It's 5AM, but it feels more like midnight with the still of the city on this quiet weekend morning. Things are slowly getting back to normal both with my hand injury and just getting things done. I write most of my posts either in the late evening or overnight, as the ambiance is just write for me. It's great to be able to concentrate and be able to create unfettered by the chaos of the world about to awaken.

The few people that ask me about crypto and investing, seem to be swept along by the turbulence in the markets, never mindful of the cyclical nature of such things. These people will never take calculated risks in order to obtain financial independence, instead preferring to scratch out a living at someone else's beck and call.

Sometimes you need to take a few hits in life in order to activate the will to build the wherewithal to grab the rudder and steer your own ship. In many ways getting knocked around in my youth (both physically and mentally) helped to toughen me up and drove a desire for change. It helped to make me unlike most everyone around me, and is the reason I'm the man I am today.

Open to New Ideas (Or Not...)

Nighttime usually found me either studying or burrowing my head in some very interesting book. Having an intellectual curiosity has been one of the bright spots in my personality. It gave me the ability to see things that others missed. Things that were glaringly obvious to me, but that others were blinded to.

Last year I shared about how a local retail store run by immigrants, had gone out of business and been forced to sell to other migrants from their home country.

The store which was initially packed, has now seen a severe drop-off in business, and I think I know why. In short, they're not paying attention to their customers, and are failing to read the room. Like the former owners, they've failed to listen even to my suggestions, as I used to work there and know what the community wants.

Here's a couple of examples. When they first opened, I noticed that they sold fried takeaway food. When it first came out of the fryer, it was great, but it soon dried out and became unappetizing. They used to have condiments that you could add to your meal, but got rid of those.

This helped boost sales, so I pointed this out, and offered to share what we did to keep the food moist and tasty.

They weren't interested.

We used to have baskets and shopping carts, which were great because they encouraged customers to buy more in order to fill them. This was all part of "shoppers psychology" which many successful retail stores make use of. However they narrowed the aisles to the point where you can't get a cart through, and in fact, you have to twist your body sideways in order to walk through them.

This meant no carts or baskets. When I asked them why they did this, they said it was because it allowed them to pack more product in.

But nobody's buying them...

They were uninterested to hear my take on why I and other shoppers preferred to go all the way to Walmart, instead of visiting their nearby store. It's so strange to see such an obvious mistake being made, when the answer is staring them right in the face. In time, this store will close just as the last one did. It seems as if these people could benefit from some nighttime studying themselves.

The Flame

A long time ago I realized there were two types of people: Those with a thirst for knowledge and open to new information; and those who aren't. All of those hours spent cracking books open, left me wanting to know the "why" about almost everything. It fueled my interest in crypto back in 2009 on the Bitcoin Talk forum, and has helped me ride the crypto cycles ever since. Whatever you do in life, stay curious, and don't ever let the fire of wonder about the world around you burn out.