Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

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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Survival is the best bet against anything in the world.

Having watched documentary of the week: Surviving Disaster – Avalanche, it gave me new insights and reminder to on survival and the basic guidelines and principles to live. Linking it up with what I myself experienced on my progress in Entrepreneurship, it gave me a actual blueprint on surviving the hardships of entrepreneurship.

I’ll just summarized what i’ve just learned and convert it to make it business-proof.

In an ski trip with an injured ski-mate with a open bone fracture, and with a handful of team mates, with night approaching, the best bet is to set up a snow cave to spend the night waiting for day light before attempting to find help.

Check for any injuries, in this case, it’s a open bone fracture, cover the open wound with clean cloth to prevent infection, without pressing on the bone, put it on top of it, break the ski stick in the correct length and tie the leg tight against the sticks to prevent anymore movement. Lay person on a ski board, move injured head downwards with leg on top. So in event of hitting an object, wound will not incur any additional damage, with head protected by helmet. With sun setting, it’s time to build a snow cave for the night.

The snow cave allows all ski members a safety cover from the elements, shelter from the wind (which speed up heat lost), allows members to stay together to have the warm air in the cave stay there while the cold air drops to the entrance.

Once the cave is built, immediately move the injured team mate inside, as motionless individual stand greater chance of hypothermia. Lay the injured person on the, while other ski members take turns to take care of each other. Giving the injured as much food as possible to encourage more heat generated, but don’t let injured drink alcohol which speeds up hypothermia. One person in-charge of the injured, another in-charge of keeping the entrance partial open for air to come in, the other one to check for every team member’s health status (preventing death sleep in the cold), and rotate duties every hour.

Next day comes, day-break, leave behind the slowest team mate to take care of the injured in the snow cave while the rest seek help.Member staying behind uses urine and ski board to mark a clear X (cross) sign on the top of the mountain while the rest find help (instead of all waiting to die).

In the process, downwards, they faced an avalanche, 2 team mates trapped in it. Using avalanche survival kit to track (20 yards effective radius) members trapped under the snow and dig them out of it before they die of suffocation and hypothermia. Moving in a zig-zag direction to cover the whole distance of the avalanche path.

Upon finding trapped member, dig up, and wait for help, use binoculars to reflect light to the helicopter, and create a landing zone (L.Z) preferrably on a flat surface. Wait for the search and rescue dogs to search for team mate who’s survival kit was not placed with him, and instead a bag further putting oneself in danger.

Than inform the rescue team about the injured at the top of the mountain.

Now for the entrepreneur conversion. The food is the important fuel that allows members to live, in business wise, minimal food to fill our stomach.

Put aside emotions, which is vital for wealth creation, follow and obey leaders who can grow money, not reduce it.

Follow all basic ethics and the laws to observe discipline, so you will not have your efforts gone down the drain one day when you’re caught for any crime.

The snow cave refers to a shelter over our head as a protection.

Team members: Select only a handful who will not put you at more risk. Example: spilling your business secrets/strategies, waste your resources, burn bridges of trust, creditability and reputation critical for success.

Search and rescue team refers to new sources of income when your financial reserves are depleting fast. Seeking help is not a sign of failure, it is to live to die another day.

Proper medical, survival knowledge with experienced leader: Vital in a process, to tell exactly what’s happening, what will happen and how to minimize risk of failure and look out for safety.

PS: In ski, dangers are bears, elements of cold, but in business, it’s the eagles and vultures, seasoned players who gradually/openly steal your strategies, food, business partners, networks and turn them against you!

So weigh your own skills set, financial reserves, networks, expertise, knowledge and flexibility to adapt to new changes, such as temporary going back to employment to first solve the fundamental money issue before you resume your entrepreneurship.

Last but not the least, be damn aware of your own surroundings, keep your strategies and wealth generation sources to yourself. In the absence of team mates, depend on yourself and your own resources.

Never ever give in to opposition of your family and love ones (that’s logical) knowing they will want to be in the rats race suffering together for a short-term most risky employment without any job security.

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Friends are people who we are attached to with feelings of affection with friendly relations.

Friends come and go as we grow and age. The fact is that the older we get, we should have come across more friends as compared to previous when we were young, but why is it on the contrary that we were much happier as a child playing with our friends.

Looking at our present self, as adults, is there any body whom you can really consider friends? People who share your both your worries and joy plus the special moments of laughter together.

As a child, we have limited friends, but it is those limited friends but are quality friends whom we can share our joy, happiness and worries bonding together easily without worries for backstabbing, credit stealers, spies or trickery. It is such a pure decent and simple friendship as a child.

Adults literally and technically have less than a handful of people considered to be friends. Who do you speak do when you are lonely at night and cannot sleep? Is there someone who comes to you mind that you want to speak to but is worried if your privacy may be compromised if you share it with your friend who works and have common friends as you?

As we grow, the purpose and desire eventually exceeds our basic need for friendship, thus closing door to communication, and with peer pressure, society pressure for survival, we lose contacts with people whom we once were closed to and become acquaintance.

While I was typing this post, than realized that it is possible to still have friends whom we can trust but only on condition that both parties absolutely have no common friends, thus in this situation, it wil purely be a heart to heart talk, without worries that secrets will be spilled and passed around eventually becoming the gossip topic of the work place or conversion topic among your friends.

Thinking back, as a teenager, it was when I started to understand friends, and starting to know quality friends. Either gender will do, just so as long as he/she is there to companionship, to play, to talk, and go out together.

When I was twelve years old, I got to know a friend in a tuition center with Chinese Development Assistant Council Program at Hong Wen Primary and few months later we met again in the same secondary school and in the same class. It was than at that moment, we both became instant friends at first sight, no questions asked. That best friend relationship lasted only a year plus before it subsides into close friend status.

Soon after another classmate became my best friend, in the same group of friends in the class due to same topic and recreation club but it wasn’t long before being replaced by another person as we both travelled back home on Mass Rapid Train together back after school. While we may share different interest and subjects, but at least we share something in common, the heart to accompany each other in silence without talking. That was when I understand true friendship. Be it happiness or sad, as long as somebody is there for you, no speech, it’s the thought and presence that matters most.

After secondary school, we each went our separate paths, but still remain as close friends despite no longer having any common topic. When I got into polytechnic, it was when I really got to know and make friends with females, on much closer terms as compared to secondary school whereby I do not speak to females other than school work related.

Thankfully I had a good wonderful first year with Republic Poly in Tanglin Campus in both terms with different but wonderful classmates which remind me of my primary school days. Happy without worries or having to worry about no common topic as we all shared the same thing in mind, how to spend the day in class acting intelligent and hardworking but in fact we are just playing games, watching videos online which was fun.

Sharing games, nice videos, food topics and even on how to penalize each other in presentation so as to score high marks for ourselves, but nothing personally, all those penalizing of each other surface and stays only within the classroom, in particular only during presentation time at the question and answer fifth presentation which compromises of five groups followed by sixth presentation (model presentation) by the facilitator.

During poly days, I got to know a person from Friendster in year 2005, and it wasn’t long before I found another true friend who I can speak my mind out, only that this time, that person was a she as compared to previous three times he among the secondary group of friends.

Text messaging each other deep in the night when we had difficulty sleeping if not just wanting somebody to talk to. Thus I would just cycle over and chat before returning back home to sleep. That did not last long either, it spread over two years plus, but technically counting the number of days, its less than a month, but what makes it so memorable was the connection and trust with secrets. Not long after, due to education parted ways. Gap widens like in earlier years in school.

Thinking back, have we ever had any trusted friends as adults to speak to? Seriously at present moment, I cannot think of any. As we each pursue our own dreams, vision, work or education, spreading our wings, walking closer towards the path of loneness and pretending to be friendly to each other to climb higher.

Like-wise in business, at work, while we all desire to find real friends, but in fact it is running away further beyond our reach at the expense of money for survival just to fill our stomach. Adults have little to near zero true friends. Most of the people befriend each other just for a hidden agenda to climb and gain support from colleagues for pay rise and nothing more than it.

Where can I find my next true friend? Or will it forever just be a dream only? Perhaps. .. Another lonely night with nobody to talk to.

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Black is result of the lack of light. In the absence of light, it is complete darkness in pitch black.

There are many words associated with black or darkness. Negativity, underground groups such as gangsters, mafias, criminals along with other natural habitat creatures such as bats, underground, caves and explorers often risk death trying to venture into the unknown.

Darkness is not considered to be anything negative but rather it is just another kind of living habitat which is not suitable for most of the living organisms.

Only the creatures with the strongest will power will survive and evolve to change themselves and learn the ropes of survival in complete darkness, in this case a cave.

Having just watched “Planet Earth” from channel U, while it seems dark and creepy looking at the caves from the outside where there’s light, pitch black never fails to give off a sense of misery which attracts dare devils to test out their guts.

Thanks to modern technology and the documentary shows, it is possible to understand and be mesmerized by the allure of the hidden beauty in complete darkness under within the cave.

As the common sayings goes: The most beautiful is often the most lethal and deadly which is true in nature, cave exploration has got its high risk and is filled with nothing but danger, especially if you decide to explore under water.

It is when you live and learn the rules of survival in the darkness, depending on your senses for food and your life that makes it much easier for you to survive out in the wild when there’s light.

Survival is a testament of certain success, regardless of whatever situation and environment, even if it is pitch dark, one must learn and navigate through the routes and find the way out.

The creatures living in darkness and daylight both have their own ways of survival, but man on the other hand can survive both in light and in complete darkness thanks to technology and learning some crucial survival skills.

While we are mesmerized by the beauty of nature we also must respect nature. Likewise, to live, succeed and win, we need to learn the rules of survival in a highly competitive society just like how cave creates evolve through thousands of generations to lose their eyes and be born blind.

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Survival is skill. It is the process of surviving unusual circumstances, dangerous situation or even natural disasters.  It is the techniques to provide basic necessities like food, water and shelter to get help.

Under certain conditions either as mention above or when chased out for a community, a person or any living organism will try their very best to live, that is a genetic system build in most of the living organisms in particular man.

In the documentary show on Okto “Is It Real: Federal Children”, it highlights different previous cases of children who were left in the care of animals, learning their language and some eventually landed up in mental institutions as their caregivers give up.

To survive and live on means to find food, water and shelter, it is already being programmed in our mind. Inside the mom’s womb, in the case of a twins, they will fight for survival in food and space, thus sometimes, moms give birth to twins of different size and weight due to food and space competition.

After birth, the mind is fine tuning the brain wires to learn and accept whatever knowledge and education in the crucial few months to first few years of life.

Before and after birth, the first few years are critical in picking up new skills and knowledge, in this documentary case example, it is the ability to learn and master human language since the federal children are being bought up by dogs, wolfs or relatives from the money family.

Brain is a wonderful organ, which can also rewire itself to adapt to changes which explains why people either upgrade or downgrade themselves in terms in intellectual wisdom and behavior by mixing and learning from the group of people they hang around with.

A person who once experienced a accident, causing bones fracture and damage to the brain thus during the healing process, the body needs to relearn how to walk in road accidents cases. This is when the brain will retune and rewire itself to adapt to learn new things unless that particular learning section of the brain is damaged.

Before I side track too much, lets get back to the topic on survival, as it suggest, our brain are programmed to seek for necessity to give us food, water and shelter. In particular to shelter, this covers the area of attention, care and concern which is just being discussed briefly in the show which I will write more in depth about it.

Shelter to my understanding thanks to the documentary show is defined by care and concern being showered to a infant/child by showing love and attention. When this attention and love is missing from the equation, which maybe a result of abusive parents or lack of attention from both working parents, it will lead to more complications which we see in Singapore these days which is sexual related problems.

Sex itself covers a wide array of topics. The core fundamentals of sex boils down to love and attention, when people will start searching for love and attention from whatever source available which will give us what we seek thus the reason why these days, boys and girls often get into boy-girl relationship.

Reason is simple, to compensate for the lack of attention and love from their caregivers who are their parents, grandparents or relatives and adoptive parents.

Children are being neglected due to intensive global competition for money which converts to bread and bacon for the family thus parents as care-givers have no choice but to seek employment for income to bring the bread and bacon back home.

Looking at the perspective of adults and parents, they are not wrong, and it is their mind, the already programmed system to seek for food, which comes from work to get money thus sexual related problems which we have in Singapore and in other countries is a global problem and is not exclusively to a country.

It is the basis of survival, in order to tackle the problem of sexual related issues, we need to go back to the basics, provide attention and love to the children which are near impossible given the competition from both local and foreign talents for the same piece of pie.

There are many ways to go about and provide a solution to sexual related issues to cut the roots of the problem, but that I will keep it secret till the time for me to offer it as a business product and services for the solution.

If you who is reading this post is a parent, try your best not to neglect your children else problems will gradually crept up to you for your ignorance and those problems will only show up when your children grows up. So if you know the cause already from my post, start showing more attention and love to your children.

Work towards having a blissful family which will solve the root of the problem.

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Language is a system of study for both encoding and decoding of information as communication process.

There are many different variations of languages, from pictorial diagrams, to words, calligraphy, verbal, visual, body and even natural weather predictions and even the use of symbols in some instances.

Man has multiple systems for information processes such as facial, visual, verbal, hearing, body and emotional communication plus breathing rhythm if in close body contact.

Animals on the other hand especially in the marine life have an extensive communication channel which is a common language in different species. It is similar to man having a common language such as English across the globe. Having watched “Water Colours Part 2 of 3”, with a new knowledge of how colour works.

While fishes cannot talk, they compensate it for their brilliant variety of colours. The colour as a language of communication is the same among all the reef animals in particular those animals that does cleaning.  The colourful display of colours and the ability to change colours is how marine animals in particular those living near the coral reefs and sea bed communicate with one another, colours is the language, used by shrimps, fishes, octopus, squids and rays.

Different body parts of colours serves different purposes, either for survival, sex or to allow other cleaners to clean off parasites from their body. Changing of colours represents the appreciation the cleaning services, and for acceptance of partner for the opposite sex during the mating season for fishes.

Colour changes also happens when the fishes are growing up, having completely different colour and body shape so as to remain completely different from the adult fishes to reduce the association and competition thus increasing their chances of survival living next to the adult fishes.

Man also communicates, but unlike the marine animals, we express ourselves more through body language and via sound. While we cannot change our colour, our body also grows more developed as we grow into adulthood, having either more muscular body for  or more curves which increases the sex appeal and attraction from the opposite gender.

Master the art of understanding language, the system of communication via different means so as to increase your chances of survival and to grow up stronger without putting yourself at risk as you grow.

Reduce risk and increase your odds of survival by mastering the language in different variations not limited to only speech.

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Dependable as mention in earlier post (blog entry) is on the basis of reliable, and it has to do with dependability as a person or system and it gets more in depth for deeper understanding.

Dependability is the ability to do things beyond what you expected of you, a person or a system. Such as troubleshooting, working with things beyond what you learn and learning it quick as well as putting it into application and coming up with a solution.

Majority of the people need not be dependable in terms of employment situation but ought and should be dependable in a family setting or situation so that the partner and the babies can depend on the person regardless of gender or age for survival and basic necessity like bringing the bread and bacon back home to the family.

It is the responsibility of doing and going beyond what is expected of a person or system to ensure everything goes smoothly without much and major disruptions.

In a family, the head of the family, most often the father figure is taking charge of ensuring that he brings back bread to the family to feed them thus leading to the phrase “sole breadwinner”. Bringing back bacon will be a bonus.

A father is needed not only to be reliable but also dependable, as he may be required to attend to sudden child health issues and family financial difficulties due to family complications and issues with parents in laws, disagreements or anything and everything which calls for attention in the family.

Due to globalization and increasing stiff competition, both parents need to be at work and thus the family is no longer depending on just a person to bring the bread back home. Instead in developing countries, both parents need to work in order to survive and afford to pay for necessities.

No matter how times have changed, generally the rule still applies as the male needs to be the bread winner because unless the law is changed to complete equality, where there is no law that enforce a guy to pay for the maintenance of his spouse and family than only can ladies and women be considered equal.

Thus if you who is reading this blog post right now, and happens to be a lady plus you are still single, start searching for a responsible partner now. It is easy to find a reliable partner but not a dependable partner. As to where to find it, I leave it to your imagination and experience.

Be responsible and accountable for the person who you will be living with for the rest of your life. Ladies, proceed with caution and make the right choice.

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Empower is to authorize, give power or authority by legal or verbal means to either an individual or a business. It is the process of enabling or permits a person or a business to do something which he/she or the business previously may have no control over with.

There is a long debated issue over the difference in Man and Woman. Seeking equality which is practically impossible and not logical, it is like asking a man to give birth to a baby.

Man and woman are born different according to genes the chromosomes which differentiate our gender the moment the sperm and egg was fertilized. With differences in genes, differences in race, language, religion, and gender set us apart and completely different from one another.

Ladies asking for complete equality is more like asking a lion to instantly change or have a complete transformation to become a tiger which has different genes which is undisputable.

We should work accordingly to our difference be it race, language, religion, or even gender, focus on our strengths, and create a team, with different members the weakness will be greatly reduced with multiple strengths to cover up for each other weaknesses.

Teamwork is the only workable way to achieve a higher social status with the help of one another. Don’t seek to look for people to empowering people, instead look for ways to empower yourself to constantly improve and upgrade yourself so as to keep growing, replacing the old with new like how our body cells are doing daily; the natural survival genetic rules of live.

Replacing and duplication is what makes us who we are thanks to the wonders of science and understanding of how our own body works through the arts of science.

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Vision is sight or the power of sensing with eyes. It is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from visible light reaching the eye which results in perception also known as eyesight, sight or vision.

Earlier I have written about vision, and today at this moment, I will write about visual perception which is another form of vision in dictionary context.

Often we man learn from observation which we learn by sight by right. Other living organisms learn either from sight, heat, smell, and touch which spreads into taste and feel in deeper context.

It is often said that “What we SEE is what we GET” but this isn’t always true. Whatever we can see with our own eyes will not necessary convert and means the whole truth in which we learn by talking in a discussion, getting to learn what was before, during and after an incident.

Our very own eyes already give us a bias side of visual perception. If we just depend on relying on our eyes for verification, it will only give us limited information and details of how other people views different events.

Having just watched “Water Colours” from Okto channel, understanding a deeper meaning to vision and the different eyes and colour receptor cones in different species of living beings from human to snakes to octopus, shrimps and fishes, it adds more variations and definition to both context and content giving us more insights to visual perceptions.

Man has three colour receptor cones in our eyes, while fishes have around two to three colour receptor cones in their eyes but with a wider position in the placement among the colour spectrum which enables some fishes and marine animals to view what man cannot view which falls into ultra-violent rays and dark black places.

It is this ability to see visual from different angles which enables us to learn about each other and create a common language in the world today, a common denominator in the language money as a form a survival.

Money is a double edged sword, seen in different eyes and treat differently by people from different social status and class. The same applies to visual perception by marine animals in particular fishes. The reason why marine fishes are so colourful is because in the documentary show, it was said that marine animals uses their wonderful colours not as a camouflage but as using the background to conceal themselves by means of disruptive camouflaging.

In marine world, fishes, rays, shrimps all use their vision, strengths to help one another. Visually poor animals may not be able to able to fend for themselves if they depend on themselves, thus it was shown that a shrimp or crayfish animal depends on a fellow friendly neighbour fish to replace the shrimp’s lack of visual ability. The fish than depend on the shrimp and its strong claws to build a holes of tunnel to protect both the fish and the shrimp from incoming predators. So to speak, both the shrimp and the fish is helping one another to live and survive.

The same should be done on land where man should help one another instead of fighting for the same food. Why not try or help one another find more food to co-exist together in a peaceful manner?

It is this selfish reason in which businesses often take over another business and not to share the pie. It is the selfishness that restricts them from growing bigger.

It is a natural survival instinct which we all must learn to abolish. Marine animals and the deep vast blue ocean is a learning ground which we can model after.

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Compete is to outdo another for acknowledgment, prize and supremacy. It is the rivalry of two or more parties.

The most competitive industry in the employment sector will be Wall Streets in the USA. If you don’t know anything or what it does, watch Channel News Asia “Chinese woman succeeding on Wall Streets” and you will get what I mean.

In employment, it is the most competitive employment for employees where sky is the limit, and like what is said in the show, anybody who can survive in Wall Street for at least a year is already earning more than others. They have five times higher wages than others in the world. A hedge fun manager can easily earn up to a billion dollars of wages if he/she is successful.

In business, Forbes ranking list is the most competitive place for businessmen and entrepreneurs. In the past, being a millionaire will be sufficient to be among featured in the Forbes List, since few years back, Forbes List has changed and it takes at least a billion to climb into the list, thus the competition is intense.

Unlike employment, business is easier and much more fun and happening, if you enjoy what you are doing, something that is your passion, you are already ahead of your competitors because there is no classification between work and play for people who are working on their passion as business thus passion is a critical factor in business.

Competition is everywhere, it is the survival of the fittest for our own lives, we cannot depend on anybody except ourselves for a living, no even our parents, although parents are willing to give up their lives for us, but that is something that’s not good.

We should learn from the wild rogue nature of animals and beast, the instincts are kept inside each and everyone of us and will only surface in desperate times for survival. Clueless on what I’m talking about, watch Okto Documentary shows and you might learn about related stuffs.

Wild animals only protect their babies until they are fully independent and able to hunt on their own before leaving them on their own and carrying on with their own lives. This is seen and practiced by Western countries which is good but not in Asian countries thus contributing to Asian weakness in survival instincts.

Go for more natural outdoor sports and advantage, you don’t need to go into the advantage and sports full time, just a one time experience will do if you can catch and remember the feeling, experience at the back of your hand and recall it easily. If not, put in some effort into it and experience what nature and what is required for success.

Entrepreneurship is all about independence, and it come from freedom, breaking away from parents, care and protection and standing alone by yourself beating the odds and be the champion.

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