Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

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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Crazy is a word which many would immediately come to think and associate with being mentally deranged or to be insane. But if you look up the dictionary, there are many different meanings to just being insane.

It has many other meanings; it can be unusual, informal, bizarre, extreme, recklessness, unexpected, random quality, singular, wonderful or excellent. Different people or businesses will occasionally and intentionally use crazy as a word to attract attention to the business.

Example: “ABC Company is having a CRAZY SALES giving up to as high as 80% discounts on all its retail outlets, HURRY UP and buy them before they are gone, WHILE STOCKS LAST!!”

Here’s another example: “He must be a crazy coach, asking us to do dangerous actions putting our own lives at risk.” The latter example often takes place in motivational seminars for your info.

Individuals, businesses and even countries are doing crazy things. Look at Japan; they are having a game show which requires game participants to be crazy enough in order to play the game and even Americans come up with a show “I survived a Japanese game show” just to win a competition.

People do crazy bizarre things everyday. The more successful you are, the more crazy things you will do that looks, feels, think strange.
Entrepreneurs themselves do crazy stuffs, at least it looks and feels strange that they are doing things out of what is considered to be normal among the majority, but it is exactly by doing what seems, looks and feels crazy, bizarre, never done before actions, tactics that make them unique and successful.

I am crazy myself, staying up so late after watching television just to blog when I can write it later when I wake up from my sleep when now by right I should be sleeping already at nine minutes to two hundred hours which is two am. I do things which others discourage me to do, but I know what I am doing, so that is good enough.

You don’t other people’s approval to do what you like, you just need to prove to them you are right at the end of the process and have the last laugh.

Do what you like and monetize whatever you are doing fueled by passion, excellent products and a good marketing strategy for profits.

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Change is the transformation from something to another thing. It is to become different, pass gradually into something else.

Since the time men started roam the earth, we underwent lots of changes to who we are today. With different nationalities language, tribes and religions we all still come from the same roots and origins, from the monkey family.

Fast forward to present, and staying local in Singapore, this nation has underwent so much changes that the kampong days are long gone, even the friendly neighbourhood atmosphere is already gone, no longer do neighbours know one another among the community. When I was young around 1980s to 1990s, the community bonding and unity was slowly fading away as I grow up while Singapore keeps changing and improving.

Lives 1990s was definitely way much better than 1950s that period, but looking at the present bonding of Singaporeans among different races, Singapore in fact has gone worse. Back than, even my grandma knows Malay and now those local Singaporean Chinese who knows Malay language is the minority with Malaysian Chinese taking away our advantage in language proficiency.

In the past, everybody knows a bit of other language here and there, even Indians know Chinese, but that’s is the super minority.

These days, with the housing development planning, the layout of the houses are pleasant taking into considerations for limited land, but gone are our privacy, with doors shut, the friendly neighbours atmosphere is long gone.

People who used to be able to work until fifty years old and retire for a blissful family, is already gone without a trace, the possibility of it is gone permanently. No longer can we grow up looking forward to retirement, in fact we will work till the date we die, that’s how the way we are growing, and this problem is not subjected to only Singapore but all over the world. Any capitalist country will face this issue.

Just that Singapore with limited resources is showing the negative effects of capitalism society faster than our neighbouring countries because they still have land, religion and culture to fall back on thus they will not face this problem so fast but gradually, they are feeling it.

Taiwan is also losing its tribe practice and people are going to cities for a living, like wise for India and other countries. But somehow thanks to its strong unity and government space for religion practice, they are still going strong with their Chinese culture and proud of it, unlike Singapore, even for our own four different religions, we also have the public holidays reduced, no longer greatly celebrating it but it has downsized so much that it becomes more like a yearly commercial event rather than festive celebrations doing only a yearly routine with no heart put into it. It’s a festival without the soul, bonding and unity in it. How I envy countries with such rich festival celebrations.

Singapore although has lost the festival bonding among people, but it has gain something else in return to compensate for its culture losses which is financial industry and is often said that Singapore is the window to China, nonetheless that comes with a great price of sacrifice.

Hard work, always increasing work load, only more and no less, work load increase is way much faster than the speed whereby our pay increases, thus we are getting poorer and poorer. Just look at the working age and ask yourself if you can even retire and enjoy a blissful family, never ever if you follow the majority. It’s just the facts.

Should we want to reverse the effects, we should pick up entrepreneurship, in particular allowing ourselves more time to spend with family, encouraging a family and work-life balance, so as to have more births per family, thus tax will not increase. Financial insiders or those who at least study bits of history will know why birth rates has links to tax.

What we deserve, we got to earn it, and to do it, we have to find our way. Singapore is growing and improving, but not the people, majority of the people are still staying in a poor mindset thus making Singapore government job of running the country increasing harder having to cope with the silver tsunami many years ahead which is slowly revealing the tip of the ice berg already. We are just another country one step slower than Japan only.

We earn what we keep, and we got to defend our homeland from foreigners, lower our demands for foreign talents, in order to do that, we have to increase our own competitive advantage so as to reduce our reliance on them.

The easiest way to do so is to do our own business, and offer employments to fellow Singaporeans by helping Singaporeans earn their own keep. Entrepreneurship is the only way to go about, don’t look at it as purely business, you can go into entertainment, science, invention, financial related or even sales and service, it is not restricted to only business. Explore different ideas and stomp the front. Be a leader, take charge of your own life.

BE in control and stay in control.

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Time is a measurement system of a unit. It is a measurement of a period or interval.

Everyone has the same amount of time twenty four hours a day seven days a week fifty two weeks a year and so on. Time is so unique that nobody can create extra time for anybody.

The poor can only have maximal twenty four hours per day, while the wealthy and successful businessmen have X numbers of twenty four hours, and it is based on the number of business partners, employees they have working on a project, repeating doing the same thing to produce products, services for sales and profit to the business.

With increase help and paying people in-exchange for their time, the businessmen thus can increase and better utilize his time on more profitable business to further increase his wealth accumulation process.

Businessmen thus in a way is buying time from people, leverage on business partners and employees which is mutually beneficial to all the parties involved with agreements to the terms and conditions attached.

While time can actually be bought, but nobody can buy back lost time, time which has passed can never ever be bought, which brings me to opportunity cost, when the timing is right, a business proposal is in front of you wanting to invest and be part of it, if you miss it that time, in future when they succeed, you cannot turn back time thus you live a life with regrets and nothing else.

We can buy time but we cannot buy lost time since we cannot turn back the clock. Instead of living with regrets, why not make the best use of time to do what we like, go after our dreams, passion or wealth.

If you are clueless about opportunity cost, there is a daily repeating event in the neighbourhood near you. Just start queuing up for free newspapers everyday, at time you may be in the front, but what happens if you are at the back of the queue without any free newspapers left. That is the lost of opportunity. You can choose to wake up early, take action by queuing or find shortcuts.

If you lose it, you cannot find it back, since the newspapers are all given out with no spare copies. It is identical to doing business. Just with the exception of business where money comes into the picture.

If you know Microsoft, Google and Facebook could be what it is today, if there is a opportunity for you to invest when they are still unknown, you have found the perfect opportunity that once lost, it is lost forever for good or bad depending on your perspective, time is important, so make sure you know how to look ahead and invest in visions, not dreams.

Today at this date, I have an opportunity for interested parties, I’m not sure how long or short this limited opportunity to work with successful businessmen will last, but if you understand the value of time, do not hesitate to contact me,

I’ll get back to you if you show interest in wealth accumulation, moreover whatever I am doing right now, it is tested, proven with time and results from seniors who have being there, done that. I’m learning from businessmen who plans on building companies, if you want to be part of it, why not now, ask me for more details.

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Laziness is the lack of desire to expand effort. It is to appear sluggish, slow moving, resistant to work.

It is a psychological problem that manifests itself in our own mind. By repeating telling ourselves that we are lazy, one day you will notice that you will tell others yourself and confirm yourself from your own mouth that you’re a lazy bone thus pushing and avoid any job or work which can be a hassle.

Laziness derives from the word lazy, but there’s a slight critical difference between these two words which dictionary and schools don’t talk about.

Laziness is a problem while being lazy is a catalyst to speed up productivity and efficiency at work for finding shortcuts. Once you start working, you will realize the difference. A shortcut is needed to reduce time, effort and to increase profits for minimal effort made.

People who practice laziness, will have a harder difficult lives and living in a environment filled with problems created by their own laziness.

People who are lazy are making lots of money. Look at your employment, do they do the work themselves or do they pass or divide their workload to the group to minimize the time spent on a project. Just do a simple comparison, is it easier for a group of people to complete a project or just a individual to complete a project? When workload is spread out, the workload decreases and thus profits are made in the process.

Another example will be for the sales people. Are the people bring in sales for companies and allow the business to profit earning more or is the employees doing the administrative work earning more? Ask and you will notice the difference. People who bring in the bacon and pass the job or work to others are earning more money, while the doers are making just average income doing not as productive things as compared to bringing in profits for the company. Nevertheless, administrative employees are just as important, if not the job or work will not get done if nobody takes up the job.

To be wealthy and successful, you first have to learn to become a lazy person finding shortcuts without reducing the profit margin or to increase any problems comprise safety at work.

Once you find or have created the blueprint, you have found yourself a winning formula which can bring you wealth and it all starts from the mind, put on your thinking cap. It is like selling a franchise business, you hold the master key, you just sell your franchise model to investors who want profits from the business, collecting royalties from every investor who is using your system.

To master the art of being lazy without having laziness in your mind is an art, a skill that must be learned and applied correctly and it all starts with your mind. So stop being a lazy bone and start thinking.

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Relationship is an association of two or more people which is based on different purpose and bonding. It may be based on for business interactions, social commitments, interpersonal or intimate relationship.

Different purpose of relationship requires different methods of handling, and understanding how it works is the key to solving the root of the problems should it surface.

The root and basics of relationship management is to look at the difference between how a man and a woman handle relationship.

There is a common saying “Men can forget but they cannot forgive. Women can forgive but they cannot forget.”

During a courtship, there is both positive and negative behavior which we can learn from relationship. Relationship management is just like a business and it requires time, effort, commitment and collaboration from both parties to work.

In the process of the courtship, it is sweet, once the courtship is over and grow into a relationship before it evolve into a either a break-up or marriage followed by everlasting love if not separation followed by divorce.

The spectrum of transition of relationship is all about business transaction these days due to the change in culture and influences. Romance; love; commitment; responsibility; accountability ; management; operations; protection; expansion.  It is all about the cycle before it duplicates itself or it dies off.

Romance is sweet like an appetizer, a small dish to stimulate a desire for more.  It can be of in all flavors depending on the person’s character and personality. It is the selection of which appetizer is suitable for you like choosing a partner.

Once you take your pick, you start to taste it, the taste lingers in your mouth, either your taste buds accept it if not reject it. If you accept it, it starts to go inside, making you hungry wanting more increasing your appetite. It is the courtship whereby you want to consume it, but it just does not want you to know what the next dish is. With anticipation, the desire grows, like in a courtship, from hands to shoulders to waist, hips, kissing and other intimate actions translating romance into love.

Love is when you start to have the taste of the dish, and you ask for more, wanting the next dish to be served fast. Short light kiss becomes French-kissing and it proceeds further with hands into the picture. Like you start off with different breads, applying either butter or jam just simply hands and or with just a butter knife. As you progress, you start using tools to consume more and the tools get more, which is when intimacy increases and clothes start dropping piece by piece.

Commitment is when the main course get served, finally you see the dish in front of you, salivating, starts drooling and you can’t wait to consume the main dish. It is whereby clothes are completely removed; all you see in front of you is the naked body. Alluring, sexy with a sense of curiosity of how it will be like.

With a slice of cut on the meat, you put it into your mouth, its equivalent to making a commitment, a promise to your partner that you will stay by his/her side. Soon as you consume the main dish, you start to fell the slight fullness in your stomach. As foreplay moved into intercourse, the promise is made and commitment sets in.

Having finished the main course, the rest of the course can be predicted, with the delicious dish already served, whatever dish coming up next is just lighter in flavor then the main course which was just finished. Like after the intercourse, ejaculation sets in, satisfaction in both parties. The customer decides to stay till the end of the course, while the cook is happy that the customer enjoyed the main course.

With that, responsibility takes places. You will start discussing how nice the dish was previously, and perhaps next time your choice of dishes if you were to come back again. Similarly like how ladies like to hug their partners after it, lying on their partner’s chest or in the arms, looking into the eyes, smiling happily, chatting about the feelings during the intimate physical contact.

Accountability sets in soon after, like the dessert that’s coming up next, it can be of either hot or cold dessert to tantalize your taste buds usually ending with sweet desserts so the customer will come back for more. Like a happy couple resting in the comfort of each other, either one waking up slightly earlier to prepare breakfast for the other partner, leaving sweet memories and closing the chapter leaving wonderful and pleasant memories, allowing the couple to make plans for marriage.

Management is the bills of the whole set breakfast/lunch/dinner. Settling the bills, checking if the bill is right for any overcharging like a couple in bliss, planning for the next session with budgeting involved now.

Budgeting includes the promise and if the partner is responsible for his/her actions before a second and three set meal can be consumed together. Discussed wisely, the budget only gets sweet and larger with more commitments and responsibilities like choice of restaurant, if want to upgrade to a higher class restaurant paying for the service and ambiance similarly to discussion of settling down for a family.

Operations is how the restaurant runs the after sales service, the methods which they will offer to give you reasons to patronize the restaurant or their service again. It is when the partner shows his/her attention, care and concern for each other to make it work and have the relationship running smoothly without any food scraps getting stuck in between the teeth.

Protection is whereby restaurants come up with new dishes, promotions to attract and retain their valued customers. This is when business rivals surface allowing the customers to chance to taste other recipes and dishes. This will be when partners come up with new tricks such as new image, choice of clothes, some teasing, and new positions and change of environment to entice their own partners to stay faithful and loyal to each other.

Expansion is when the business is doing well; restaurant owner decides to open another outlet via franchise model duplicating their success. It is whereby both partners planting and wants seeds to be planted in the farmlands. For males, it’s to get the female pregnant, for females, it is to get married and the cycle continues, this time on the baby inside the womb.

Transactions are happening everyday, every second, how you run the business and how much you profit depends on you and nobody else. Learn management skills, it is the skill that is applicable to anything and everything.

Have a profitable business and a happy marriage. =)

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Perfect is a word used to describe flawlessness and completeness, everybody and business aspire to be perfect but there’s no business or person who is perfect and it will not be possible.

The only way to be as close as getting perfect is to aim for perfection, excelling in products, customer service, before, during and after sales service including delivery, information counter, food etc.

To work towards perfection, is a uphill task but it is not impossible, with each feedback and complaints, there will always be rooms for improvements and thus to space to perfecting any business or person character and behavior.

To strive for perfection, is equivalent to aiming of the highest proficiency in skill or excellence in art or in a trait. In order to be close to perfect like a champion, first have to face a lot of obstacles, hurdles and learning to go against the tide and waves.

Like a deserving champion surfer paddling against the huge sea waves, duck dive together with the board to avoid being washed away by in incoming wave, and emerging in the after wave, sporting for the big signs of a big wave and working hard to ride top of the wave before surfing inside the barrel and coming out still surfing on the board before the barrel of close in on the surfer.

An occupation which can integrate both passion and business together, work towards perfection is  property, whereby the wealthy land developer builds his/her own dream home with the state of the art high tech facilities and amenities that everyone dream of.

In order to first learn the skill of perfection, we first have to learn to eliminate our own negative habits one by one which will take a long time, but it’s a worthy bargain with nothing to lose and a lot to gain with time.

There isn’t anything which is perfect, but we can work towards perfection and perfecting ourselves, environment any other things as long as it is within our abilities.

To succeed, master the skill of perfecting something, not to be perfect.

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Small is what majority of the people don’t like, but in monetary size, it is welcomed by bankers, businessmen, designers and fashion professionals whereas average people like to have big bigger items and ownership thus they spend more.

The trail to wealth and successful starts from being small to big, from a small business and expand it into bigger business. Rich people start big, and grower bigger without learning the technician issues with starting from small thus they lack the foundation to go from small to big, and contribute to their failure to come back successful after once declared a bankrupt.

Look around the people who you know who invested capital into businesses. Those who jump into the boss category start by throwing in lots of hard earn savings from friends, family relatives and parents. They never once know the pains and labour of managing everything themselves, thus in the event should they want to cut cost, they don’t know how to do it themselves and thus with lots of weakness themselves, the business collapse and never picked up again.

Lost of trust and savings from their closed loved ones is part of the reason. Failure to cut cost is another reason, not knowing the basics and how the business really works from the insider trade secrets is the fatal flaw and the mistake which small business investors failed in.

In the world of property, starting small is essential, but recognize the fact of Singapore versus other countries, It is common for us and in Asia those developing countries to have big homes at a affordable price, needless to say, China has the largest yet extremely affordable price to those homes.

As Singapore economy progress, so does the homes, there are inflation which are obvious to people as home buyers but from gullible home buyers, they feel that it’s value for money, but due to demand and supply, buyers are ignorant of the facts thus they never fail to push the sales of property up and speculation etc.

Singapore property is going from average size to smaller size homes yet commanding a higher price tag, reason, lack of land, more demand for their own home, high demand not desired, low supply of desired homes thus there are huge demands for homes near their relatives etc and rules implemented to assist people to encourage family bonding etc.

Look at Singapore’s property market, the square feet of the home, previously average was 100+ square meters, now it is slowly reducing to slightly less than 100 square meters. Look into future, it will be super cramped and commanding a high price tag like Hong Kong a pigeon home all squeezed inside..else look at Russia first world economy status, their homes average square meters was only sixty square meters, extremely packed yet cost so much more.

Successful and wealthy businessmen always believe in “Less Is More” and this is true and will withstood the test of time, thus quality is always more important than quantity. Look at the different types of food business, markets, coffee shops and food courts are all offering affordable food that’s no longer cheap like few years back and they get more portion. They run the business longer than average, wants more customers with larger portions and serving for coffee shop business owners, to earn more, they earn by quantity thus they can’t offer quality.

Food and Beverage industry will know, increasing the business profits by setting a time limit of two hours for whole course of Chinese New Year set lunch or dinner package, some restaurants who wants to squeeze more profits than lower the limit to a hour so every hour, new batch of customers come in, their profits are up making huge profits during the Chinese New Year season.

If you look at high class restaurant, they however are super successful yet able to retain their high class standards and price without having the rush hour kind of environment because of the way they do business. The customers are king, no time limit, only appointment basis, once it’s fully booked, they will not make excuses to force customers to leave restaurant unless they are happy to leave. Never mind if the food portion is small, but the value of the food it commands is of high end standards and grade thus accountable and justified for the pricing thanks to benchmarking.

Paying more for class, service standards, ambiance and the luxury of time is what amounts to the difference between high-class restaurants versus average restaurants.

Look at different business model and how they operate and you will realize how wealth is really generated.

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