text:
TEA ROAD by Momento Perfumery
When a new niche perfume company launches it's often off the back of a single successful fragrance that has grabbed the public's attention. While his can guarantee an initial flurry of orders and reviews, the inevitable follow up fragrance is often the make or break for the brand. Will it stand up to the promise shown by the first release? Launching instead with a small curated collection can minimise some of these fears, and allow customers to find their own favourite, and that is exactly what Mladen Dragic did with Momento Perfumery. So, with five fragrances in the range, why was I drawn to the delicious Tea Road?
Momento Perfumery was launched in 2021 and is another up and coming brand based in Canada. This territory definitely seems to be making some noise in the world of niche perfumery and, with a very different landscape for inspiration, it's turning out some fascinating fragrances. As I've mentioned before, France and the USA were always the major players in the perfume industry. So, with variety definitely being the spice of life, it's great to see others challenging this historic monopoly. With Momento Perfumery situated in Vancouver, but a tradition stretching back to the Adriatic, let's look a little closer.
Mladen Dragic grew up with a fascination for scent, but he admits that his was more from his surroundings than manufactured ones. He remembers "salty sea, sun scorched Aleppo pine needles, brightly coloured and fragrant oleander flowers, and powdery mimosa trees", so his childhood scent palette was already creating vivid memories. As he grew older he naturally discovered the world of commercial perfumery and, whilst this was initially exciting, he soon grew tired of what he saw as "recycled formulas with no real passion". He wondered whether he could do any better, revive a feeling of pride in perfume, and even make it a career.
Tinkering became serious study and, after seven years of triumphs and disappointments, Momento Perfumery was born. His initial collection of five fragrances all take the common ground of amber as their starting point, with each adding a different olfactory subcategory. There are three valiant attempts and two excellent perfumes, so that's a pretty good average. The first success is Avicenna, which is a deliciously spicy amber floral. It showcases rose at its heart but, with an intriguing resinous base, treads the unisex line. However, my favourite from the whole collection is the smoke and amber imbued Tea Road.
Inspired by the 1727 Treaty of Kyakhta, the fragrance opens with a traditional sweetened amber accord but, through the centre of this, a bergamot and floral quality appears. It almost hints at the scent of narcissus and jasmine, but the citrus adds a sharpness. The black tea note then shows itself but is paired with a textural leather aroma, almost like a soft cowhide rug, before an incense and vetiver note adds both a dryness and a whisper of fireside warm. Interestingly, as these deeper notes blend together you see a reappearance of the narcissus, with its honeyed peaches, before you're finally left with a sandalwood and musk trail. Tea Road is not a traditional tea fragrance, and that's what makes it so special.
Tea Road is available from the Momento Perfumery website at momentoperfumery.ca priced at $15 for 5ml, $25 for 10ml and $105 for 50ml. It's also available as part of the Discovery Set priced at $65 for 5x 5ml. [Samples provided by Mladen Dragic]
* Moment Perfumery fragrances are formulated to comply with Canada's allergen restrictions rather than EU allergen restrictions.
Labels: Avicenna, Canada, Independent, Mladen Dragic, Momento Perfumery, Niche, Tea Road, Vancouver
ABODE MIST INTENSE TRIO by Jonathan Ward
WHISTLER by Wild Coast Perfumery


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Status, Status Anxiety, Success & Life Fulfillment: How Are They All Related? | DTPHD Podcast 3
Join David Tian on the "DTPHD Podcast" as we explore deep questions of meaning, success, truth, love, and the good life.
For over a decade, David Tian, Ph.D., has helped hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find happiness, success, and fulfillment in their social, professional, and love lives. His presentations – whether keynotes, seminars, or workshops – leave clients with insights into their behavior, psychology, and keys to their empowerment. His training methodologies are the result of over a decade of coaching and education of thousands of students around the world. Join him on the "DTPHD Podcast" as he explores deep questions of meaning, success, truth, love, and the good life. Subscribe now.
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HENRY CHONG is our special guest speaker on this episode. Henry is Director of Fusang Capital, a fund management company that manages the assets of multi-family offices. He is also a Director at the Portcullis Group, Asia's biggest independent group of trust companies, providing comprehensive wealth administration to high-net-worth individuals, providing a one-stop shop for corporate, trustee, and fund administration services to individuals, family offices, philanthropies, private banks, and investment managers. Henry is a graduate of Oxford University with a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy Politics & Economics and is a founder of the Oxford Economics Society. He also holds a M.Sc. in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSC). He will be sharing with us from his deep insights in behavioral economics, finance, health, and psychology.
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Episode 3 Show Notes
3:01 Why status can matter, especially with respect to evolutionary psychology
4:37 Why some men have an obsessive drive for increasing their social status
7:21 How happiness and status are similar
7:47 The "Crab Method" for attaining status (and happiness)
8:39 Why most people striving for status (or happiness) fail at it
10:32 Why the principles of trust and reciprocity are so important to success and happiness, and how you can benefit from this
12:28 Henry and David finally disagree on an important point (…or do they?)
13:41 When "value" and "status" come apart — or why status doesn't always come to those who may deserve it
15:09 How you can attain "status" without much money
17:01 What happens when you fake status or artificially inflate your status
17:56 What happens when you become friends with people who care a lot about "status"
23:21 How thinking too much about status can have harmful, long-term psychological effects
30:17 What if your passions or interests don't lead to high status?
33:34 Tons of practical, how-to advice on how to find happiness while at the same time skyrocketing your status naturally
45:15 When would you need to depict having LOWER status than you actually have?
Status, Status Anxiety, Success & Life Fulfillment: How Are They All Related?
Truth, love, and the good. Here we go.
David Tian: Okay, welcome! Welcome back! This is the DTPHD Podcast. I am David Tian, Ph.D. and very honored to be joined, again, by Henry Chong. First, about me, for over the past 10 years – actually, over 12 years now – I've helped over hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries attain success, happiness, and fulfillment in life and specifically in relationships. I started out as a professor of philosophy in psychology and Asian cultures and then resigned from the university to found my dating coach company. I transitioned from there into relationships counseling, and more broadly, life coaching.
I'm joined here by Henry Chong, a man I've known since before. He went to Oxford, and a man of the world, so to speak. I'll leave it to him to introduce himself. Henry.
Henry Chong: Yes, hello. Thank you very much. My name is Henry Chong. I'm the CEO of the Fusang Group, and we are a group that helps families of substantive wealth look after their assets and minister their assets. In doing that job, my travels take me to a whole number of different things, looking at a wide variety of investments. And in doing so, I also have a very deep personal interest in how people think, how they operate.
I have degrees from Oxford in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and later on went to do Behavioral Science. I find that this study of how humans think and operate and how that interacts with the economy is fundamentally important when making investment decisions. I've known you, David, for a very long time, and I've always enjoyed our wide-ranging conversations and all kinds of topics: life, love, and the universe. And so, I'm very happy to be here, again, for our second podcast.
David Tian: Yeah, right. So thinking about the DTPHD Podcast and who I'd have as a second voice, the natural selection is Henry Chong. Let's dive into it. Today, we've selected, as our topic, status, and specifically why it's important, why it's not important, and status anxiety, status insecurity, and just status overall. I'm going to kick it off with an idea about status. It seems like, at least in the dating coach world or pick-up artist world, a world that I'm trying to escape but finds its tentacles in my life over and over, a very common concept there is status and the importance of status.
There's almost like a status obsession. There are courses that are selling well now called Status and books called Status. It's sort of scary to me, on the one hand, being a student of the humanities and a professor of the humanities, but I also understand it being a student of evolutionary psychology. In evolution, when it comes to mating and attracting mates – because after all, that's all that we're, as biological beings, made for. Let's get that straight. We are made for survival and replication at the most basic. If we can't replicate, then we're sort of useless in terms of our genetic material.
Our genes are always driving us forward for either survival or replication. And when it comes to replication, status matters a whole lot because if you are low status, your chances of surviving in the Savannah a hundred thousand years ago was a lot lower. If you're low in the status hierarchy, you won't get many mating opportunities, if any. In fact, as a male, you probably won't get any. In fact, the research has shown that males who are in the lower 50% of the status hierarchy probably didn't mate, and so we're not their descendants. We're the descendants of males that were in the upper 50%, if not the upper 33% of males throughout human history.
Therefore, we must have adapted or evolved the adaptive trait to have a drive for status. Just as we have a natural desire to eat sweet things because we're not adapted to deal with a world full of Krispy Kreme donuts on every corner, if we found some sweet thing a hundred thousand years ago, we better gobble it up because we wouldn't see it very often. Again, we're not adapted for the world now. We're adapted for the world 50,000 or 100,000 years ago.
And one of the things that we would have brought with us is a drive to attain status within our small tribes, because people didn't live in large societies back then, that we were adapted for. So actually, we were not adapted for living in a community bigger than 150 people or something like that, maybe even less, maybe 15 people. The drive to not be the lowest male on the totem pole made sense, because we would have no mating opportunities and we would have low chances of survival, relative to being the leader who could command all the resources and the sexual mating opportunities.
The drive for status makes sense. That's how it makes sense. The obsession among dudes who are trying to meet women, they would be obsessed about status and their place in the hierarchy because they are trying to maximize their mating opportunities. That's a liberal way of putting – or a generous way of putting it. They want to make their status seem higher than their natural status, where they natural would fall or would naturally be at that moment. They want to artificially increase their status, hence the status obsession.
But that's coming from the mating perspective. But I also see it coming from people who are just trying to make it in business, who are just trying to make it as an entrepreneur in his 20's. This seems like a really popular thing right now with the hustle and grind sub-culture, the entrepreneurial – like the 20-something entrepreneurial sub-culture, and sort of like this valorization of the startup subculture is the idea of status, of trying to make it in the world. That usually means billions of dollars, some kind of exit around that level, to make yourself feel like you've made it.
It's scary, because first of all, it does away with the whole meaning of life. We can talk about that from the humanities perspective. But also just from a straight science perspective, there's pretty decent empirical evidence to show that our happiness doesn't track our material wealth beyond a certain number: 75,000 just from… There's a well-known scientist who put that out there.
Henry Chong: Yes, that's The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt.
David Tian: Oh, right, in the book The Happiness Hypothesis he reports it, but it was like – I think it was a Nobel prize-winning social scientist. Anyway, there's a number of 75,000 per year, and that was a few years ago, at least. Now, it might be 80,000 or whatever, but beyond that certain number, which is relatively – that's upper- middle class, but it's not unattainable for many people. But beyond that, happiness increases only marginally, and then at a certain level, it starts to decrease or flat-line.
And even before any of that research, there's a lot of philosophers or theorists who posited – and many of them were from a religious background – that the meaning of life could not lie in accumulating more material possessions or climbing the status hierarchy. Yet, it seems like most of the world, especially the people in my market, young men who in their 20's and 30's who are trying to make it in the world and who feel insecure, they latch onto status as the end-all-be-all that will save them from their current fate. I just wanted to muse on this a bit.
Henry Chong: I think status, like happiness, is something that is very hard to pursue directly. People who try to pursue status directly usually, at least the way we see them, people of those status, people who try almost a bit too hard – just like happiness. John Stuart Mill said you have to approach it sideways like a crab. If you spend all day trying to be happy, you never will be happy. You need to go out and do other things and happiness will come to you as a byproduct of doing all those other things.
I think status is the same way. You need to go out and do productive things, add value to the world, be someone who has deep expertise in a skill, some kind of something that you can give out into the world. If you can produce in that way, status will come to you: status, money, and happiness. If someone says, "I want to be a legendary mountain climber so that I will have status, and everyone will recognize me, and I will be famous" you will never become a legendary mountain climber because it's very hard and it requires a great deal of intrinsic motivation to get you to the peak of that profession, like any profession.
I think it's extremely hard to pursue status directly, and I think that's the mistake a lot of people make, a lot of the people that you're talking about, for example. By maximizing for status, first and foremost, they don't end up taking the time to, for example, gain deep mastery at a specific skill and become one of the best in the world at a specific skill. They don't take the time to gain the discipline needed in the daily pursuit of whatever their chosen path is.
At the end of the day, I think something within us is wired to recognize that, to see people who are not taking in action for any kind of intrinsic motivation, but purely because of how they think it'll make them look. We seem to have some kind of natural aversion to those kind of people.
David Tian: That's a good point. You're saying even if you were to pursue status – a lot of the spiel that I started with was attacking the pursuit of it at all. But you're saying to get it at all – if you're going to aim for it, even aiming for it is not the way to get it. That's a great point. It's like you're saying, it's like happiness. In a way, this is like a pursuit of fame. A lot of people think if they are famous, they'll get money, then they'll get the girls, then they'll get the big gangster life.
What they end up having to do is to fake it. They're faking that they are something. Maybe people who are listening can think back to when they've seen somebody fake status. This happens a lot in night clubs. They try to be bigger than they are, more important than they are, richer than they are. They'll try really hard. They'll buy clothes but they don't seem to be very comfortable with them.
There's some bullshitters who can take it pretty far. What happens to those people?
Henry Chong: Certainly, in the short-term, it can most certainly work. We don't live, as you say, in tribes of 150 people anymore. We live in a large world, and when you encounter people for the first time, it's entirely possible to fake it, so to speak. The problem is, it's hard to sustain that over a long period of time. People eventually figure it out. And I was saying earlier, we have some kind of intrinsic dislike for these kind of people, and I think some of it is due to the way we're wired for trust, reciprocity, and intrinsic sense.
We can talk a bit about the evolutionary reasons why things like trust and reciprocity are so important. Once upon a time, if you're living in a tribe of 150 people – if I hunt a deer, I have more meat than I know what to do with, I need to share. I share because I know that you will reciprocate. When you David, you go out and catch a deer and I haven't caught anything, and that's why for example reciprocity is non-linear is why trust is such an important part of the way our society works.
A lot of people – it becomes too much about quid pro quo, and the world doesn't quite work that way. The world works by building relationships, by building trust. This is the most fundamental glue that holds society together, and we have a natural aversion to people who try and upset this balance.
David Tian: Right, so trust and reciprocity. You're talking about authentic status in some way, and then there's this aversion of it which is inauthentic status.
Henry Chong: Exactly.
David Tian: Let's back out a bit and talk about what status actually is referring to. Biologically, there is a way to think about the hierarchy. You were saying – maybe before we pressed record – about how in the animal kingdom or early man, or smaller societies, status was a lot more linear versus what it is now. What is status actually trying to track, or what does it track? It's not just money. People think that it is now, and that's a very American view of status.
If someone were to fake status, what are they actually faking?
Henry Chong: I think it's a bit more contextualized in today's world. Again, we live in a big world with technology, with things that have become quite diverse. Our communities are no longer local. You can have an online community of people who follow you on Instagram, which is a perfectly valid community. So I think status is relative, but still I think in its core, it relies on your ability to add value in some way to your community.
David Tian: That's a much more idealistic view of it than I think. It should be, right?
Henry Chong: Value doesn't have to be a judgment of whether that value is good or not. I challenge you to name one person who has achieved 'fame' by just wanting to be famous or pursuing fame without actually having any kind of underlying skill. Even people we think of as being famous for being famous, like perhaps the Kardashians, still have a very unique skill. They are very good at social media.
David Tian: The value they're adding there is an entertainment value.
Henry Chong: That's what I mean. It doesn't have to be a judgment about whether this value is –
David Tian: There are people who add value who might be lower-status. Doctors without Borders, who are relatively anonymously, name one person who is part of that organization besides the head. Maybe you know your friend who is in it, but they're not famous because they just don't get spread. So, there are people who do valuable things and do valuable work that people don't hear about. And in terms of status, they might actually be considered by the society as a low thing.
You said it's relative, and that's a really important point. Your status is determined by your peers, or your peers being your community. Within the community, not everybody is equal. You have some people, they're the influencers so to speak, looking for a better term than that but they're the ones who influenced most of other people's things. They have a disproportionate control or say over what is considered to be of value. Your status is always going to be relative to the community that you want to peg it to. So wanting to have a higher status within your school would be very different from somebody who is having a higher status in the night club. Those would be very different types of people, probably, depending on what your school is or night club is like, but the average ones would be quite different.
I think what status is – if you think about influence or authority. A good way to think about it is where status and wealth come apart. Nowadays, you might have the royal families, and they might not be very rich; they just have status, like the people recognize them. They respect them and they probably get a lot of perks that don't come along with just paying for stuff. They live in this great palace, they get all of these tax breaks, and all of these other perks that if you were to buy them outright with cash would be a lot more expensive than whatever they are paying for.
Another one is actually famous people. There are some billionaires that we would never recognize; we just don't know. You might see the name in the Forbes list but you don't know what they look like. You wouldn't be able to tell them on the street. But then you'd have somebody who is maybe only net worth of 20 million. I think Conor McGregor, before he fought Mayweather, his net worth was assessed around 25 million or something like that. He's a lot poorer compared to anybody in the Forbes lists, yet we know his face, and his name, and all of that stuff because he is famous. Fame and riches come apart.
Whereas status, what happens when you become famous, is you get a lot of free stuff. You walk into a night club and they throw you all of this free stuff. That's a reaction to your status. It's not a reaction just to your money. Status is just assessed relative to the status makers, that's a good term like status assessors. The masses, if the masses have a voice, are usually the one that have the final say. If there are a million people who have folllowed you on Instagram, you have more status than somebody who has 100 people on his Instagram.
This is a crude way of assessing status. So, when a guy is trying to fake status or thinks that status is end-all-be-all of his life, what will happen to his life is – like you were saying, he might be able to fake it for a while, but people will figure it out. When that happens, not only does the house of cards falls, but his life falls.
Even when he's making it, people who fake status – the only people who will be duped by it are other fake people. If there are enough fake people all faking status, what happens is they come into cahoots with each other. You see this at a local level in night clubs. There are enough fake people there, and they're trying to fake that they have a lot of money. A bunch of fakers get together and they either explicitly or implicitly make a pact, which is like, "Hey, let's pretend to be cooler and have more money than we do. We'll chip in on this table, we'll hack the system so it makes us look like we have more money than we do. We'll pool our resources."
Unless those are friends that were from way back – but probably not if you're club friends – are all fake friends. The moment that you break with the pact, or they find that you can't uphold your end of the fake status bargain, they are going to drop you. A lot of people in the clubbing world, pick-up artist world, or any kind of status-obsessed world are surrounded by fake people, fake friends, that they shouldn't really be trusting them.
Going back to trust and reciprocity, reciprocity is there because as long as you continue to uphold my fake status, I'll uphold your fake status, so we'll just lie about each other to girls. We'll keep that going until the girls figure it out and then we have to move on to new victims. But these friends of yours, just like clubbing friends, the average clubbing friends, are going to be fake.
It creates a circle around you and a life around you that is fake. Even if you get, as a celebrity, lots of free stuff, respect, or adoration, the moment the status goes away because people find out that you don't deliver the kind of value that they thought you delivered, those people will go away as well. What I see a lot, and I have this separate Facebook group, because there's another show I do called Man Up, and we have a Man Up Facebook group. You can join that, and there's 18,000 people in there right now.
A lot of the guys, every week or so, we have two or three people who complain that they don't have friends. Often, their refrain is, "I did have friends, but they turned out to be fake friends and I think everyone is just in it for themselves." I'm not sure, there's no real question in there, they're just looking for some kind of validation or I don't know. People like this usually are bitter.
One of the reasons why they find themselves surrounded by fake people is because they're being fake themselves. The obsession over status will breed that kind of fakeness.
Henry Chong: At the same time, I think we also need to realize that we're making valid judgments about those kind of people who hang out at night clubs. Your value is extremely limited to that context. Now, as long as that is the kind of status that you are pursuing and what you want to maximize for, so be it. But the minute you leave that context, as you say, you lose all that status. Intrinsically, it's pretty similar to Conor McGregor. He has a lot of status because he is a UFC fighter. If he decides to go from being a UFC fighter to becoming someone who works for Doctors Without Borders, his status will be very different in that environment.
The key is to realize what kind of value is valuable to you, what kind of status are you trying to maximize for? The problem is, a lot of people go and try and maximize their value in a night club environment when that's not really what they care about. Again, if that's your life, if you run a night club, so be it.
David Tian: Just for human beings in general, they shouldn't aim for status because even if that's what you want, you're not going to get it by aiming for it. In addition, if you do want status – what I'm saying is, it will lead to an unfulfilling life. Status can be something that you have given to you by your context, and that might be nice to have. Once a while, you might revel in it somehow, but you don't want to stay there for too long. Because if you think about your status too long, you're going to get sucked into getting more of it. That becomes some kind of metric in your life of how to measure your success or your progress.
It's dissatisfying not just in terms of the people that you draw into your life, but also internally, the mental gymnastics you have to go through. You're quite right in pointing out the night club – I met my wife in the night club, and I have plenty of friends who enjoy night clubs. I enjoy night clubs given the right state of mind that you enter it into. I think a lot of club owners know the game. They have to, to game that system.
They know that these people who are buying them drinks wouldn't have bought drinks for this guy, the owner, if he weren't the owner. I don't think any smart night club person is under any illusions about the truthfulness of that friendship. That's why it's actually hard to get through to them and become their personal friend. They are constantly screening you and testing you to see whether you're really a friend.
One way, if you really want to go all the way – what's the movie? It's Matt Damon and – Oh, Talented Mr. Ripley, where you keep the ruse up all the way to the end. You infiltrate that influential person's personal life sort of like an undercover cop would for gangs or whatever, and you win over their approval. Actually, gangs are a really good test case for status. That's pretty raw status right there; if you're the top dog, you get to kill other people. You get to order them to chop off fingers, and things.
Anyway, so then you infiltrate that personal life so you hang out with him on a Sunday afternoon with their kids, and the dog, and all that, and then they start to think, "Okay, you're truthful." But what they are really looking for is the authenticity that you are going out with trust and reciprocity. But I wanted to also point out that the inner life of somebody like that really suffers. There's a textbook for psychiatrists, the DSM. We're up to DSM-5 now. There's a helpful taxonomy in DSM of psychological disorders, and there is one that's quite pervasive in the Cluster B set of disorders, which is the Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
And one of the hallmarks of a Narcissistic Personality Disordered-individual is obsession over status, which is the constant thought of, "What do other people think of me? How am I being perceived in this situation now, here, and in the future, and back then?" This obsession about how others perceive him or her. You might start off as a non-Narcissistic Personality Disordered individual. You're just insecure.
And then one way to get over the insecurity, and maybe you just want more friends, maybe you want more sex with good-looking people, is to act and think in a certain way. And that was really dangerous. Just the context for why status makes sense in the pick-up artist world is – it gets you the first steps. If somebody who doesn't fit into night clubs or cool settings at all suddenly starts to dress like somebody who does. He doesn't know why he's wearing those clothes because his aesthetic sense has not caught up to that or has not become that yet, but he's just ordered by a fashion stylist, "Wear these clothes in this way and go out there!"
So he does it, like a robot. He puts on the clothes, gets a new haircut. It's not him yet, though. He hasn't owned it. He doesn't even know why. He doesn't even like the look in the mirror, but he's just told to put it on, so he puts it on and goes out there. When people start to look at him, they'll consider him like he fits in and one of their own, so he'll get that initial pinging of status or validation.
So then he thinks, "This is working!" And then he'll start to talk like them. He'll mimic their styles of speech and the content. And so, he starts to fake it. He starts to fake as if he is one of them. Inside, he's just really thinking, "Okay, they like X, so I will do X." And really, what's happening is he starts to get that thought pattern of, "What do they like? How do they see me now? How do they perceive me? How are they judging me? How are they evaluating me?"
He's constantly thinking about that because he hasn't actually arrived at the aesthetic sensibility that they have for appreciating the intrinsic nature of the things that bring status and value in that context; he's just mimicking it. What's interesting is the structure of the thought process creates a narcissistic personality disordered person. It creates a disorder in him. I know from personal experience because I went through that and I got really good at that.
One of the reasons I got really good at it is because I got into their minds, the minds of the audience, the minds of the target market, and figured out what they like. I was able to mimic that. Eventually, it went all the way and I was able to adopt thought patterns that they had. It was really scary, because most of the people in those environments have narcissistic personality disordered thought patterns, which are along the lines of, "What do people think of me? How can I impress others?"
The more you study NPD, the more you find out how awful their inner lives are, because in fact, they can never be truly fulfilled. Because anybody who is obsessed with the question as the driving force of their lives, "What do other people think of me?"
Imagine that were your primary question that you woke up with every day, you would never be secure and certain in your life because that's always a big unknown. You're always pinging, "Do they like me today? Oh good, they like me today. Today, I'm allowed to be happy, to feel good about myself, and so on." Your self-esteem is always at the mercy of other people, and you don't know yourself. You're not the center of your own values, because your values are centered around other individuals. They get to tell you how to feel about yourself and about anything, really.
Somebody who is obsessed about status goes down the road of unhappiness and lack of fulfillment, not just the fact that he's now going to surround himself with fake people, but also because of his inner life. His primary questions are driving him towards dissatisfaction.
Henry Chong: And because he doesn't intrinsically enjoy the environment that he's in, right? He's living a life because of some kind of externally-referenced values, not because of internally-referenced values. You shouldn't run a night club because you think it'll bring you status. You should run a night club because you enjoy running a night club. And if you really do intrinsically enjoy running a night club and you're willing to have the discipline and put in the time to learn the skills necessary – because it's a skill like anything else in the world. If you're willing to do that, you'll get good at it. And if you get really good at it, you will probably have a lot of status as a night club owner, specifically.
That's why I think it is important that you understand that the value is contextualized, and you do need to deliver value. Being a good night club owner delivers value to people who want to go to night clubs. That's why you cannot pursue status directly. Instead, you have to start saying, "What is it that I want to do? What is it that I enjoy doing intrinsically?"
For example, Conor McGregor, if he became a UFC fighter because he said, "I want to be famous", he wouldn't have gotten very far. It's not an easy road. Instead, he said, "I want to be the best fighter that ever lived." Because of that, because he was willing to put in the time, and the dedication, and the training day in and day out, now that he is one of the best fighters in the world, he has plenty of status. But still, to be honest, contextualized to that environment.
He has a lot of status as a UFC fighter. Instead, you look at someone like Ronda Rousey, who, I'm sure at one point was extremely intrinsically motivated. She was in the Olympics. She had a once incredible winning streak in the UFC, but I think at some point it shifted for her. At some point, she became more afraid about looking after that winning streak, about not losing, than she really did about just intrinsically wanting to be the best fighter possible.
You can see that, because the minute she lost, it just destroyed her. That identity of having this perfect record was so much more important to her than just the intrinsic joy and value of being a good fighter and enjoying fighting. And to be honest, you look at Conor McGregor, he really enjoys fighting.
David Tian: That's a great point. You hinted at earlier – the best way to actually get status. The reason why people are usually obsessed with status is because they think that status will bring them certain emotions or goods like mating opportunities, respect from others which will get them more validation which will make them feel like they are finally significant and worthy enough in life.
The way to get those feelings of significance, enjoyment, and mating opportunities, they think are through status. Let's think about status as a byproduct of contributing value to your society, to the community. The way to do that, you were saying, is to take it to the highest levels, is to find something that you enjoy intrinsically, and then you'll have the persistence and the tenacity to break through all of the different plateaus that would be there naturally, and to get that high level and that skill.
What if the thing that you choose to pursue, because you enjoy it? What if the thing that you intrinsically enjoy isn't valued much by the community? So like, somebody who really loves Smurfs. That's Gary Vaynerchuk's example. Let's say you really love playing checkers. That's not really cool these days, but you really love it. What should that person be doing, you think?
Henry Chong: That's the question. If you say, "I intrinsically love Smurfs, but I don't want to pursue my Smurfdom" or whatever, because there's not a lot of status in it, again, you're pushing it from the wrong way. Now, you're concerned more about the status than the intrinsic joy of the activity. If you say, "Look, I enjoy checkers."
The honest truth is someone who is the best checker players in the world would never make as much money as the best hedge fund manager in the world, but that's my path. That's what I want to get good at. You can be the best checkers player in the world and have a lot of status in that world. And checkers players, the world over, will go, "Wow, he is the best." And you will have a lot of status localized in that context and in that community.
But if you say, "You know what? I just want to gain status, I want to play checkers because I gain status". To be honest, you're probably not ever going to get very far. Anything in the world, to be the best in the world at is not easy. There are plenty of people out there who are professional checkers players, and it's not easy like anything else. It takes a huge amount, not just time and dedication, but willing to suffer, quite frankly, all the not fun bits. I'm sure being a night club owner on the surface sounds appealing to many people, but it's a lot of late nights.
I have lots of friends who run night clubs, and it's not easy. It's a pretty hard life: the drinking… I mean, it's long hours like any job. And sometimes, it's just a grind.
David Tian: That's a great point. Let's bring out value more, because that's the thing you pointed out at the beginning. There's intrinsic enjoyment of an activity. Let's say blogging about Smurfs in the Smurf fan world. Gary Vaynerchuk's example was like – in 2009, he gave this talk that was picked up by TED, and then it became viral. "If you love Smurfs, then Smurf it up." And then a couple of years later, The Smurfs Movie came out and he made another video about how the top Smurfs blogs were getting some sponsorship money from I think Disney or whatever to promote the movie.
Their time had come. They could finally make money off this blog that no one paid any attention to, and suddenly they were cool again for a little while. That was his example. There is a way – You can think of some examples of people who became famous doing things that you would never have thought would been cool but got picked up because of the right way of marketing. Value is that way. If you are the world's best chess player, but you only play in closed rooms with no recordings, and the only way you'd ever hear about them is through the newspaper, the score – because they didn't allow anybody to record it, and they didn't do any interviews or whatever.
Then they aren't providing value to the society. You might be really good at something, but if you don't provide value to others, you shouldn't expect others to reward you for that. This is a reason why Conor McGregor, even though he's marginally better or worse than GSP, ended up making a ton more money than the top fighters in the UFC, was because he understood marketing and branding really well. He was able to provide that extra entertainment value which was the disproportionate amount of the money is coming in through that to that world.
Now, he's making boxing money because he was able to do that. And a lot of the fighters who are pure fighters, who never want to give interviews, they don't want to talk to the media, they don't want to play up their personalities, they just want to fight, are going to be getting the 50,000 to show or 50,000 to win or whatever it is when Conor McGregor is making 10 million in the UFC for a fight. Now, even 10x that.
There's a separate move strategically, like in business, from being good at that skill to monetizing it. So, when you want to monetize then the marketing comes in. A big part of status and branding is your personal brand, your personal marketing of yourself: your presentation of yourself, how often you are in the minds of your market – and this is something I used to teach as part of night club game.
There are ways of keeping yourself in the minds of the people that you want to aim for, and there are ways of presenting yourself so that you are basically marketing and branding yourself in that context. That will take you to that next level to get the status. But if no one hears about you and you're toiling away on your own, and you're really good at the skill, and you have intrinsic enjoyment of it, but you're not getting rewarded, the next thing to do is to think about marketing it: How do you present it so that it gives even more value to even more people?
And then you'll get rewarded at some point. That's the idea as far as making money off the thing that you really enjoy.
Henry Chong: This is also I mean by when you say 'adding value', you need to think long and hard about: adding what kind of value to who? Again, you need to take an unvarnished, no-bullshit look at what is it you do. Conor McGregor understands that a lot of the value he provides is entertainment value, moreso even than winning the fights. And because he understands that and he understands how to exploit it, he delivers a lot of value to people like me, who quite frankly are just armchair fans of the UFC and fighting. But we enjoy watching his fights.
A lot of times, people want to ascribe value judgments to what people do. But the question is, rather than worry about what people think, what do I intrinsically enjoy doing? What can I become one of the best in the world at doing, and how can I then deliver value to other people by doing this? You can be one of the best chess players in the world, and in lots of ways, as you say, of marketing and branding these days. You can start a Twitch channel, or a YouTube channel. You can teach people how to play chess, or you can just provide entertainment to the world by saying, "This is an example of chess being played at the very highest of levels."
But whatever it is that you do, you do need those elements. It's not enough to just say, "Yeah, I want to provide entertainment value to people" if I intrinsically don't enjoy doing it, because then you're never very good at it. There have been a lot of fighters who – Everyone knows that, right? As a fighter, you understand that you've got to sell your fights, but most people aren't very good at it, and don't enjoy doing it. And so, they just don't actually provide the value.
Conor McGregor enjoys providing the entertainment as much as he enjoys fighting, and that's why he has gotten quite good at it.
David Tian: Yes, and I think that's his natural personality, which is this big, brash personality. He's not actually taking any extra effort to act in a certain way. He's just acting as himself and just showing up for interviews. Of course, showing up for interviews is a big deal when you have that many interviews, you put in the hustle. But it's him. It's him being – so far as we can tell, to keep up that level of media, he's being himself.
Here's just one piece of hope – I'll give a little hope to the guys who are listening, from my world, or my former world, who are nerds, and they feel like the things that they intrinsically enjoy, and the value that they can provide to the society, is not enjoyed or valued by their target female market. The hot girls that they want to impress and all of that.
That's why they had that switch, right? I started off as a Ph.D. student who was very geeky and had a very argumentative personality. I was a debater, and I loved to debate philosophy, and psychology. The nerds like me who had to go from something that the target audience didn't like, into something that they did like, and to make that transition to enjoy it intrinsically, there's a big switch there.
Now, looking back, I would say to people – because I coached guys to do that for over a decade. It's really hard for the average person, or even for 80% of the people who attempt this, it's really hard as an adult, to switch your interests from one extreme to the other, or that drastically. From geeking out over Plato and Aristotle to geeking out over Kanye West if you didn't enjoy Kanye West music or Eminem before that.
One way to take that Gary Vaynerchuk point of the Smurfs. He said two years later, there was a Smurfs movie and they came calling, and you had better been ready with your blog from years back. Because if you suddenly jump on that bandwagon, no one is going to buy it and they're not going to sponsor you. But if you've been blogging and became the number one Smurfs blog, they would've then gone to you for sponsorships and promotions because you're already established.
Here's the takeaway I give guys now: Pursue the things that you intrinsically enjoy, because even if you don't become famous or rich off it, in the capitalist world, in the capitalist economy, you'll be able to make enough to live. The original point that I had – I think it was Kahneman who did the research on the 75,000 a year. There's a certain point at which it was 75,000 dollars a year. Beyond that, there was only a marginal increase in happiness, and then it leveled off.
If you can make 75,000, if you really hustle at the thing that you enjoy, or you can do that at night and then take a job – whatever. But if you're spending your time doing something you intrinsically enjoy, even if you're not monetarily rewarded for it, you're still going to enjoy life. There are some things that maybe you won't get like hot chicks or whatever, but you're going to enjoy life. So, if you just sell your soul to get the hot chicks, you're going to hate yourself later anyway, and the hot chicks thing is like eating a lot of ice cream, which just becomes old after a while.
But the point that Gary Vaynerchuk is making is: Maybe you will hit it big. Here's an example. It became really cool, and people in their 20s won't remember this, but older people will, it wasn't cool to say that you were an entrepreneur. I'm 40 now, so when I was Henry's age, that entrepreneur meant that you were unemployed: You didn't have a job and you had no future. So, entrepreneur meant unemployed.
Now, it means something cool because there's 20-something year-old Zuckerberg and people like him who wore a hoodie and became billionaires. Now, it's like this whole startup culture which is really cool: wearing jeans to work, and all of that. That's a pretty relatively new thing in human history. They made nerds cool. They made coding cool. They made that sub-culture cool. And maybe you will be that – probably not, but you'll never know when the cultural shift will occur, so that the thing that you intrinsically enjoy will become cool.
In the mean time, you can learn marketing and branding to make it cool, to bring more value and to draw in a bigger audience for that thing that you enjoy. That's something I've been really hammering home to my philosophy friends and my professor friends. That the reason you're making only this much money from the university is because society, generally, in a capitalistic economy, only values your work that little. You teach two courses a term to a grand total of 30 students, that's how much value you bring. In fact, you're probably overpaid given the value that you're bringing, and you write books that maybe 50 people in the whole world read, and articles that maybe 20 people read or less.
If you want to get rewarded more in a capitalist economy, bring more value to more people. That means you are going to have to – instead of being a purist about your work, you're going to have to look for ways to bridge that divide. But in the mean time, maybe you can just bide your time until whatever it is that you do enjoy and are good at becomes cool. That might come along.
In the mean time, you're going to really enjoy the time that you have in this Earth because you're doing something you intrinsically enjoy.
Henry Chong: Exactly. And if you intrinsically enjoy something: If you get to wake up every day and do something that you love doing, what do you care if you get the fame or the status? If you actually think about it, what is the successful life? Isn't it getting to do what you want to do when you want to do it with who you want to do it? And if you get to do that every day, who cares about the other stuff?
In fact, personally, I would much rather be successful and not famous at all. For a lot of people, famous is the negative thing that comes that is unavoidable because of your chosen profession. If you're an actor, being successful and being famous go hand-in-hand. I'm willing to bet a lot of them would actually prefer if they could have one without the other, because fame comes with a lot of burdens. It's not necessarily the easiest of lives.
Again, I personally would much rather do what I want to do and not have anyone notice. The problem, of course, is that, again, if you're a philosophy professor for example and you do want to be adding value to a lot of people, then maybe it means that you need to figure out how to communicate what you teach in a way that is accessible to a whole lot of people.
You could easily be a philosophy professor, and if you have some niche area of philosophy that you make so interesting and so accessible to millions of people, and you have millions of views on your YouTube channel, that's adding value. You probably will become famous and get a lot of status for doing it, whether you like it or not.
David Tian: Actually, professors are a great example, especially philosophers, of having status within the local community versus having status in the greater community. A lot of professors, especially young professors, feel they need to follow their senior professors. And the senior professors, especially in philosophy, really pride themselves on being understandable, like unapproachable.
Especially in America, Anglo-American philosophy should not be relevant to real life. Because if it were, it wouldn't be philosophy. A lot of senior philosophers believe that. There was a time when they were enjoying status within the university community, and maybe broadly speaking, like you get a Kripke type – like a Princeton philosopher of language, for instance, who is very famous within the small world of philosophy, but no one outside that knows him and doesn't really give a damn. And so, if your community shrinks, then you want status within that little community. But don't be wondering why you're not getting rewarded more by the outside community if you're shafting them.
I was recently in North America. I was there for two months in the West. One thing I discovered was that when I dress the way I dressed in Thailand, ironically, which is still a developing country with my Hermes bracelet wearing that became a thing with my Tom Ford suit, and I have these Chrome Hearts, a ring and a necklace. That actually attracted the wrong type of person on the street.
I was approached over and over by beggars. Not beggars, it's the wrong word but I kind of got picked on because I look like a good target for hand-outs or to be made felt guilty. I'm just walking down the wrong street, and there were a lot of wrong streets in New York, and even in Toronto, surprisingly. What I discovered is when I'm in the West, especially North America, I shouldn't have status displays. In fact, it would be better to dress down a lot.
I'd walk around town in Converse, and just plain blue jeans, and a plain T-shirt, and then I wouldn't get bothered. That was a weird thing, because when do you want to make it look like you have less status than you actually do? That's an interesting question. When is it that you have so much status that you want to have lower status?
A celebrity, like you were mentioning, Henry, like an actor who wants to blend in and go watch a movie in an actual theater with the public would have to go in camouflage, with the hoodie and the whole thing, dressed down a lot. You see this in the paparazzi. They're trying to avoid the paparazzi and sneak off to Starbucks and order a drink. They have to blend in.
I think it's not that difficult for us to imagine how fame would be unpleasant to live with. Anyways, it's a nice wake-up call to realizing when you have real status, often, you want to fake low status in order to weed out certain people. You don't want to attract certain people, gold diggers, or people who are going to try to take advantage of you. The people who stick around are there for you really, for you as a person. So you look for people you can actually trust, so let me come back to your initial about trust and reciprocity.
Henry Chong: Not just that. A lot of people – you know the people who are truly high status because you can walk into a black-tie event wearing jeans and a hoodie like Mark Zuckerberg. If you can go meet the president wearing your iconic black T-shirt blue jeans outfit, ironically, that's you displaying the highest of status when you say, "I can afford to take myself out of the game altogether."
Maybe just one last story to end on that I think is just interesting is this old story about, once upon a time, there was this Mexican fisherman. He's lying on the beach, and he's playing his guitar. He's sitting in his hammock by the ocean, and this young, newly minted Harvard MBA student comes over and says, "Hey, let me teach you about how to be successful." A lot of people have probably heard of this story.
This fisherman says, "Okay, what should I do?" And this MBA says, "Well, you know, you need to be working longer hours, so you can go out and catch more fish. You get more fish means you get more money." And the guy fisherman says, "Okay, what next?" And he says, "Once you catch more fish, you make more money, you can buy a second boat. You have a second boat, you hire someone to work for you, now you're making even more money by catching even more fish."
This goes on, and he gets a fleet of ships. The MBA says, "Now, you need to go up the production chain. You go into distribution, and marketing, and packaging, and canning, and then you move into retail so you're selling your fish directly to the consumers. The guy says, "Oh, what then?" And he says, "Well, you can IPO your company. You can sell it. You can make millions of dollars."
And then the fisherman says, "Okay, what's next?" And he says, "Well then, you can retire and live a life of luxury lying on the beach with your hammock, playing the guitar, watching the ocean." I've always liked the story, where a lot of people, after the whole circle, you come back to where you started. A lot of people chase status so that one day, you can just wander around wearing jeans and a T-shirt and no one will bother you.
I've always thought that quite interesting.
David Tian: Yeah, sounds right, man. I like that. Alright, we've gone over time. It's always a joy talking to my main man, Henry Chong. This is David Tian, signing out. We'll see you in the next podcast.
Henry Chong: Yup, take care everybody.
David Tian: Hey, it's David again. Before you go, a couple last things. First, all the show notes and links to resources can be found at DavidTianPHD.com/dtphdpodcast. Or you can just go to DavidTianPHD.com and find it through the top navigation menu.
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text:
HME Colleagues Join Forces to Create Powerhouse for Post-Acute Patient Care
Lab Tactical Consulting Sells to Join Industry-Changing LifeH2H Solutions
Lab Tactical Consulting, a consulting group specializing in HME operations and patient experience, has been acquired by LifeH2H Solutions. Until the merger was finalized in late July 2018, Lab Tactical was independently owned & operated by Anna and Ryan McDevitt. Owned by Dewey Roof, LifeH2H Solutions is an emerging business focused on solving complex business problems in the post-acute healthcare market.
Roof created LifeH2H Solutions with the intent of developing solutions that are rooted in clinical competence and substantiated by thoughtfully measured use cases. The Atlanta-based team of Anna McDevitt, Ryan McDevitt, and Nimesh Patel join the LifeH2H team as LifeLab, a division of the company dedicated to mapping and documenting business processes, refining patient education experiences, and developing data-driven models to support positive clinical outcomes. The team's first goal? Make the transition from the hospital to home a positive experience for the patient and a profitable transaction for the health system.
"People are our priority," says Roof, "that won't change, and neither will the goal of healthcare: take care of people. There IS a right way to take care of people while improving the experience for stakeholders. This space between the hospital and the home — where patients' clinical care is often compromised — is complex and disjointed but has bred new opportunities to improve outcomes and expand the role of HME companies in the healthcare continuum. We can, and will, elevate the relevance of HME providers in their markets like never before. Our commitment to an intelligent, well-orchestrated solution has demonstrated not only superior patient outcomes, but we are proving doing the right thing is meaningful and profitable for all involved. Bringing Anna, Ryan, and Nimesh to the team gives LifeH2H the ability to report, refine, repeat, and scale our vision. Simply, their high-level and unique skill set fit perfectly into our high-powered unique solution suite."
The two companies are no stranger to one another. Over the years in the small world of HME, these colleagues became friends because of a shared passion for putting the patient at the heart of business solutions. Anna McDevitt, former CEO of Lab Tactical, shares Roof's enthusiasm for creating solutions that consider how a patient is impacted by business decisions.
"Healthcare stakeholders — providers, hospitals, health plans — make a lot of decisions in the name of the bottom line," McDevitt explains, "It's time we also make decisions in the name of patient care. We have an obligation to make the right choice when it comes to how people are affected by business processes. We are proud to join the LifeH2H team because of the team's commitment to finding a balance between people and profit by creating thoughtful, purposeful solutions."
The LifeLab division of LifeH2H will continue to operate from the Atlanta, Georgia office in Strongbox West with Anna McDevitt as Director of Customer Experience, Ryan McDevitt as Director of Professional Services, and Nimesh Patel and Implementation Manager. LifeH2H Solutions is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina.


text:
Licensing International Names 2019 U.K. Rising Star Award Nominees
Licensing International U.K. names six junior licensing industry standouts as nominees for this year's Rising Star award.
Licensing International U.K. has announced the nominees for the 2019 U.K. Rising Stars Award.
The Rising Stars award was established to recognize excellence among junior professionals in the U.K. licensing industry. This year's nominees include young leaders at both agencies and licensor groups.
Samuel Byard, product development manager, SEGA;
Oliver Stanton, senior licensing manager, TSBA Group;
Laura Lane, founder, My Icon Story;
Sebastian Mather, founder, Beautiful Game Ltd;
Karina Rhoden, junior licensing manager, Smiley Company and
Louisa Skevington
, licensing coordinator, Rocket Licensing.
"We're really pleased with all the Rising Star award submissions we received on behalf of our junior licensing industry professionals this year," says Ryan Beaird, marketing and operations manager, Licensing International U.K. "In reviewing them all, it is clear to us just how many talented, intelligent and highly motivated young people there are in our industry. The increase in submissions year-on-year for this award is evidence of our growing young professionals' network here in the U.K.–something we are very proud of."
Winners of this year's competition will be announced on Sept. 10 at the 2019 Licensing Awards, taking place in London. All six nominees will receive a free
ticket to the awards event.


The main pillars of the economy of the Pelagonija planning region are the production and processing of agricultural products and the exploitation of mineral resources. The region, among other things, is the largest producer of apples, tobacco and milk.
Economy Sector in the Pelagonia region has significant advantages which at the same time represent an opportunity for additional economic development. The region has good geographical location, proximity to a member state of the European Union and two NATO member states. The region has a relatively good road infrastructure and connection within the region. For the development of the economy, the opening of the border crossing Markova foot with the Republic of Greece and the construction of the expressway Prilep - Veles is a great opportunity. Improving good neighborly relations with the Republic of Macedonia. Greece and the reopening of the railway line Veles - Bitola - Florina - Thessaloniki will have a huge impact on the development of the economy and on the flow of people, goods and capital.
On the territory of the region there are significant natural resources (mineral resources, minerals, water, cultivated land) that are underutilized.
The Pelagonia region has good climatic conditions for the development of agriculture, and especially for the cultivation of industrial crops. A small number of products with higher added value are produced in the region, there is a shortage of processing capacities for agricultural products, and the stakeholders in the value chain in agriculture are poorly connected. The growing demand for food in global terms, the steady increase in food prices, the increased interest in aromatic and medicinal herbs, and forest fruits represent an opportunity for more intensive development of agriculture.
The ore deposits in Pelagonia and Mariovo, which are used today in the three blocks of TPP Bitola, marble from Prilep, mineral springs near the village of Medzitlija, Bitola, represent a significant opportunity for more dynamic development of the mining and mining sector.
Ensuring energy from stable, reliable, clean and renewable sources is a huge potential due to favorable climatic conditions in the region for producing energy from water, sun, wind and bio mass.
There are many active business entities in the Pelagonija planning region, which is an opportunity for development of the region, as well as an opportunity to reduce the unemployment, since existing enterprises can create even bigger number of jobs. In the region, there are institutions / organizations to support the business sector but do not have the capacity to better support the business sector. Support is needed to improve the competitiveness of existing enterprises by establishing an institutional framework for business support, supporting the introduction of new technologies, setting up quality advisory and expert assistance for business and supporting cluster formation. It is also necessary to support innovation and create a set of measures to stimulate cooperation between the economy and higher education institutions because the economic crisis has led to even more drastic decline in the opportunities for applying science in the development of the economy and creating a knowledge-based economy. The lack of capital for investment and cash for financing development projects of the business community is a weak side, and in order to overcome it, it is necessary to implement measures to facilitate access to available funds as well as promotion of various forms of joint venture in order to increase and the social responsibility of the business sector.
The existence of local industrial zones with established urban planning documentation is an important precondition and a strong side for increasing investments. On the other hand, the existing industrial zones do not have the full infrastructure. It is also necessary to undertake activities for construction of infrastructure in the industrial zones, creation of measures and benefits for investment, their promotion to potential investors in order to increase the investments in all sectors, especially in the processing industry. An enormous opportunity for economic development is the inclusion of the big diaspora in encouraging economic development and establishing cooperation with economic promoters. The significant opportunity and comparative advantage of the industrial zones in the region is the reopening of the railway line Veles - Bitola - Florina - Thessaloniki, by which these industrial zones will be connected to the port of Thessaloniki.
The promotion of active employment measures, retraining of personnel, promotion of programs for stimulating entrepreneurship, self-employment and craftsmanship are possibilities that should be used. The established higher education institutions and research centers within the region can help eliminate this limiting factor. A potential threat is migration, in particular, the outflow of highly educated workforce and reduced access to finance for the private sector.
Within the region there are significant differences in the achieved level of economic development. The municipalities of Dolneni, Demir Hisar, Krivogastani, Krusevo, Mogila, Novaci and Resen can not generate a level of development such as urban centers Bitola and Prilep. The problem of development disparities is particularly pronounced in rural municipalities where there is a low quality of life and insufficient entrepreneurial capacity of the inhabitants. A serious threat is the tendency to evict these citizens elsewhere in the country and abroad, which is why it is necessary to undertake measures to reduce migration processes. Activities are needed to stimulate the opening of new businesses in these municipalities, to improve the capacities of human resources and to align them with the needs of the labor market.


Road safety specialist TTC is deploying GreenRoad technologies across its new DriverProtect suite of services to bring a fleet risk solution with a focus on behavioural change.
Late last year, TTC announced it was expanding on its focus on the fleet risk management sector with the new DriverProtect portfolio, providing a full range of services covering fleet risk audits, policy management, driver licence checks, driver risk profiling and grey fleet management.
Now the firm has announced a new partnership with GreenRoad that will help "make sense of fleet data".


Designer consignment site The Hula is celebrating its second anniversary by launching a new shopping experience, The Living Room in the heart of Soho.
Hula is an online marketplace for pre-owned designer womenswear, where products are collected by invite only to ensure the best edit and 100-per-cent authenticity. The company donates 5 per cent of net profits to partnered charities.
For 10 days next month, consumers can shop pre-owned designer womenswear, bags, shoes and accessories, with daily replenished stock from more than 4500 pieces across 700 brands at 95 per cent off retail price.
Brands in the pop-up store include Alaia, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Celine, Chanel, Chloe, Dior, Gucci, Isabel Marant, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Saint Laurent, and Valentino.
A VIP preview will be held on Sunday, December 2 and Monday December 3 from 11am to 6pm, with the store open to the public from December 5 through 16 from 11am to 6pm weekdays and until 8pm weekends.
TheHula.com pop-up store is located on Level 3 of the Kong Art Space, 3 Staunton Street, Soho, Central.


People are worried about the quality of drinking water from domestic supplies.
Most know that our domestic municipal water supply here in the U.K. is generally perfectly safe to drink, having been treated to kill harmful bacteria, but are worried about the chemicals that might remain in it such as chlorine, pesticides and nitrates or other harmful bacteria that are not affected by standard treatment methods, like cryptosporidium.
EU standards have been set to reduce the levels of these and other chemicals and you can do your bit to ensure the water you drink meets these standards. In total, over 70% of our bodies consist of water - making us very susceptible to the chemical contamination in water supplies.
You can now set your own higher levels of water quality with a suitable water filter from our range. We offer a extensive range of water filters from various manufacturers, each successive model improving on its lesser brother. All are available either installed by our qualified engineers, by mail-order or direct from our showrooms in the form of a complete DIY kit including all fittings required for a standard installation.
We also are happy to supply and install a range of POU water coolers for the office which can house the water filter of your choice. Did you know an average family of four will use 500 gallons of drinking water a year?


While it's too early to tell for sure, I'm willing to bet the iPad mini's user base will resemble the iPad's more so than it'll look like the ownership population of cheaper, Android-based devices. And because of the iPad mini's key areas of difference compared to the iPad (over 50 percent lighter, 23 percent thinner), it's a much more convenient device to pick up and put down frequently while watching TV programming. Plus, it has access to the same software library as its bigger cousin, meaning developers don't necessarily need to go back to the drawing board to create second screen apps for a new form factor.
The iPad mini's size makes it a take-anywhere device, and its screen real estate ensures that users won't just give up on engaging with content that might involve a lot of reading or might be a better handled on a desktop than on a tiny smartphone screen. And the device isn't compromised in terms of connectivity or capabilities, either; the cameras are good, it's got Bluetooth, optional cellular connectivity and all of the AirPlay capabilities of its bigger sibling, all of which could potentially be leveraged by developers to make second screen activities more engaging.
In reality, the iPad mini is better for a number of use cases than its larger predecessor, but it seems like the perfect couch companion after a few days of thorough testing of that theory. With mobile tech moving steadily toward a place of prominence in the family living room, watch for the iPad mini to become the pace setter in this key changing facet of home entertainment.


Answering service, never miss a phone call message again. Answering service call, phone answering, incoming calls, phone messaging, phone answering service. Telephone answering service business phone calls answer services, phone answering incoming calls messaging 24 hours 7 days per week. Answering service for business, business phone messaging, incoming business call assistance messaging service, overflow, after hours, weekend, holidays, emergency services. Answering services phone messaging incoming business calls answered nationwide, business office calling eliminate phone tag.
Answering service phone call answering information live phone answering phone messaging telephone announcement call center operators are professional, courteous and well trained. While you were out phone tag virtual office offers the caller options to be directed to employees who are physically located in different locations. Our business answering phone calls responsibility is your customer, and the importance of accurately transferring business office message to the right person at the right time.
Business telephone answering service live voice answering - live voice messaging friendly representatives are available for your business phone calls. We have the newest state of the art phone answering service messaging computer systems, which presents with detailed information about your company, incoming business calls every time a incoming business telephone call is received.
Answering service phone messaging - answer services business telephone can include your business phrase when taking telephone calls and your address and office hours, announcements, fax number, email address, and nature of your enterprise and as well as directions to your location. Every customer receives a personalized nationwide toll free number. Your answer services phone messages can be advertised as your own, or alternatively, can be used to route office calls, calling from your established telephone number when you are not available telephone answering service .
Disaster planning - weather-related problems - hurricane loss time off site answering solution a good disaster plan does more than provide peace of mind. It can help you retain business in the face of a crisis – and even serve as a marketing advantage.
Telephone lines can still function during an electrical outage-telephone systems do not. During an electrical outage calls can still reach your telephone lines, you just cannot answer them since the telephone system itself is out.
Delivery by voice mail Messages taken by our representatives can be recorded into a voice mailbox for your retrieval. You can have the voice mail box notify your pager when a message is received or you can check-in for them at your convenience, 24 hours per day.
Message Delivery by E-mail - Messages can be sent to your e-mail address as they are received instantly, at predetermined times scheduled or when you call in on demand. The choice is yours.
On-Call Schedules – Our computer system keeps track of the most complicated on-call schedules, even those that vary by time of day and/or by day of the week. Your schedules can be faxed to us, e-mailed to us or phoned into us as much as a year in advance!
Express-Check In – We can provide you with a special "check-in" phone number that expedites the message retrieval process. Upon entering your security code, our computer system instantly tells you whether or not you have messages.
Patching – If someone needs to speak with you right away, our representatives can "patch " the caller through to you. A " patch " or "conference call " allows you to speak directly with the caller without either one of you having to hang up the line.
Business call answer answering messaging, phone message call center can patch the caller through to you. Patch conference call allows you to speak directly with the caller without either having to hang up.


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Google to pay Mozilla $300M yearly in new search deal, says report
Google promised to pay Mozilla almost $300 million annually to keep its search engine as the default in Firefox, according to a report today on AllThingsD, a blog operated by the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Google and Mozilla jointly announced Tuesday that they had struck a new deal to keep Google as Firefox's default search engine, and on the browser's home page.
At the time, Mozilla said only that it had "negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google" which would last at least three years. Mozilla and Google both declined to provide additional information about the new pact, citing confidentiality requirements.
[ Further reading: Google's Chromium browser explained ]
Yuhong Bao's blog
Today, Kara Swisher, the co-executive editor of AllThingsD, said unnamed sources told her that under the agreement, Google will pay slightly less than $300 million per year to Mozilla.
Swisher also said that the price had been pushed upward by bidding from both Microsoft, which operates the Bing search site, and Yahoo.
According to metrics company comScore, Bing and Yahoo were tied in November for second place, each with a 15% share of the search market. Google controlled a still-dominant 65% share.
If Swisher's sources are on target, the $300 million would be nearly triple what Google paid out to Mozilla in 2010, the last year for which the latter has released financial information.
Google to Pay Apple $12B to Remain Safari's Default Search: Report
In 2010, Google's payment accounted for 84% of Mozilla's total revenues, or approximately $103 million. In 2009, Google forked over about $89 million, or 86% of Mozilla's income, to have Firefox's default search spot.
Total payments to Mozilla by Google during the years 2008-2010 were about $260 million, or $40 million less than the open-source maker of Firefox would receive in one year under the alleged new deal.
Mozilla and Google today declined to comment on the AllThingsD report or to discuss specifics of the new contract.
Privacy for the win! Startpage.com defeats Google and Bing to become best search engine
You see, following an in-depth investigation, German organization "Stiftung Warentest" has declared the search engine to be the best. With all of that said, provides Google search results without all the tracking -- it's the best of both worlds!
But one analyst believed that the $300 million figure was feasible.
"Yes, $300 million is a big sum, but it does highlight what is at stake," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC, referring to search. "The sum shows that there is competition which Mozilla no doubt was able to harness in this deal."
There was at least one sign that Mozilla may have been playing Microsoft and Google against each other: . In October, Mozilla launched a customized edition of Firefox, dubbed "Firefox with Bing," that puts Bing search in the default search position.
If Bing had swung a deal with Mozilla it would have been a coup for Microsoft's still-struggling search engine. But it would also have been in line with Microsoft's expressed plan to put Bing on the map.
Why should I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google?
During a meeting with financial analysts last September, Qi Lu, the president of the company's online services division, said that Microsoft could not simply "out-Google Google [but] we must change the game, change the game fundamentally."
Lu pegged strategic partnerships as one of three key factors in doing just that, noting that the more partners Microsoft acquired, the more data it would have at its disposal to radically improve the quality of search.
And take on Google.
"We have the strategic partnerships, Yahoo, Nokia, and Facebook, in particular, because with Facebook and Bing we have two organizations that are deeply motivated to innovate, particularly innovate in a way to disrupt the incumbent," Lu said, not naming but obviously talking about Google. Like the three partners Lu listed, Mozilla is a rival of Google, and so would have fit within Microsoft's framework of working with Google's foes.
Google personalizes search results even when you're logged out, new study finds
But if Microsoft did try to close a deal with Mozilla, it failed. And Mozilla benefited.
"[This shows] the importance of the browser as a category," IDC's Hilwa said. "Browsers are free but extrapolating from this deal we have a $1 billion market based on monetization through the browser search bar alone."
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news forComputerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.
The article source: www.computerworld.com
The ultimate guide to DuckDuckGo
Read more March 11, 2019
How Google Tracks Your Personal Information
7 ways to search without using Google
Google makes it easier to delete your search history
Read more Oct. 24, 2018
Tags: mozilla, search, deal, google, browser, firefox, microsoft, today, gregg, lu,


text:
@interface PodsDummy_Pods_EJURouterSDK_Tests : NSObject
@end
@implementation PodsDummy_Pods_EJURouterSDK_Tests
@end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Anheuser-Busch InBev has touched a nerve with its corn syrup-themed attacks ads. Several Super Bowl spots boasted that Bud Light does not use corn syrup, while trolling rival brands that do.
MillerCoors also hit back with a tweet clarifying none of its products use high-fructose corn syrup. It claimed that many Anheuser-Busch products do.
The Super Bowl always has its share of feel-good car commercials.
GM was unable to stop an auto worker union's 30-second ad from broadcasting on Canadian TV stations during Sunday's game.
The commercial accuses GM of expanding in Mexico while leaving Canadians "out in the cold." GM is closing its car factory in Oshawa, Ontario, near Toronto, costing about 2,600 blue-collar jobs.
The Unifor union wouldn't say much the ad cost, except that it's a fraction of the price of a Super Bowl ad in the U.S.
The union ignored a cease-and-desist letter from GM of Canada threatening legal action if the ad keeps airing. GM says the ad is misleading and inaccurate.
Bud Lite has shocked "Game of Thrones" fans with a spoiler about who gets killed in the final season of the hit HBO show. It's the Bud Knight.
Not really, of course. But the beer brand and HBO lit up social media with a surprise mash-up of a Super Bowl ad.
It starts off mundanely enough with the Bud Knight of "Dilly Dilly" fame appearing for a jousting contest. He loses and is about to be unmasked, when a dragon appears out of nowhere to incinerate the entire scene. The ad did double duty to promote the beer brand and the April premiere of the fantasy show's long-awaited final season.
Coke has homefield advantage this year with the Super Bowl in Atlanta, where it is headquartered. So, Pepsi is trying to have fun with its perennial challenger brand status.
Actor Steve Carrell takes a flustered waiter to task for asking the familiar question, "is Pepsi ok?" after a woman orders a Coke. Cardi B and Lil John pitch in for the message that Pepsi isn't just "ok." IT'S OK!!
Coke owns the "pouring rights" at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Its products are for sale at the fountains during the game between the Patriots and Rams, served in NFL-themed Super Bowl cups.
Women's empowerment has swiftly taken center stage in this year's Super Bowl ads.
Later in the evening, supermodel Karlie Kloss will play up her identity as a businesswoman in an ad for Wix.com. She wears an understated green T-shirt to show how she used the platform to create her professional website.
Toyota will highlight the perseverance of Antoinette "Toni" Harris, a female football player at a California community college.
Super Bowl Sunday is kicking off. Prepare to be entertained… by the ads.
Each year's slate of Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of the American psyche. Forty-plus brands have shelled out millions for the chance to win over live-TV viewers of Super Bowl 53 with a combination of humor, celebrities and heartfelt messages.
The ads run from silly to the serious. Avocados from Mexico features a pet show where the humans get judged, while The Washington Post will honor missing and slain journalists in its Super Bowl debut.
They're aiming to capture the attention of the 100 million viewers expected to tune in on Sunday. Many marketers have already released their ads online but there will still be a few surprises from Google, Bud Light and others.