Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

In every business, it is of the highest importance and priority of the business not to be taken hostage at any point of time. Such is a understood practice that major big enterprises all have their own in-house lawyers, accountants, web designers, marketers to help with growing the business rather than outsourcing it to a third party.

Having an in house talents in charged to handle the business operations is good, but it will cost businesses much more in terms of unnecessary expenses not required. Engaging a third party on a long term contract, freelance basis helps reduce costs, however, businesses never would want to give advertisers, marketers full control of their resources if not the worst case scenario will happen, such as employees running away with clients money, stealing information and selling to competitors for a profit and many others.

In a recent article, it was mentioned that a SEO Firm actually turn its back against a soon-to-be former client, by de-indexing their client’s website presence on Google since the firm is about to lose the business even before the contract expires. Such is a taboo in business practice, very unprofessional.

If you want to avoid such nightmares from happening, there are some simple pointers that you with any other businesses should take note of.

1. Have a contract to protect yourself, your business from any potential liability lost.

2. Make sure you know at least what you are outsourcing, and you can reverse it easily if the outsourcing service providers fail you. Learn from the experts, if you don’t want to be bothered with such issues, hire a consultant to review the work being outsourced, so you know your work are in safe hands.

3. Always check and ensure that you are dealing with professionals, people, business with integrity and ethics, with a clean record.

4. Have your outsourcing service providers reporting back to you and your business-in-charge on what have they done, and what results have they got, regardless of it being good or bad, so that you are kept in the loop, to know what’s working and not, so you can easily replace or undo any chances that you or your business deem neither effective nor helpful to growing the business.

5. Have an auditor to check if they service providers that you are outsourcing to are really doing their jobs, if they are providing sub-standard work. Purposely tell them their work will be audited, this way, they know they cannot screw around with the business. (This way actually is well practiced by multi-national corporations, with accountants having yearly internal and external auditors just so to keep the financial accounts correct, and ensure there is no breach of duties.)

6. Accept and acknowledge the fact that your priority is to grow the business, so outsourcing is a must if it more costly for your business to hire your own in house consultants, employees to do work that actually do not need much work.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is a skill that majority of the marketers would find it extremely hard to understand due to the difficult algorithm settings of Google formula where nobody knows exactly the full formulas.

It is a skill that can effective, and be efficient for businesses to grow their web presence without allocating a heavy budget on advertising since seo is a skill, it is a strategy, that is considered trade secret by best business practices, the lesser the people who knows about it, the better it is for the professionals.

It helped me to understand the real basics and importance of running a business. Following the continuous change and improvements of their formula, it is actually better for those individual who learned from the professionals. All that I can say about seo is that, if you apply ethical, honest traditional business skills to online, in terms of website keyword optimization, linking, content publishing,  you should be able to get ranked and being found on Google.

The changes of Google was good, as a matter of fact, it helps weed out poor optimized website results and providing more relevant results pertaining to giving the users of search engines what they want, and not what marketers like grey or black hat seo marketers are trying to do in outsmarting the Google to cash in on any lapse of their formula.

Over the past few years, having played and applied only a single basic seo strategy like only using internal link building to tests what i have learn and made confirmation and prove that it works. It has come to my conclusion that whatever I learn from really works, at least for the past few years, and my mentor has being giving frequent updates that benefits us his students of course.

Learning this skill can indeed make a lot of difference and save lots of advertising expenses if done properly spreading awareness to both local and global markets. Having Pay-Per-Click skill actually doubles the effect of higher conversion, low cost marketing while growing for business clients who engage in our services, it is way much cheaper to pay for qualified leads who are searching for the specified keyword of products and services as compared to traditional advertising of paying for maximal viewership ignoring if they are even interested in the products and services, which are considered waste of time, money and resources into creating of advertisement.

There are so many ppc ads that I have observed in that are poorly optimized, ads showing up for words that they did not optimize for, resulting in higher impressions, lower click through rates due to unrelated keyword optimization by under trained ppc consultants from many companies both locally and globally.

I will take more time and put in more effort to improve and apply seo strategies from now onwards so as to maintain my spot on page one for my own keyword that will help me close more deals in future.

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Following the recent Google Panda updates, my own blog that was found on page one for my name itself has being changing positions for the past few weeks.

From the release and execution of the updates of Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in the past, i only need to maintain a few blog post on a per month basis to remain competitive and have my blog search engine results page to be found on page one for google.com.

After the chance, which I need a testing, finding out that it dropped to page two, second spot for couple of days without new content..

Just last week, I managed to climb back up to page one, not the last position of tenth, but on the eighth spot, now after a few days, i’m back on page two for serps.

The chance following google panda update for the google spider crawling rate has being proven that they increase their crawling rate by over fifty percent.

Exact details on how fast they crawl and update, it will be a secret that I myself know. At least now I know how fast and soon i need to give new content to maintain my page one results.

More chances will be tested, as i play around testing the blog entries to test how the updates affects my blog so I have a better idea of how they search engine rates new content.

For more information on specific panda update refer to Tips To Break From Google

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Failure is the state of inability in meeting or achieving a desired or intended objective for completing a task, role or duty.

While majority if not all man on earth seek success, only a handful out of the six billion plus population on earth are able to achieve their targets set by themselves or by the organization they are working for.

While most people seek only success, and avoid failure, the people who did it, all knows one thing in common, they first have to go through numerous attempts and disappointments, failures before they can succeed.

Yet most people still avoid failure and yet expecting to achieve success in their life time. That may be possible, but only if people blindly follow the formula, step by step without modifying any of the instructions in the process until they succeed.

There are many good business of success practiced by multi-national corporations (MNCs) that share information and have complete transparency that increase their success.

Excellent examples will be of the aviation, health, food sectors, police cooperation on both local and global information exchange. One’s failure helps many other businesses locally and globally so as not to repeat the same mistakes again. Yet many individuals choose not to learn from other people’s experience and follow their own steps in finding their success.

Call it stupid, or foolish, but I believe it is part of living. It is the learning of life itself, how nature will let us learn what is humility and what we can do and cannot do that will only push us forward by force even if we don’t like it. It’s just reality.

Just the picture itself, while we grow older, wiser, climbing the social status ladder is what everybody has being taught, trained, and naturally are already doing. But when they miss a step thanks to a broken step along the ladder, they just retreat back to the previous safer option of waiting at the safest closest step of the highest point one step below the broker step.

While some slightly adventurous individuals will attempt to skip the broken step, and move forward to the next higher step to continue the climb, and a few others may depend on purely their arm strength to continue climbing upwards to get a higher point for clarity and better view at the top with slightly more freedom on the top.

A failure and the different types of reaction to reacting to what the situation calls for determines who is the winner at the end of the task if there is ever a time limit.

But in real life, there’s no limit, we are only limited by the life time which we live, and it is an unknown factor. Over the past few years, I have being testing trying different methods of entrepreneurship to find the success that i know is there, yet it is so near yet so far. Four times of lost opportunity and failure is sufficient to tell me to learn and stick to the very basics.

As much as how talented I know I am in direct selling, customer service and internet marketing in providing and sporting problems from the root of the cause almost immediately used by individuals and in businesses in every day application, it is useless without person or a company who will give a chance for the talents to use their skills.

Being talented with eye for details at first look is not doubt good, but that has made me to become stubborn and in flexible which i have come to terms with by now.  That is the humility that life has taught me, that failure is a very helpful teacher itself although the results failure throws in your face is not pleasant, but it will help us grow better.

The methods I have used to date all give me a identical result which is no result nor profit if i continue doing it the way it is. Times have come and requires me to change the way i do things if I want to succeed.

Last time, i work myself all these years, depending on my limited savings, hoping to create products for profit, which proved to be fruitless. Now it’s time for a change..another trial and error..as i rejoin the ranks of employee..at least working, earning money for the next few years perhaps while I put reduce the entrepreneur priority and save more money so in future, I have sufficient money at my disposal when a opportunity comes my way.

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Exam is to use a set of questions or exercise to evaluate a person’s skills and knowledge on a certain topic.

It is something that we are being judged on a regular basis, either on an annual basis if not once every few years depending on the occupation’s advancement prospects.

Examinations is not to be forgotten once we completed our academic qualifications, in fact we should accept and live with the fact that we are constantly being graded based on our skills and knowledge in whatever we do if we want to have a better prospects for advancement.

This simple rule applies to most if not all of employment sectors both public and private sectors. Only those who have shown their worth are given the position that they are looking for at the next higher position.

This also is applicable in terms of entrepreneurship, but in this case, the examiner is not the boss, since an entrepreneur does not have a boss to begin with, but rather it is the fellow already successful entrepreneurs and potential future partners who are the examiners.

If they accept a new business joint venture, partnership, or engaging you as a provider to help their business grow, it is thus considered as a pass to making it into the entry level only in the business circle.

In this unique exam, the exam candidates are not tested on general knowledge, but rather their precise in-depth knowledge of their own products and services and the values that they as a new business start-up will be able to provide to the other business owners, investors in helping them grow their sales in any way possible as long as its legal and ethical.

Not many people are actually aware of this fact, just look around your peers (if you are currently employed) and quietly observe who are those people who are quietly moving up the ranks and how did they do it?

You should be surprised if you do not see continuous self-upgrading employees who are being promoted..and on the flip side, speak to your colleagues and casually talk about promotion and how to get promoted, it should not come as a surprise if you hear somebody say, those that are promoted are not based on their merits but based on how much they suck up (boot-lick) their immediate superior and trying every way to get into the good books of theirs instead of working hard in the right way.

Some times in life, once we all stop schooling, our brains will stop improving, thus that is when people start getting stupider, even throwing away common sense and embracing those under table methods to get promoted without any intentions to upgrade themselves via finding shortcuts.

Are you getting older and wiser or are you getting older and stupider?

There is no shortcut to success, be it in business, relationship, employment, everything requires practice, practice and lots of practice. Shortcuts means results are being compromised and so will your income in the long haul if you are experiencing slower increments as compared to your fellow employees who proved their worth in their duties of work.

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Test is the process of measure and check for the quality, performance, reliability, effectiveness of a something before putting it into mass production or practice for others to follow and adopt good practices regardless of being in business, education, employment or family and even law concerning security.

It is actually a small little action of pushing a person, product or business model/practice into real life application, should it yield positive results, than will it be adopted by either leaders, governments, political leaders, business owners for beneficial results in providing win-win situations.

Actually every day, every second we are being tested not only by the universe, the people around us but also by ourselves. Depending on the prospects that you want, you are considered put to test with projects, ability to cope with additional workload, stress test, ability to with alone and in team to determine if you are suitable for the next possible position should anything happen in your life, employment or business.

Only by putting to test, than will results be reflected, with constant, continuous, consistently growing results, performance, will than only one be qualified to take on the next higher position even if he/she is working on their own.

Without having to pass the test a the basic level, it is not possible to advance to the next level. Just as important is the skills set that an individual has, and how much is he/she willing to learn and improve without ever thinking of stopping.

Such is the requirements of a winner, a true blue champion who will rise to the top, even after some injury that may force a temporary defeat, yet to give it a clearer picture and understanding of what the new winner’s strengths and weakness are before you compete and work on their weakness, pressuring the inexperienced winner to give way thus clinching the top position and honor.

People who think that once they completed education, they are bidding farewell to test, examinations should think twice about it. For life will always be like in a race, a quest for the survival of the fittest, most rewards going to the winner of whatever niche he/she may be in.

It is only after reading Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill that I realized this many secrets that schools, business owners, investors will never talk off nor even admit, but those are the facts, proven time and time again with history, news coverage.

To succeed, continuous testing, correcting for best results, performance is required to ensure success in no matter what sector or industry you may be in currently or in the future. As long as you strive to clinch the top score among the same group of people taking the same test, you stand a good chance of being the first.

As a matter of fact, many working adults didn’t even realize that they are constantly being tested on daily basis, their work performance, expectations, ability to deliver, surpass and perhaps even work beyond what is expected of them will give them a shot for a higher position.

Here’s the good news, not many people do know this, even if they do, they refuse to admit it, so if you admit this fact, acknowledge and give in your best on a daily basis, the time will come when you take what you deserve at the top.

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Regret is the last thing that anybody would like to feel in whatever situation at any time and place in their lives.

It is the an emotional feeling that makes us realized that we may have committed a mistake and had misjudged someone or a group in the process.

Without regrets, nobody can move forward..for it is this very feeling that only forces an individual, group, organization or even a nation to push forward and move on.

It is this emotional feeling that makes each of us reflect and repent on our past decision, actions and choices if they are still applicable for use in future when it has already failed to do so in currently. With mistakes, comes reflection, with which comes revision of all procedures, direction in attempt to correct their past mistakes, find out where they may have gone wrong and work out a solution to rectify it.

With the recent Singapore Elections, People’s Action Party (PAP) may have won the most seats as expected, but what is unexpected was the loss of senior ministers over their first ever GRC loss in the cabinet seats.

Following up, the lesson learn was great, action taken was swift too,  with both minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew and senior minister Goh Chok Tong taking the lead to leave the cabinet paving the way for prime minister to control the party with new directions, with the help of new blood following a new revision of cabinet ministers and their new positions for the next two years before revising new appointments.

This two years will determine if the newly appointment ministers are up to their task or not. The next election in five years to come will determine and reveal the results if their efforts have being paid off or not and if they are still refusing to listen to the giving the people what they want – a chance and reform and not a one way approach without taking care of the interest of the people due to failed representatives who didn’t answer to the citizens’ needs and explain why things happen and how they can work towards the same goal, but maybe with different solutions producing the same result.

Like any other organization, in business, or in national country’s interest. It is up to the leaders in charge to set the direction right, with precise and clear rules, favorable to the people who are working and supporting them regardless of employees or consumers. As long as they know what and how to answer to the calls of the very important people who help the business grow, than only will it take place. Without listening and correcting direction, strategies from time to time, a leader will be considered more or less out of touch with the very people who has once help the leaders to where they are today.

Looking at the Aljunied GRC loss represents a clear distinctive answer. Workers Party (WP) stood the ground and had listened to the people, as compared to PAP’s group of candidates who may not have being listening, thus the residents of that group consistency decided to give the WP  a chance to prove themselves, since they already realized that the former PAP team didn’t meet up to their expectations.

It remains to be seen if both sides are just putting on an act (with temporary hardworking efforts of meeting the people until the election fever is over and cease their activities) or if they are genuine in winning the hearts of the people by providing consistent efficient support to their supporters.

Moving on, this is actually also happening in every single business organization regardless of the scale big or small enterprises. Just by looking at the Straits Time Newspaper Classifieds section every Saturday if not on a daily basis, and you should be able to identify certain businesses with frequent if not regular consistent employment ads seeking for new employees.

Such frequent job advertisements in the newspapers represents a clear problem, which is that the business fails to deliver and give what they employees wants, thus they are always short of manpower who are willing to work hard and grow with the company.

Also within the different variation of job ads, if you read between the lines, you will soon realize that if the company or the department in-charge (superior) will make your work experience either a pleasant or negative experience. Signs of overworking, unreasonable shift schedules that leaves employees with little if not zero control or say over their working hours means that the company is actually squeezing every little juice out of the poor employee yet paying only a little amount of salary while requesting for multiple skills and experiences. That’s how you can easily spot those rouge or poorly managed department heads.

Back than again, until the leaders of the business in Asia don’t really reflect on their ground employees on the front line, thus the manpower turnover rates are exceptionally high especially in the sales industry such as insurance, financial, property sectors. The worse case situations comes from the food and beverage industry as well as those factory and warehouse employees, with little to no rooms for complaints. Lowly paid, overwork, annual leaves starts from seven days instead of the usual fourteen days of standard public holidays. Removing their entitlement and placing it as a privilege, just because the poor employees have little or no knowledge nor do they have any bargaining chips for better welfare.

So in order not to have any regrets, if you are at the top of the chain, listen to the ground for their feedback. If you are from the bottom, learn to read between the lines, and find an employment that gives you both money and reasonable working schedules and entitlements.

But if you are caught in the middle, learn to work within the rules, so you will not lose out, but gain the support of the ground people at the bottom so you can gradually win the support of the top if you show them (top management) you are popular with the bottom people and they are wiling to work hard along side with you, thus you will get your pay increment with time if you ever ask for it with reasons backed up of course.

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Zone in dictionary context may be nothing more than just territory or area in different nations, but in it has a deeper meaning in terms of entrepreneurship.

You might have come across if not heard of the phrase “Get in the zone” before..but have you ever thought what it truly means?

In world of business, where it is constantly at war for the following: niche market, brand,  retain and grow clients, profits by bringing more value and convenience to the end users who are ultimately the real boss of any business.

This question has always being bothering me for years..it was only recently that the puzzle has being solved..thanks to National Achievers Congress 2011 Singapore organized by Success Resources. With a ticket, attended the full three days..it is than I realized that I finally understand what it means.

Like majority if not all of the speakers having a similarity despite being different individuals, they all know where, what and how to play in their own zone.

If you’re still confused, it actually refers to playing by your core competency at where your strength truly lies in. Having the skill is not enough, to be able to continuously work without working is the definition of getting in the zone.

Find out, and ask yourself where your strengths and interest truly lies, if you can ever convert your passion into your life and provide value to the others.

Once you truly mastered and grasp the idea of what you can do for the whole of your life until you die without regrets, complains regardless of the hard work, little returns no matter how small it may be..you by than will have found your own zoning.

The elusive unique area that lies your passion, find ways to fuel your passion, keep it running, get comfortable (against all odds of rejections, disapproval) doing what you love, even if you may experience tremendous set backs on your journey towards your goal, just push on.

The reason why most entrepreneurs fail during their starting up phrase is due to failure to get within their own zones respectively. Once they experience financial issues, they take many steps back, but only an true entrepreneur push on, seeking other means to solve that problem with every single new attempt to fix whatever that’s not working in their favor and converting every No into a Yes as the ultimate goal.

Have you found your own zone yet? If you have not, start looking.

If you don’t know how to start, try out anything and everything that you can get yourself and your hands on..try everything, and ask if you like whatever you are doing currently, and if you can continue to do that very thing which you will not get sick off til the last day of your life.

If you found it, great, if you don’t start exploring. By the way, that’s the purpose of your life – the calling of your inner soul..that gets the super wealthy, influential individuals moving, staying clean from drugs, sex and bad publicity.

Find something that will allay your inner peace, give you a sense of happiness, most often that comes from sharing or helping others to find that value which you believe to be beneficial to many others too.

“Success is not a destination, but a journey..”

The more you give, the more you shall receive..

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Acknowledgment is a recognition for gratitude of assistance in helping to achieve something.

It only happens after an individual has completed a task, project or assignment that has helped if not benefited either a small or big group of people.

It is a sign of acceptance f not a simple confirmation of a job well know.

In modern society, where winning is expected, losing is punished, little emphasis placed on either acknowledgment, recognition or confirmation of a job well done. Such a negative practice is what shape a gloomy adult working life in the employment sector. As employees are paid to deliver results, not expected of them to make any mistakes or else risk getting fired.

Without confirmation, recognition of credit and praise respective individuals for their due credit, individuals may in time eventually start questioning if they are really of use to the company or if there is any room for personal growth, salary increase, and most importantly a future/prospect with the company he/she is in.

In employment, doing the right things is expected of you that does not warrants any praise. Doing the wrong things on the other hand leads to punishment, gossips, behind a person who is the victim so to speak. Creating sparks of tension in everybody, casting a natural flim of failure to make mistakes. Which ultimately and indirectly reflects of what the boss or superior wants the employees to do.

And the unintentional message that was put across was, mind your own business, this is my business, you are paid by me, I’m your boss, so you do as I say, and never question what I want you to do. Such a message might seems positive from the boss perspective, but looking long term, it greatly decreases the employees will and interest to spot any potential threats that may endanger or cripple the business from any impending rising competitors creeping up and taking over the market share from a company with employees who are only taught to do job scopes within their roles and not to try spot, say and correct any wrong things.

Such a seemingly harmless act of a simple acknowledgment of an individual for their effort, actually will cause the business to collapse in the long term, and that’s what most businesses owners, investors failed to realized, by not encouraging employees to speak up,  business will only spiral downwards and be eliminated from the business area.

While it may look and sound simple enough, but the fact is that this simple word is heavily emphasized and acted upon in the top competition industry with billions and trillions of cash flow liquidity. That is why bankers, property, insurance, Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) all have a similar sales awards to their top sales employees in different companies.

Without confirmation of their very existence, confirmation of their effort and hard-work is in the right direction, the business will only gradually sink deeper into the ocean, into the depths of the sea like how a company goes from profitable to bankruptcy state before court goes into liquidation of company assets to squeeze any remaining money from the company before closing it for good.

A simple gesture of encouragement or praise will work wonders, and that will determine the culture of the business, and eventually the success or failure of the business.

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There are an abundance of opportunities everywhere, every second and every minute.

Opportunities are anywhere and everywhere, to take advantage of the opportunities,  an individual must be well prepared, as it is a chance for only the deserving individuals to succeed.

Once the opportunity window has shifted or moved, than we must wait for another slot of window to open before we can have a chance to display our strengths, values, products and services to a secure a business deal, transaction or even finding sponsors or be part of a team.

It is not what you promise to deliver that gives you a shot at the opportunity, but rather what have you already done in the past and present to get you where you want when an window of opportunity comes along.

Just like the Formula One race official volunteerism chance came, I took a shot, yet was informed that I didn’t make it despite my couple of years helping out as a volunteer, perhaps it’s due to not relevant with many other volunteers able to meet the criteria thus they slots goes to them.

To me, it made me have some reflections, while I know I’m not qualified for the time being, at least I know I need to increase my experience in volunteering to gain a slot in Formula One grand prix race official the next year and considered the last and final year of SingTel Grand Prix in Singapore before any new discussions surfaced to selected the new Formula One title sponsor to replace SingTel.

It is just a matter of time, experience before I gain a slot to be the race official. Hopefully, I can bring more skills and expertise to the table next year for the submission.

Opportunity is only given to those who are well-prepared, thus only the rich get richer, because they are well-educated, knowledgeable and knows how to take maximal advantages of whatever advantages that comes along.

By utilizing their connections, networks, reputation, creditability, it increases their chances of squeezing maximal value out of the single window of opportunity.

For the rest who are less knowledgeable, with less contacts, creditability etc, they might need to tag along and follow closely to those who are leaders in whatever niche they want to succeed in and reap the fruits of shared labour.

Here’s a opportunity for all entrepreneurs in Singapore and that’s a good news for all aspiring business owners. If you have always wanted to start your own business in Singapore, be it home based or in a retail outlet etc, better do it in year 2011.

Reasons are as follows:

1.     Government has announced to have tax rebate of $2000 for the year 2011 only, a sweetener for SMEs (small medium enterprises) to gather more votes to vote for them in the coming elections 20112 as announced in Singapore Budget 2011.

2.     To maximize the full $2000 in 2011 tax rebate, you just need to make sure that your business does not earn incomes beyond $120,715 in combined annual sales income. (I think should be gross income for tax purpose)

3.     Your business cycle must end on Dec 31 2011 for full advantage of the tax rebate

4.     Since its catered for SMEs which accounts for nearly 95% of the SMEs falling into this category, it means huge savings, thus more so for aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners.

5.     If you can’t make money from a business with this tax rebate this year, what makes you think you can make more money without the tax rebate in future?

In a nut-shell: How prepared are you for the next opportunity that comes your way?

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