health problems or relationship troubles with millions of people — unless it’s in some way that makes them sound witty, detached and aloof? Facebook is just another way for people to project the image that they want people to see — not unlike in a real social situation, except easier. It’s a real simple formula: post some seemingly candid photos, gather a few smart quotes, and add “friends” as indiscriminately as possible. Next post fun, witty (or in special cases sincere) messages to your friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends… you get the point. Oh yeah, don’t forget to update your Facebook status at least every hour or else how will everyone know what you’re doing?

    Not that I’m any exception. I just like to keep my “witty farts of consciousness” (editorial) to a minimum. Facebook is great for connecting with people, I just prefer to get to know people in person — call me old fashioned. So instead of wondering around aimlessly through other’s witty brain farts, I think I’ll do something more productive. Now with that, I’ve got to change my Facebook status…

  • Day One

    I finally finished “About Me” section and “Links”. I feel this is the bare minimum I need. Next time, I’m going to put up some interesting books I’ve read because I like reading. That was easy.

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Past Posts