Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

Zone in dictionary context may be nothing more than just territory or area in different nations, but in it has a deeper meaning in terms of entrepreneurship.

You might have come across if not heard of the phrase “Get in the zone” before..but have you ever thought what it truly means?

In world of business, where it is constantly at war for the following: niche market, brand,  retain and grow clients, profits by bringing more value and convenience to the end users who are ultimately the real boss of any business.

This question has always being bothering me for years..it was only recently that the puzzle has being solved..thanks to National Achievers Congress 2011 Singapore organized by Success Resources. With a ticket, attended the full three days..it is than I realized that I finally understand what it means.

Like majority if not all of the speakers having a similarity despite being different individuals, they all know where, what and how to play in their own zone.

If you’re still confused, it actually refers to playing by your core competency at where your strength truly lies in. Having the skill is not enough, to be able to continuously work without working is the definition of getting in the zone.

Find out, and ask yourself where your strengths and interest truly lies, if you can ever convert your passion into your life and provide value to the others.

Once you truly mastered and grasp the idea of what you can do for the whole of your life until you die without regrets, complains regardless of the hard work, little returns no matter how small it may be..you by than will have found your own zoning.

The elusive unique area that lies your passion, find ways to fuel your passion, keep it running, get comfortable (against all odds of rejections, disapproval) doing what you love, even if you may experience tremendous set backs on your journey towards your goal, just push on.

The reason why most entrepreneurs fail during their starting up phrase is due to failure to get within their own zones respectively. Once they experience financial issues, they take many steps back, but only an true entrepreneur push on, seeking other means to solve that problem with every single new attempt to fix whatever that’s not working in their favor and converting every No into a Yes as the ultimate goal.

Have you found your own zone yet? If you have not, start looking.

If you don’t know how to start, try out anything and everything that you can get yourself and your hands on..try everything, and ask if you like whatever you are doing currently, and if you can continue to do that very thing which you will not get sick off til the last day of your life.

If you found it, great, if you don’t start exploring. By the way, that’s the purpose of your life – the calling of your inner soul..that gets the super wealthy, influential individuals moving, staying clean from drugs, sex and bad publicity.

Find something that will allay your inner peace, give you a sense of happiness, most often that comes from sharing or helping others to find that value which you believe to be beneficial to many others too.

“Success is not a destination, but a journey..”

The more you give, the more you shall receive..

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Bureaucracy is commonly described as the administration of an organization usually in large entities like government, multi-national corporations and non-government corporations.

It is a system that is successfully implemented like a clockwork within the organization so much so that it has literally fused and become one with the culture, and behavior of how the administrative, processing, and disciplinary actions works. It is mainly created with the intention to generate and increase efficiency and productivity within the organization possible with the least amount of resources thereby increasing net profits which attributes to more bonuses for the shareholders, investors, and employees.

The system is built on a step-by-step hierarchical level, and no one is to challenge that every system created to keep the organization and the business running like a well oiled machine as though it is like a robot working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week non-stop.

Yet such a system is also a victim of its own success. For this is also very often in majority of the organizations a largely one-way-communication system from the top-down approach with no ways of the top management nor the owners listening to the cries and concerns of the ground workers that in fact the executioners, who carry out the daily operations that results in consistent profits for the business and the organization.

Its’ failure comes from not the top management, but rather from the middle management in particular the supervisors, managers and directors who may want to secure their own employment appraisals and be kept in the good books of the top leaders thereby keeping only employees under their command those who will boot-lick, curry favors beneficial to the immediate superiors and at times compromising on the values and objectives of the company just so to simply keep their own jobs for simply job security.

Largely due to this ignorance, and failure to implement bottom-up strategies to interact with the ground workers are the primary culprit for the collapse and failure of any known organizations and it even dates back to civilizations as far back as the dinosaur age where humans were not part of the equation just yet.

Why you may wonder as to me mentioning about civilizations is simply because they failed to listen, observe and react in time to response to looming dangers that will put themselves at risk of extinction. Meaning to say, failure to observe, protect, and conserve the very source of food (money for organizations) will result in gradual extinction (failure and collapse for businesses) in the long term should they have reacted and spot potential dangers of food shortage In organizations’ context, it refers to resentments from the employees, and a full employee work strike will cripple the business and even the national economy gross domestic product of any country.

Just look at the middle east countries numerous strikes, civil wars, and even taking into account of Thailand internal politics war with the red and yellow shirts supporting different leaders with their interest at heart and you will soon start to realize the importance and link of success. It is simply by just listening, protect, conserve grow, and fix any disagreements, grievances peacefully for a mutually beneficial future for long term survival and sustainability.

If you really want to succeed in your business/personal life whatsoever, read up on how Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Li-Ka-Shing run their businesses, the model and how they treat their employees with utmost respect and humility. However, should you have no time to read nor find out about their thick volumes of information and practices, why not hire somebody who knows and understand it.

You can seek the professionals, but just pray hard and do your homework that they have your interest at heart and is not out to earn one-time lump sum of consultancy fees from you or your business organization. If you can’t find that kind of professional, perhaps you can consider giving me a chance to prove my worth and how I can help you and your business grow.

To win or to lose. To create success or crawl into despair and failure depends on the how individuals deal with a mutually beneficial system of two way bureaucracy.

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Value is defined as the worth often associated with benefits to either oneself, a group or to the masses in terms of financial aspect.

But when it is viewed, rated and determined in terms of ethics, it is not something that can be justified by monetary sense. Yet something that not many would know how to weight the importance of value in terms of ethics without the ability to determine it’s real worth.

From the perspective of poor individual, value is not as important as having immediate access to money which is considered top priority for them for basic survival

Yet from the perspective of wealthy individual, majority if not all of the individuals would weigh value about money, as they can measure the returns on investments with a business based on the accounts.

That is what differentiates the rich and the poor, even the rich from and wealth who know their priority.

Poor have only benefit in their dictionary, not value. Rich and wealthy have both words benefits and value in their dictionary by definition is to understand what it brings to the table at the end of the day in a financial transaction.

Reasons for the poor get poorer over time is due to the following reasons:
1. They want only immediate money commonly defined as benefit
2. They want the benefits exclusively for themselves and their immediate family members only.
3. They don’t care about the interest of others and how much benefits others will gain | In short selfishness

Reasons for the rich getting richer with time are due to the following reasons:
1. They want both benefit (immediate) and value (long term)
2. They want to share the profits. Only by sharing with mutually benefit terms, than can everybody grow wealthier without sacrificing anyone. | In short, this what market expansion with profit sharing.
3. They care not only about themselves, their immediate family members, friends and even their colleagues, employees and business partners. By helping others, they are helping themselves too, but the results comes back in another form of financial returns of employee, business partners loyalty so the business is always growing. | In short: Long term investment, don’t be myopic/short-sighted.

If you like to know more details about expanding the market and growing your wealth on a long-term basis, head over to my other site, that talks about a ebook that I have written named Consumer Guide: 7 Secrets To Cost Efficient Shopping Analysis.

Inside this ebook that i’ve personally written, I talked about how an individual can get the maximal value out of a product/service with 7 secrets of cost efficient shopping analysis. How you can stretch every single dollar you spend on your next shopping trip.

Including flexible, customizable secrets that you can use on both products and services with examples on stand-a-lone basis. While it is titled Customer Guide, I have also included reasons, and explanations on how to make the customer want to buy your products, from both the clients and the sales professional’s perspective.

The key to getting from poor to riches (wealth) is to understand the in-depth value, plan long-term and don’t be myopic.

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Value is the concept of worth. In economic sense, it is the price of goods and services.

Understanding and appreciating value holds the key to creating wealth. One which not many will realize, but yet it is practiced in every single business model globally and you’ll notice this in every profitable business model and industry. Those who don’t, never made it successful and end up closing business, feeding banks interests on top of loans and never really learn what went wrong in the first place.

While it is important in business, the business owner not necessary need to deliver it him/herself to the clients. This can be done through the employees under a set of SOP also known as standard operation procedures. Understanding how to deliver value and the experience to the end clients will result in business growth, in return healthy financial accounts.

While most businesses seek to offer value, but not many understanding the link to providing quality value as compared to cheap, affordable low-end value for money products and services.

Both the super rich, affluent and the ordinary middle income business owners all provide value contributing to their success, but only the super rich knows how to get up their value by charging more and backing it up with quality service and experience.

Looking at a either a 5 or 6 star hotel, the treatment of the clients, Very Important People aka VIPs, as well as the space, ambiance, room for quiet conversations, experience, gathering only the brightest, richest, influential contacts worthy of the start treatment. That is what makes value.

Unlike the ordinary value-for-money, $2 food, wile it’s good for majority, but it’s not financially profitable for the business owner. He/she may be trying to sell more (quantity) to compensate for the low price. In-directly losing focus on the quality, freshness of the food, which is key reason for which clients will buy from a store. That’s one critical mistake made by most newly start-up business owners in food business in markets and in food courts.

Yet when you look at fast-food restaurants, they have changed their business operations model from cooked (8yrs back), prepared for walk-in clients to order first, while your food is being prepared, therefore offering quality, freshness guarantee. Clients don’t mind waiting for quality stuff, as long as they are within budget, not too costly, and it should be fine.

The same long queues, and waiting customers can be seen for really delicious food stores in markets locally too. Thus the next time you want to take a shot at wealth creation, remember to provide value with quality, and not quantity.

The other thing that I may have touched on in earlier paragraphs are servicing, but not much written on that particular, as it is general knowledge, and i leave it to your own observations of how different business service their own clients to have them coming back for more, even if the price is slightly higher.

Know wealth, learn to offer value, give clients your best services, and have they agree to value (quality) for money products and services and you’ll find yourself in the wealth creation circle and on your way to growing your wealth. That’s how the rich get richer, and the best part is, you can train others to do it.

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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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Earlier in my previous blog entry, I wrote about my initial plans to launch a product on the 27th Jan 2011.

Now it has a high possibility of being delayed, I can say that it’s a blessing in disguise, just thought of a better phrase to increase the attraction of using better words to glue more eyeballs to the cover page of the book with a sudden flash of copy writing skills which I am learning on my own as I was reading Straits Time and learning how Newspapers actually use this skill to boost sales.

The same skill which they did to boost a Sold Out effect for Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. Today is the 3rd day whereby they are using newspapers to publish this book. I finally learn the 1 strategy used by them.

As I look back and cross-reference to how I managed to remain and capture attention of most forum users with my attention grabbing subject, it all glued together and solve the very question which i had all these years.

Proper use of language will make wonders if applied on correctly. Putting emotions into a words and sparking some elements of controversy is what I found out to the one of the few secrets of copy writing.

Just when I got the feeling that my book will be delayed yesterday. new hopes surfaced when I saw a spectacular view of sun rays shinning from the ground upwards into the sky like what spotlights do in events. Which I captured it down with a camera, telling me that hope is just round the corner. I’ll post the picture in future after I watermark it.

Than today, i got just that, new hopes of additional money with product creation. Instead of re-writing the whole book, chapters, I’ll will writing a 2nd book and market both books together since it compliments each other.

As for the details, maybe next time when my books are ready for launch and adds more value to the product than when left marketed alone.

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Disagreements is a state of prolong dispute or debate over either an issue or an opinion.

It is the difference which often leads to nothing else but conflicts, disagreements, arguments which results in communication break-down and the list of trouble and problems just keep stockpiling like a small harmless snowball rolling down the mountain gradually gaining in mass, velocity and the damage upon impact with contact on any obstacle.

Although the root of all the above starts from a difference in opinion and how things get done, it is more about how to solve and nail the root of the problem in the bud or the seed will sprout that will sprout and grow with time.

Regardless of rich, poor, young, old, male or female, we all will come across and experience disagreements which leads to arguments and if not solved immediately, hatred will take roots in our mind, gradually accumulating in our mind eventually blinding ourselves to bias perspective and clouded judgment coming up with poor decisions thus affecting personal, family and even business operations depending on the situation a person is in.

Different people of different gender, social status have different ways to handling disagreements, I will get to the root of it and address directly the difference of how poor and rich address disagreements.

This can be practice and done by anyone regardless of your gender, social status, age language or religion. It is a skeleton key to ironing out disagreements.

How to solve and nail disagreements in the bud is crucial and critical for success.

Poor people often look and handle any disagreement at face value or what they see that will result in instant repercussions only without factoring into future present tense and the chain of events which it could lead it.

Rich people on the other hand handle disagreement in depth and will factor in anything and everything to put it up for discussion, because it is profits which the rich, affluent, successful and wealthy people are talking about thus they need to talk about anything and everything to ensure profits do not turn into red negative losses.

Below is an example of how poor and rich social class handles disagreements; it is between a mom and her daughter who place her lingerie in the washroom with the intention of wearing the same lingerie for a evening event before washing it.

Example: Poor social class disagreement between a mom and her daughter.

Mom: Hey Jane, you should not misplace your worn lingerie in the washroom.

Daughter: Mom, I just finished my shower, let me put on clothes first before I take it back into my room in a moment.

Mom: You better remember to do what you said.

Daughter: Common, give me a break and stop nagging will you?

Example: Rich social class disagreement between a mom and her daughter

Mom: Hey Jane, you should not misplace your worn lingerie in the washroom.

Daughter: Mom, I just finished my shower, let me put on clothes first before I take it back into my room in a moment.

Mom: I will not tolerate this action of yours; it is unacceptable, keep your lingerie away this instant!

Daughter: Yes, mom, I’m coming, and I will not repeat this again.

You might have notice that the openings of two examples are completely the same but the ending is completely different. It sets a different tone, and gives no leeway in the latter example as compared to the former example.

It is about getting what you like or don’t like across to the other party and have them acknowledge it immediately so the same mistake will not be repeated again in future.
This is why the rich always get richer while the poor only gets poorer day by day without even noticing the slight difference in how they handle disagreements.

After the disagreement has being settle, have both parties sit down peacefully and listen to what each other have to say with how and what they think, so that no misunderstanding will be kept in their minds. Talk it out immediately, that is why businesses always have negotiation talks face to face so any problems and technical difficulties gets ironed out immediately without any delay.

Do not look at things on the face value, practice it if you want to succeed and reduce disagreements and conflicts. If you who is reading this blog entry right now, have any questions or doubts, feel free to voice your doubts and comments either in the comment box below this entry or use the contact form.

If you have the same problem in your existing business, and needs consultant to identify technical issues, problems which seems to be always circling around your business and complaints always hovering around the same topic, contact me for a quotation.

I hope the above entry was helpful to you readers. Any feedback, suggestion or comments are greatly appreciated.

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Marketing is a form of selling without selling. It is the advance selling strategy which businesses and super salesmen/women use in business.

It involves not only the product, but included as well in the sales pitch is the benefits, value, efficiency, productivity and how much unnecessary expenses a product can help the business or a client save in the process with just a single purchase of a product. From a single marketing sales pitch, it not only is selling the product, also together is the brand, value of the actual worth, building brand royalty, relationship and opening another option to allow customers to get updates of the latest products launch if there is a system put in place.

Marketing is a deep advanced selling strategy which only a minority of the sales people uses. People who use marketing instead of selling are people who do their own businesses, and thus employees most often will not be bothered to sell the brand with the exception if they are working for a premier brand.

It involves branding, positioning, customer service, relationship building, value creation, royalty relationship building and most importantly, looking at the clients interest at heart. All these are needed to be shared during a short sales pitch.

Marketing tactics can be learned but it is not a simple task to begin with. It starts with education with the right intention. All these can be learn from work but without proper guidance, and spotting the mistake during the sales pitching/presentation, it makes a whole lot difference between selling and marketing.

Are you marketing or are your selling yourself?

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Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event or with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. It is the play of any game of chance for money or other stakes and to take a chance on either a venture or risk towards success.  It can be any matter or thing involving risk or hazardous uncertainty.

By adopting gambling, it is to engage in a reckless or hazardous behavior and in the process of doing so, affecting their close family members and people living near them.

It is only today that I talked to my mom that I understand their thinking. They think that they are investing rather than gambling. Investing in a new hope on a daily basis, resetting their losses on investments with each new investment, purposely does not want to know and record how much they start to ‘invest’ in gambling activities.

The wealthy and successful businessmen will factor in their total losses on investments and proceed onto another business venture if the business is not doing well, but the poor does exactly opposite, ignoring their losses, keep pumping in money with the slightest hope of recouping their daily investments.

Gamblers are investing in the wrong area which leads them to poverty, it is the poor who are digging their own grave and adding more restrictive chains binding themselves to poverty instead of wealth and success.

Lottery, 4D, TOTO, horse racing and even casinos are the traps businesses set for their own company and business profits increasing their own wealth at the expense of the already poor people.

Gamblers often say “small bets will not matter much” but the issue is not placing a small bet, but to be completely blind to striking a balance in their own financial statements which requires basic accounting knowledge. It is like wanting to work to bring the bread home and striking a balance between family and work time. People who are addicted to gambling purposely blind themselves to greed and worship money rather than being hardworking to learn the tested proven ways to increase their own respective pot of own gold in terms of hard earned savings in hope for a decent retirement without worries.

Just look at the track record of winners from gambling history, is there anybody across the world who as being featured in the news to strike the jack-pot winning millions and is able to increase their pot of gold instead of gambling it away bits by bits? Are they able to increase their own wealth without any external help of professional successful businessmen, no gamblers to date since the day gambling was invented has made it possible?

The answer is obviously clear cut and straight forward, gambling will not make anybody rich, instead it is the gambling operators that are successful and wealthy from, it is a simple predator versus prey whereby the gambling operators set multiple traps within the gambling den and the casino with more chances of recouping their losses and highlight how much the highest ‘lucky’ winner has won to date to encourage gamblers to spend more.

Like business whereby nine out of ten businesses will fail ten years down the road, gambling is identical if not the results don’t need to take ten years, in fact just one year will see the results with nine out of ten gamblers losing money than profiting from gambling.

If you who is reading this article right now, agrees and wants to increase your chances of winnings with the factors you can control to reduce your risk of losses, contact me right now and I will show, lead and guide you on how to grow your money into wealth.

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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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