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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Integrity is something that is considered to be worthless in majority of the people but considered priceless in the minority professionals.

Worthless in the sense whereby there are immediate return on investment also know as profits, mark-ups and margins do not show up instantly thus majority of the employed and self-employed individuals have experienced what all working adults would least like to be faced with, and that is office politics.

It is a unpleasant, ugly politics battle, making an office environment hostile, changing individuals with happy to sad in a matter of seconds.

Yet it is considered to be priceless in the minority professionals. Reason being so is have you ever seen any wealthy individuals with bad office politics? Never, and you will not observe anything like that in their business operations at any point of time. The office environment might be hostile, but it’s considered a battle of survival of the fittest with the best sales closing etc.

Not many people will actually pay attention to this word, it’s more of a morals and ethical principles to differentiate character, reputation of an individual, business or around a brand label.  It is what separates the successful minority professionals from the unsuccessful majority of the individuals fail to excel in.

For having a negative reputation, integrity, it is equivalent to lower possibilities of closing a deal with a client based on past record. When you are not worthy to be of a positive influence among your immediate social circle of peers, friends and family members, chances are you will only attract the same group of individuals similar to you in character and personality. That is why there is these phrase “Great minds think a like”, and the reason you see both the wealthy individuals (business owners, venture capitalist) and the mafia leaders hang out together.

Even within the mafia syndicate, they must also observed integrity and disciplinary issues among the ranks which makes that look awesome, attracting numerous recruitment globally among the young and gullible into committing crimes and being scapegoats of the experienced and seasoned leader.

So what happens in between where no integrity are being followed, that’s where you are faced with office politics, arguments, disputes, fights that can be easily avoided by a peaceful discussion to exchange ideas.

If you forgo and choose to ignore to value integrity, you put yourself at risk of spoiling your interpersonal relationships with your friends, peers, colleagues, family members, relatives thus in-directly spoiling your own future. Why so, because once the people who know you in the past, when you are fouling, ill-manned, your past friends who may not even know how you have changed and improved for the better ends up spread word of mouth on how bad you used to be in the past when you and them were still young. So in the process, ruin your chances of leaving a positive impression on any potential lead, prospect who may be considering securing a business deal with you in future.

Start to foster good relationships from young, if you have a negative record, start repairing them as soon as possible to prepare for a brighter future.

Preparation, laying the basics right.

Start things off on the right foot, if you want to be wealthy might as well get the basics right.

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Brew is the process of preparing a drink, brewing is often used and association with beer, undergoing the process of steeping, boiling, fermenting of malt and hops.

While there are a wide variety of beers all over the world, the core components of the beer is consistent, which consist of barely, yeast, hops and water. The same components under different conditions will produce different results.

Likewise in business, we may all have being taught and read from the same books, but our ideas plus experiences will result in different business ideas which translates into unique businesses with application put in place to produce either a product or service if not both of which.

Business involves many steps similar to brewing a beer, no matter what you are brewing either from the back of your home, garage, kitchen, workshops, laboratories, or even large scale beer brewing plants, the end results are still the same, beer.

The difference within the similarity is only the core components which go into the transformation process. Like how barely becomes malt and how sugar becomes alcohol, similar on how a idea converts into a business execution for profits.

While the process is troublesome from the third party point of view, but once you understand how it works, you will understand the basic principles in the process to start your business right from your home with a simple starter kit.

Business can take flight anywhere and everywhere, as long as you have the basic components required and know the proper steps to implement and have a successful brew first before you try adding in your own conditions to brew your own unique beer like a new business product.

Passion is all that it takes.

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Line is an indication of demarcation, boundary, limit; often said to the fine line between right and wrong. In business and in law under the justification system, a clear line is drawn and spelled out clearly between the legal and illegal business or law practice.

Smarter individuals and businesses will than engage professional help such as lawyers and accountants to get into the hidden line of spectrum, the grey boundary which is similar to science, the colour spectrum of light and how it compromise of many various different light rays.

It is clear that in business and under law, it is easily to spell out what is right and wrong thanks to the terms and conditions with agreements to follow whatever considerations that has being discussed and agreed before any contract has being signed. But it is not always the same as for relationships especially when it comes to emotional relationships which has no right or wrong, neither is there any laws in any country to date that governs this emotional relationship in particular.

What every country can only do is to spell out laws which concerns business, money when relationships failed over partnership or when things get messy and out of hand.

Ladies often said men are playboys, which I as a guy can only agree but only partially agreement. But with time and exposure to books, television shows, and the ability to understand and comprehend in depth conflicts of relationships and emotions plus the link between these two, there is only one conclusion at the end of the topic. And that is; people often draw lines and follow the lines, rules set by it within the boundaries, people who cross the line and mostly it is the guys who does that, thus giving the blanket impression that ‘all guys are natural playboys’ in some ladies regardless of age.

Guys in the past change girlfriends like nothing, giving ladies the impression of being a playboy, but after years of thinking, and understanding from different perspective, guys change girlfriends only when their other half step beyond the line and try to have more control over something which results in arguments and unhappiness leading to break-ups which also happens in ladies breaking up with guys too for similar reasons.

Now-a-days, the line is further being blurred and more towards the grey area with the media coverage of skimpy, revealing clothes and designs which give the young minds a wrong education over the television, fashion fads and trends and even within individuals be it at work, play or home.

The boundary is no longer clear, emotion, love and sex are mixed up in the young minds which leads to more problems than what ordinary people can handle which is why nationals and politicians are having headaches over marriage issues, abortion, pregnancy issues in many countries across the globe.

To solve the global problem, there is a simple solution to the problem. List out and define your own line, limitations, principles and follow whatever rules, terms and conditions which you have set to eliminate all these potential problems which will surface without clear rules implement order in place to keep it well oiled like a smooth running machine that never breaks down or jams up.

Always draw and distinguish a clear line to eradicate all potential problems even before they have any slightest chance of growth in our mind or heart whichever way you like it.

Line is what sets the huge gap between poverty or wealthy, rich or poor.

If you want to say good-bye to poverty, welcome wealth and riches, than start defining your own line(s).

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Tiger Woods the first billionaire athletic who is now back to a multi millionaire thanks to his scandals.

The scandals and his wife have one thing in common, ladies. From the start of the scandal, his wife chasing after Woods with a golf club which caused Woods to crash a fire hydrant and sent to hospital which lead to a sex scandal which involves numerous number of women from different professions.

Woods can become a billionaire is due to his ability to market himself and his skill and not discounting the fact that he knows how to manage his wealth. To become a wealthy successful person, one must learn basic accounting knowledge which is essential and the fundamentals are same on money management.

Considering the zeros differences, there will be slight difference in how money is being managed to grow the money instead of losing money. Yesterday in Straits Time, Woods was labeled as a Cheapskate by one of the ladies associated in the Tiger Woods scandal for only buying her a sandwich and not to provide for her financially.

With regards to that, I am in full support of how Woods managed his financial statements and looking at the profit and loss statement on anything and he is a good accountant himself to manage it well as a matter of fact.

By not providing for the lady financially, it is simple investment knowledge not to invest in a losing property or entity which will only drain your money away like a leaking tap or a faulty water dam depending on the number of zeros investors are talking about.

Providing financially for that lady not only will incur losses in short, mid and even long term.

Short term, the lady’s appetite for financial support will burn a hole.

Mid term will be that the profit and loss statement is going from blue to red tabs and it gets only darker blood red.

Long term is due to the business implications on the brand of Tiger Woods picking up the bills for another lady who is not his wife which will lead to companies losing trust and withdrawing from Woods earlier than expected if he did the wrong choice of providing financially for that lady.

On the other hand, Woods have being paying millions to hope savage his relationship with his wife, Elin Nordegren is a smart choice which has short, mid and long term benefits.

Short term is that he increases his own relationship bonding and trust among his friends, relatives and business partners as a complete model family and as somebody to look up to. With a family as emotional support, he can easily discount the work stress and replace it with family love, support plus care and concern which has immediate benefits.

Mid term is that with a complete family image, businesses will want to associate themselves with people who are already successful themselves and are setting a good role model example for the majority. To top things up, he is a expert marketer himself in his golf skills on top of a blissful supportive family prior to the scandal broke out. Combining both role models and his marketing skills of himself, he opens up new invitations for appearance which is his residual income source.

Long term benefits are tied together with business endorsements, representing various brands for their prestige, creditability and association with somebody trustworthy which is long term passive income for doing absolutely nothing. All that Woods needs to do is to behave himself which he did until the scandal broke out.

Financial management requires a basic understanding of accounting and the ability to foresee short to long term benefits before venturing into any investments, which includes in providing financially for ladies in this case study.

If you want to get rich, start first by learning how to better manage your money without professional assistance.

“It is easy to have principles when you are rich. The important thing is to have principles when you are poor” – Ray Kroc

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Principles are collectives of an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct. It is according to personal rules for right conduct. It can be moral principle, or a rule which a person fixed himself or herself to do something.

It is the ethical standards, judgment, rule of a good behavior. Everybody needs to define and refine their own principles and follow strictly to their principles and their own beliefs.

I have my own principles in doing anything and everything. Always refining my principles in details and improving on them to build creditability trust and brand myself with my principles. This way, you will position yourself on a different value worth of your intangible assets of good will that you are offering.

Different people have different perspectives leading them to their own principles based on previous experiences which they face and it is completely different among individuals. It is built on the basis on the family, friends, teaching, education, and how individuals view things, events and happenings around them. If you have absolutely no clue to what I am writing in this blog entry, ask yourself how and what do you want others to look and treat you like?

Is it to treat you like a friend, or like a pest avoiding you, or even treat you like a machine, overloading you with their own job increasing your burden without helping you in anyway in return for the help offered on your side?

How and what life do you want to live like? How do you want to be treated as? Helpful, useful or friendly person, you decide what kind of life you want to live and if you want to be an employee, or an employer.

Do you want to take control or be controlled by others at their mercy?
Start to define and refine your principles right now at this moment!!

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Law is a system of rules put in placed and enforced through a set of institutions.

It is the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation, or of custom and policies, recognized and enforced by judicial decision.

With the rules in place, it helps to help people, business in place to deter them from administering any harmful or deceptive actions resulting in losses.

It is a intelligent system to control and maintain order. At home, school, work or in business, there are always rules and regulations to follow, depending on the seriousness, basic rules will be set for home and school for basic needs whereas at work and business, laws are usually used to control, reduce and prevent theft of confidential business secrets, recipes and fraud charges against both employees and employers keeping the interest of the business in place where profits is the key.

It reflects the way which we want to live our lives. With the help of law, it maintains the social order of how we live our lives, similarly likewise in nature; there are both predators and preys who also follow the natural survival instincts to prey and eat just enough and protecting themselves too.

If we want to survive, we need to learn the rules of engagement, in business, there are such rules which are not written in any books except for the one book which I have mentioned previously in earlier blog entries.

Everything in the world is about rules or laws whichever way you call it. Follow the rules and practice and you will be fine to live a long shelf life like products manufactured from factories. Just follow the standard practice and nothing will go wrong. Add and try being innovative and you risk putting yourself at risk and health complications, reducing your own life span.

Example: Man likes to be unique, such as having tattoos, piercing; playing punk act like gangsters only to flee at the sight of police, doing things that the society just rejects which includes smoking, gambling, drugs consumption, raping, prostitution and many others, all of which falls into the grey area and can be a double edge sword if used correctly.

Law is used everywhere and anywhere like a net casted all over covering all the way from the sky to the land and even the seas. 法律以经捕下了天罗地网，就算你是天之骄子也难逃法网，想逃也逃不掉。No matter where you go, you have to learn rules of the community and environment which you are engaging yourself into, and do so to survive, not to commit suicide like the robbers, scammers, who thinks they can outsmart the law but they are in fact just denying and tricking themselves that it is possible, but few years down the road, they will still end up being caught, if that is so, why still even bother to try their luck?

Instead of testing the system, why not ride on the system like a surfer surfing the waves like a champion, if you can’t beat them, join them. Don’t believe it, you better do. Simply said, just try swimming against a huge wave and see what happens. Perhaps that hard reality might knock some sense into those silly individuals.

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Help is the act of either giving or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or a need, to render assistance to people who need it.

It also make life less difficult and reliving them off their illness, pain and sufferings.

Help is everywhere and anywhere. Are you the person who likes to help and advise people or are you one who only likes to receive help and assistance from others and never give back any?

Help is a two way thing. The more people you help, the more people will help you succeed. The more reluctance you show in refusing to help others, the same others will show to you.

Look at businessmen. They are setting up businesses, helping many people in different areas. By employing employees, they are helping the majority of the people to get paid if they are willing to work hard for the company, and in return they get money to bring bread and butter back home to the family.

By doing business, providing service and solutions to help solve business partners’ problems, they are helping others again, and in return they get money (profits) back in return.

By lending a hand in charity with money, they help people in extreme poverty get fed with food and basic supplies, they didn’t expect anything in return, but than others see it, than again they are helping themselves.

The return favor of helping comes back to the business in the form of recognition, branding and position which is goodwill, building a reputable brand for the country, individual or business, the more low-profile you are, the more happiness you will get and more rewards will come back to you.

Not everything comes back from helping in the form of money, but the values and reward to helpful people and businesses will end up with much more than what they offered.

When individuals and business do charity, they can reduce their tax for that year too from the government and more support from the leaders governing the countries with more benefits in future. There’s nothing to lose in helping but a lot more to gain.

Exercise caution when you offer and extend a helping hand. Never ever help any individual that refuse to accept your help and stretching out their hand. If they reject you, so be it, there are others who will gladly accept and appreciate your help.

Practice selectively helping, else you will be abused too. Example: You don’t go around helping people in the brink of bankruptcy when they didn’t learn their mistakes or lessons. The more you offer help, the more you’re digging your own grave to perish together with the people facing bankruptcy at the expense of your financial help.

You will not help people who don’ t share the same vision, goals as you (only applicable to businesses only). If you’re into philanthropy, than just do it as long as it is within your means and financial ability allows. Spending and spreading wealth wisely to those deserving of a chance to succeed and grow.

Do not help people who will turn their backs on you, a real life betrayal of unconditional help will be USA. They who believe in their religion believe in helping anyone and everyone, and the help they offered get abused in this case example.

USA trained Osama Bin Laden, who in turn became a real ring leader in terrorist who betrayed USA’s kind intentions, war breaking out among Iran, Iraq, and neighbouring countries suffer in some ways.

So select carefully and help, don’t help people who act like they need help but with hidden agenda that go against your vision, principles and directions which again leads me to entrepreneurship.

Choosing the right business partners, help people who accept your help and not people who only want to make use of your help, be selective and test their intentions if needed.  Choose the right business partner and your life plus wealth will be made much easier, choose and make the wrong choice or decision, and you have hell of a time like USA still trying to capture Osama Bin Laden who may still be hiding inside the mountains underground and in the caves etc.

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