Take a look at how Nathan Siy's enthusiasm drove Evoke Electric Motorcycles to success

Hello and welcome to the Rich Robinson Show. I'm your host, Rich Robinson. Over the past 25 years, I've been an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and professor here in Asia. After nearly a quarter of a century in China, I'm now based here in Bali, Indonesia, the island of the gods.

Asia is my home now.

60% of the world's population also lives here, but I would contend 80% of the world's dynamism and opportunity is right here in the region. On the show, you'll hear candid and fun conversations with some of my friends and colleagues, people I've met along my journey, entrepreneurs, operators, experts that will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial agility That actually defines it. This first season, season 1 of The Rich Robinson Show, is titled At the Speed of China. Like, wait for it, at the speed of light. Things happen fast in China, and in this season 1, we're gonna take a deeper look at that. The rapid economic development over the past few decades, as well as the speed and cycles of innovation taking place All day, every day, right now.

Let's go, Jio! Showtime.

All right, that's it. Starting kick off the recording here.

Nathan, my friend from his factory in southern Beijing. Welcome to the pod, my old friend. Great to see you.

It's awesome to be here. And yeah, miss you, man. You're not here anymore.

Miss you too, buddy. I know, but you know what? I will be—

Floating away somewhere on a beach or something, right?

Oh my goodness. I'm really optimizing for lifestyle here in Bali. Some people are looking to maybe come here because now COVID as the ultimate accelerant has freed up friends in New York and Shanghai and Silicon Valley and Singapore, right? And I tell them, don't really think about coming to Bali because it's really not as good as people make it out to be. Well, I mean, except for the nature, the weather, the culture, the people and the prices and yeah. But other than that, no, it's great.

Small stuff, man. Small stuff. But yeah, no, it's good.

I love Beijing. Thanks so much. I love Beijing and I'll be back and forth, 6-hour direct flight. And I love the grittiness and edginess of Beijing and your factory in southern Beijing kind of personifies that. It's like where shit's happening, right? Right, right in it. But before we dig into your just Fantasmagorical, awesome journey with electric motorcycles, Evoke motorcycles down in the outskirts of Beijing. I want to dig into hero's journey. Take us back to yesteryear, my friend, to where you were born and raised and your sort of Chinese history all the way back.

Yeah, like Dark and Stormy Night sort of story or like General Tso?

I want to know when you were bitten by a radioactive motorcycle when you were a child and became this superhero electric mobility entrepreneur in China.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll give you like a brief recap of everything, but yeah, I mean, I'm sure, you know, like at this point in Canada over there, it's vastly different from where we're sitting at right now today, night and day with the whole thing, but it's never been, I love my upbringing and I think that's the journey as to what kind of led me here, but ethnically, what city was that that you were Vancouver? Yeah. Vancouver born and raised. Lots and lots of Chinese out there, but I never actually thought it was like a thing grow up around. The Chinese culture, but sort of Westernized. But I was kind of on the outlier of the whole thing. I was pretty whitewashed and I think I still am. So if you go back and talk to like any of my friends, you'd be like, yo man, where will you end up in 20 years? Nobody ever said China. I didn't speak the language. I had a couple of friends who actually spoke Cantonese and I guess different dialects and stuff, but I never got into that circle. So this is like the farthest place I ever would have thought.

What generation are you? How many generations back?

We're family 4th generation already. So my great grandparents left. China, so really far from the whole Chinese thing. But I mean, it feels like that's a lifetime ago, like back in Canada. Now I just kind of feel this is like home, you know. So it's definitely been a transformational journey on my end too, internally, of like going from this whitewashed Chinese kid to I guess the opposite of it, like a Chinese inner sort of white outer. That's weird. I went through like a whole like 180 flip, actually. I was really kind of anti-China and that stereotype to it. Now You know, they're doing so much stuff when it comes to at least my industry, like new energy manufacturing, lots of cool stuff happening. So now, like, last 20 years or whatever was kind of anti-China. Next 20 years, you're going to be super pro-China. Like, look at all the cool stuff coming out.

Yeah, you're like an Italian gladiator that was born in one of the hinterlands and then you go into the arena in Rome.

What's up with the Italian, man?

You're in the arena, right? So you're kind of back in the ultimate fighting arena, which is the entrepreneurial arena of Beijing.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it definitely feels like that, man. Every day it's a battle, every day it's a fight, but at the end of it, you get a little bit of a win, a small win or something. So it feels good. Sure. It's like getting punched 100 times, but you get 1 or 2 good hits and you're like, yeah, that's awesome. I don't know. Decent trade-off. Decent trade-off.

That's great. And what about that path from Vancouver to the Middle Kingdom? How did that happen?

Oh man, that was, yeah, I was like, it was supposed to be a 1-year thing, man. I'm sure you hear this all the time, but you're like, yeah, I'm totally going to get like a 1-year contract. Do some, like, some decent work, get some experience, head back home, get a better job. But yeah, that was totally the initial thought process. It was like, hey, I got a 1-year contract. Gonna do something completely unrelated to, like, manufacturing right now, but it's supposed to be a 1-year stint, get some experience, head back to HQ in Vancouver, and then kind of grow from there. But, um, yeah, I'm sure you hear this all the time. It's a girl. It's a girl that gets you, that kind of loops you in here and you get stuck.

Yeah.

No way. Yeah. Good, good stuck. Not bad stuck, but stuck.

Nonetheless. Yeah.

Good stuff. So I guess that was like, I met her like 2008 or so. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just around the Olympics. So I was here in 2006, moved here. I was supposed to be here for a year. It was kind of like a pondering after the first year, I was kind of like pondering back and forth and I was like, yeah, you know what? I think it's time to go home. I really can't speak Chinese. It's really difficult. I'm sure you were here at the time as well. And you know, how many Western food restaurants were there? It was like McDonald's and KFC. So you had 2 choices. Um, yeah, it was super limited. But, uh, actually the, the interesting thing, man, like back, uh, I guess it was 2007 when I got kind of like, my contract kind of just ran up and I was like at the cusp of like, do I go or do I stay? Or try it another year or head back home. And that's kind of like the year that I just, we were seeing all these like cool electric scooters flying by. And I was like, you know what, as my going away gift, I'm just going to buy myself one. It was like $400 or something. Like ridiculously cheap. I was going to buy it, ride it around for like a week and then just literally throw it away and just go back home. So I kind of bought that. And to be honest, man, that's kind of why electrification has really shifted. Yeah. This completely shifted my life because if I didn't buy that electric scooter, I never would have started exploring Beijing. I never would have fell in love with it to try another year. And the following year I met my wife. So yeah, if I didn't have that electric scooter, I would have been back home in Vancouver. I would never met her and my whole life would be really different.

Yeah. And you were already in manufacturing.

And so, yeah, that was the whole thing. Like coming from a car background, it was always like, everybody wants to go faster. They want them to go faster. They want to go kind of like longer, especially for electrics. But yeah, it kind of kickstarted the whole like interest into like tinkering into mobility, like electric mobility. So I was able to rip that apart. I was able to like make, I was able to hack it pretty quick and that's how that The whole premise of like what got started into electric motorcycling. Because I kind of took that little electric scooter and took it to its max. Like I was doing 100 kilometers an hour on that thing. And imagine like these tiny little wheels and those kind of like real flickering and kind of—

Yeah, exactly.

Brakes were super small. The whole frame was kind of shaking. So it was really sketchy. But that was the whole thing. Like you want to go 100 kilometers an hour, you want to go above 100, you need a more stable platform. So that was kind of like the point, the tipping point where I was like, okay, you know what? We gotta shift. We gotta get into something that's better build, stronger brakes, overall more stability. And it kind of got us into the whole motorcycle. So yeah, it's still a growing thing. It's still, we're still R&Ding and developing things every day. But yeah, that was kind of like the kickoff point for it. It was really like, hey, I wanna do, I wanna ride something myself. It's gotta meet my own sort of specifications. And from there we started finding out like, hey, other people kind of wanna buy it as well. So yeah, it was never, never a business.

It's very much like an Elon Musk kind of thing that I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to make it happen, right? Nobody else make it happen. I guess I'll just have to build it. And you built something so goddamn sexy. I mean, that thing is as far from a shitty little scooter with a governor on it. I mean, that, that is like a world-class vehicle that it just looks great and it has sick torque, right? I mean, like that thing is just, it's amazing, right? So it's like, you've been, you've really like created something definitely world-class and just groundbreaking. But tell, tell us out in podcast land about that sort of early, early days when you were trying to get this whole thing. Yeah. Kick it off. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, what's super weird about China is like, they, for some reason they don't have this like garage culture sort of thing. Like you take a look at what, like Harley, Disney, all these, like you see these and stuff where they all kind of started in this like 2 by 2 sort of shack. And then coming from like the West, that's also kind of how we start. Like we want to build it in a garage. We want to make sure it kind of works and we got a little bit of space, but China doesn't. It's really weird. But like when we were first kicking off, I was actually renting a 1 by 1, like literally 1 square meter by 1 square meter outside. And okay.

So you had to rent something.

That's— Yeah, it was really weird. Well, we were renting it from another guy. I never played, man, but I mean, like, imagine, like, it was just enough. Like, we just had the bike there. It was literally for storage and we would like kind of tinker around. The weird thing is though, but I had to go around to like maybe 50 or 60 different shops and just ask them, can I rent a 1 square meter by 1 square meter to store a bike?

And he'd be like, hey, get back behind your line. Your toe's over the line.

Yeah, exactly. It was like he sectioned it off. He put tape and everything. The weird thing is, Rich, like he gave us the space. But he gave it to us. So when we first started this, Beijing, man, it's like negative 10. Yeah. It's like negative 10.

Or scorching or polluted or dusty or windy.

But it was covered. So it's this weird thing. It's outside, but it was covered. And I've never kind of seen this, but it was the closest thing to like a garage that I could find because they don't have these. Like you want to rent a warehouse, it's like 5,000 square feet, like 500 square meters. But you want like a tiny-ass warehouse. Nobody has that here. Right. So it was really, it was stuff like that.

That's amazing. So a lot of like software companies start in the garage, but you were so like cost conscious that you should have started in a garage, but you're actually outside of a garage. So it's actually, wow. I never heard that story either. That's a great origin story. You have a picture of that? When you come and you've graciously agreed to guest lecture at my Peking University MBA class on entrepreneurship. And that, that's kind of, that's like the picture of Bezos. Sitting on his table with the spray-painted Amazon in the background. Right.

So I love that photo. Yeah, I've seen that, man. And that, it totally takes me back to like when we first started. I remember I was actually like, I got the picture that I have is me in this like super thick down jacket with gloves trying to like put a screw in. And you've ever put a screw in with gloves? It's really difficult. So yeah, it's like, I don't know, but yeah, it worked.

It worked. That's terrific. And what year was that that you rented that?

That was probably 2000, 2011 or so. I can't remember specifically, but it was, I remember it was wintertime because when we first kicked off, I was like, I was already in quite a lot a year. So yeah, look, winter of, I guess, 2010 or 2011. But at that point it was still like tinkering around. I still had another startup at that time and kind of doing that like on the weekends, doing it at nighttime.

Tell us about that.

Education, straight up education. Like that year education was so hot, like English learning, trade learning, any sort of stuff that was related to like education. It was like, that was the place to be. So I was actually running that startup. It was really weird. I was doing language training, but that year or that era, I was trying to push the limits and I did everything off of like a tablet. So back, well, 10 years ago, 9 years ago, tablets were just kind of kicking off and everything. So I bought like hundreds of these super cheap tablets, like Android, I think 4.0. And it was really difficult, like the technical side of stuff. I set up a whole little server. It could download from directly from our server, from our content. But the touchscreen was like resistive. It was really hard to like click on small icons. It was really poorly done. But at the end of the day, the company that bought my other company was in it just for the content. So they didn't really care about the application and stuff. So I built out over like 2, 3 years, hundreds of hours of video content, GPTs, all for use on this tablet. So now I guess kind of moving forward is, in hindsight, you never know, right? You don't know, oh, is this going to work? This is, this tablet's really the way you're going to learn. But yeah, I guess nowadays it's all online. So I guess he's using the content for some good stuff. But yeah, that kind of like kicked off the whole, like after I sold that, I was able to like get a little bit of like seed cash and then start this full time.

So then you use, use your own money that kind of bootstrapped it on your own.

Exactly. The first couple of years of R&D was really bootstrapping. And like I said, trying to cut costs because, you know, like whatever you can save here is essentially your own money. So that's kind of what the whole like 1 by 1 meter start off was. It's just, hey, I want to pay a couple bucks to try to test this out, leave the bike there, work on it at nighttime.

Wow. Fascinating. And then from there, how did you end up then more professionalizing the company and next milestones along the way?

We still had like, like the whole, like we would say it's like a logarithmic growth with this whole thing. Like I did start from a 1 by 1, then we moved to a 4 by 4, which was like, literally it wasn't that much bigger, but we actually spent quite a lot of time there. We spent maybe a year and a half and it was really interesting because we started off with like 4 square meters there. And we actually invested in building a second roof, a second floor sort of, cause it was like a high ceiling. Warehouse. So we got a 4x4, but we ended up making that 8x8, sort of. So we did electronics and PCB design on the top, and then we did builds on the bottom. We had, I think, most, the most we ever have crowded in, it was like 6 or 7 builds that we were doing. So literally you were like wandering around bikes to go through it. So it was really weird, but yeah, we got the builds done surprisingly in a decent amount of time.

What about those frames? Like, did you Buy existing frames? Did you start to weld, or like what were the?

Yeah, so we actually started welding them. We took some the first couple of prototypes we brought in that we kind of modified stuff. But then as we kind of built on, we're like, okay, there's so much that we have to customize. We just got to build it ourselves. So at that point, we were able to just it's welding and coming from like an automotive background, I got a lot of that stuff under my belt. So it was pretty easy in that sense. But again, China doesn't do that, which is really strange. You're like you want to buy. Like five frames, they're like five. That's nothing. This is China. Like where's you should buy five thousand. It's a huge problem with China where it's kind of like Texas. It's like go big or go home, and they don't really. I don't know. Maybe in manufacturing, I haven't really found this whole niche that kind of builds up organically. So from my experience here, you either kind of raise investment and then buy five thousand, develop it, and then kind of go from there, or you don't bother starting. I don't know. Like that's just kind of my take on it.

Fascinating, fascinating. Yeah, because I guess down in Guang in Shenzhen and Guangdong, like if you want to do electronic. manufacturing, then maybe they're like, okay, you know what? We'll prototype this with you and we'll spark it up. But yeah, I think that tinkering culture, like when I got to Beijing in '99, when I first moved there, splitting time between Hong Kong, there's 400,000 cars in the whole city. And most of them were owned by Danwei, right? People didn't have individual cars.

Right.

So nobody ever grew up like fixing cars. Like you needed to. Yeah. So, so, so then there was no personal and there was no like industry. Yeah, indeed, indeed.

Yeah, like, oh, you're working on cars, you're fixing your own plumbing or something like that, or you're doing your own renovations or something. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's the whole thing. So I don't know, at least stage 80 coming from that circle, it's looked down upon. So a lot of people I feel don't even start these things. They may have like awesome ideas and they may not have like, they don't want to go 100% into it, but like, how do you even tinker? How do you even, it's a huge missing segmentation, I think.

Fascinating. Fascinating.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of the scooter market got kind of dominated by Japanese players and maybe Taiwanese with bicycles and maybe some scooters as well too. So, so maybe, yeah. So it was actually pretty bold to just say, you know what, kind of Elon Musk-like, I'm going to say it. I said it again for the second time, like where you're just like, at least you had some automobile experience. He didn't have, he didn't have any, but just like, hey, let's go rethink this whole thing. And you guys built that from complete scratch. It's really fascinating.

Yeah, it was. Like, like again, it's build it for yourself, right? Build it for yourself. And if you start flipping it, there's a market. But yeah, I don't know. I actually don't know the story of how he started. I know he just invested into Tesla, but I actually don't know too much about before we PayPal to Tesla transition.

Well, I think his idea was that he, the planet is going to basically implode from global warming. So SolarCity and Tesla, and then let's have an exit option. He's like, I want to, he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. He said, right. But I mean, he really brought a lot of interesting new, you know, I watched a video with him recently and he's like, prototyping is actually fun and manufacturing is brutal. And, uh, being cash flow positive is just absolutely nightmarish and harrowing.

Totally agree with him, man. That is such a headache right now that we're like smack in the middle. I guess, you know what he was, whatever, 5 years ago, he was saying manufacturing hell. Like that's what we're doing on a daily basis.

So let's get to that. Let's get to that in a minute. Like. Tell us about some of the strategic investment you got in this kick-ass warehouse that you're in now and like your great team. What were the milestones along the way?

And yeah, so, so we eventually scaled up here to, uh, we're actually on Foxconn's incubator lab right now. So it's the guys that do, you know, the iPhones, everything like that. They got a massive, this is one of the smallest facilities, I think, in Beijing, but they have 4 phases. This one's like, I don't know, it's huge, man. They got like, I think 5,000 to 10,000 people just on this phase. So this is pretty big. They got 4 other bases in this Yizhuang, Beijing area. And this is the smallest one that they got. So yeah, I mean, Foxconn has been super helpful at us and really, as Mark was saying, manufacturing hell sort of thing. They got this down. Like they are able to, they got such a good team. They got such good engineers that they can kind of pick and choose exactly this battery pack, this sort of PCB. What issues are you going to face at 100,000 or like 50,000 units where at this point, Invaluable. Yeah. Like 2, 3 years ago when we first kicked this off doing like a couple hundred, a couple thousand, we're like, yeah, we're not, we're not going to get to 50,000 yet. But it's always good to keep those in mind, learn as much as you can, because eventually that is kind of our goal. And they are so good in terms of like what to look for in terms of just the precision that they have when it comes to manufacturing. A lot of people think it's just like you just stick stuff on a board, you kind of build it hand or whatever, weld it together and you're good to go. But they got a really good analogy that kind of really stuck with me over the last couple of years. There's kind of milestones when it comes to manufacturing. I guess this kind of applies to other stuff, but they say it's, what is it? 1, 10,000, 100,000. So you only build on manufacturing to those numbers, anything below and you're in a category. So you build one prototyping, right? Like super easy. You can take 4, you can take 3 months, 5 months, whatever to build a single prototype. You can't take that Mindset or the manufacturing method or the thought process or the engineering into the next scale, which is only 10. So they say 10 is kind of like the next step up. When you're building 10, you call it like test mules, prototype sort of stuff. I guess 1 would be concept then. So then 10 would kind of be test mule and like you're getting on the road, you're giving it to customer feedback. And they say the whole process then changes. The precision that you need, the accuracy, the stability, the manufacturing kind of consistency you need is completely different. And going through that a couple of years ago, I totally understand it now. Doing 10, you could still get away with like CPARS. You can do kind of additive manufacturing, no problem. But then you're thinking 6 hours to print a part. Doing 10, yeah, that's not bad. Like 6 hours times 10, that's only 60 hours. You can't take that to the next, next step, which is 1,000. How are you going to do 6,000 hours to make a part by additive manufacturing? It doesn't work anymore. So they kind of gave us this 1, 10. We're not at 100,000 yet, but so we're still under the 1,000. So we're in that sort of mind space and that sort of manufacturing methods, we've had to shift a lot of our processes to like faster sort of manufacturing processes. We used to do a lot of additive for prototyping and we actually started getting into like additive manufacturing also for some cosmetic panels and stuff like that. But even at, you know, 10+ units, it doesn't make time sense anymore. The amount that you're spending 3D printing something, the amount that you're doing, it doesn't work from just vacuum forming it or it's not the consistency and speed you need. So they've been super helpful, man. And it's definitely 1, 10,000, 100,000. And hopefully we get to the 100,000 mark where we're going to have to shift our mindset once again of how to be able to produce stuff at 100,000 quantity batch or whatever. And we'll be doing quite successfully. We'll be quite successful, but that's kind of like the goal. That's the goal. We want to shift to that next phase, that next milestone.

Great way to frame it. That's really super, super insightful.

Totally not my mindset, man. But yeah, they were super insightful when they were build to only The phase that you need for manufacturing, because at the next phase, the next jump, everything changes.

Love it. And how did you connect up with Foxconn? I mean, they're just a behemoth of a company.

They are, man. They're such a massive company. And it was such a Chinese, like they got this word that's just like yuanfen. It's like destiny. It's like, I don't know, fate. Yeah, sort of fate, I guess, is the easiest translation. We were back in our previous facility. So I was saying like, you know, we kind of scaled up on logarithmic scale. So we were at a different warehouse that we had about 200, 300 square meters, about 2,000 square feet. And it's on a golf course. Well, it's like right next to a golf course. So it was this beautiful kind of like rustic warehouse that was just sitting right next to one of our investors actually owns the golf course. So he kind of gave us that space. And just one day, like these 2 people just kind of knocked on our door and they were like, hey, we're from Foxconn, Beijing. We'd like to talk to you about doing some new energy vehicle stuff. And at that point in time, like it was like, it's super random. Who does that? Who walks up to your door? Who finds you first of all on the internet? And then finds out you're in the same city, walks up to your door without a call or an email and just from one of the largest contract manufacturing companies in the world and just kind of knocks on it and says like, hey, you want to do something? So honestly, we actually slammed the door. Like it wasn't me, but it was somebody else, one of our other employees. And it's like, they didn't believe it. So they just, oh, Nathan's not here right now. Yeah. Like the boss isn't here right now. Go away. Go away. Like that was it. So when he came back, He actually said, oh yeah, there's a couple of people looking for you from Foxconn. I was like, that doesn't, that sounds kind of scammy. So I said, fuck it as well. So I don't know. But again, 2 days later, like clockwork, 2 days later, they came back. And at that point they gave us, I guess, yeah, I don't know if they gave my employee a card at that time, but I was the one that kind of answered the door because they were like, oh, these guys are back. They gave me a card that actually was like Foxconn Precision Manufacturing. And I was like, holy shit, these guys really are. Like from Flockcom Beijing. So yeah, then I kind of sat down. We had an actual sort of official meeting and everything like that. We came down to their facility to talk more, but it was super random, super like fatey, I guess, in that sense, but never thought to look out for them. Never even thought of like doing this whole contract manufacturing process, but kind of going through it and I, there's no way we would have been able to scale not being in China, not working with contract manufacturers like Foxconn, like some of the other guys. So like a double-edged sword, right? You don't have the assets, but like you have the ability to scale quickly.

Yeah. And I think there's going to be, I think that's a much more positive trend where, okay, I'm a startup. I don't have many resources and I don't have any users and I don't have any reputation. Right. But you know, I'm a large organization, tons of resources, tons of users and all this reputation and brand. Right. But as a large player. I'm not so nimble. I'm not so good at innovating and I can't necessarily move quite as fast. But then you're like, wait a second, we're nimble and innovative and we move really quickly. Right. So it's like, if you could really lock that together. And I think in China, you can really see, like, I had a startup doing mobile gaming and we got approached by Alibaba and Alibaba and Tencent are like very prolific investors and acquirers. Right. So they have these teams and the teams are like. All right, you got to go out, you got to mandate, you got to scout these things out. And I think probably Foxconn is seeing that too. They're like, oh wow, hardware is being democratized. Let's pick electric mobility. Who's doing something kick-ass in that space? And because you were so bold and pioneering it, right? I mean, like, it's pretty unusual for a non, like, local Chinese person to be able to really do well in that kind of space, right? But you were kind of ignored, like you said, right? Like that space was like not really as crowded because you were zagging when everybody else was zigging. Right. And they were like, they show up at your, they show up at your door. Right. Which I think is part of like the whole China speed thing where there's so much competition and these large players are so kind of like paranoid and even also opportunistic that they're driving and moving ahead because they're like, we're going to get disrupted. Well, why don't we go and invest in these companies and help them to grow? And then we can do the manufacturing for them and then we're going to win. Right. So.

Yeah, no, true, man. It's really synergistic. It really is. I mean, they have so much like unused space, unused resources, people, machinery, facilities. It just makes sense that a lot of us are kind of starting up with slower quantities, but they want to see these customers, like they call them customers. Like they call us a customer even though we haven't given them any money. But like, I mean, my feeling is that they feel as we grow, we're going to be a huge contract player to them. Like they could just, we could just dish off Hundreds of thousands of bikes in the future and it's win-win for everybody. So yeah, I mean, I don't know about their mandate. I've never actually asked them, but what you say is probably pretty accurate when it comes to like, they're set out to like find these innovative companies, bring them into the whole like supply chain sort of thing. And then kind of give them a taste. That's essentially what it is. Like give them a taste of what we could do. And then as we kind of grow bigger, of course, we're going to be dishing off all of our manufacturing to them. Like we already are. So. Yeah, I think totally win-win for everybody.

Love it. And tell me, like, it's now been about a decade and I did some hashing. I don't know if you've ever done that before, like Hash House Harriers, where you go, they call themselves drinkers with a running problem. And so the way that it works is that it's a whole group of people. It's very social running, but people have all these different levels of skills. And what they do is they have a, like a rabbit, a hare who goes out and they put all of these false paths. When you're running, because you're out usually like in the mountains or the woods or something. So all the faster people run and then they get led to the wrong, a dead end. And then they're like, oh, I have to turn back. And then they turn back. And if there's other people already running down the path, they're like, this is the wrong one. We have to turn back. Right. So then people find, that's how everybody ends up at the destination kind of at the same time. Right. And then everybody drinks. Right. But it's kind of like entrepreneurship where you're like, I got to get on this path. I have male juju, right? Is this going to— I have to get on this path. And I went down there and like, all right, that was actually a really big waste of time, but now I know that's not the way to go. Right. Sometimes you go there and you're like, okay, wow, I learned something, but now I have to come back. And like, what are some of your dead ends or something where if you go back to 2011 and you're like, okay, listen, I know it's weird that I'm from the future, but I got 2 things to say to you, pandemic and Dogecoin. But also—

That, that, yeah, super deep question, man. We might have to come back to that one. I gotta put a little bit of time into that just to think, but like, I don't see it as mistakes. And in terms of like what If I go back and tell myself, don't do it, like, then how would that kind of mess stuff up along the pathway of learning? Then now we're going to trip you into like the whole time travel thing. But like, I'm just saying, like, if you actually went and said, don't do that, how would you end up? I have no idea. But like, everything's been, I'm not going to say like good, obviously there's been a lot of learning. There's been a lot of like kind of mistakes made, but I think all those mistakes are super critical to like where we've ended up, whether it's to like how to work with people. I think Okay. Yeah, I got a good one because I think this is a huge area that I'm trying to like kind of work on myself. But in terms of like stress management, again, if you tell somebody this, it's, I don't know if it's going to actually help them. I go back 10 years ago and say, hey dude, let it be less controlling and manage your stress. Like, what's that going to do? But yeah, I've been trying to work on that myself a lot. Like we've had quite a lot of employees and a lot of like just team members here where it's crunch time. I kind of get super like stressed out and then I start taking it out on them where they're like, hey man, you're supposed to be reading my mind.

Where's that report that I need?

How are we doing for like parts and inventory this month? I mean, I wouldn't even say that. I wouldn't go back to the future and tell myself that. I just kind of want to work on that myself on a daily basis. Like, how can I try to manage that? How can I frame myself and other people's perspective and kind of understand it? Because I think it'll, I mean, I hope it's going to make me a better manager, a better team member in the future. Yeah. I mean, I guess I know it doesn't really answer your question, but it's super stressful.

Yeah. I have to rethink that question anyway, because that's, that is kind of silly, the whole butterfly. flaps its wings and maybe you bump into it when you show up through your time travel. And then, and then it causes a different pandemic to happen because of that. Who knows?

Right. In High School Musical, right? The butterfly effect. Isn't that the whole like time travel concept? Okay, cool.

But you know, that, that's a terrific point. And I think that's a book that I intend to write in the future about the mindset of entrepreneurship. Right. And really get, and thanks for sharing, right? Because we're not the best version of ourselves as entrepreneurs all the time, because there is so much stress and it is your baby and it's like, And then it's easy to snap at people and it's easy to just be counterproductive because you just want to win.

Yeah. I mean, what, yeah, what do you do in that situation, man? Because sometimes we have so much stuff going on, manufacturing, R&D, you got sales, you got investment, all kind of creeping up on you right behind you. Like, how do you handle that?

Well, I think there's 2 interesting things. I had Victor Koo, the founder of Youku, as a guest lecturer at our MBA class. And when they really were like, They're losing money on every video that they're serving, right? Because the content delivery network, their CDN is so expensive, right? And competition is high and they're running out of cash and he's just getting kind of stressed and he's unable to really even think clearly and he's staying up late. And then he had a mentor who was a very successful entrepreneur and he's like, no, he's like, when you feel that, then you need to like be decisive, but you have to give yourself the best opportunity to decide well. So what that means is at least 7 hours of sleep, maybe 8 hours of sleep, like even sleep extra and think about it before you go to sleep. Let your subconscious do some of the work. Wake up and don't do anything. Don't check your phone. Don't go to the bathroom, drink a glass of water, but then think of, and like maybe let the dirt or the silt go to the bottom of the river. And then you'll see something. You never have enough information, but you'll have a clearer picture and then decide and then go on with it. Right. Because otherwise, if you're staying up late and you're stressing out, then you have like less patience and moodier and you're not thinking as clearly. Right. So that's one thing. And then I just think meditation is something that's super—

Yeah, definitely. I think that's a good suggestion too. But you know what's interesting? You said like, yeah, you said a key word there, which is moody. I think that's just a, I don't know, the negative way of saying emotional. And I think that's like the whole double-edged sword. It's like, yes, you are passionate about this. Yes, you do want to succeed. You want to see this through. And that kind of moodiness slash emotional Is that a word? I don't know. But yeah, like that, that's definitely what kind of gets like, hey, we want to get this out to, we want to get stuff to our customers. Where the fuck is our inventory? Right? Like that's kind of like how it is. And then it kind of builds up. But then when you take a look from the flip side, you're like, yeah, dude, like that guy couldn't have understood. That guy couldn't have read my mind. It's like at that point in time, I want like a whole inventory list and find out where we are. Like, yeah, I understand that, but it's tough to stop yourself, at least for me.

It is.

Like, yeah, like 10 seconds after I'm like, oh crap, I shouldn't have said that. But like 10 seconds prior, you just, you just had it coming out. Like, I don't know.

Yeah. So I actually, I think that's why meditation for me, like that's something transcendental meditation is an absolute superpower. Like it's something where really investing in, I think of it as kind of like you're in this gnarled medieval forest and you take kind of this scythe and you clear out an area and it's got some nice grass and sunlight and maybe an old log and you can like sit inside there. And then just be like, okay, I got the sun shining on me. And like, I have some space. 'Cause otherwise you're just like, you know, fuck this forest. And you're just like, kind of like battling it and you're in like the dark and like, you need to clear it, clear that out and invest in it because there's 2 battles that you're fighting, right? The battle is like, oh, I'm battling out there in against the market, against competitors, against whatever external forces, right? Innovation and like, but then there's the other battle between your ear holes, right? And like that battle is something that people usually don't give themselves enough space and support and invest in that. And I think it's really, I think brave of you to even admit, right. That like, that's a shortcoming because everybody has it, but people rarely talk about it.

Yeah. Do you ask any of my employees, any of the team here? They're like, yeah, dude, that guy's got like, when he's stressed out, he's got like a super short fuse. But what do you do as you're hacking through the forest? When you hit that kind of like limit, do you then just start chopping down trees? Make that Zen section for you, or do you do it kind of like before you set out?

No, but I mean, I think meditating allows you to like step out of the forest and go into that clearing and just be like, because that's actually a fascinating thing that I learned. Cause I grew up in Boston and I, and like, especially that bitter soil of Boston is like, everything's okay. Like you're over the line. Right. And it's like that challenge.

Right.

And just like, is that a Boston thing?

Sounds like a North American thing. Cause I, I'm pretty well, sure.

No, but I think Boston has an even extra, like maybe if you go to California or you meet people from like the South, or even I think Canadians are pretty polite, right?

I'm not, I'm just saying like, we're also the same until you hit that like limit, then you're like, you know, everything, I guess everybody, that's the whole thing.

Everybody does have a limit, but then you can really set that governor, like where you can, where you want to be. I did a 7-day silent meditation course, 10-day silent meditation course with my wife. And it's called Vipassana. And he who had done it previously, I was like, can you summarize it? He's like, I can summarize it in 2 words.

What is it?

Appropriate response. He's like, that's what that gave me was the appropriate response. So this is what I learned from doing that 10-day silent meditation retreat and doing about almost 8 years now of transcendental meditation is that there's stimulus, there's emotion. And then usually I have response, right? And you can't control the stimulus. Stimulus is going to happen. You can't control the emotion. The emotion is literally hardwired. It's like part of your firmware in there, right? You can't control your emotions. You're going to feel fear, anger, anxiety, excitement, whatever. Like those emotions happen to you before you even register them consciously, right? Your body reacts to it. And that's what Vipassana is all about is like, Just being hyper-aware of what's happening in your body. Like, oh, heart rate increasing. And my skin is starting to feel prickly and like, oh, I'm like sweating or my temperature is changing and I'm breathing differently. And it's like, oh, I'm feeling anger, which is like the public face of fear or whatever. Right. And you can't do anything about that. But what happens is you can choose. So it's stimulus, emotion, space, and then response. So it's like, that's why I think of like, that's what meditation does. It allows me to be like, oh, fuck, are you kidding me? You don't even know what I'm doing. But then you can like, it gives you to like, then choose what, how you want to react. Right.

So it's interesting way of putting it. I mean, but I've always been kind of like on the whole onus of like controlling your emotions. Everybody's talking about like, hey, you gotta, as a manager, as a leader, you gotta control your emotions. What you're saying is you got no choice with that, but you can control the response, which kind of makes sense. You don't think there's any way to control the emotions? Like really, at some point in time, do you just want to like pass off the fear? Do you want to just pass off the uncertainty? Like, is there a way to just turn that off? You see, that'd be the magical kind of like pill for us.

I don't think so. There isn't, right? There is no, I think you're hardwired. Some people are hardwired to feel more fear or feel more anxiety. And I don't think there's really much that can be done about that. I do think that you have to offset it with sleep, diet, exercise, Meditation, journaling, time with friends. Journaling is a superpower as well too, because journaling is something where I take all the butterflies fluttering around in my head and I pin them down on paper. I write for 2 pages of like, oh my God, I'm worried about my son doing his remote learning because it's not working out for him. Right. Or I really have stress about this new venture that I'm launching because I don't have the product market fit yet or whatever. Right. And just writing about it and like consciously focusing on, like, that's something that can make it. And then I think the last thing I'll say is that I think in the non-stress situations, it's really good to kind of outsource your stress. Like when things are not in an emergency mode, like make some sort of artificial kind of emergencies or pressure with your staff and allow them to feel that and kind of become antifragile. And make mistakes. And then, and so then, because oftentimes it's like, it's only when it's an emergency and only now, and then you can't, you have no room to make a mistake. And then it's like, then let's all back off. And then like 3 months later, like, all right, now. And then they're just like, well, shit. Like I still haven't worked on that. Right. So it's almost your job. Just like there's no bad pets. There's only bad owners. Right. And there's no bad employees. There's only a bad manager or leader. Right. And like, and it's really tough to like. create that environment where they're becoming antifragile along the way, because it's a lot of extra work. But then in the future, then that culture is created. And that my favorite definition of culture is that it's what people do when you're not there. Right. And like, then, then when you start going from 1,000 to 100,000, then it's able to like kind of—

Then, then that's true. Yeah. True scaling. Hands off. You're not there. Yeah, totally, man.

But yeah. So anyway, I enjoy talking about that, but that's another podcast and another book. I think that whole Like all that stuff between your ear holes as an entrepreneur. Like that's like so little talked about, but it's such a big, such an important thing.

Right? It is, man. Like how do you, how do you make people better entrepreneurs? It's all about like, well, either controlling your emotions or controlling your response. One of those two. Figure out how to do either one. And I think everything will flow a lot better. There's been tons of times where there's just arguments and like just pure, like straight up almost fighting based off of either a bad response or like, hey, you know what? 10 seconds ago, I probably shouldn't have said that, but Hell, I'm neck deep into it already. Just continue the fight. Like, I don't know if it's ever happened to you, but yeah, like that happens all the time with us. And we don't even, yeah, we don't mean to. It's like, we're all on the same page. We know we're on the same page. We want to get these builds out. We want to finish off this project, but yet we're still yelling at each other. Like, I don't know. It doesn't make sense, but yeah, it happens all the time.

No, it's very common, right? It's very common.

I'll read that book, man. When you get that book out, I'll, uh, send me over a copy and then I'll, I'll go through that line by line.

I'll bring you back on that podcast. I already know the name of it. It's called Impostorpreneur, because there's like also, because everybody's got imposter syndrome anyway. Totally right. And then if you're doing something that's never been done before, like make a fucking kick-ass electric motorcycle in China, like then you're like, I don't even, can this even be done? Am I the right one to take it to the next level? Like, oh my God, there's another part. It's like, of course you're riddled with fear, uncertainty, and doubt because you've decided to do something that's so incredibly Unknowable and risky and difficult that it's supposed to feel that way, right? Yeah.

I mean, that's the whole neck deep thing. We're kind of neck deep into it already. So it's really hard to go backwards or a different direction or what.

Yeah. I mean, the vibe I got in the factory when I was there is that it's the can-do optimism and everything's possible and everybody's so geeked out and into what you do. That's of course necessary to be able to drive.

Yeah. Like I guess they're both North American in that sense. So like mindset and everything's kind of lined up, but Man, coming out to China, it's like a whole different ballgame. Like you're dealing with every sort of different culture out there and on the planet, and they all somehow find each other based on the project. So like I'm working with like people from Poland. Okay, cool. So anyways, yeah, we'll continue on, but like, yeah, I mean, working with like people from Europe and they've got such an interesting sort of like culture to the whole thing. Like they're super relaxed when it comes to, I guess, comparatively to from like North America. Like, I don't know about you, like your experience here in China, but like talking to them, it's like, oh, I'm taking the weekend off as an entrepreneur. Like, when do you ever take a weekend off? So like, there's times I'll message him on like Saturday morning and then I won't get a response for like 48 hours, which is like, it's insane when it comes to like number one entrepreneurship, number two, like North Americans. Yeah. I don't know if that's your take as well, but like any time, like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, back in Canada. You text somebody, like they should text you back within a couple of like hours. I don't know, like leaving it 2 straight days. That's crazy. And that happened like a lot of time. And apparently it's like super normal. It's like, hey, we don't work weekends or like 5 o'clock. One of our dealers and distributors, we've actually had that exact same issue where it's like the time difference. Obviously we're facing like European time and China time, but there's times that I'm running through like a technical call or I'm helping one of our teammates run through a technical call. And they're like, okay, so this, you disassemble this section, take a couple screws out. And then what you want to do is you want to unplug this. And he's like, oh, hold on. It's like 5 o'clock here. And I'm like, okay. And he's like, well, I'm going to go home. I'm like, we're in the middle of like, yeah, we're like disassembling half your bike. And he's like, yeah, no problem. No problem. We'll pick it up tomorrow. And I'm like, how do you just leave a bike like half disassembled? Like it's a customer's bike. Like, is he not going to care? Is he not going to like want it done quickly? But He's like, no, that, that's how you do it in Europe. Like 5 o'clock on the dot, I'm clocked out. I'm going home. Like that's it. And it's such a weird thing. Like these guys are, they're also running their business. It's like a small business to them. And if they're just, if they're super relaxed about it, I don't know how they're, they come across to their customers, but apparently that's the norm. So it's been a big shift, kind of like reshifting from like the 996 here in China. Then you got the entrepreneur stuff generally worldwide that we're all trying to go. And then you got North Americans, I think we're kind of in the middle where they're acceptable at any point in time, but they may not be working. And then you got Europeans who are just like, oh, totally taking the time off. So it's learning to manage that, learning to work with them. And yeah, it's been interesting. It's a very broad range that we have to deal with.

Fascinating. Yeah. And I think that's part of the purpose of the book is that, okay, maybe you don't want to be in China. Maybe you don't actually even want to do any sort of manufacturing in China, but Chinese companies are now starting to be much more aggressive going global. And they're going to be competing with you, right? And like, that's the kind of new normal in a way. Every, the clock speed is just going to be different and you need to learn some of the tactics and approaches around that to be able to remain competitive.

I mean, even people coming into or trying to do business with China, it's something that I think will be a whole shift, like especially the whole new norm where everything's online based, everything is like video conference. Like we have meetings all the time now, like 12 o'clock midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning. Talking to like West North America, that's the norm. I think whether you're in entrepreneurship or not, I mean, for better or worse, right? Like it's connected now, right? Everybody's gone through this whole COVID thing. Everybody knows they're now connected with a device. Like why couldn't you get ahold of somebody? Right. So I don't know. I don't know if it's a good thing. Maybe it's like, maybe it's going to crash the world or something. Like everybody is just so hyperconnected that there's no privacy anymore. I don't know, but I'm just saying. That's kind of how it is in China. And that's kind of like the expectation a lot of our suppliers have. Like you can call up China anytime, any minute of the day, and then 9 out of 10, somebody will pick up. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Indeed. Hey Nathan. Wow. Thanks so much for your time. It was really wonderful to catch up a bit, my friend. Maybe the Olympics. I took my oldest boy to the Olympics in '08 for the opening ceremony. And I would love to be able to do that if we can get back for the Winter Olympics. But I'll be back and forth a lot in the future teaching and businesses that I have up there that I'm involved with. So I think that's a new normal and I'm going to be writing a lot more about China and kind of channel learnings from China to the rest of Southeast Asia and the world.

Another book, man. Yeah. Send over when it's all done and done.

Will do. All right, my friend, all the best then. To be continued.

For sure, man. We'll catch up another time. Okay. We'll grab a beer next time you're in town.

Great. Thanks.

Okay. See ya.

Deal.

That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rich Robinson Show, Season 1, At the Speed of China. Visit therichrobinson.com/show to smash that subscribe button. Please also go to iTunes or whatever platform of choice Rate and comment, and until next time, thank you very much. Zaijian. Cheers, y'all.