Global business news twenty four hours a day at Bloomberg dot com, the radio, plus mobile lact and on your radio. This is a Bloomberg Business flag from Bloomberg World Handquarters. I'm Charlie Pellet. Costcos numbers are out a beat on the earnings per share number dollars seventy seven. Their estimates dollar seventy three fourth quarter sales though thirty six point five six billion estimates were for thirty six point nine billion.
The Dow, the SMP, NZTAK all declined today. SMP five hundred index down twenty points, a drop of nine tenths of one percent. The SMP ending today's session at twenty one fifty one down, Industrials down a hundred and ninety five points, a drop there of one point one percent, and has stack down forty nine, a drop of nine
tenths of one percent. Ten year of four thirty seconds yield one point five six percent, Gold up a dollar ten the ounce twenty higher by one tenth of one percent, and crude oil West Exus Intermediate up seventy cents of art seventy five on w t I, a gain of one and a half percent. I'm Charlie Pellot. That's a bloom Bread business flash. You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio. We all know that cheating is bad, particularly someone has cheated us.
It's something we think everyone should avoid. But the author of a new book has a different spin on it, and his book, The Cheat Code, explains why it's one of the reasons certain people seem to get ahead just a bit faster than everyone else. And of course he's
a good example. Uh. He graduated from college by age eighteen, he raised four million adventure capital, started company before he turned five, and then grew that company into a global mobile advertising in just four years with the cheat Code. Brian Wong, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. Okay,
what's the cheat Code? Yes, I mean the title is, yeah, a bit controversial on purpose, but the whole point of it was, you remember back in the day with playing video games, you have these cheat codes you could use to get ahead, right, And the whole premise of this was,
what if there are cheat codes for real life? And so there's so many one of these cheat codes embedded in the book, and as an entrepreneur for the past six years as I built my company, I figured, you know, there might be something that we could do that our actionable tips and tricks that you can actually do in the next ten minutes, that or even tomorrow, that could
help you get in the habit of getting ahead. I feel like a lot of self help things that are trying to get you to be motivated, or a lot of really kind of generic advice like follow your passion and all these things we've all heard that it's more what can I do tomorrow? And that is what I wanted to get folks that were entrepreneurial in their mindset to be able to do right away. All right, So why don't you offer some of the tidbits of advice and some of the experience that leads you to it. Yeah.
So one of my favorites is the cheat, uh know, your superpower, which is basically on the point that as you get older, you kind of had a point where you stopped focusing on fixing your weaknesses and really focusing on just your strengths. And you know, when we're in school, get bs and cs and you get tutors to fix all that, and it's you know, why not just go to the things you already know you're gonna be good at and highlight that as your superpower. For example, my superpowers.
I'm very good at getting people really excited about stuff, and that's what I do every day with investors, customers, you name it, and I folks that are complementary and their superpowers that have superpowers that I don't have, like in math and anything quantitative, they'll have that covered. So that's one. The second is actually tapping into the power of email. One of my personal favorites cold email. Adding a cold emailing cold LinkedIn adding are two ways to
basically get whatever you want in business. Now, of course I'm being half serious, half kidding, but the whole point is if you're able to ask, get to people, get network to use the power of technology, you have the ability to get ahold of anyone you want to potentially work with in business. So I know who's the boss?
What does that? What part of the cheak code is that it's really understanding that everyone has someone they're essentially responsible to, even the top of the top, right the president being the American people you know for us, uh, I think what happens is when you're pitching, when you're going into a meeting, it's really important understand what the
power structures are. And for me, I had a political science background, so it's really important to understand power structures and I figured that that would be something that would be worth analyzing when you go into these scenarios. I was gonna say, get a haircut, but that is in the book, isn't it Get a trademark haircut. It's one
of my favorites. It's really about it's representing personal branding, and you know, it's, I guess kind of appropriate trump that, you know, people who seem to have the best personal brands, the best being the most memorable, happen to seem to have trademark haircuts, um facial hair. I mean, it's crazy, isn't it. But the point is, when you're out there in the world of business, it's important to develop your own brand, whether it be the personality you convey, the
way you communicate, visuals a part of it. It's all part of the package. Now I want to hear more about you. You grew up in British Columbia. You graduated from college very early, so tell us what is it about your background? Is it your parents you mentioned tutors. Did they just pound you into getting good grades? Where you sort of did you just you know, jump into the world born like this crazy little toddler that that ran around and never stopped and met people on the street.
I get told I have a lot of energy, but I feel like I don't think my for example, i Q levels or intelligence were necessarily higher than anyone else's. I think that it was just my perseverance, as cliche as it sounds, just there's a lot of things that don't actually take a lot of skill, like not giving up, not taking no for an answer, these types of things,
and I think I just I had this itch. I felt like I needed to do things a bit faster, mainly because I realized now even looking back with technology, a lot of timelines that we used to always think would take a certain amount of time have compressed. And this is to get promoted and work to getting head
in school. A lot of things were built in an era or just processes and structures and things that they're sort of normal or the status quo came from an era where not necessarily the access to technology and knowledge that we have today existed. So what also, I advocated in the book is you can learn almost anything online today. Anything. In fact, there's like this Olympic pole vaulter or something I think learned how to do it on YouTube, right, so that you have no excuse now to not learn
these things. Pick it up. They say, the next Bill Gates is probably gonna be a little girl in rule India if she's got an Internet connection in a tablet. That's why you have no excuse now to not learn these things and try to get ahead faster, Bryan. The book is filled with things that you should do. Tell us some of the things you should not do. So actually one of them in there, and I think on on sort of a business angle is uh, don't treat your investors like God or anyone that has money or
seems to represent money. One of the reasons why I describe that is because a lot of entrepreneurs they'll pitch a vc uh and then they'll get feedback, and then they'll like change everything and try to appease that person. And I try to remind them you were the one that came up with this idea. You're the one who
knows it the best. Someone who's designed to be mild, wide, inch deep isn't necessarily going to have the best advice for you, and you're supposed to be as confident and secure that as possible, so essentially represents don't you know, take all this advice at face value and make sure you understand where their motivations come from. Well, don thank
you very much for your motivation. Appreciated. Brian wat He is the chief executive and the co founder of Keep, a mobile advertising network, and his book is called The Cheap Code, Getting Off Script to get more, go faster, and shortcut your way to success. Thanks for listening to taking stockhim pim Fox my co host Kathleen Hayes. This is Bloomberg Bloomberg. Taking Stock is brought to you by
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