Minding my own Biz

A lot of people are quite impressed by my enthusiasm in business. Some even ask me how come in this risk averse Singapore Society, why I would like to do business when we see so many business failed in Singapore.

Well I like doing business is because it requires an individual to be all round. Analysis and planning skill will come into picture during strategy formulation and execution. This would make me think and consider details better and more precise. Any detail overlook could be disastrous to a business. Making sales, doing marketing brush up our people skills and makes us understand more abt human thinking and psychology. Doing cold calling give us courage and thick skin :P and give us a training ground to learn how to handle rejections. Motivating and connecting with staff makes us learn more abt human motivation method and psychology as well. And many more.

As you can see, doing business, for my case is not really abt making money, although that is one of the main goals of pursuing. Doing business will train me all round, make me a better and knowledgeable person as well. Money is secondary, doing business is my passion.

Another thing I like to do business is I would like to add more value to other people's lives. I want to improve lives. Only through business I can improve people's live in large quantity and high quality. I want to create better quality goods and services for people's consumption which I believe can be achieved without breaching moral and ethics. Give my employees (if there is any) something to look forward to and a chance to grow and feel challenged. I don't believe in exploitation, I believe in growing together.

If I do make it big in the business world, I would like to set up a trust fund that will donate a certain amt of money to charity. The trust fund would also be able to help volunteers who are genuinely passionate abt voluntary work to do it full time without having to worry abt bread and butter issues.

Basically, I like doing business because it can improve my intelligence and emotional quotient, make me more knowledgeable at the shortest possible time, know more people and possibly help more people. Anyone want to partner me and join me in this journey? :)

Cheers!

Excuse me, where do I sign up for cheap life lesson?

Was reading a friend's blog entry which trigger some thoughts. How do we learn life lesson without paying a price for it? We all know that life lessons sometimes come with a price tag that not a lot of people can afford. So how can we learn lessons abt life without paying these 'prices'?

Actually the method is very simple. All you have to do is...... be more observant, be a listener and an avid reader! How much does it take to be a keen observer? How much does it take to listen to people's life story? How much does it take to learn other people's life experience through books? Well if you borrow from the library it is free, but if you bought a person's book, you can re-read his experience over and over again to get new insights and thoughts, it only cost u the time and price of the book. Cheap in my opinion when some life lessons you experience, like I mentioned before, has great consequences.

For example, my friend saw how patient a man is to the requests of a fickle-minded female colleague. She learns more about the meaning of patience and also how much trouble fickle mindedness can bring to people. She is able to learn it by being observant to her surroundings, learn from other people's experience without being in the picture and the best part is because she put it in a blog, I am also able to learn from her experience as well. I am able to learn the lesson of being patient and fickle mindedness just by spending 10 mins reading through her blog, without being at the place at all. (This is an example of the power of blogging or Internet)

I always like reading the biograpghies of many successful businessman, like Michael Dell, Ray Kroc, Louis Gerstner, Sam Walton, Paul J. Getty and many more. They have altogether 150 or more years in business. (Taking the sum of those people I named.) I am able to learn from their mistakes, success and business lessons through reading their books. Assuming I spend 8 hrs reading each book that they read. That would be 40 hrs or around 2 days. All I have to do is spend 2 days of my life and I am able to learn 150 years of business experience, WOW, you can see the trade off?

Wherever I am, I always keep my eyes open and my ears pricked so that I can pick up all kinds of information and then have it processed in my brain so that I can learn from my surroundings and other people's experience.

When I talk to cab drivers, I am able to understand how tough it is to earn money while on the Singapore road and tend to be more understanding. This resulted in sometimes not taking the coins back when receiving change. It is just my way of helping people out.

Learning other people's life lesson can improve your life in many ways, it makes you be more understanding of other people's situation, build up your emotional quotient, reduce your own incidence of mistakes and so on, and it all comes with a price you are able to afford. So start being an avid reader, keen listener and sharp observer.

Cheers!

Where is the cheap training ground?

Yes!!! Happy Belated Birthday Blog!!! I have been writing blog for the past 1 year. Wow, that was really fast. Recounting the blog entries that I have written, I hope I have help many readers with their life Knowing that their lives change for the better after reading my blog would really bring a big smile to my face. My main purpose of this blog is to help people see things better from another point of view and also improve lives if possible. The only blog entry that I regretted very much writing is the one that hurt a lady deep, my one and only biggest regret in life. (Now don't be a busy body and search all my blog entries for it. Thank you! :) )

Now I just came back from dinner with some friends. They are doing network marketing. Two of them being new in network marketing, ask abt my opinion in network marketing since I share with them that I have done it before and failed in it. (Yes, I have failures, gloat over it, but I WILL BE BACK, STRONGER AND BETTER! :P ) I thought I share my opinions here in the blog as well.

Basically I think network marketing is a gd training ground for would-be entrepreneurs. Firstly, you can do a proper business without worrying too much abt some business systems like inventory control, supply chain management and other business systems are actually scaled down, for instance cost control, account managment, reward and punishment system. Skills like sales and marketing and people skills are given tremendous training opportunities in network marketing.

Why? U need to talk to people to promote your prodts rite? Talking to people, setting up booths, networking to get contact allows you to brush up your sales & marketing, and people skills.

Even if you failed in network marketing, your skills that you picked up from doing it is very valuable because you can use your people skill to know more acquaintances which can translate to more opportunities. And moreover the costs of doing network marketing is low anyway, compare to other businesses.

Sales and marketing being the lifeblood for businesses (All businesses have to make sales to survive rite?), if you have lousy skills in them and you start a true business, it is very likely that it would collapse, since you cannot make enough sales to survive. And since your foundation is not strong, you think you can move on to manage other business system? If your people skill sucks, you go around pissing people off, you think you can make a sale? Even if u did made a sale or two, you would not get any referrals at all. Think abt it. :)

You can also brush up your negotiation and people-reading skills as well which is also very crucial in true businesses. If you are successful in it, congratulations, you are being paid to brush up your skills and you have build a system of residual income.

I failed in network marketing but I do not regret doing it (Hei, if I did I would have two regrets leh, which I don't. Haha!) because I am able to pick up the importance of maintain my health, know more abt supplements, brush up my sales, marketing and people skills. So although I lost some money and failed in network marketing, I think I picked up more than what the money I lost, can buy.

Now I am not saying u just jump into any network marketing company and start practising your skills. Choose a suitable company that would suit you. Its culture, its philosophy, its products and many others, must suit you. Choose carefully and do your due dilligence.

Cheers!

We are not magicians!

Want to change your life? For example, you want to be more healthy, you want to spend more time with family, you want to leave the dead-end job that you have, you want to pick up an interest.

So now confirm you want to make changes in your life? What is the next step? Maintain the lifestyle pattern that you lead? And expect miracles to happen? Well, we all know if we maintain the lifestyle pattern that we lead, it is absolutely impossible to introduce change to your life. Let's say you want to be healthy. But you maintain you diet, do not increase your exercise time, don't supplement. Do you think you can improve your health, by still leading the lifestyle? Absolutely not! Remember you got into your present state because of the lifestyle you are leading NOW. So if you are unhappy abt your present state, you should start considering a change in the lifestyle you are leading.

Of course I am not talking abt dramatic change to your lifestyle. You should have a concrete plan to slowly introduce changes to your lifestyle. If you want to feel healthy, start changing the food you take for your meals, for example slowly increase the intake of fruits and vegetables. You can start increasing the vegetables intake first, say for lunch, then move on to dinner. Start having at least one fruit for lunch and move on to having another serving of fruit for dinner.

Don't really have to increase the time for exercise dramatically. Start by having 15-30 mins per week dedicated to exercising, for example strolling in the park during a weekend. Slowly expand it to both weekends. Then if there is a chance, have a weekday dedicated to sports, you can find some colleagues who are interested in the same sport to exercise with you after work or why not pick up a new sport?

Start slow, we are not magicians, we are not able to bring a dramatic change in life, we can only bring in gradual change. But if you want to feel healthy, you have to START changing your lifestyle or else there is NO way you will become healthier than what you are now. Plan your gradual change and then STICK to your plan! And please, don't give up just because you do not see result after 2 or4 weeks into the regime. This will take longer than that to enjoy and see the benefit of the change you want.

Start changing, then you can have changes in your life! Cheers!

Brain - A wonderful mechanism

Time flies. Another week has gone, glad that I am steadily achieving progress in my dream of becoming a biz man. Time is really a big constraint now. Was wondering should I cut down on my work time at the work place since there are quite a lot of benefits to it and I would reduce the chance of making someone unhappy when I am there. Anyway, seems like I have been writing a lot recently. Haha, another sign of thinking too much? :P

As the title says, our brain is really a wonderful mechanism, but provided you do not let emotions override the decision made by the brain and you know how to make full use of it. I let emotions override it once and here I am, still regreting what I have done. But I am moving on and not think too much of it. The search begins!

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we should exercise our brain or do more thinking in our daily life. Only then can our life get better and more efficient. Now, actually if u realise, there is another way we can use our brain to improve our life further and that is our relationship with people.

Let me give some examples, the same colleague who commented on me being impassionate abt my work, apparently, he just speak without thinking most of the time. There was an instance where he spoke (wait I think 'spoke' is too mild, 'shout' or 'bellow' perhaps? No idea, I was not around when the things happened) to someone regarding a HR policy. He was arguing with people who cannot make any decisions at all abt the HR policy, and because of that spoilt the working relationship with the administrative people unnecessarily. The last working day of the week, he made a remark to another administrative staff in my centre. "What is the point of having you here if ....?" Oh come on lah, such words can hurt leh. Result: Another administrative staff pissed off by him.

There are other instances where he pissed administrative people off, all because he became very hot-tempered, misread people's signal and make remarks without thinking. Even in writing an email, where you are able to check whether one would misread your intentions, he also can pissed people off. A CLASSIC example of a person who is ATROCIOUSLY poor in people's skill!

The purpose of this blog is this, we have a brain that is really a wonderful mechanism. Use it whenever possible. Try to word your sentence properly before you speak out. Of course initially your response to people will be slow but at least you do not make people unhappy abt you. For email or SMS msg, always check whether there would be a possibility of making people angry, because in these modern communication tech, only mere words are sent to people but the receiver fill in the tonality and volume, depending on the words, for the msg. Speak to relevant people, only raise your voice when necessary, like for instance at people who CAN give you what you want.

Use your brain and don't play play. Having a healthy relationship with people is always good cos as I mentioned, you never know when an opportunity will come from these healthy relationships that you built. As for the colleague who go around pissing people off, he just shut many doors for him!

Cheers!

You do not have passion at all.

No lah, I am not going to talk abt BGR here. Haven't I have enough trouble already? What I am talking abt is the passion of doing something. Recently someone complained to me that I do not have any passion in my work anymore. Well, coming from this person mouth is definitely not convincing. I was thinking of using this blog to give people counter-example what is true passion. Hush hush for those who know who it is.

This person who complained that I do not have passion in my work does the following:

1) Leave the office on the dot. Wait. I think leave is not a good word to describe, zipped? flash?zoom? Aiyah whatever, you know what I mean.
2) Attend conference not mainly because he wants to know more of the area he is studying but mainly because of food and chance to travel.
3) Has a chance to interact with new supervisor to find out more abt the area he is supposed to be passionate abt, but don't want to grab the chance because he has a class to attend to.
4) When offered a new contract, complain that the salary increase is so small.

So can anyone tell me whether this person is passionate abt his work? Haha, such a person can ... :P

In my opinion, a truly passionate person is someone who is alway THIRSTY for more knowledge on the area he is interested in, does work in his area of interest until forget to eat his meals or even forget to sleep. Discovering new knowledge and wisdom in his area of interest brings him great satisfaction and happiness that no amt of money can buy. Money should be in the top few priorities of pursuing passion but definitely not the first. Such behavior, then I would consider a passionate person.

So what is passion again? :)

Cheers!

Thinking

The start of a new week. Really feel great, although a person try to find trouble with me but I refuse to be drawn into it. Thank goodness. My only wish is that the lady would continue reading my blog. Cos I am only left with this channel to communicate with her. Sigh! I really deserve it.

Was watching this program on Sunday. It is a program asking a local artist to be in a profession for a day. So for the program I was watching, the local artist needs to be a rag and bone man, in Singapore commonly known as 'karang guni' man. When I was watching the I did not realise there are so much knowledge required just to make the profession works. For example, how to calculate the buy-in costs, what is worthy to collect back, how to bring the heavy load down the stairs, how to bundle up the newspapers and so on. I was quite overwhelm by the amount of thinking required. I used to have a business idea of being a new age karang guni man, but now I am glad I did not because I trivialised this profession by too much then, it is definitely not as simple as I initially thought. After much thought I conclude that all profession do require a lot of thinking. Only by doing much thinking, you are able to reduce costs, make your work easier and efficient, gain business and many many more.

Another time, I was trying to get a cab during peak hours. It was so difficult, until I start doing some thinking how I can get one quick cos I was running late. Then I remember that one fren of mine said carpark could be a good place to flag a cab cos most cab drivers start their day there, at the carpark. So I went to the carpark to look around and within 5 mins I found a cab (compare to I was waiting for 30 mins before that).

Based on this examples, it really is good to try apply thinking to everything, so that you can make your life easier and better. All things require thinking to make things easier and efficient.
So thank goodness I like to think a lot cos it exercise my brain and gives me new ideas and breakthrough each time.

So I urge readers not to stop thinking. Keep on thinking how to make your life easier and better. Don't switch off after work. Try thinking how to make your after working hours better and so on! Have fun thinking!

Cheers!

Be careful!

It has been a roller coaster ride this week. Things are moving very fast, up and down, in and out like a roller coaster gone mad. Very difficult to stomach emotionally, so was a quite down but I am glad the week has ended.

I paid an extremely high price for it, as much as I am unwilling to foot it but the price is not determined by me, so I have to accept the fact. Just want to stress to people who are reading this. NEVER EVER let your emotions get the better of you. Zidane head-butting incident is like mine. If you let emotions rule your actions, even for a split second, the consequences can be very huge. So huge you may not be able to accept it. I really regretted my actions but what is done is done. So for readers out there, please please don't let your emotions get the better of you and always remember to seek the whole truth and not from one angle only. This is one major point I want to make in this blog.

I was quite down this Saturday morning until I come across this article in Straits Times talking abt some group of Singaporeans who although are earning lower middle level income (abt $2k) but are having huge problems making ends meet. Reading through the article. It makes me think that my problem right now, compared to them is like comparing sesame seed to a watermelon. I feel I should make people realise what happen so that such cases would be reduced.

This group of people are not able to obtain much govt subsidies compared to low level income grp but could not meet the rising costs of living like those of the well off. I notice that they are mostly saddled by two costs that are considered the main and highest costs to most Singaporeans, and they are housing and medical costs. The third most highest costs for this grp of families is tertiary education costs.

Now, in my opinion, these costs could have been avoided because actually most of these costs can actually be predicted when it will come up. Housing costs can be predicted and affordable with proper financial planning. Most people bought larger flats for capital appreciation, but I would urge readers not to think of that. The time when housing is a sure bet has long pass, the baby boomers have more or less settled in their ideal flats. When buying housing, please do not maxed out the sum of money you can afford because you have to take note of rising interest rates (assuming most people got in when the interest rate is low.)

Some part of medical costs can be offsetted by proper purchase of insurance, again financial planning prudence is required. Do not overlapped the coverage and try to cover all possible scenarios like handicapped, hostpitalisation, surgery and so on. Another way to offset more of the medical costs, START taking care of your health!!! Your health requires MAINTENANCE, not repair. Once your health is damaged, it is extremely difficult to get back to the pre health challenge condition. Start taking good care of your health, so that your body has a better resistance agst illnesses.

Tertiary costs, there is no way we can stop the rising tertiary education costs. But with proper savings plan offered by insurance companies and if you start as early. You can, using the magic of compound interest, offset most of the costs. Again financial prudence and planning is required.

If you have noticed, these three costs can be avoided much by having financial prudence. So the second major point of this blog is, I strongly urge readers to start learning how to plan your finances NOW. Health and wealth requires long term care and planning so start doing NOW.

I can understand that we need instant gratification to enjoy life but please make a bit of sacrifice for a better future.

Cheers!

Sincere Apologies.

I refer to my previous blog where I was writing about how my expectations has disappointed me. After a week of double checking and verifying the facts. I would like to use the same place that started the whole chain of events to end the chain.

I am offering my sincere apologies to the lady for the hurt I have caused. I admit that I have let emotions rule the better of me and I will keep this in mind so that such thing would not happen again to hurt anyone.

I should always try to remember to verify the facts and make judgement only after I have found out the actual happenings. I am deeply saddened by what happen. But most important is I should not let this happen again.

A lesson that I have paid a high price for.

Teaching - A fulfilling lifelong career

As many of you would know, I am a person who is willing to share my knowledge with anyone, except for enemies which I have only very few. :P Anyway, I like sharing knowledge and during my school and university times, I alway help my classmates and fellow coursemates with questions even to a point where they score better than me, but what the heck, I think I turn out to be a better person overall since I have derived the intangible benefits of teaching and coaching.

I like to 'teach' and 'coach' because of the following points. Firstly, by teaching you actually revise your work. You revise what you have learnt and the more you help people with their questions, the more times you revise, which translate to deeper impressions of these theories inside your brain. How many times have you come across in your work or study where the impression of certain theories or facts are not clear enough and you have to keep on referencing back to the books. I do come across such situations but this I would say has cut down to comfortable level.

Secondly, when we teach, sometimes we may need to go back to our basics or foundation of our skill or domain knowledge. These are some basics that we could have neglected or even forgotten because we have taken it for granted since we have the domain knowledge or skill has been used by us for so long. Revisiting these foundations will help us to grow our foundations bigger and stronger, and as chinese have a saying, "A very tall building, its foundation will always start from the ground" So to grow, you need a very very strong foundation.

Third, the challenge of making something that is difficult to comprehend into something that can be easily understood by others takes tremendous understanding and skill which I love taking on. And the joy of seeing someone who can comprehend the difficult theory give u intangible benefits like joy and satisfaction of overcoming the challenge.

So teaching others does not mean you do not grow at all. In fact, you are stronger than the person you taught even though he or she has the knowledge and skill you imparted because you would strengthen your foundations and understanding.

So I encourage people to share your knowledge and skill. It is a good experience and you would realise that individuals have individual way of understanding, and these can help you to know a certain person better as well.

Cheers!

Confirm Genuine! 99.999% pure!

One question that is always on most people's mind. "Who is ur Genuine Friends?" Is there a good gauge or some indicators to show that? In this competitive world, it is always good that we are able to differentiate the enemies from the good friends so that we can build genuine friendship and stay away from those that basically want your throat.

I learnt of one simple way to gauge it but it requires wisdom which takes time to build up. And I am still learning, nope I am not a wise man, I still made some mistakes now and then esp. recently, but let's not go into that.

To differentiate is very simple. Genuine good friends want the best for your life. They want you to improve and grow. They don't want your throat. They only want to see improvement in your life, simple as that. So good friends are those that point out your genuine mistakes, how do we know it is genuine? Firstly, you have to check and see if the mistakes are made largely by you, this requires wisdom.

Once you have to wisdom to see that the mistakes are made by you, the next thing is to have to courage to admit it. Most people fail in this part, which can be easily attributed to human nature, since human nature depicts that we blame other things for our mistakes and then forget abt it. THINK for a moment, those people that never admit mistakes are made by them, blaming other factors for it are usually very isolated, does not have a wide social circle.

Now you have to COURAGE to admit your mistakes, the next thing is to learn from them and never to repeat. Like that you would have met the objectives of your friends pointing out your mistakes. Only from learning from your mistakes, you are able to improve on your life which your friends want to see.

Enemies, well basically, if the law permits, they would want you dead, to put it explicitly, but we live in a world govt by law, so that is out. The next thing is they want you to fall behind them and to do that would be to distract you from your true mistakes. They 'smoke bomb' you by complimenting you so that you do not realise the mistakes you made. Or they 'smoke bomb' you by pointing out mistakes that are genuinely not your fault at all. This will distract you from improving yourself and even be pre-occupied finding a solution to 'your' mistakes which is not your responsibility in the first place.

Now, my opinion is that this is definitely a good gauge but definitely not the only gauge you should use. Think abt it. That is why friends who are reading this blog, if I happen to point out your mistakes too explicitly, it is because I treat you as a good friend of mine and wants you to improve. I can understand that you will be offended at first but please keep in mind that Genuine Friends want you to improve.

Cheers!

I want to see some results

For the last three weeks, I have been learning a new language, Bahasa Indonesia. This is because I got to know some good friends who are from Indonesia. (And I feel so glad that I did! Senang Sekali) . And since I have the environment, it would be great to be able to pick up Bahasa Indonesia so that I can interact and know more friends. And moreover nxt time I can go to our neighbouring countries to do business :), assuming that I am able to pick up the language well enough to express myself and be understood by locals.

Currently, I am still at the stage of learning the vocabulary and have formed very simple sentences. (Long sentences still not successful, always got 'salah'[Means wrong in Bahasa Indo] ) But making good progress though, so much so that I felt inadequate just learning from my Indonesian friends, I went to buy two books on Bahasa Indonesia.

Just want to share a bit of thought in my learning experience of a new language. It seems like learning a language is a fast and surer way to grow in life. Why do I say that? Because when you are able to speak in the language you just learn and the locals actually understand it. It is like almost instant gratification. You can feel that you have achieved something, and it shows out fast.

Compare this to knowing the fact that there are 2 mammals that lay eggs (I know one of them is platypus, cannot remember the other one), you can feel a moment of joy that you learn the fact, but the gratification does not come, unless this question was asked in "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" gameshow. And you are able to answer without asking the audience or outside help or use the 50-50. :P

So you see, in life, according to Maslow and given Singapore standard of living, most of us would have reached a stage where we want to fulfill our need to grow. And this need to grow must be substantiated by interest & passion. And interest & passion must be fueled by gratification.
(and other things as well) So I would recommend that people that feels the need to grow, maybe to pick up a new language. Moreover picking a new language will open up a whole new world of knowledge to you.

For instance, if you learn Mandarin, you are able to read the Chinese novels, appreciate the Chinese thinking & history and learn more abt Chinese culture and how it was evolved to its present stage. And being able to communicate with your Chinese friends in their own language will further bridge the gaps.

Have fun growing! Cheers!