Entrepreneurship Lesson: Profit Target & Time Planning

There are a few good tips and reminders that I learned from mywifequitherjob.com on breaking down huge profit target that needs to be etched in my memory. What he said is not new, it's easy to follow, but it needs discipline and strong will to power them. I mean, often procrastination is the killer behaviour that causes my things don't move at all or as smooth as what my mind is requesting my body to do. Instead of always thinking that they need to make $100K per year, they worked out to break down the figures into monthly, daily and target no of transaction. Surprisingly, they ended up with a requirement to make only 6 transactions per day to achieve that.

> Choosing the profit target: My wife and I initially chose 100K to be our profit goal for the first year because we felt that it was a number we could actually hit and 100K per year was roughly the salary that my wife left behind when she quit her day job.

> The key is to have a gameplan on how to get there. By breaking down your earnings goal to a daily value, you can plan ahead and figure out how you are going to make your numbers.

In another article about time planning, here are the useful tips and reminders that they have shared.

> There’s plenty of free time lying around. You just have to learn how to extract every last minute.

> Most of us don’t have huge blocks of time to devote to any given project. You often only have small .5-1 hour chunks of free time available and these valuable time slots are wasted away with the belief that nothing can get accomplished in such a brief moment of time. 

>  I gradually learned to never make sacrifices at the expense of my health. With a business, I discovered that the list of tasks is endless and it’s impossible to just cram through it. You might be able to get through a week of little sleep, but things will eventually catch up to you and you may well burn yourself out.

>  By creating tasks that can be accomplished in small chunks, you can make better use of random time slots and consistently make progress.

Crap From A Learned Man: Do You Believe Him?

We are hearing more and more crap from our former PM. I wonder how come he's allowed to say something that all this while the government said is sensitive. Please allow us to openly say as to how he's saying. Just because he was a former PM doesn't mean his identity and position is special.

Again, we are hearing people from the government side, not necessarily ministers, talking about racial issue. We have had enough of the blaming, either on Chinese or the opposition on what ever that is happening or has happened that made the Malays becoming inferior and threatened. Never have I heard the opposition mentioning about racial stuff. I think they do not have the time for all this petty stories that only our former PM is interested to write or speak, especially after his retirement. It's true from what our former PM said that the politics has became more about race because the opposition is now more focused on what is close to the people's heart and attention such as the Rice (economy), Anti-corruption, Competency and Education (= RACE).

For whatever he has said, it is definitely not wrong if you choose to be on his side of the court. For me and the other urban people, we know that this is just a story that will get an A in the STPM Pengajian Am papers. We do not need to read the full article to get the meaning of his mind and will not misunderstood his intention even just by reading the title.


Let us hope the GE13 will come tomorrow, and show to this man that it's always sweet to win from a disadvantaged position, like how Italy beat Germany yesterday morning.

Germany Or Italy?

Based on the past experience watching World Cup, both teams are considered traditionally boring because you cannot expect them to score many goals in one match. Besides, they don't display fancy individual skills like the Latin American countries and their players are not as famous as those from English, or Spanish league. Most of the players played in their domestic league, especially the Italians.I believe many people are able to name more Germany than Italy players due to their performance in the World Cup 2010. Frankly, I only know Buffon, Pirlo and Balotelli from the Italian team.

 

However, in this Euro 2012, Germany is the more exciting team, having scored in every matches so far, and beat Greece in the quarter finals by 4-2. I would like to see Germany win this match, but my gut feeling told me that Italy will be the eventual winner. Italy somehow has the ability to win when they are not expected to.

My pick: A win for Italy.

Score: 2-1

 

Kuala Lumpur Losing Landmarks

I read about this unpleasant news that another landmark of KL, BB Plaza will be demolished soon. This time, it is again sacrificed for the sake of building a large underground MRT station.

This made us question why there is such a need. Though we know that this building belongs to UDA, a government-owned firm, it just need some common sense and engineering study to avoid all this. First, we knew that part of Jalan Sultan will be demolished, also because of MRT, now it's BB Plaza's turn.

Little did the government or City Hall realized that many of the landmarks has been taken away and transformed into something modern. This also resulted in KL becoming more and more a modern city, that doesn't have anything to show to people that it was actually built in the 19th century. Instead of putting us in a proud position as a well-maintained heritage city, we chose to be a continuously developing young city such as Dubai.

Few of the gone and soon to be gone landmarks are as below.

1) Stadium Merdeka
2) Stadium Negara
3) Chin Woo Stadium
4) Pudu Jail
5) Klang Bus Stand
6) Jalan Sultan shops
7) BB Plaza

If you have the chance to go to Europe, you will notice that you won't see a megamalls or shopping complexes in the city center old town area such as Gamla Stan (Stockholm), Montmartre (Paris) and Barcelona.

What the MRT company is doing is really unnecessary and unfortunate. They choose to let their kids learn about this buildings from History books, rather than Geography books.

Entrepreneurship Lesson: Separating Business From Pleasure

I read about this article on Mywifequitherjob.com, and found that it is interesting and true to an extent. He shared the reason why he thought that selling what you like to do may end up you hating what you previously liked to do.

He gave a very valid example about his wife who likes to do embroidery as a hobby, but eventually became a stressful kind of activity when they started to sell the embroidery products. This is because when it is put up on sales, and there is a customer demand, you will tend to do what the customer is requesting because they are paying for it. This will in turn create a conflict where you are thinking whether it work because of passion or because of sales.

Excerpts from his blog:

> Once we started offering personalization and custom embroidery, customers wanted designs that were all over the place. Some customers had really tacky taste and wanted my wife to create some truly heinous designs and some customers were extremely anal and picky.

> Most orders required several iterations of back and forth correspondence and all of this customer interaction took a toll on my wife’s psyche. What was once fun for her became a chore. She wasn’t creating designs for herself anymore. Instead, she was catering to customers for a couple of extra bucks. 

>  What was worse was that nobody could help her out in this department because she had all of the expertise. Her skill set was not easily transferable in a short period of time. And because her time was so valuable, the money wasn’t worth it and there was no way the business could grow in this way.

Yes, I believe now in what he said, and I see the point in not mixing what's like to do and what's do to make money. However, it seems more possible to like what you sell.

Survival Skills: No Tissue and Water In Toilet

I have heard about this survival skills many years back, and it has been retold a few times. Many of the people haven't heard of it. Therefore, I decided to post it in this blog after seeing it appeared in the internet with pictures that I can use.

This is an important skill to learn because Malaysian toilets often doesn't come with a tissue dispenser. This is either because majority of the Malaysians does not use tissue paper for "big business" due to their culture, or the tissues are given by the cleaner at the entrance, or the tissue is sold upon request (just like the low-cost kind of business model).

I would say, smokers are the safest bunch of guys because they always carry a box of cigarettes in their pocket. In case of emergency, they can easily take out a piece of paper from the cigarette box and use it according to the SOP.

In addition to this, if there is only 1 piece of tissue left, there is something you need to know also. The tissue paper quality is down nowadays. So, you need to fold it on the short side to use without failure. If you fold it on the long side, what will happen next is that your finger will get the "cream" of your business. This is because the fiber of the paper seems to orientate on the long side. Hence, any force from the finger will result it to rupture effortlessly.

I Found My First Inspiration

Last Friday was a day of mouth and brain activities for me. I had a chance to have a lengthen deep chat with a pal on the future. It seems like the wonderful future lies just in front, and if we don't act fast, this future will just be a history.

Both of us doesn't like what lies ahead of us. We thought that something is not right, and we know a strong  regret will come if we are still in a state of denial. What used to be fun for us will evaporate soon. Since there is no hope in the segment of things that we like to do, we might as well move to where our passion can flourish.

Hope what my internal eyes see is correct. We aim to built further up from what foundation we have now. We aim to utilize our left brain experience to enhance our right brain future.

We need to accept that we are given unrealistic goals, and it has effectively killed off any passion left. The longer we are still sitting here doing nothing, the risk becomes higher. Therefore, it's wiser to move before being moved. Dollar and cents are what making us move, and no denying, they can also make us scared to move.

Here are the smorgasbord that motivate me to follow up with my plan.

 

 

Divided Malaysian : I Don't Think We Are

I read about Dr M's speech today at Malaysian Insider. He was commenting that Malaysian became divided because of vernacular schools (hope I interpreted it correctly, else I will be sued). After reading the news, I think what he said was half correct.

Malaysians are indeed divided in education, especially when there are some Chinese attending Chinese medium school and the remaining attending the national schools. I don't see the problem in unity, but I see the division in the education standards. The division resulted in the clever and not-so-clever bunch of kids in school.

No one can dispute that China is the new economic superpower, and everyone in the world including Malaysia knows that it is essential to do business in China and with Chinese in Chinese language, as well as able to read in Chinese. Can you tell us, how our Malaysians who don't get formal education in Chinese, and not encouraged to attend vernacular schools in the name of unity can become part of the economic driver?

How?

Satay Fish : Smart Marketing Or Con Man Job

Someone brought a packet of satay fish to treat us, and it was bought in Pulau Pangkor. On the front side of the packet, you can see the whole surface of packet was printed with logo and the other side was clear. The brand is Cap Ong.

I was the one who opened the packet, and I didn't realize it at first about the content. Initially, I wallop 2 mini packs that was packed on the outer side. When I took the 3rd mini pack from the inner side, I realized that the size of the satay fish was half of the earlier 2 packs. After checking through another 7~8 mini packs, I can make the conclusion that this manufacturer had cleverly or cunningly packed the bigger size fish on the outer side for customer to see, and attract their attention. However, on the inner side where there is no way for customer to see the content clearly, they put in those smaller pieces and orientated the packet in which the logo faced outward.

Judge by yourself from the pictures below. Was it a coincidence that the packet was full of smaller fishes, pure unlucky to have picked it up by my colleague, or really a con job that happens on all the packets originated from this factory?

> The side where you can see the content. The fishes are bigger.

> The front side with logo printing. You can't see the inside from this side.

> Comparison between the big and small pieces. 

I Need Inspiration

I was inspired after reading this article on Yahoo today: Ideas That Made $100 Million.

I was chatting with a pal on how simple was the idea, but yet we are still sitting here doing nothing, but feeling restless. Hence, I came out with the following motto to push us to start doing something. Else, we will still be sitting here when the list extended from 10 to 100, and we are nowhere in the list.

They Support Because They Don't Live There

I saw the news in the Malaysian Insider about a group of pro-Lynas supporters demonstrating in Kuantan supporting the operation of the rare earth plant. The NGO called themselves Daun, joined by Perkasa and other NGOs were urging the Government to continue this project in the name of boosting the state’s economy and provide employment opportunities for the local community.

I don't believe these people lives near the plant in Gebeng, or at least in Kuantan itself. That is why they are so vocal in supporting the Government. What if we put an incinerator or open dumpsite at their hometown, what will they say? It is in the name of better environment and waste management..

Haze At Puchong

This morning when I saw the outside view, I didn't like what I saw. You can see from the below pics.

Besides looking forward to the Euro 2012 results, now we have another thing to check each day; the Air Pollution Index (API). Today's API in Puchong is easily above 200. Visibility is down to 3km based on my prediction

I Joined Qatar Airways Photo Contest

Qatar Airways is organizing a photo contest called Qatar Airways Reflections Photo Contest that will end on 30 June 2012. There are 4 categories to choose and submit, namely Magnificent Cities, Vibrant Culture, Breathtaking Nature and Exciting Journey. Frankly, I do not know how to gauge what the organizer is looking for.

Below are my submissions for the contest. Since it is a global voting contest, and it is open also to professional photographers, I think my chance is close to nil. Anyway, it's good to try and see if miracles can happen how many times in a person.

The first picture was submitted under the Vibrant Culture theme. This picture is to show on the Chinese Northern China lion dance, which is different from the Southern China lion dance, especially in the appearance and movement.

               

                                                                               

               

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The 2nd picture was posted under the Magnificent Cities theme. I noticed that I was the first to post a picture of Stockholm, Sweden, and I thought this picture is suitable because of the overall nice view of a part of the Old Town, known locally as Gamla Stan. Since Qatar Airways flies to Stockholm daily, it fits to put this beautiful picture to attract more people to see how pretty this city is, especially Malaysian who are very unfamiliar with the Scandinavian countries.
 

               

                                                                               

               

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They Have Summer, We Have Haze

It's the time of the year for many Europeans, because Summer break is coming real soon. Nowadays, they are rushing to complete everything in hand so that they don't get calls from their suppliers or superior in the middle of sailing, fishing, hiking or sun tanning next month.

As for Malaysian, we are always like to joke about our whole year long Summer. They actually thought we are a blessed nation because we do not have to encounter dark and gloomy days and cold and chilly nights for at least 4~6 months of the year.

However, little did they know that we also have another season that started almost 10 years back, and beginning to intensify 5~8 years ago. That is the Haze season. This season is now more predictable than the monsoon season. This year, it has started since last month (May). The weather is extremely hot, dusty air outside the house, smelly air inside the house and shielded sun rays.

So far, it has not been reported in the media intensively, and we don't see the Minister or DG of Environment appearing on TV announcing the Air Pollution Index (API). Based on my experience, the air is in the unhealthy stage, and this is very clear during the day.

This is the morning view at 7.15am.

Learning Entrepreneurship From Internet: Part 1

I'm grateful to have some spare time lately, and I started to think again about the things I'm doing and want to do. It has been awhile that I have discussed this with a close pal, and what we want to do is to own a business. There is no concrete plans in place, but some sketches in our mind. I have always stressed that money is not the problem, it is the thing inside our mind and heart is the stumbling block to do this. The golden word is Discipline.

While browsing through the internet for inspiration and motivation, I saw this website with an interesting name: My wife quit her job; Building wealth and entrepreneurship when your spouse wants to quit. I think he has given us a good starting point to our journey on being the own boss. I would like to do this for my wife too, and this is definitely not a sacrifice but a small gratitude.

He has written many interesting and useful articles, and some of the advices can be used to unblock our minds to move towards our aim. I will try my best to read up all his articles, and capture some of them in this post as a constant reminder for me.

Pointers:

> When it comes to my definition of success, I consider there to be four key considerations:

1. Am I earning more than my outgoings?
2. Are my earnings on an upwards trend?
3. Am I happy with my future prospects?
4. Am I happy with my day-to-day living?

> Simply having a good product isn’t enough. How effectively you put that product in front of the right people will define the success of your business.
 

> Almost all of my friends who started very successful companies all had this uncanny knack for staying focused and not getting sidetracked by minute details.

> Most of time, you don’t really need to know very many things in true depth unless it is one of the core competencies of your business. 

> What and how much they spent so start their business:

• Webhost by bluehost.com for $7/mth
• Shopping cart software for free
• Digital camera for $200
• Shipping material for free
• 2nd hand computer for $100
• Inventory for $322.90

> Building wealth requires planning, budgeting and an awareness of how money can work for itself. The sooner you can amass even a small amount of money, the easier it is to accumulate wealth in the long run. It all starts with the proper frame of mind.

This is just the first part of the content that I have read. Hopefully I don't waste this opportunity to be out of the treadmill, and earn something for myself based on my own effort. I can no longer afford to stay on as a NATO (No Action, Think Only) member.

Just before checking out, a humble thanks to the author of mywifequitherjob.com for the well written advices.

Euro 2012 Opening Day

The UEFA Euro 2012 will start at midnight (MY time), and the first match will pitch Poland, as co-host against Greece at 6pm Polish time. They are in Group A together with Russia and Czech Republic. I think the selection of date and time was cleverly done, so that people around most part of the world, especially on the Eastern side of the globe will be able to watch it on Friday. For Malaysian, it is an opportunity for some to sleep late without fearing of the work blues the next day (those in the city where working on Saturday is unheard of), and for some to sleep early so that they can wake up at midnight to watch, then continue sleeping after the match.

Poland is the lowest ranked team of all the competing teams at no 65 in FIFA ranking, while Greece is at no 14, Russia at no 11 and Czech at no 26. But these teams are still many many tiers above our Harimau team, which is lying at no 154. Anyway, as usual we will be happy because our neighbour, Singapore is 4 steps below us.

I have nothing much to say to comment on those team. Usually these kind of group will be seen as a boring group because there is no traditionally famous teams such as England, Germany, France or Spain. Anyway, you will never know that they may spring a surprise by winning difficult matches or score in huge margin. This happened in 2004 when Greece beat the fancied Portugal in Portugal to lift the Cup.

Checking on the net (about.com, thomsonsport.com, football365.com) for players to watch in Euro 2012, I only saw 2 players from Group A, namely Alan Dzagoev (Russia) and Robert Lewandowski (Poland). They are selected by all of these predictors, and we should take note of this info and track their performance.

The first match will be played at National Stadium Warsaw at the Polish capital city, Warsaw. This old town of Warsaw is listed in the Unesco World Heritage site. The other match will be played in Wroclaw, a northern city in Poland.

Poland is leading 1-0 now, from a goal scored by Robert Lewandowski at the 13th minute.

 

 

Today's 1Joke : 8 June 2012

I think our country is fast becoming the laughing aim for many people around the world. Yesterday, we saw the government is supporting the action of the PTPTN to freeze loans to student as a way to punish the Selangor state government's stand on abolishing PTPTN loan.

I think this is really an immature and absurd action. Furthermore, this action was taken not by the opposition but the government. What is the advantage of doing this? Please do not blame us after the election, and ruin our children's education.