Sometimes doing everything correctly isn't enough.

In 2020, I could fix my life.

After failing to start a business, I owed $40,000 and had no work.

A $1.2 billion startup on the cusp of going public pulled me up.

Ironically, it was getting ready for an epic fall — with the world watching.

Life sometimes helps. Without a base, even the strongest fall. A corporation that did everything right failed 3 months after going public.

First-row view.

Apple is the creator of Adore.

Out of respect, I've altered the company and employees' names in this account, despite their failure.

Although being a publicly traded company, it may become obvious.

We’ll call it “Adore” — a revolutionary concept in retail shopping.

Two Apple execs established Adore in 2014 with a focus on people-first purchasing.

Jon and Tim:

• The concept for the stylish Apple retail locations you see today was developed by retail expert Jon Swanson, who collaborated closely with Steve Jobs.

• Tim Cruiter is a graphic designer who produced the recognizable bouncing lamp video that appears at the start of every Pixar film.

The dynamic duo realized their vision.

“What if you could combine the convenience of online shopping with the confidence of the conventional brick-and-mortar store experience.”

Adore's mobile store concept combined traditional retail with online shopping.

Adore brought joy to 70+ cities and 4 countries over 7 years, including the US, Canada, and the UK.

Being employed on the ground floor, with world dominance and IPO on the horizon, was exciting.

I started as an Adore Expert.

I delivered cell phones, helped consumers set them up, and sold add-ons.

As the company grew, I became a Virtual Learning Facilitator and trained new employees across North America using Zoom.

In this capacity, I gained corporate insider knowledge. I worked with the creative team and Jon and Tim.

It's where I saw company foundation fissures. Despite appearances, investors were concerned.

The business strategy was ground-breaking.

Even after seeing my employee stocks fall from a home down payment to $0 (when Adore filed for bankruptcy), it's hard to pinpoint what went wrong.

Solid business model, well-executed.

Jon and Tim's chase for public funding ended in glory.

Here’s the business model in a nutshell:

Buying cell phones is cumbersome. You have two choices:

1. Online purchase: not knowing what plan you require or how to operate your device.

2. Enter a store, which can be troublesome and stressful.

Apple, AT&T, and Rogers offered Adore as a free delivery add-on. Customers could:

• Have their phone delivered by UPS or Canada Post in 1-2 weeks.

• Alternately, arrange for a person to visit them the same day (or sometimes even the same hour) to assist them set up their phone and demonstrate how to use it (transferring contacts, switching the SIM card, etc.).

Each Adore Expert brought a van with extra devices and accessories to customers.

Happy customers.

Here’s how Adore and its partners made money:

Adores partners appreciated sending Experts to consumers' homes since they improved customer satisfaction, average sale, and gadget returns.

**Telecom enterprises have low customer satisfaction. The average NPS is 30/100. Adore's global NPS was 80.

Adore made money by:

• a set cost for each delivery

• commission on sold warranties and extras

Consumer product applications seemed infinite.

A proprietary scheduling system (“The Adore App”), allowed for same-day, even same-hour deliveries.

It differentiates Adore.

They treated staff generously by:

• Options on stock

• health advantages

• sales enticements

• high rates per hour

Four-day workweeks were set by experts.

Being hired early felt like joining Uber, Netflix, or Tesla. We hoped the company's stocks would rise.

Exciting times.

I smiled as I greeted more than 1,000 new staff.

I spent a decade in retail before joining Adore. I needed a change.

After a leap of faith, I needed a lifeline. So, I applied for retail sales jobs in the spring of 2019.

The universe typically offers you what you want after you accept what you need. I needed a job to settle my debt and reach $0 again.

And the universe listened.

After being hired as an Adore Expert, I became a Virtual Learning Facilitator. Enough said.

After weeks of economic damage from the pandemic.

This employment let me work from home during the pandemic. It taught me excellent business skills.

I was active in brainstorming, onboarding new personnel, and expanding communication as we grew.

This job gave me vital skills and a regular paycheck during the pandemic.

It wasn’t until January of 2022 that I left on my own accord to try to work for myself again — this time, it’s going much better.

Adore was perfect. We valued:

• Connection

• Discovery

• Empathy

Everything we did centered on compassion, and we held frequent Justice Calls to discuss diversity and work culture.

The last day of onboarding typically ended in tears as employees felt like they'd found a home, as I had.

Like all nice things, the wonderful vibes ended.

First indication of distress

My first day at the workplace was great.

Fun, intuitive, and they wanted creative individuals, not salesman.

While sales were important, the company's vision was more important.

“To deliver joy through life-changing mobile retail experiences.”

Thorough, forward-thinking training. We had a module on intuition. It gave us role ownership.

We were flown cross-country for training, gave feedback, and felt like we made a difference. Multiple contacts responded immediately and enthusiastically.

The atmosphere was genuine.

Making money was secondary, though. Incredible service was a priority.

Jon and Tim answered new hires' questions during Zoom calls during onboarding. CEOs seldom meet new hires this way, but they seemed to enjoy it.

All appeared well.

But in late 2021, things started changing.

Adore's leadership changed after its IPO. From basic values to sales maximization. We lost communication and were forced to fend for ourselves.

Removed the training wheels.

It got tougher to gain instructions from those above me, and new employees told me their roles weren't as advertised.

External money-focused managers were hired.

Instead of creative types, we hired salespeople.

With a new focus on numbers, Adore's uniqueness began to crumble.

Via Zoom, hundreds of workers were let go.

So.

Early in 2022, mass Zoom firings were trending. A CEO firing 900 workers over Zoom went viral.

Adore was special to me, but it became a headline.

30 June 2022, Vice Motherboard published Watch as Adore's CEO Fires Hundreds.

It described a leaked video of Jon Swanson laying off all staff in Canada and the UK.

They called it a “notice of redundancy”.

The corporation couldn't pay its employees.

I loved Adore's underlying ideals, among other things. We called clients Adorers and sold solutions, not add-ons.

But, like anything, a company is only as strong as its weakest link. And obviously, the people-first focus wasn’t making enough money.

There were signs. The expansion was presumably a race against time and money.

Adore finally declared bankruptcy.

Adore declared bankruptcy 3 months after going public. It happened in waves, like any large-scale fall.

• Initial key players to leave were

• Then, communication deteriorated.

• Lastly, the corporate culture disintegrated.

6 months after leaving Adore, I received a letter in the mail from a Law firm — it was about my stocks.

Adore filed Chapter 11. I had to sue to collect my worthless investments.

I hoped those stocks will be valuable someday. Nope. Nope.

Sad, I sighed.

$1.2 billion firm gone.

I left the workplace 3 months before starting a writing business. Despite being mediocre, I'm doing fine.

I got up as Adore fell.

Finally, can we scale kindness?

I trust my gut. Changes at Adore made me leave before it sank.

Adores' unceremonious slide from a top startup to bankruptcy is astonishing to me.

The company did everything perfectly, in my opinion.

• first to market,

• provided excellent service

• paid their staff handsomely.

• was responsible and attentive to criticism

The company wasn't led by an egotistical eccentric. The crew had centuries of cumulative space experience.

I'm optimistic about the future of work culture, but is compassion scalable?

The Habit of Learning implies constantly learning something new. One daily habit will make you successful. Learning will help you succeed.

Most successful people continually learn. Success requires this behavior. Daily learning.

Success loves books. Books offer expert advice. Everything is online today. Most books are online, so you can skip the library. You must download it and study for 15-30 minutes daily. This habit changes your thinking.

Typical Successful People

• Warren Buffett reads 500 pages of corporate reports and five newspapers for five to six hours each day.

• Each year, Bill Gates reads 50 books.

• Every two weeks, Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book.

• According to his brother, Elon Musk studied two books a day as a child and taught himself engineering and rocket design.

Learning & Making Money Online

No worries if you can't afford books. Everything is online. YouTube, free online courses, etc.

How can you create this behavior in yourself?

1) Consider what you want to know

Before learning, know what's most important. So, move together.

Set a goal and schedule learning.

After deciding what you want to study, create a goal and plan learning time.

3) GATHER RESOURCES

Get the most out of your learning resources. Online or offline.

Calmness is a vital life skill.

It aids communication. It boosts creativity and performance.

I've studied calm people's habits for years. Commonalities:

Have learned to laugh at themselves.

Those who have something to protect can’t help but make it a very serious business, which drains the energy out of the room.

They are fixated on positive pursuits like making cool things, building a strong physique, and having fun with others rather than on depressing influences like the news and gossip.

Every day, spend at least 20 minutes moving, whether it's walking, yoga, or lifting weights.

Discover ways to take pleasure in life's challenges.

Since perspective is malleable, they change their view.

Set your own needs first.

Stressed people neglect themselves and wonder why they struggle.

Prioritize self-care.

Don't ruin your life to please others.

Make something.

Calm people create more than react.

They love creating beautiful things—paintings, children, relationships, and projects.

Hold your breath, please.

If you're stressed or angry, you may be surprised how much time you spend holding your breath and tightening your belly.

Release, breathe, and relax to find calm.

Stopped rushing.

Rushing is disadvantageous.

Calm people handle life better.

Are attuned to their personal dietary needs.

They avoid junk food and eat foods that keep them healthy, happy, and calm.

Don’t take anything personally.

Stressed people control everything.

Self-conscious.

Calm people put others and their work first.

Keep their surroundings neat.

Maintaining an uplifting and clutter-free environment daily calms the mind.

Minimise negative people.

Calm people are ruthless with their boundaries and avoid negative and drama-prone people.

I was entering tens of millions of records per hour when I first published Slonik PostgreSQL client for Node.js. The data being entered was usually flat, making it straightforward to use INSERT INTO ... SELECT * FROM unnset() pattern. I advocated the unnest approach for inserting rows in groups (that was part I).

However, today I’ve found a better way: jsonb_to_recordset.

jsonb_to_recordset expands the top-level JSON array of objects to a set of rows having the composite type defined by an AS clause.

jsonb_to_recordset allows us to query and insert records from arbitrary JSON, like unnest. Since we're giving JSON to PostgreSQL instead of unnest, the final format is more expressive and powerful.

SELECT *
FROM json_to_recordset('[{"name":"John","tags":["foo","bar"]},{"name":"Jane","tags":["baz"]}]')
AS t1(name text, tags text[]);
 name |   tags
------+-----------
 John | {foo,bar}
 Jane | {baz}
(2 rows)

Let’s demonstrate how you would use it to insert data.

Inserting data using json_to_recordset

Say you need to insert a list of people with attributes into the database.

const persons = [
  {
    name: 'John',
    tags: ['foo', 'bar']
  },
  {
    name: 'Jane',
    tags: ['baz']
  }
];

You may be tempted to traverse through the array and insert each record separately, e.g.

for (const person of persons) {
  await pool.query(sql`
    INSERT INTO person (name, tags)
    VALUES (
      ${person.name},
      ${sql.array(person.tags, 'text[]')}
    )
  `);
}

It's easier to read and grasp when working with a few records. If you're like me and troubleshoot a 2M+ insert query per day, batching inserts may be beneficial.

What prompted the search for better alternatives.

Inserting using unnest pattern might look like this:

await pool.query(sql`
  INSERT INTO public.person (name, tags)
  SELECT t1.name, t1.tags::text[]
  FROM unnest(
    ${sql.array(['John', 'Jane'], 'text')},
    ${sql.array(['{foo,bar}', '{baz}'], 'text')}
  ) AS t1.(name, tags);
`);

You must convert arrays into PostgreSQL array strings and provide them as text arguments, which is unsightly. Iterating the array to create slices for each column is likewise unattractive.

However, with jsonb_to_recordset, we can:

await pool.query(sql`
  INSERT INTO person (name, tags)
  SELECT *
  FROM jsonb_to_recordset(${sql.jsonb(persons)}) AS t(name text, tags text[])
`);

In contrast to the unnest approach, using jsonb_to_recordset we can easily insert complex nested data structures, and we can pass the original JSON document to the query without needing to manipulate it.

In terms of performance they are also exactly the same. As such, my current recommendation is to prefer jsonb_to_recordset whenever inserting lots of rows or nested data structures.