Procrastination is Opportunity’s Assassin December 9, 2012 bizadmin I know of a friend who wanted to pursue a PhD Programme in National University of Singapore (NUS) in the Arts Faculty. But due to work commitment and lackadaisical attitude and procrastination, the programme was finally called off and no longer offered by NUS. Such a waste and missed opportunity. Not only that, you don’t have to pay; Besides, she will also get a stipend of S$1,500 per month working as a research assistant to fund her studies. This is a classic case of ‘Procrastination is Opportunity’s Assassin’. I am also in the midst of writing a book with 26 pages of manuscript which is yet to be submitted. For this first venture of book authoring, I have to keep reminding myself not to procrastinate and get the job done as soon as possible. I will only write when in the mood so that my writings will flow with my thoughts. But then again, I keep putting off the ‘mood’ to write to pursue my other hobbies like reading the newspapers and magazines. If there is no pain, then there is no gain. Hence, I need to get myself in sync with my brain to continue writing until the manuscript is accepted and published. I have read many books by local authors and as well as foreign ones. There is cash to be made with published books and the work in write once, earn forever – provided the theme and contents of the book are evergreen topics; those that will never get out of fashion, but be in constant demand.
Follow the Habits of the Ant December 5, 2012 bizadmin The ant is small in size but is a very diligent creature. It will continue to work and work and store up food for winter. Unlike the grasshopper which sings and play all summer, it will definitely go hungry when winter comes. From the book of Proverbs, we have been exhorted to be like the ant, working and storing up for rainy days. When it applies to humans, this means working and saving up for our retirement and old age. During our golden years, hopefully and not woeful years, we should be working and taking every opportunity to save up as much as we can for our twilight years in time to come. Nobody can escape the cause and effects of aging when our bones become brittle, sickness sets in and lost of strength of youth. It is inevitable and everybody will go through this process of growing old and aging. Hence, in our productive years, we should be working hard and saving as much as we can while we are healthy and mobile;. With a mind that is still alert, we should fully utilize it functions for a more prosperous and happy life, with more than enough to tide us through a lifetime. For those with children, you might like to leave some money for your kids, so that they will not have to beg in the streets like vagabonds. They will be well provided for and will not go hungry. God will take care of His children so that they will not go hungry and do not have to beg in the streets. Just like the birds in the air and the flowers of the ground, they are clothed and fed by the Almighty God. This is the nature of living things. The book of Proverbs tells us to work hard with our hands so that we do not go hungry when winter comes. We ought to be diligent and not be slothful. Just follow God’s wisdom and we will never go wrong. God’s kind of success is real, lasting success. Not intermittent success or temporary success.
The Importance of Blogging December 1, 2012 bizadmin To create more visibility, it is important to have a blog – either on your own personal domain with WordPress script installed on your paid server or free blogs like Blogger which is developed by Google. You can monitize your blog contents with Google Adsense, Advertlets, Nuffnang, Bidvertiser, and other contextual advertisment programs. Many bloggers have successfully earn a constant income each month by putting advertisements such as Google’s Adsense on their blog/blogs. By revenue income, Adsense is the most lucrative of all the other programs. People are known to quit their stressful full-time jobs in the multi-national corporations or offices just to concentrate on monitizing their blogs and to maintain them. The other key point of the importance of a blog is that it can create buzz on your products and services if you have a loyal, constant stream of visitors who come to read your updated blog. They can also add stickiness to the blog by commenting and reading comments. Popular blogs have high stickiness and will have thousands of readers every day. Who knows, some of these visitors might become clients of the products and services added by hyperlinks in the blog posts. You can also participate in sponsored posts or paid posts like Payperpost, Loudlaunch, Blogsvertise, etc. From a payment of US $3 per post, it can be more if the page rank of the blog is higher. For instance, Loudlaunch is paying US $5 a post for blogs with page rank of 2 or PR2. Page ranks measure the importance of a blog or site with number of inbound links versus outbound links and such. Hence, from contextual advertisements to paid posts, these are the ways to earn a lucrative income from your blogs. Note of Caution: Never ever click on your own contextual advertisements for higher revenue. You may get banned permanently. Hence, it is not worth the extra click of a few cents to be banned from participating again!
Buy Dividend Stocks November 27, 2012 bizadmin If you want to buy stocks, go for dividend stocks with a dividend yield of about 10%. If you keep collecting the dividends for 10 years, it would have paid for the stock and anything beyond that is net profit. There are a few formula to consider when deciding to choose dividend stocks. Some people depend on the cash received from the dividends for their livelihood. If you are an accountant, investing in shares will be much easier as you would be used to number crunching. The current ratio is a test of a company’s financial strength. It calculates how many dollars in assets are likely to be converted to cash within one year in order to pay debts due during the same year. You can find the current ratio by dividing the total current assets by the total current liabilities. By investing in dividend stocks, you should look out for dividend yield of more than 2%. Dividend yield is calculated as annual dividend price over the price per share of the stock. Look out for dividend stocks that pay consistently every year. This means that the company is making profits annually and sharing its profits with shareholders. As a shareholder, you are just like the owner of the company. Stock trading involves understanding the business and nature of the company well and not just simply invest without any knowledge whatsoever about the business nature.
Marketing is the Lifeblood of your Business November 23, 2012 bizadmin For any business to survive, you need to do some form of marketing or advertisement to spread the word around. For instance, in online marketing, your new web site will not be noticed if you don’t do any promotion to spread the word around about your products and services. You need to invest some money into advertisement and marketing so that you can get traffic which could potentially turn into clients for you. When people come and visit, they could be interested in what you have to offer and thus buy on the spot from your web site. You can sell info products or tangible items with a shopping cart installed, with safe and secure payment gateway. Marketing will catalyse and propel your business to greater heights of success and visibility. The word will be spread fast like wild fire on the world wide web if you own a web site selling products like tangible items or even info products such as reports, ebooks and such. You need to spend one third of your investment in developing the web site, one third in maintaining the web site and the final one third in marketing and promotion. This is how you should allocate your resources equally, as a benchmark. Even in my business, I do postage marketing extensively. Each postage of a calendar and marketing letter with 80 cents stamps attached cost about $1.50. But the returns are much higher should we be successful in clinching a project which costs tens of thousands or somewhere in that region. So, it does not take rocket scientists to figure this out that marketing is key to the success of your business – be it online or offline.
Contemplating a Franchise Business November 17, 2012 bizadmin Some months back, I was contemplating a sandwich franchise business in Malaysia. The renovation cost comes to about $400,000.00 and this does not include the kitchen ovens, tools and utensils. Moreover, you have to pay 10% franchisee fees for every meal bought by patrons. Although it is the world’s biggest food franchisor in the world due to its low start up capital at $45,000.00, we decided to shelve the idea because too much is at stake. We have the finances, but not the time to dedicate this business full time and concentrate on it 100%. It is like a marriage. You need to put in 100% effort and commitment to see it through to success. As we are currently in the sports business, we cannot allocate more of our commitment and concentration to be diluted to the food franchise business. The issue is that we cannot be everywhere attending to different businesses. It is not good to be Jack of all trades but master of none. If we commit to a business, say sports, then we need to have targeted laser concentration on the said business. Don’t try to do everything and branch into different types of businesses where you cannot possibly concentrate fully. This sandwich franchise business is sprouting everywhere all over the country. It is a very popular brand and easy to clean up, since no cutleries are required, other than paper wrappings that can be thrown away easily. Hence, cleaning up after a meal is easy peasy – as opposed to dining in Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets where the bones, skin and what not have to be removed and table wiped clean.
Happy Deepavali to my Readers November 13, 2012 bizadmin KLCC Kolam Happy Deepavali to all my Indian readers here! The kolam above was taken in KLCC Suria at the ground floor recently, during my stay at Mandarin Oriental Hotel for business. The theme is peacock and you can see the designs similar to the peacock feathers. Peacocks are significant creatures during Deepavali. Most of the kolam theme is based on this magnificent bird. Mandarin Oriental Kolam The kolam above was taken at the lobby of Mandarin Oriental Hotel recently. Here is to wishing a festivity of light and success to all, especially the Indians of this nation. Malaysia is a kaleidoscope of cultures of Chinese, Indians and Malays. It is rich in heritage brought down by our forefathers. This tradition has continue for more generations down the line. Holiday Villa Subang Kolam This splendid kolam was shot at Holiday Villa Subang hotel during our project visit there. We have existing business project here and while waiting for my colleague, I decided to take the liberty to snap this amazing photo of the peacock kolam. There is a styrofoam design of the life size peacock on this beautiful structure. Enjoy your holidays and merry feasting! I am going to E & O hotel later to have buffet dinner at Sarkies Corner.
Blue Ocean Strategy November 11, 2012 bizadmin In blue ocean, there are plenty of fishes and there is no competition, unlike red ocean where competition is very fierce. So, when we do business, we have to pick a niche where there is plenty for everyone and hardly any competition around as in the blue ocean. However, in any prospering business, competition may come from your own workers who have learnt the tricks of the trade, come out and compete directly with you, sometimes even taking along your former clients and contacts. It happens everywhere. However, this can be prevented with discerning boss who knows how to take precaution and keep secrets away from workers. You cannot trust them completely! Sooner or later, they will still come out and join venture with other workers to compete with your business. To maintain the blue ocean strategy, it would be wise to hire a separate worker to handle all the imports and contacts from suppliers and keep this a top secret from your installers who are the biggest threat. If you are in the supplier material business, it would be advisable to remove the source contacts and emails of the labels on the products. At times, competitors may pose as a potential client to check out your products and ask for samples. This is where a wise boss will try to remove all information of the source of material from the samples so that your competitor or whoever contacted you will not be able to contact your source directly and compete fiercely with you. It happens every where, and you cannot presume that the email origin is from a genuine client, but could potentially be from your competitor, out to check and try to benchmark you.