Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

I believe majority of the successful individuals out there are always looking for the checklist and formula but over the years, i realize from over the years of searching for the answer, it is actually very simple, yet most people would avoid it at all cost. There are just some times when you give it your best but still fail to meet the grade.

To succeed, is to first learn to fail, not only faster, but numerous more times than what the majority have not gone.

By doing so, it is actually doing ourselves a service, to take a shortcut and fast-forward towards success, and avoid banging into the same walls and repeat the mistakes which new business owners, and start-ups will face.

Failures is the success package that is only being wrapped up with newspapers instead of beautiful gift wrapping paper.

Success with failures alone is not sufficient, the individual must be able to learn, reflect, and ensure there’s no repeat of the same mistakes, thus increasing the probability of success.

You’ll need to have quality gift being as the main ingredient that will guarantee your success, that is experience, and an eagle’s eye for details. The ability to identify potential trouble makers even before they show any signs by simply testing them, and making observations.

There are a few list of factors that which I’ve realized that success really does require third party or external help in order to process the gift to be of value to be appreciated by the recipient.

The help is not physical help, but rather in a form of experience, exposure, being placed in a difficult situation, and building a portfolio leveraging on a stronger brand initially until the personal branding and reputation is recognized by the related industry players before coming out on your own.

As i gradually am being tasked to help the company filter and identify quality service providers to increase the efficiency of the business, I realized something that I never once know nor even read in any books, but did watch and picked up in movies.

“It is not who you are that matters, it is who you represents that matters!”

By representing the business, the trust, creditability and financial ability are than being placed on the business representative, thus a nobody can instantly become a somebody due to a company employed individual, than when the company’s name is mentioned, the trust is immediately shifted to me, the representative, than a person becomes of value.

That is something that will never happen in a hardcore one-man-show type of entrepreneur example, and they will take a longer time to succeed, as they build on the trust, reputation from nothing.

It takes at least three to five years to build and grow reputation for a already successful business to be even successful, whereas it takes close to ten years for a individual to be successful, as a person build everything up from nothing.

Learning to leverage on a strong company with proper branding, credentials is an important skill, you don’t need to work for the business to leverage as joint venture or having them as your client works equally well if not better. So if you have nothing, start finding a company whom will offer you that positive leverage.

Exposure to more competitive market, under pressure to deliver results, combined with limited resources will really stretch an individual in a positive way towards success. Something that I currently am being placed in such a situation, or risk losing the job confirmation, at least that’s the way i am reading the danger signs from the instructions given to me to carry out the work.

Being exposed to competition is similar to the process of creating a gem, that requires high pressure in confined space to create a raw gem stone, following which, requires precise polishing that requires a skilled and trained individual to do so.

Limited resources forces a person to put on their thinking cap, thinking out of the box, and use any closest possible solution to address the problem first. During this process, it is a gradual appreciation and change in the way individuals do things, in terms of principles and perspective change towards the better and gets a person to see things from another perspective and get their brain run faster than ever.

With exposure to different landscape and business practices to meet expectations and delivery dates, it forces a person to level up and change gear to move faster or risk elimination. This is something that being a self-employed one-man-show entrepreneur, can never experience due to no competition except for themselves and against the naysayers hoping that they will fail faster so all their friends can celebrate failure together.

Being thrown in different situations will really help shape a person, their experience to be a better person and an informed decision maker. It is required to create the gift to be of value in order to be appreciated. This gift is what most if not all people will admit without any disagreements and that is experience, as it helps provide them from harm’s way.

There are both positive and negative experience, to be successful, it means to learn how to convert every single negative experience and failure in a positive learning experience to face the same problems at attempt to fix the issues at it’s root cause instead of running and avoiding it. That’s the ultimate difference in the successful and the failures.

Failure is not a option. it is a necessity before you can succeed.

Exposure, experience with the proper leverage under pressure with no alternative choice will help propel oneself or a business towards success.

When you feel helpless, than will you grow faster at the next opportunity to grow, thus learning to real truth to make full use of any opportunity that comes to us, thus the success succeed because they understand this perfectly and capitalize on it better then their competitors.

Cherish what you have and milk every single drop out of it.

In a nut-shell: The only competitive advantage a successful business have over their competitors is to be one-step faster than their competitors.

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Taking action is one of the simplest thing to do, but in a business, there’s a saying that goes by this: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Thus many people who may have heard of this old saying end up in the planning stage, and never took action, until one day they realize that its too late, and somebody else came up with the similar if not identical solution, and off goes the opportunity that comes along with it to the first person who took action by executing a task on hand.

In the past, i didn’t really understand the importance of Fire, Aim, Ready as told to me by my mentor, but after my third attempt of using Aim, Ready, Fire, it has come to my understanding that this strategy doesn’t works at least in the situations of SMEs aka small medium enterprises for they will always be not ready due to lack of financial funds and cash flow to fight with the big competitors with whatever resources they have, and the luxury of time at there expense to think, plan whatsoever, as reputation, and creditability is what they already have as their ammunition to fend off competitors.

Being small, i after my 3rd attempt of using a strategy that failed to work, it’s time to adopt and carry out the seemingly simple yet critical advice that I didn’t really realize how important it is until my cash flow to keep myself and my entrepreneurial dreams alive and running at a dangerously low level.

Following which, I’ll just do what I can to take any action, slowly  but surely climb my way up and built on my portfolio, reputation, creditability to play with the big boys who can have the luxury of time to plan before execution of task.

Speaking of which, i just realized that even competitors of big scale also didn’t take a long time to plan, they too set a time limit before the execution and carrying out any task on hand so as not to drag and delay any ongoing, incoming or outgoing task that is in the process of completion.

Moving on, with the next fund injection by the govt on the first of may this coming month, a move made before the election as political sweetener, I’ll be careful to use the funds slowly with clear budgeting to put it for good use instead of waiting for it to run dry one day.

Having said my point, it leaves me with a summary and a lesson that I will probably remember always: “You are never ready, you just need to keep moving on and be make preparations while on the move.” – That how we all should, and it is exactly the same way on how the countries, national security, even natural environment, nature is revolving, moving forward.

Nobody is ever prepared, we just need to keep moving ahead and strengthen ourselves with every second that passed by. That is what i believe to be the simplest yet most overlooked primary reason that leads to either success or failure in life, business or even in relationship. We just have to keep on moving ahead.

“Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?” – Ray Kroc

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Package is a bundle of something usually in small or medium size packed or wrapped in a parcel for delivery. It can also stands for a completed product or fully operational system that is ready to be sold to the clients from the manufacturers to the retail outlets before landing onto the end users.

There are numerous packages bundled up with various business products and services. Package is no longer the same old parcel sent among people via postage. It has now evolved into a whole new package for business, offering a full package by definition is to provide a head to toe one stop solution to the users with any related services that the end user or client will require in attempt to capture and gain the trust and loyalty of a valuable customer encouraging them to return back for their services.

Bundle of services, products of various mediums can be found anywhere and everywhere, big or small there are lots of examples.

Small businesses offer a package in the form of a convenience store also known as “mama shop” in the past which has since largely replaced by convenience stores such as Cheers and 7Eleven franchise outlets offering a one stop retail outlet for general products which we need on daily basis.

Big businesses will provide similar bundle packed services like in a hotel, there are housekeeping, business conference room, social hall, meeting, training room, restaurants, accommodation, swimming and other related facilities to ensure that the customer is satisfied with the range of products and services offered for maximal customer satisfaction.

However, it is not always this way, at times, there will be instances whereby due to some minor error or miscommunication which cause the break in delivering a complete package of services and products due to short of manpower or ill-trained service providers/employees thus resulting in a complaint or silent dissatisfaction causing the client to be a one time client only.

Examples such as in-complete service are as follows: Failure to fulfill services it promised as per advertised (Goldman in the fraud case), trying to cut corners by reducing business expenses with inferior quality product replacements (Toyota acceleration problem)  or in worse case situation, totally omitting a crucial section of the package only to have the client finding out when he/she opens the package up once it is delivered to the end-user (spa business sudden closure without refund/providing services as promised).

Whatever we do, in personal, among friends or with business, it is all about packaging, a package that you offer and sell yourself to your friends, and business partners which are tied up with your creditability, reputation or past track record, branding, efficiency and productivity along with other factors involved. It comes in a package..

Failure to provide a full package will result in loses of reputation and your own brand will be killed in a instant. It is hard to build a brand, but it is extremely simple to tarnish or ruin a brand over night.

Proceed with extreme caution. It determines your success or failure, rich or poor and it depends on what we do in business not only for ourselves but also for the business.

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Secrets are confidential information which was not meant to be shared and be kept within the knowledge and circle among the parties involved only.

Everybody has secrets and it covers a lot of different areas be it health, business or relationship, depending on the impact in an event which should a secret leaks out, what impact of damage will it reflect on individuals, families and businesses thus in the higher middle income to rich and affluent families often have a price tag to every secrets.

How much secrets can a person keep, and how long did the secret last before leaking or is it always safe with the person? There are many factors which everybody can test and sound out on anybody to find a trustworthy person.

The ability to safeguard a secret is c direct and straightforward reflection of an individual on his or her integrity, honesty, creditability and reputation of himself/herself. The better you are at safeguard secrets, the more money and wealth you will receive at the end of the day.

Look at Tiger Woods, reports have mention that his inner circle of friends even help him cover out his scandal and offered to pay the ladies in some previous reports to keep it under the table and from the public media. On the other side, we have the ladies who cannot wait to spill the beans to a short term fame and money for their one-time income for selling their story to the media.

In business, especially secrets dealing with personal, business, the more you help them safeguard the secrets, the more you will benefit as well on a continuity basis which can be considered reciprocal and passive income source.

Before the fall of Tiger Woods scandal, the golf industry was seeing their business media attention and viewership increasing, shortly after the scandal broke free, golf related businesses and individual professional golfers experience a dip in their wallets and in the accounts for individuals and businesses.

The ladies on the other side could enjoy the benefits of being treated like a queen if they keep it under the tabs but they choose not to for unknown reasons which does not make logical sense to me, emotions got the better of them. Committing a suicidal step to their reputation and personal creditability, telling all others potential business partners and friends that “don’t ever let me know your secrets or you will see your reputation, effort and business go down the drain”, in short it is equivalent to telling them do not hire me if you identify me as a secret spiller.

By being a secret spiller, it has not long term benefits at all and it will follow that person till they rest in peace and in some instances, it brings and spills over to the next generation making live more difficult for their kids and family even after their dismissal. Refer to Adolf Hitler and Benard Madoff; read related articles and reports how they people do not want to be associated with such people. That is what I think and after reading lots of similar business related books which support certain parts of what I have written above.

Ladies always wanted to be treated equally, but do they really mean what they say? I’m not against women; in fact I’m supportive of ladies as a matter of fact, more towards women than to ladies for their supportive role and they mean what they say unlike ladies who are still not yet mentally mature and able to take up responsibilities for their own actions.

There are many ways to earn money and keeping secrets is definitely one of the best ways to increase your own network, by being able to keep our own mouth zipped up.

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Trust is the emotional creditability which everyone has used on everything and anything in our daily lives, from buying a product from a reputable food store to buying clothes from well known brands offering products suitable to respective individuals.

Trust is also used in relationships, family bonding, education etc. Trust is formed when an individual has shown and proof that him/herself can be replied on with responsibilities. It is the integrity and confidence which someone might have on the other person.

It is not easy to build trust but it is simple to build trust. The way which it works is simple, if you abuse the trust, never ever again will others trust you regardless of what you do. That is how successful businessmen emphasis in entrusting their business partners with projects and businesses.

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