I want to share a story about a friend of mine. Lets call him Tom.

Tom is a friend of mine who’s in his sixties. He has a very inspiring story. Coming from a poor family, he worked his way up building a business that made him the multi-millionaire he is today. At sixty, he’s very very cheerful, loves golf and loves buying new supercars. The only other thing he’s interested in (apart from family of course) is business.

A month ago I learned that Tom has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. It’s the same type of rare cancer that got Steve Jobs and the one insurance companies are so worried that I might get because of the cyst on my pancreas. So worried that they won’t insure me anymore.

I’ve been back to see Tom in the hospital 3 times now. He’s still his very happy cheerful self as he tells me how he feels about life now.

1. He says that he no longer takes any interest in his business. Something that used to give him so much joy and something that he would devote a lot of time to.
2. A month after he was diagnosed with cancer, he sold off all his supercars and kept only two more normal cars for necessary usage.
3. He can’t play golf anymore and doesn’t think about it.
4. He has millions to his name… but he knows even all that money isn’t going to necessarily save his life.

Tom is the first close friend of mine who’s fighting cancer and his battle has really changed the way I think about things. I think about my own death. The thought of dying and going into the after world doesn’t really scare me so much. I think I’ve done good things in my life in aggregate and I don’t think I would go to hell but hey that doesn’t say a lot. Okay so the thought of dying itself and moving on to a better place doesn’t scare me as much.

What scares me now is:

1. Who will take care of my family. My wife, my kids.

Now for this I know that they’ll find a way. My parents, my sister, my wife… heck there will be someone around to raise them and they’ve got a long line of great candidates for guardians after me and my wife.

The other thing that scares me though is:

2. That I die before I reach my full potential.

I was reading a book today written by the founder of the Four Seasons and he talked about a friend of his who died at the peak of his career. At least he reached the peak. I’m worried that I might die… before I reached my full potential.

I know it’s a little narcissistic and also naive because hey in reality.. when you die… you die. Life goes on, people eventually forget you. I always remember how Nando Parrado told the story of how he came home years after the world thought he died in a plane crash. Everything was the same. Everyone grieved at first… but eventually life goes on.

That’s a sad reality. That most of us won’t be able to leave any form of legacy that anyone else would care about. The legacy I would love to leave though isn’t for anyone else.. but for my kids. For them to see that their father was able to be successful in what he did. That he failed and failed… but alas he succeeded. What I’m worried about is that I fail… and fail… but die or get crippled by some disease before I succeed. Never reaching my full potential.

I pray God gives me time to live life. I don’t know how long I would ask for. Life expectancy these days can go to 100 and beyond but hey… maybe 75 for me? Is that too much to ask?

“You’re so obviously an introvert”.

5 words that I thought I’d never hear in my life… but what mattered weren’t just those words, but who it came from: My wife. Of all the people who know me in this world, nobody knows me like my wife so it really made me think when she said those words.

It’s surprising to me because I’m pretty good with people. You can put me in a group of strangers and I can strike up a conversation and 5 minutes later you’ll see us joking and laughing away. That’s exactly what I told my wife and she came back with this:

“Being able to mix with people doesn’t mean you’re an extrovert. An extrovert gets energy from being around people. When an introvert is around people though, it drains energy”.

I thought and I realized she was right. I thought about the days when I’d go out to social events and chat chat and when I came back home I felt really tired and drained. So much I would just lay on the bed and want to be left alone.

During my leisure time I realise I don’t go out of my way to make plans with friends. I rather stay at home and read my book, play my games or watch TV. This is a huge contrast to my extroverted wife who finds the need to go out every time she’s free to meet her friends and just chat. To her… the activity she gains energy from is being around people. To me… I gain energy from being around myself.

So how have I been able to fake it all this while? How have I been able to be an extroverted introvert? When I talk to people I realise I’m not the only one. There are so many. Want to spot an extroverted introvert?  That’s easy.

In groups where people are less talkative, the extroverted introvert will make an extra attempt to talk to more people, to be the life of the party. But introduce an extrovert there and the extroverted introvert enters radio silence almost relieved that he doesn’t have to talk.

An extroverted introvert loves spending time with people too sometimes but only with people within their comfort zone. They’re often also good at communicating and expressing themselves… but only to the people they love.

So what does that mean for me now that I know it?

I know that in order to get out of my comfort zone I have to force myself to go out sometimes. To call people out or to accept more invitations to hang out. Especially with the job I have. Entrepreneurs need to meet people not just for networking but also for information, perspective… all sorts of different things.

I also know that my wife is an extrovert. She needs to go out, meet friends and hang out with people. So I’m gonna have to give her the freedom to do her thing.

I’m reading a book now called Sex at Dawn. It’s really a book about how human beings are not meant to be monogamous but more interestingly it goes deep into studies and research about us as human beings.

Here’s the shocking things I’ve learned from the book about what human beings were like in our earlier years:

1. We shared everything. Our very early ancestors were foragers ie hunter-gatherers. We often lived nomadic lives and exist in small communities where we shared everything. In small communities, there was very little need for laws or enforcement because everyone knew each other. If someone did something that harmed another person then that person would have to deal with the shame of doing so from everyone else. So people generally don’t do these things. Compare that to the world of today… people do bad things because they don’t know the people harmed by their actions. They aren’t close enough to feel the shame.
2. There was little reason for war or conflict because nobody owned anything and everything we needed was available around us. When you consider that nobody had the concept of owning land, or owning anything or anyone.. then there really is nothing to fight about.
3. No leaders could oppress its people. Because everything that we needed and wanted was available around us, no leader could oppress or exert influence on everybody else because if you weren’t happy you could just leave. So people followed leaders then not because they were forced to, or it was a given right or anything.. but because that leader had gained their respect.
4. There was no poverty. That’s right. Think about it. Poverty is man-made. Man created money, man created the social classes that have and have-nots. Man created all of that. In our early years, there wasn’t a rich or poor or middle class. Everyone had a chance to eat whatever they wanted to eat or do whatever they wanted to do. The Earth provided for everything. Nobody starved.
5. The lives of our ancestors weren’t as bad as we think they are. There was a story in the book where European explorers visited a South American tribe at the time and took pity of their impoverished lives. They lived in little huts, they ate insects or bugs and they didn’t have nice proper clothes to wear. They decided to bring back two people from the tribe to Europe and train them how to dress, how to eat with a fork and knife and eventually brought them back to their tribe a year later to hope that they would go back and teach their tribe. After leaving the two natives for a year, they went back with disappointment to find that they had went back to their old usual lifestyles. The explorers offered to bring them back to Europe but they didn’t want to. They were happy in their tribes with their community, and what the explorers saw as poor living conditions, they saw as their way of life.
6. There was no stress. And there was a lot of free time. Hunting for food, taking care of household chores all took only a few hours a day. Researchers found that it was very common for our ancestors to sleep 3 hours in the afternoon every day because really… there wasn’t really anything to do. There was no empire we needed to build, no legacy. We just needed to take care of ourselves and raise our kids.

After reading about all this, I began to think that HOLY SHIT! It’s entirely possible that our modern human lives are the worst possible lives in our existence as human beings., Today we worry about stress, we have a large number of the population living in poverty, crimes, wars, violence… none of these existed in the early days when we were hunter-gatherers.

The flip side about this made me think. What is it that makes us so stressed these days? What matters? What do we really need? If we were to be hunter-gatherers of our current generation, maybe that’s just the equivalent of having jobs that earned just enough for us to survive. Do we need to pursue wealth at the expense of being able to spend time doing what we loved doing.

All the stress, all the pressure we feel now. That’s all man-made and in many instances. it’s something we can choose to do or choose not to do.

That’s all food for thought for me this weekend. Maybe it might be for you too 🙂

Things has been really busy for me since my short staycation. It is only the 3rd day of the week, and I already feel like time is running out for me. Other than the plans that we have for the expansion of Colony is now in its development phase, I am also busy preparing for my upcoming talk that will happen tomorrow (check them out here if you haven’t already). Apart from preparing the content, I am also thinking how should we create an environment that is conducive and engaging for the audience so that it truly benefits the participants who are joining.

My team has been really helpful throughout the planning, but now that I have more control over the venue and settings, I really want to deliver that superior experience to all my guest. So I thought I could turn to all of you – if there is one aspect that you care about during talks or conferences, what would it be?

Also, we still have a few spaces left for the talk so do sign up in the link above if you haven’t already. Looking forward to see you there!

The past few months have been taxing on Shorty and me. We’ve been really lucky that the response of our 2-month old Colony has been great. The insane growth of Colony though comes with a price. It’s been heavy on both of us work-wise and hard with her too having to juggle work and the kids.

Bogged down with the daily grind we realized we’ve hardly had time to spend with each other. We’ve thought about doing holidays together but that runs into a whole bunch of scheduling problems. Our coming weeks are so packed that we can’t put together a meaningful window for us to make a long overdue trip together. We normally go for a trip together, just the both of us at least once a year. I can’t even remember the last time we did that now.

I realized that what we needed wasn’t to go anywhere fancy or experience anything new. Both Shorty and I are fortunate to have had the chance to travel a lot in the past and another trip to Japan wasn’t going to move the needle. What we needed though was to be able to spend time together. Just me and her.

So one day after work I decided to explore the idea of a staycation. Choosing a nice hotel to spend the weekend at in KL. I looked around at a number of hotels and I found that The Majestic Hotel was the best value.

There were a number of different rooms in the pictures I could see online though so I contacted them wanting to see what the difference was and what kind of room we were getting.

The great news was that they unexpectedly recognized my name and offered to sponsor us that weekend. They were amazing hosts and now that the staycation has come to an end, I can safely say it was a much needed break away from home and work.

Here’s why I loved the staycation experience:

1. It takes away all the anxiety that comes with travel

We don’t have to worry so much about having to make or miss a flight, or changing to different currency or even packing. If we ever forgot to bring something we could just go home and get it. No worrying about getting a local SIM card or how much it could cost if you were to answer that roaming call. Removing all the anxiety that come with traveling allowed us to focus on the destination itself.

2. The kids are just a short car-ride away.

If you’re like us, parents who struggle to be away from their kids for more than a few days… then Staycations are perfect. Because if we ever miss them we can go back and spend time with them in the afternoon which was exactly what we did. Heck we even brought them over to enjoy the lovely suite that The Majestic team gave us.

3. Going from a world of doing many things to a world of doing nothing.

What did we do on our staycation? Well we went for a 2 and a half hour massage and scrub at the Majestic Spa which was awesome and we ate at the restaurants on property. The rest of the time we were just in the room chilling and doing whatever we wanted to do. There was no expectations about how we should or shouldn’t be spending our time. Shorty was playing a lot of candy crush and reading about this Canadian lady who tattooed her eyeballs. I on the other hand was reading my books and watching David Blaine on TV doing magic tricks in front of Hollywood Celebrities.,

It’s a liberating experience to just have time to do whatever you want. No need for any sight-seeing, no need to think about where to find food and no toddlers calling after you for immediate attention halfway reading your book.

4. There was adventure!

Okay so I’ve been to Majestic Hotel many many times before. Every year I go there at least once for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. I’ve once attended Bryan Loo’s daughter’s birthday at Contango… but what I have never ever explored was the Majestic Wing. That is the really old colonial building that was the original Majestic Hotel that went as far back as… well I hear it was one of the earliest hotels of KL.

Instead of posting pictures of the hotel now, I’ll leave it to you to Google it.

5. It’s a lot more affordable.

For the money we save on air tickets, or airport shuttles and stuff like that we get to stay in a nicer hotel than we normally would. Not to mention we don’t have to budget for falling for tourist scams which is something I always tend to get when I go to foreign countries

All in all I am now in love with the idea of Staycations and I’d highly recommend Majestic Hotel in KL for one if you ever wanted to do one.

One of my friends is a guy named Jonathan Quek. He’s a professional speaker who makes a living giving seminars that people pay to attend just to learn from what he knows.

Sometime a few months ago he sat across me at The Barn and wanted to know more about my social media experience. How I had used social media in entrepreneurship to help level the game when it came to  business. So I told him whatever I knew in my past 10 years of social media experience ranging from the days of Friendster to Twitter to Plurk and well today’s Instagram and Snapchat generation.

After hearing all that he said “Why is it you have never shared this with anybody?”.

My reply was that I didn’t think anyone would be interested and besides I’m not a professional speaker. That though was precisely why he thought I should do it and why people would listen. So he asked me who else had used social media very prominently to help him in business and I named a few… one of them being Bryan Loo of Tealive.

Bryan happened to be a good friend of ours so Jonathan went to speak to him and asked him if he would be a part of a talk we would put together. Bryan happily agreed. Just like me he thought it would be fun. So this is what we put together.

Click here to learn more or to check out more details.

I’ve used digital (not just social) media so much for business. Even when it comes to Colony. All the hype we’ve been getting, the press coverage and even the fact that we’re on the first page of Google whenever anyone searches “Coworking space KL” is no accident. The results have been really powerful. The organic effects of all this work has driven more leads and more cost efficient leads than all the ads we could buy.

But speaking about it… that’s a whole different thing altogether. I can’t help but feel somewhat nervous about it. Somewhat worried that… hey what if what I had to say wasn’t that important or meaningful after all.

Well we’re a few weeks away and at the very least I think I’ll have fun. Heck the 3 of us are friends… so at the very least it’ll be all of you guys hanging out with 3 friends.

I asked Jonathan if he could give Bryan and I a promo code so that we could give like a 50% discount for our followers and he gave this to me.

So if you want to sign up click on the link above and go ahead

and sign up.

Last night Shorty asked me “What if one day you fall in love with someone else?’.

My answer was almost a reflex: “I won’t”.

When she dug deeper on why I explained how even though I’ve had a decent number of girlfriends in the past, what I have with Shorty is something that I’ve never experienced before. We have been married for 5 years now, together for 9… and till today I always look forward to spending time with Shorty. Even if it’s just following her home on a car ride and talking to her.

So the thought of falling in love with someone else is really foreign to me.

“Still.. you could change…”.

I guess I can’t ever deny the possibility that things in life might change but even then I’m not sure how much of an impact it will have on our marriage. The way I see it, once we have a family, our relationship is more than just us. It’s our kids. We owe it not just to ourselves but our kids to keep a good healthy relationship running. Even if I do fall in love with someone else, I don’t know if I can be the one breaking off our marriage and letting our kids grow up in a broken marriage. No matter how many times I try to convince myself that maybe it’s better that way, rather than letting them grow up in an unhappy marriage.

Because that’s not the point. When I say we owe it to each other, we owe it to each other to find a way to be happy in our marriage no matter how unhappy  we are. It’s something of course that works only if both sides are happy to work on it and I guess it becomes really challenging if only one side is trying hard.

My marriage with Shorty has reached a new phase though. Now that she’s also my business partner in Colony, I feel that I see her in a new light. No more the blogger, influencer, mom or wife… but a businesswoman. When I look at what she’s done with Colony I can’t help but pause for a while in admiration. It’s amazing and a part of me is still looking forward to what she’s going to do next.

Why am I writing this here? I guess writing about this helps me crystallise my thoughts. It helps me mind map my thoughts on marriage. Marriage is a long journey, and it’s something that will constantly grow, evolve and change so it’s good to lock in a memory of what my thoughts are on marriage at this particular point of my life.

Early last week Shorty and I were running around preparing for the 27th of August launch of Colony’s first co-working space. There was just so much to do. We had to finish up all the last minute renovations that we still had ongoing, to preparing for the launch event itself.

The launch turned out to be great. Something I’ll blog about on a later date once all the official photos are out.But back to the story… it was in the midst of all this planning when Shorty said

“What are we doing for our anniversary?”.

Our anniversary is on the 28th July. The one day after our launch. Now Shorty and I have a history of not celebrating Valentine’s Day or Anniversary in a fancy way but we normally try to do a dinner together or something. Not necessarily a fancy dinner, but just some time with each other.

I said we can do a dinner… but on that night an investor of Colony was in town so I probably had to take him out. After we finished dinner that night we got a call from a tenant of ours at Colony that they were having trouble with their air-con.

The weekend had just started at the end of a really busy week and before we knew it we were back at Colony on a Friday night. A major client was using the space and their air-con broke down. Shorty and I went in and relocated them to another space in Colony while trying to get someone to come fix it. Unfortunately it was the weekend so no technicians were able to come until Monday.

Saturday was spent trying to find a technician and on Saturday night Shorty and I decided to catch a movie to celebrate our post anniversary. She had wanted to watch Baby Driver. Right after our movie though we had to go back to Colony to do some stuff so there we were again working. Sunday was an almost full work day for me too since the technician managed to come in and I wanted to be around to learn what happened. I figure I need to know about all these maintenance issues.

At the end of the weekend we spent most of it together… but working. The best part though is that I loved it. Looking back at it, working with my wife has helped me look at her in a different light. At home I see her play the role of mother and wife, but at work… as this really capable woman who inspires me to work with her.

We’ve only just started working together but I feel like our relationship is moving into a new phase altogether.

Whoops okay now I gotta go… wife just finished doing some work and she wants to go for a massage. Husband duties calls!