Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

Balance is about equilibrium with equal distribution of weight distributor to achieve balance.

Everything must be balanced, and there must not be biasness on any side but in reality, it isn’t possible to strike a balance unless we control our own source of income, wealth and time by working for ourselves and not for our boss.

At work, government across and all over the globe always talk about having a balance working life, which is nonsense, if they want to get paid via tax thus they have money, they have to think of ways to allow business to have more employees thus more tax will be received from everybody making them richer but not wealthier since government are not experts at wealth and financial management.

The true experts of wealth and financial management are the billionaires and multi-millionaires. Millionaires are not included in my theory because millionaires can be done alone with hard work while multi-millionaires cannot.

News reports of financial crisis, great depression, stock crisis, commodity shortage thus causing sky rocketed cost of food and basic ingredients such as sugar, salt, and oil at times are the solid proof that government leaders are just ordinary people like you and me in the streets. They know nothing about real wealth management. They can make mistakes and push the blame to somebody else by military or keep it within the walls of each respective country as top secrets etc, and the best part, they don’t get fired because they need to retain ‘talents’ who are just sadly ill-trained professionals who knows only theory but not practical experience whatsoever.

Such people in the government do not and will not know how to balance the equilibrium and will continue to make mistakes than push it to others, got let somebody be the scapegoat taking the blame while opening a back-door to the person who help them take the rap.

The Lehman Brothers is a typical example of ill trained professionals who cause the world economy to share the rap and consequences of their actions, sparking a crisis with more problems in western countries than Asian countries.

With US government using tax-payers money to bail out the companies that didn’t do a proper job to save employments, when this happens, it is debt sharing, and passing the debt to the majority of the people. Take the total sum of money USA used and divide among the US population, and you know on average how much a US citizen helps the government to pay off the debts, which is why the US presidential election is all about, getting the consent of every citizen for approval by votes.

In Asian countries, it is run with a slightly different practice, because of the lack of politicians, and leaders, whatever mistakes they made, it will be compromised because there are no successors to take over thus they can continue making mistakes and nobody can do anything because they lack the higher appointment to veto the politician out immediately. Business and politics will never be able to work together due to a conflict of interest and why Warren Buffett initially decline President Obama request to lead the US in terms of investment options.

At work, health and family, it is all about striking a balance but it is not possible to do it because not possible to do so as business is all about profits and family work balance must be compromised in order to meet quota set by the company and the management else face the risk of being fired.

The only possible way to attain work life and family plus health balance is to work for ourselves, and find alternative income source to have flexible work time, have a business system to have it running on automatic basis so to allow equal balance.

The alternative is via internet marketing, and multi-level marketing (MLM) which requires no boss, no fixed timing, efforts and pay are justified by the amount of commitment they put in which is why news articles in Singapore have mention successes in blogging stay home young mothers who are IT savvy. MLM however has created tremendous success that can’t be overlooked but it is treated with negativity thus people are not receptive to it.

Education is all about helping ourselves to earn more money, but why and how did people think that it’s only right to help boss earn money and not help themselves? Are you slapping yourself in the face? Wake up to the reality and face it. If you at any one time want to deny facts, you will be a loser and loser will only suffer in misery and nothing else.

Do you want to seek balance in live which will encourage good health or do you want to continue to work your guts out risking your health helping your boss get rich, and not helping yourself?

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Being part of a big company is a good experience as well as to the unpleasant experiences which we will face in future. Working in these companies speeds up each of our individual learning curves and experience while searching for the suitable employment to pledge loyalty.

While I’ve work for small to big companies, the difference of communication (feedback) can be felt at an instant. How responsive the response to the feedback and suggestions goes to show how important does the management feels about employees benefits and happiness factor in work to boost productivity and declining workplace medication leaves and medical claims thus resulting in higher sales profit margin.

Only when a company sets a good example than only will it be possible to improve and grow as a large company. Perhaps I should replace it with being part of a big family, when you feel at home than naturally will you want to take up responsibility roles on your own instead of others delicate the task to you. Responsibility doesn’t means that you have to be in senior position to be responsible but it applies to all positions regardless of rank. It’s personal responsibility in all aspects and helping the company to cut down operating costs and taking it as their own.

Corporate culture can be felt the moment you start your first day of work in any big companies, try consulting a superior and see how long it takes for response to be taken notice and if any changes has being implemented. While I was once part of the large companies including a MNC company at raffles place. All that I can comment is the slow response to our feedback, it’s the time that kills the trust of employees into believing that since it’s taking such a long period of time, than their feedbacks are not valuable to the management for rooms of improvement thus as time passes, the feedback department will receive lesser and lesser feedbacks with time.

Having a bad corporate culture might not have any significant effect on the top management because they often discuss and talk about profits and hang around together, but what makes a company and earns them their profits comes from the work of the masses (employees) thus satisfying employees should comes as a number one priority to curb high employee turnover.

For people in the HR dept should know this, especially in the F&B sector, when employees are unhappy with the work environment, the solution can be easy, just fire the boss and find another one. This may seems insignificant on the surface but if left on its own, you will soon find your middle to high management employees changing lanes and work for fellow competitors in no time.

The bigger the company is, the bigger the problem primary due to a lack of employee based welfare department to look into such feedbacks and suggestions. To make things more complicated, there’s only top-down approach and no bottom-up approach because of the multiple management systems within the companies. Top down approach is whereby instructions are only passed down with no rooms of negotiation from the masses (employees) with their own views to the extreme top management due to again the direct communication – their direct various head department in-charge will help resolve the issues. But often this is a flawed communication system that kills in the long term because all problems are kept within the department and even spreads to other departments over lunch and dinner breaks or even during panty tea-break sessions etc.

Following the recent case example of mass employees jumping over to another fellow company as mention in the news articles, such is not a problem that can be resolved easily. Company loyalty, no company has ever given or offered something near to what I’ve expected thus forcing me to turn to entrepreneurship. Being taught in a Problem-Based Learning thanks to RP, while it may seem insignificant to students but this first year of problem solving skills is important to gear all people to solve problems, but from what I observe, most of the students just take it with a little pinch of salt only and not applying what they have learnt.

Feedback and suggestions are important but are they really being valued in the middle management where all feedbacks and complaints are being silenced and prevented from reaching the top for fear the complaints will cause them to lose the jobs. Thus to survive the game, you have to play the game well. It’s a cruel and harsh reality not known to people with different exposure of working environment.

Having said my point, it’s up to individuals to decide if you want to play the game and putting yourself at risk of being targeted by all those under-performing employees who will form an alliance to de-throne you and from their own lazy department and putting on an act when the higher management comes for a visit.

Feel free to voice your opinions. =)

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Fellowship – a subject that many leaders and businesses would like to have in every businesses to have a loyal base of employees to ensure survival and ride out any oncoming crisis.

The choice to follow a wise leader isn’t an easy task and not easily identified as well from the beginning especially if there’s little knowledge about the person if he/she purposely hide his/her true abilities to as a safety precaution from copycats and people who will steal their ideas for profit etc.

Fellowship is when a leader fit to be the king or the president of nation commands respect from the followers even if it means that they have to die to protect the leader. To die without regrets and the serve the leader whom you think is right is no easy task considering today’s cruel profits and money-driven society which is what the world is about – first class national where power, money and politics controls all.

To seek a safe shelter and a sanctuary for his/her family members, being made to choose between a stable lifestyle versus a hardship future mixed with lots of uncertainties, thus resulting in entrepreneurs commanding respect from those who choose to be the followers.

Fellowship comes with both pros and cons. With constant fear for ideas and secrets leaking out to competitors etc..While each individual choose a wise leader of their own respective needs and wants, they all are right because it’s only right to feed the family.

But if the fellowship comes in the form of money driven only and not true growing up in terms of education and self-improvement than what meaning has it to do with fellowship of a leader who’s only after money profits at the expense of many others who suffered in the process. I came from such a scenario so I know how it is like to suffer under the hands of a leader who’s blinded by money and profits.

To find a wise leader, lots of consideration factor has to be in place before a wise practical with a certain amount of acceptable risk can be taken to follow a person.

You may wonder what has this subject got to do with you yourself who’s reading this right now. If you’re clueless, think of the fellowship and brainstorm, what if the criteria for considering is used for job employment considerations, business venture risk commitments and the return on investment and projected profits and reputation that comes all in a package.

Just Over Broke (JOB) or a Business Opportunity to never worry and control your own life, destiny and choice of living etc. What’s good, what’s bad, it’s up to each individual to decide. Are you going to be a chess-pieces or are you the chess-player? What’s your choice?

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This is a topic which many if not most of the Singaporeans of birth are concern about. Lets look it this topic from various angles.

Singaporeans main concern is that their jobs will be taken and replaced by foreigners due to competition but from my point of view, I’ll agree with the intentions of government whereby their presence here will increase the competition, but however too much foreigners will impose great pressure on Singaporeans which is why hospitals are getting patients over the years with more suicidal cases in MRT Railway tracks etc.

Let us look at it from the foreigner’s point of view since this is about foreigners. From my own personal interaction with them in my school days, the only remark I would say about them are respect. But the respect that I give to my fellow counterparts – foreign students taking up part time jobs in Singapore to help relief the financial burden of their own family back in China and Bangladesh etc. They are hard-working and some students have depended on their family borrowing money to send their children over to Singapore for an education.

Only those foreign students with rich background will stay on in Singapore after the basic secondary education to build up their foundation of English if not in students are sent over to polytechnics to get more exposure of 1^st world country education system.

I’m sure the primary reason for Singaporean adults who are against the idea of directly approving foreigners into Singapore for direct employment is because they will bring in their service culture from various native countries into Singapore thus causing a direct drop in Singapore service standards.

From the setting up of GEMS (Going the Extra Miles) to increase the service standards in Singapore and the Singapore Service Star Award, all these are created to solve the problem. But Singapore isn’t solving the problems from the roots but rather just trying to fill up only one hole at a time. Just look at the chances which to the rules and regulations to foreign workers, upon mass influx of foreign workers into the lower-end employment jobs, only than did Singaporeans who are working adults start making a fuss about foreign employees, but Singapore didn’t really make any chances to solve this problem from the root but instead try to introduce and impose other measures to help lessen the problem.

Foreigners just came to Singapore to work for a period of 3-5years and saving sufficient money before going back to China for those smart people. For those greedy foreigners, they choose to stay in Singapore to get a better living, but they made the wrong decision without even asking the problems faced by Singaporeans.

Let us look at some of the observations which I personally have experiences and thus able to identify the root of the problem which explains the information provided in this blog post.

Foreign bus drivers – they are speaking Chinese in Singapore whereby it’s a multi-culture nationality. Does this make any sense? No, because only Chinese Singaporeans will understand it. It only increase the unhappiness among Singaporeans.

Coffee shops and food centers are already hiring lots of foreign employees who speak only Chinese and nothing else. Although it’s a proven fact that they help fill up the unwanted employments which Singaporeans by birth are unwilling to take up, but there are other alternatives to which we can better solve this issues isn’t it? Just look at how the hotels hire and use healthy senior folks with the chores etc.

The service sucks, the tables are not really clean – as in non-sticky. They just literally throw the product onto the serving section in front of my eyes.

I was wondering what type of service is this; it is like throwing food to a pig to eat that kind of feeling. A purely foreigners based food store with superb unprofessional service standards selling fishball noodles.

Is the management confused with the promotion of speak Chinese Campaign with the influx of foreign employees? Their presence here does not help the issue but rather gives us more reasons to hate Chinese in fact thanks to the unpleasant experiences.

Foreigners working Singapore should undergo some kind of training and get them to adapt to the Singapore culture first before working in Singapore to reduce the issues and problems which most of us are unhappy with.

Much work need to be done and refine in order to make Singapore a better living place where everyone can co-exist with one another.

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Employment in Singapore is typically the common topic among the daily conversation which recession, and financial crisis comes into the picture. It’s also much talked about when it comes to students who are near graduation after completing their University, Polytechnic, Institute of Technical Education (ITE) studies or even O-Level qualification employees.

With various different entry bars of qualification, they are separated into different job scopes and industries. The bars are always rising due to competition from overseas etc thus Singaporeans can only head towards the academic qualification of at least degree to meet a basic living these days.

Ten-twenty years from now, you’ll see the minimal bar default status set to Double Degree already. Now it’s mostly in Diploma graduates if not University graduates in the crowd walking along Orchard road. Just randomly pick anyone and ask for their qualification and you’ll see what I mean. With around 50% polytechnic graduates, 30% university graduates and the remaining belongs to lower academic qualifications. (Percentage are based solely on estimated figures, no survey has being done with regards to this)

As more and more students are choosing to opt for higher education, the most common problem after their graduation will be that they have a heavy burden of education school loans, with high interest to be repaid back to banks. Lately they do offer no interest education loans during their studies period as a relief to encourage more students to take up the offer.

When more people take up the offer, it means more business for banks to earn interest which converts to more revenue thus government gets more tax from banks thus they too encourage higher education. It makes perfect business sense doesn’t it?

Below are few scenarios which Singaporeans are facing:

1) Are Singaporeans ready to start their own family after graduation immediately upon employment or

2) Do they need to slog and work for few years to repay their debts first before being debt-free or

3) Are the top management living on our debts to increase their own salary

Refer to the Youtube video on title: One Nation Under Lee (Complete Video)

Since low-middle income employees don’t pay much tax thus we are ultimately being squeezed without knowing why. Here’s a calculated fact, while Singapore and major big corporations encourage the use of installment plans to make more purchases to enjoy the benefits of starting a new home early. Do we have the true ownership of such installment paid merchandises? No, we don’t, the banks own them until we have fully paid back the whole amount with interest. That’s the reason why the poor are getting poorer whereas the rich are getting richer.

Education is a business too, you need to learn basic account and set the balance sheet right before considering taking up the upgrade option to be smarter academically. But question here is, even if you are academically smarter, does that means you’re financially smarter, the answer is a loud and clear N O “NO!” Graduates have heavy burden of study loans thus you will see the rise of social escorts among university students upon graduation taking up this option due to it being the fastest way to off-set their debts but it comes with a heavy price to keep it discreet and unknown to their family and friends for fear of being viewed as a prostitute just that they are of a higher-class only. More will be shed in coming posts.

Employment to employees just means that they are given the temporary assurance that they are being sheltered by the company from retrenchments. It gives them the illusion that as long as they contribute to the company, they’ll be saved from retrenchments but this is no longer true. With many competitions from foreign talents, they need to increase their productivity to justify their worth to secure their employment. They are just waiting for payments month by month. Job stands for Just Over Broke which is why people declare bankrupt when they are unable to pay their monthly installment bills or they will negotiate with the banks to lengthen the repayment period which is a win-win situation which comes at an hefty cost spread over the 20yrs of installments in a HDB home purchase due to low cash-flow.

In current times with the financial crisis, where money is even more important incase of more retrenchments, do you know what do you need to know to cut cost of living to ride out the crisis.

If you find my blog interesting, kindly give me some feedback so I can better improve on the topics which I’ll be covering in my blog.

Thank you.

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There are a lot of different employments in Singapore for people from all walks of life to choose from.
Be it whether they want a change of working lifestyle or environment, there’s lot of choices to choose from, moreover Singapore is a very save country to live in without much worries.

Employments are separate into different sectors: Public and Private Sector.

Within the public sector, we have the White and Blue Collar.

White collar jobs are associated with sales, managerial occupations and clerical related. Those working in the office environment or at the front end of the counter are considered as white collar jobs. Examples of such are accounting, advertising and even customer service.
Blue collar jobs are associated with machinery, heavy labor based jobs in Singapore. Examples of such employments are in the industrial workers in the manufacturing and repair services. These also includes auto-mobile and electrical plus food industries.

Such blue collar job requires little to no education previously, but this is no longer true as Singapore progress over time from a 3rd world country to a developing nation from World War II to present day.

In today’s context whereby without education certifications, people with little to no education certifications can no longer survive in the public and private sector except for a few minor industries which are still being covered up by the media or at least it’s still not recognized as a professional occupation as of yet compared to our overseas counterparts whereby they can hold their heads high saying their own employment regardless of the industry they are in. Thanks to the receptivity of them and the government to open up their mind to anything.

Thanks to the constant competition, Singapore has undergone a lot of reshuffling and progress to be the sparking little red dot in the global map.

Even the white and blue collar jobs are further sub-categories into different segments, with that comes the common used term nowadays. PMETs means Professionals, Managers, Executives, Technicians which made up both White and Blue collar jobs.

Below are the lists of different sectors in both Public & Private Sectors
1. Administrative
2. Accounting/Auditing
3. Advertising
4. Civil Service/Military
5. Consulting
6. Customer Care
7. Creative Production/Design
8. Engineer
9. Education
10. Finance/Investment
11. Management
12. Health care
13. Hospitality/Tourism/F&B
14. IT Development/Management/Sales
15. Import/Export
16. Arts/Musical/Theater
17. Real Estate
18. Procurement/Purchasing
19. Trading/Wholesale
20. Technical Jobs like Manufacturing/Repair and Servicing
21. Voluntary/Non-Profit

Now, let us look at what other prospects can you work in besides all those which I’ve mention in the above examples.
Private/Not Yet Professionally Recognized Occupation Yet in Singapore
1. Prostitution
2. Social Escorts
3. Professional Modeling
4. Pornography
5. Multi-Level Marketing
6. Sports Related (Employments as Athletics of Singaporeans of birth thanks to a inflexible thinking of parents these days and of course some important management people at the top of the public sector)

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