You Are Who You Meet

It’s deeper than we think, sometimes everlasting

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - 75’’ 4K Smart TV

The Ultra High End - $100 Groupon Gift Card

The Superpremium - Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

The Premium Core - Gift of Ducky Tran Membership

The Accessible Core - You Are Who You Meet

The Affordable Luxury - Podcast Guests

The Everyday Luxury - Ultra High End Submissions

The Bespoke

I know you’ve all been waiting for this week!

The WINNER of April 2024 Bespoke Contest is ALEX from Arlington, Texas!

Congratulations to ALEX for winning the $5,000 Vacation Package with his submission of “your favorite animal”:

Check out some of the animal photos that were sent in:

Congratulations to ALEX again and I hope the vacation package takes you to see more wonderful animals from around the world.

IMPORTANT ANNOUCEMENT!!!

In order to maintain the Ducky Tran newsletter with prizes, I have made the difficult decision to reduce the Bespoke Prize costs until the community becomes larger. Initially, the Bespoke Grand Prize was meant to help the community grow, but at the same time, the community is made up of members that are not just here for the Bespoke prize alone. Thank you to you all!

However, if this change does affect your consideration of keeping the membership, I understand. The prizes scale with the size of the community and one day, I will be able to provide prizes greater than before.

There’s always a bright-side:

1. I get to vary the prizes a bit more, allowing for different content and prize pool

2. The content is not as stagnant, after seeing months of the same material on top of the newsletter

3. Ducky Tran can continue to release weekly content

4. We get a build a community that has benefits but no rely on them or ads to sustain, which was the original intention of creating Ducky Tran.

But now, let’s check out May’s Bespoke Prize!

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: 75’’ 4K Smart TV [ARV $900]

• Odds: For every 120 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) 75” TV Prize

• Contest Period: May 1, 2024 at 10 AM CST to May 28, 2024 at 10 PM CST

For May 2024, I am giving out a 75’’ 4K Smart TV worth $900! Not everyone watches TV daily, many people don’t even have cable anymore. However, during parties, sporting events, or even business meetings, we gather around the TV to watch our favorite shows or required presentation.

Sometimes, it’s just a way to get some time to yourself as your kids watch Disney+ or Netflix. The average household has 2-3 TVs! So even if you don’t need another TV, this could be your upgrade from your 2007 Black Friday 42’’ TV Deal that works only on rainy days.

With this 75’’ TV, you watch TV while washing the dishes from the other room. Like most TV nowadays, the “smart” function allows you to have apps that you would normally use on your phone, so music, movies, and even shopping can now happen on the big screen. I didn’t put a specific brand of TV because I know some members may be biased towards specific brands of TV, but the value of $900 is still valid for all brands.

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner of Issue 23’s Instant Pot is GIANINA from Irving, Texas! This is her submission for “a photo of somewhere you would love to go to”:

Congratulations to GIANINA, I hope you like cooking like I do, this Instant Pot is a time-saver!

This week’s submissions were a good flashback for me when I was traveling the world. All these places look amazing and I can’t wait to see more adventures from you, especially if you get to go to these places in the future.

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $100 Groupon Gift Card [ARV $100]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) $100 Gift Card

• Contest Period: May 1, 2024 at 10 AM CST to May 7, 2024 at 10 PM CST

This week’s focus is social wealth. We try to spend time with our friends and family when it is convenient and cost-effective. For this week’s prize, I wanted to make convenient and affordable so you can’t make any excuses to go hang out with your friends and family.

This week’s prize is $100 Groupon Gift Card. Groupon has a lot of great deals on events, food, experiences, things you don’t need, and things you think you need but still don’t. Regardless if you need them or not, it’ll be available for you to share memories with your loved ones.

For those that don’t know, Groupon put out deals from business owners to give a discount in order to drive customer traffic to their store, product, or service. You can get amazing deals worth more than $100. But don’t forget to share the $120-worth of Krispy Kreme donuts or $150 Spa Day with someone you love, or a lot of someones in case of the donuts.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. I’ve been to many zoos and aquariums, but the Churaumi Aquarium is currently my favorite of them all. Take a look at my favorite photo I took (below)!

The Aquarium is built so beautifully on the outside, you forget it’s an aquarium and not a botanical garden. They have fields of flowers, trees, and luminous art pieces all around the main building. Just walking from the parking area to the front of the building was an experience in itself.

The Aquarium is 4-stories and the reason is to have tanks like the one in the photo. That large tank held several giant whale sharks, which are the 3rd largest creatures in the ocean! Just look at its size compared to the visitors. There are many other large tanks that hold hundreds of species sea life. The beauty is really how they have created ecosystems with variety of sea creatures.

Some of my favorite animals to see there were the enormous whale sharks that get up to 29 feet long, giant rays that get up to 20 feet wide, giant spider crabs with legs that can span 13 feet from end to end. (Look up giant spider crab, it’s pretty cool but may be scary to some so I’ll leave the photo out.)

If you ever have the time to visit Okinawa while in Japan, this is one of those spots you have to really experience. Like most of nature, it’s hard to fathom and truly grasp its majesty from just a photo, you have to experience in person.

The Premium Core

This week’s Premium Core topic is the Gift of Ducky Tran Premium Membership. Many members have asked about or given advice about how to establish some way to gift Ducky Tran Premium Membership. Due to the software that I use for the newsletters, there are some limitations; however, I have found a way to make it viable.

I want to grow the Ducky Tran community so I can share my knowledge, make a cooperative community, provide insightful and meaningful content, and provide prizes and deals not seen before.

This gift allows you to provide your friends and family an excuse to read the newsletter and check out what Ducky Tran is all about. I believe, a month of Ducky Tran Membership, is already undervalued where it is; however, the price is set so there is a low barrier of entry to the community. As the community grows, the value will just increase even though the price will remain low. But in order for the community grow, I ask you to help spread the word and share Ducky Tran with your peers. It will make for a wonderful birthday gift, graduation present, or just an opportunity for your peers to win weekly prizes.

Deal #1: I’m offering a discount on both 1-month and 3-month gifts at shop.duckytran.com for the rest of the month of May. The gift must be given to a new account holder. Follow the instructions that will be emailed to you after the purchase. You will also receive your referral count.

Thank you for being part of Ducky Tran, and I hope to see this community grow as we continue our journey through 2024!

The Accessible Core

You Are Who You Meet

Most of know that we generally take after our parents, siblings, and closest friends. But many times, we overlook the influence that random people have in our lives. It is true we become like the people we spend most of our times with, but then how are we different from our siblings who have the same parents or our peers who are each other’s best friends.

That is the focus of today. We forget the minor relationships we have every day, with people we don’t know the names of, with people will never remember. But it’s a two-way street, not only do they influence us, but we influence them.

Let’s put in a simpler way so we can visualize what these minor relationships really are to us.

Let’s imagine the entire concept as a math lesson at school. The relationships you have with your parents, siblings, best friends, and closest peers are the lessons you just learned. Through these interactions you are taught what is right, what is wrong, and the different ways you can get to the same solution.

Now that you’ve learned this math lesson, you have it in your repertoire forever. So many people see the attributes of those close relationships in you, like your ability to add or subtract, it’s innate.

The minor interactions you have with random people at the mall, restaurant, and park the next day is like you practicing what you’ve learned from the math lesson. Sometimes you practice exactly how it was taught, sometimes you make a few mistakes and fix it, sometimes you will get it completely wrong, and sometimes you’ll choose to not use the lesson you’ve learn and instead us a different tool in your repertoire.

All these correct, incorrect, or different options shape the way you utilize that lesson from then on, and also shape the people that interact with you.

But like any math problem, or any lesson, practice makes perfect. All the random interactions you have throughout the day will refine your true personality from the ones you’ve acquired from your closest friends and family. This is what makes you unique. This uniqueness comes from days, weeks, months, or years of honing personality attributes that were passed down to you from your closest relationships.

Every day, you are a random interaction for someone else to hone their uniqueness. So don’t hide from these random interactions, help yourself and help others become the perfect solution to their math lesson. You may have now realized that the lesson is as important as the practice.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 23 Community Poll Results

Here are the results for Issue 23:

1. Most members voted they spend at least 1 hour of social media daily, with about 1/3 with excess of 2+ hours. I think that’s pretty accurate with how involved social media is in our lives. From food to events to catching up with friends, social media is a hub for are to-do lists.

2. It was evenly spread out on if you cook at home or not, from 0% to 25% to 50% to 100%. I actually like seeing this because I like to get as many perspectives when I ask these polls, and this just shows the different lifestyles of Ducky Tran members.

3. It was split 50/50 on people that would like to be part of a Ducky Tran podcast. I’ll be asking those that are willing to be part of the podcast to vote on this week’s poll.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

Look at these wonderful submissions of 2023!

Making these collages was quite fun. I got to see how far Ducky Tran has gone and see all the fun photos that are submitted. I’m excited to see what the future holds for the community and look forward to sharing with you the different perspectives of the members of Ducky Tran.

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: groupon