Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

Wealth is what everybody seeks. The abundance of resources, possessions, and assets.

While many seek wealth, they confuse it with money.

Money should be viewed as a tool rather than a measure of status.

While majority of the people globally all focus on earning money to make it rich, succeed in life, only the top of the corp, those who really understand the meaning of wealth, success can achieve it.

The reason why majority failed to get rich is properly due to a simple reason, they spend more than what they earn. Simple fact, but many choose to ignore this fact, and instead adopt another practice or belief, learn how to earn more money to cover up what you spend. That’s what most people are doing, digging multiple holes (traps) of financial difficulty only to refill one hole at a time while digging many holes simultaneously.

Real life case study is when people take up installments to buy property, furniture, vehicles, education loan, investment loan etc.. All involved loan while trying to get rich, having said that, that’s the worst situation that a wealthy person would do.

While many wonder what do we need to do to get wealthy. That most people wouldn’t even think about it, because those are the things that aren’t taught in school, nobody will teach others how to get rich, which in other words put oneself at more risk of competition for investments to grow own asset port-foilo, thus all schools globally only teach students how to be employees, even those teaching entrepreneurship modules, degrees are taught by professors who are knowledgeable only in theory with no physical actual experience. So at the end of the day, are degrees really that important if a person really want to succeed and make it wealthy?

Apparently not, the simplest and idiot proof method to be wealthy is first to understand what is the difference between money and wealth, what are the problems associated with money, greedy, discipline, management, investing, growing money and even finding sponsors. All of which are the important steps vital to understanding the real definition of wealth before even one can have the mental capability to sustain wealth in assets, cashflow, and managing it.

Most speakers, successful individuals only spoke and share about the importance of business ideas, but they didn’t share or mention much about the basics, thus majority are taught the advanced skills, knowledge without the basics. It’s like building castles in the air, without proper pillars as support, just a wind, flood, or fire (natural disaster) is enough to pluck out and demolish the whole building of its location into rumbles and trash.

That’s why the rich get richer, while the poor gets poorer. Only those who get it will be wealthy. Not even those smart-aleck are able to conceal or hide their tails for long, as financial crisis or global or region wide happens every 10-12 years, so it is like a circle. Only the real deal stays for the long term.

Having said that, the key to creating wealth is to bring value to the masses. Without value, there’s no room for growth.

So if you get what I’m saying, it is best for you to start working in different industry, get a clear idea of how money flows from one hand to another before switching to another industry to increase your learning growth, physically experience of business operation, running, and training employees beats education, theories taught in schools.

If you’re a parent, or soon-to-make, make it a point to throw your kids to get doing business, or at least let them earn their own money to buy the things they want themselves, and not you paying it for them. Vital to let them learn and understand how difficult it is to earn that money, so this is a life lesson that will help you in many years down to the road. Stopping your kids growing up dependent on you for their living, nor to suck your financial reserves dry. That’s long-term thinking, and at the same time, showing the kids how to take up responsibility and running a family.

When a person learns the importance of money, than only will they gradually see the light at the end of the tunnel in knowing real wealth before able to start creating wealth.

If you don’t believe it, read up or start observing how people get poorer. Especially those who struck lottery. Lucky individuals globally with no knowledge of managing money, assets will only see their money depleting day by day. After a few years, they are back to square one, in the same situation before they strike lottery.

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Risk is something that not many will want to take. But without it, success cannot be attained.

Just like the picture above, while a sniper trainee is learning the ropes to being a sniper.

In a actual operation, a sniper himself/herself is at risk of being discovered by enemies if enemy noticed the scope’s reflective lens from long distances.

While the long range shooting increases the possibility of safety from enemies, but it also put the sniper at risk of not being able to leave safety as the weapon is bulky, maximal ammunition load of only 10 rounds. So part of the training is not to be discovered while preparing to eliminate enemy.

This is a situation of killing or be killed, which also happens everyday in business and in everyday life.

In business, it’s all about calculated risk, and greatly minimizing the risk of failure, making strategic moves to increase market share and financial muscle to growing the business.

In everyday life and at work, we are putting ourselves at risk too, but majority choose to ignore the real risk that each and everyone is facing. The risk of retrenchment, which happens without any notification, no guarantee whatsoever.

While employment may seems like a smart choice, to me personally, it’s more like walking on a thin thread of line in the air.

Just one step of wrong move, and employees will face risk of getting fired, with no other sources of recurring or passive income, leaving many retrenched individuals jobless, bleak future, family arguments, and many other factors.

But while the odds are against us, majority of the masses still choose to be ordinary. By going with employment and staying in the rats race.

With entrepreneurship, while the risk of financial burden may seem huge, but once everything has settle, the risk is kept low, and nobody can fire you unless you decide to quit/sell the business to somebody else.

The best part about risk is that those intelligent risk takers all attained success in live, financially, spiritually and multiple aspects. It is only by giving up some elements of security, than only do we have more rooms for take in other benefits that comes with such risk.

A common example of risk taker is a stock trader, making calculated moves with proper analysis based on market reactions, business information, economy directions, growth trends etc. Likewise, property developers, investors all share the same thinking.

Embracing risk is the sure way to succeed, but do so with caution, lots of practice, training, and most importantly, get a coach, who can share his/her experience with you to eliminate if not greatly minimize the obstacles that you will face in your quest to success.

Take control of our own life, start your own business, but only if you know what you are doing, if you don’t, you’ll be killed. So stick with what you are at best and gradually widen your skills and expertize.

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Ownership is having legal rights of procession; proprietorship. It is to have the exclusive rights and control over property.

It involves multiple rights, from title to intellectual property, distribution rights, translation, print, copy, duplication, recording, transmission in whole or in part in any retrieval system or in any other permission related to the use of a product or property.

Having ownership of a proprietorship is akin to winning and having a money tree bearing fruits of money and increasing the owner’s wealth with deeper pockets.

Example: Having a great story, can be translated into a book, animation, video, drama series and movie or be converted into other mediums of products for instance bookmarks, gifts, clothes, or any other product which can be sold for money.

The world is our limit, as long as we the owners put on our thinking cap, wealth, money and riches will find their own way and crawl onto the owners if you know how to market and generate profits from your own products, knowledge of expertise which is exclusively only available to you yourself only.

There are thousands of ways to get rich, have you found your own method to make it big? Going from rags to riches is a simple but uphill task which is not easy without proper guidance.

Are you having any exclusive knowledge, product or information or idea that could propel you forward towards getting rich? Do you have great ideas but yet are clueless on how to market your ideas nor have any strategy to safeguard your intellectual property to prevent other people from stealing it away from you?

If that is the situation you are in, speak to me and I might be able to offer some advice to you upon request.

Getting rich and be successful is not a lonely journey, in fact you will need business partners and companions who will assist you on the voyage to your destination. It is up to you to decide if you want to win alone or win as a team so as to celebrate success together and share the happiness at the top rather than being alone with no one else by your side to share your joy and happiness.

It is simple but it is not easy. Speak to somebody whom you can trust for advice. See you at the top.

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Developed is the status given to countries with high gross domestic product GPD per capita which refers to nations with high development according to some criteria.

A developed country has other means of measurement industrialization has a part contributing the economy boosting the financial status and capability of individual countries. The other measure associated with developed nation will be the human development index which combines the economic, nation, life expectancy and other measures factored in.

Being a developed country has got its pros and cons. Pros is more beneficial towards the nation, politicians, businesses and government, and  cons is more towards the poor, majority of employees who cannot benefit in any way regardless of the country being under developed, developing or developed nation.

Poor is not a good thing, and it certainly isn’t good to be poor in a developing if not developed nation. In such a developed country, there will be intense competition for business and profits. The most inflated assets becomes overpriced will be a home.

Home is the shelter which everybody needs and thus either you are rich or poor, you cannot avoid not buying it. The only difference is that the rich can afford with the inflated pricing but not the poor.

The more competition the country has, the higher the inflation is. Just look at Hong Kong, Russia, ask them how small is their home is, sixty to seventy meters are the size which average income earners can afford to buy.

Singapore is heading towards a near developed national but we are still holding onto the developing nation status. Just look at the way the homes are built in the past versus currently and the trend of the homes versus the price.

There is not doubt, homes are highly inflated, while they remains the same price, the square meters are dropping by at least thirty percent and more. Just couple of years back, the norm of purchasing a home, the standard size should be at least a thousand square meters, but over the past two to three years, kitchens, living room, rooms, and even washroom get downsized, but the price still remains the same giving a false impression that there is not any inflation.

All these are just decoys, sales gimmicks which all businesses employ to trick those gullible people.

There was a news article which I read some time back which made me laughed. That article was about a block of apartments of six to seven hundred square meters of size being sold at a much higher price tag for the same amount with a home for at least a thousand square meters of size in the same area. The irony is those small homes get snap up much faster than homes which a bigger size despite it being more expensive!!

An example will be in the past comparison of an old three room apartment built in the 1980s versus the ones which has the same size of a current four room apartment built in the after the millennium. Just look at the newly built versus the older generation apartments, compare the windows, put your thumb against the windows from your vehicle or when you happen to pass by in public transport.

Older apartment’s windows can cover around the size of our thumb while the newer generation of apartments, their windows are smaller than our thumb, to me, newly built apartments are like pigeon holes for birds to live, not us, but funny thing is, we have no choice but to move in since there isn’t any other choice left, neither was I in control of wanting to move or not.

When I read that article, I was wondering if adults are smart or are the developers smarter but since I’m already as of a adult age, I know I am definitely not going to be among those intelligent adults buying a expensive apartment with lesser space just because of the sales hyped up buzz of thanks to the media which created a sales frenzy.

If you understand what I mean, spread news of this blog post to your beloved family and friends, help them save money and prevent those developers from ripping our money off our wallets just because they don’t know that they are suffering a loss on each purchase of flat yet they are smiling and thank you the property agents who are in fact making their clients poorer.

I don’t know how smart we ourselves are, but if you want to help yourself, your friends and family save money, than tell them about the trend of property size are descending while price is ascending thus price inflation on all apartments.

Spread the word to save money. Don’t rush into buying homes if they are just building smaller homes and jetting up the prices. Practice delay-gratification, it will help you save hell lots of money. Trust me on this.

There was once when a blocks of flats in a are of Singapore that was not popular in the launch couple of years back, with only less than ten occupants which made that area looked like a ghost town, which made developers to relook at their layout, design before new apartments were built soon after with numerous other strategies to push for the sales of the unsold apartments which was featured in the newspapers.

The moral of the story and lesson learnt, do not rush into buying homes, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it that will force developers to rethink and relook at their product (apartments) which they are selling.

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Agreement is the act of agreeing, coming to a mutual arrangement that is accepted by all parties to an arrangement.

There is another type of agreement which is gentlemen’s agreement. It is an informal agreement between two or more parties involved and relies upon and reflects the honor of the parties for its fulfillment which is not governed by any law. It is also known as a promise or verbal agreement.

Depending on the position you are in, you can have a verbal agreement or to have it pen down in black and white to protect your interests in-case anything goes wrong so you can claim and protect your business and your own intellectual property and trade secrets.

Experience with time will tell you that sometimes verbal agreements do not work and that is when you should pen it down in black and white to protect your interest and rights. If you are considering doing a business, consult a professional lawyer and have him or her write out a few local terms and conditions, privacy, refund, employment, breach of contract agreements before you start telling anybody about your business ideas.

Whatever that involves money and anything that will help either a person or a group of people to make money, have to be guarded nicely and be put in a safe nest for housekeeping making sure everything is law abiding and thus establishing a multiple win solution for all business partners, investors and employees interests at heart.

Have you started thinking about your own agreement? If your answer is no, you should and start thinking, think back of past experience which will help you come up with a list of conditions to be written in an agreement.

Protect your money, property and nest like how an animal protect their young in the wild.

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Substitution is to take the place of a person or an item, to replace the place of something by having a substitute.

Using substitute is a negative habit or mindset thinking that a replacement is just as good, false conscious self-denial thoughts to our mind, replacing inferior quality or less worthy brands for the original brand.

Substitution only happens and is embraced by poor minded people who can accept anything as long as they have something. Wealthy mindset people will however reject and only accept the best they can find without allowing any room for quality drop in terms of service, product or packaging.

Look at the poor, they trying to buy electronic gadgets, latest multi-purpose handphone with camera and mobile computer built in functions wasting their money, keeping up with the fashion fad making themselves only poorer and saving less and less with each increasing month as new products are launched into the market. With new products, poor are getting poorer buying liabilities and not assets.

Look at the wealthy successful people. They purchase property, never sells it, instead they rent it out, collect rents, buy new properties, mortgage it for new property and repaying the mortgage to keep their properties. They sell only assets such as units in a building and not the ownership of the building which they still own the rights to. With a leasehold period, there’s a expiry date to the transaction, so the owner can resell the unit again when the lease term stated in the contract is due. Wealthy people build wealth; they never sell it away making others rich, they just make themselves and help people who help them get rich.

If you want to be wealthy and successful, stop accepting substitution for replacement, insist on the original, and some day you will find yourself to seek for items, assets which you never once looked at.

Learning to say ‘NO’ is a start, mastering the skill of selectively rejection by saying ‘NO’ is the mastery of skill to a wealthy mindset.

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Choice is an option of careful selection between different options offered, excellent, good average or bad products, merchandise and services. Different buyer decision leads to different customer experience and satisfaction, thus creating different classes of customers and businesses targeting a specific group of customers.

Choice is an opportunity for each of us to decide what we want, how we want it, and the expected results is already clear when we make a decision, knowing that the decision we make will have direct effects affecting our desired results.

It is a very fine and thin line between making a wise choice and a negligent choice. Whatever you do, do the right thing, make the right choice, but most importantly ask the right people.

Getting wealthy is not a want, it’s a need, a necessity for Singapore given that Singapore’s high-end property is snapping up fast by foreign investors, as fellow Singaporeans, are we so useless to submit and raise the white flag and allow their to take over and run our property, assets, earning money from us? Is this a repeat of history when the British took over Singapore only to run away giving Singapore to suffer at the mercy of Japanese during WWII?

Are we throwing away our choice to the foreigners? Getting wealthy is no longer a want, it’s a need that we need to protect Singapore, and be able to lift our heads up high, able to show the world what a little red dot can do in the globe, whoever that looks down on the little red dot will regret for making that choice and for even saying it and think about it. The Singapore founding leaders have done an excellent job in this aspect, but what are the majorities of the people doing to this? Nothing, so getting wealthy is no longer a want, but a need and a must do it. The world is your oyster, will you allow others to take the credit from you, taking away your fruits of labour only paying you a miserable small sum of money?

We the Chinese holding the huge population percentage should work together instead of cutting each other fighting among one another and giving the opportunity to the on-lookers who took advantage of it. Look at China; they made a very wrong choice, to be a fake dominant country producing products, food, merchandise that’s not real, giving foreigners a chance to grab a slice of the pie. All can be avoided, but it’s the thinking of the leaders running the country that needs a good washing to plan long term and not short term.

Singapore has done a great job in this aspect, and now not many countries dare to even mention the “little” again. It’s a fact that we’re small like a dot, but together we make a difference, and are the envy of a lot of other neighbouring countries wanting our help to grow their economy.

We should and must learn how to uphold, fortify our fortress, promote the Singapore brand, increase our advantage in the region, and work together to be a wealthy and successful.

Just like Jay Chou who wants to help his fellow singers in the music industry in his country, and China also being proud of themselves without the need to neither depend on foreigners nor even bother about what the world wants. So work towards being self-sufficient and depend on ourselves for our living instead of dependent on others.

Are you going to be a loser or do you want to grow together with Singapore and shine, even if we are the little red dot, but we are in fact multiplying our little red dots in other countries with their nations’ approval, so do you want to have your imprints all over the world helping Singapore multiply the red dots in other countries or are you happy to have others taking away our hard earn labour?

As we pursue our dreams, ambitions, we can throw away our pride, ego, face, reputation, and even work like a slave, but we can never ever throw away our dignity which is the core of ourselves, something which we need to be proud of despite how little and small our efforts may be but it makes a huge difference.

Even a beggar have dignity to stay at a place, work hard at begging for food, rather than a stray dog making pitiful sounds and a sad eyes tears rolling begging for food.

Dignity is what makes us who we are regardless of how small we will make around us, but if applied and used correctly, dignity will be the source fuel like the Sun in the galaxy burning its own fumes warming other planets that stay around the sun. Like Bruce Lee, he started low, throwing away his pride, learning multiple disciplines of martial arts, keeping his dignity and respect for our yellow skin and done us Chinese proud.

Do you want to be the person offering and extending a helping hand to others or do you want to be the receiver asking for help? It’s your choice and only YOU can decide what you need!

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Reputation is the key consideration factor when doing anything be it business, going into a relationship or investing on an individual or a company.

As simple as it sounds, it doesn’t looks easy to carry out. Reputation is an intangible asset which is in the balance sheet of profit and account statement which we treat it as branding. How much does the brand cost, and what is the difference between products which is branded versus a product which is new on the market.

A new product will take time to build a base of customers by offering services for value creation and giving customers more reasons and small gifts here and there to convince and persuade customers to change direction from a brand to another. Whoever is able to command a higher perceived value in the eyes of the customers wins until the next contender surface.

Business is all about reputation, creditability, and how much he/she can influence and make customers or even strangers take his/her word with complete trust and assurance without even an doubt in the individuals’ character or personality. That to me is build on mutual trust, and a unprecedented high level of trust will be build when quality is not compromised even in big companies and franchise models. This is the true value of trust which goes a long way.

It takes from months to years to build the trust in both the brand (business) and in the leader leading the company risking his/her reputation on the line with each and every step. One wrong move will result in overnight tumble just like when a professional explosive specialist has being given the go-ahead to push the button to detonate the explosives in a vacant building to give way to new property developments.

With reputation being placed on the line, every step we take with ourselves or with our business partners, colleagues and friends should be taken into consideration first and their credentials first before signing any agreement.

If in the event, there’s no trust and credentials yet, a guarantor and disclaimer policy can be put in place before you carry out any business campaigns. By first drawing a clear line between what’s yours and what’s not, you can be sure of what and how to react in times of problems should they try to push the blame to you? Always have a mutual black and white agreement with people whom you work with so once they commit, they will have to obliged by the terms and conditions set and follow throwing away any grey to black hat strategies which they have if you are not a push-over.

Devise your own terms and conditions before hand, get to know what potential problems you may encounter if you have a lot to lose considering you’re a influential successful person. If you’re a nobody, just go right in, learn whatever you can build your trust, reputation and credentials from the first project you do.

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