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Friday, January 20, 2006 |
To Franchise or Not to FranchiseOf course, if you are an established business, one way to grow it is also to franchise it out. From statistics, it does seem that the failure rate of franchise is lower than those people start up themselves. Prof Cornwall presents a great writeup on its pros and cons…. 7:13:51 PM  comment [] trackback []
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Saturday, January 14, 2006 |
The Peter Drucker Legacy of Gems
1. Understanding what your Business is all about. - Ask yourself always, ” Who is our customer, and what does he consider value?” 2. Questions Drucker posed to Jack Welch shortly after he became CEO. - “If you weren’t already in a business, would you enter it today?” 3. When asked where he got his insights. (more…) 6:18:45 AM comment [] trackback []
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Two Precepts I Learned in Managing This year, I have put some thoughts on the way my business is going, and I have learned two important precepts that I plan to implement next year. Business is good, but if we take time to continue to make it healthier , it does allow the business a better way to capitalize on opportunities when they present itself. These precepts and principles are known to me as it is to most businessmen, but the effectiveness (more…) 6:16:28 AM comment [] trackback []
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Advice for Entrepreneurs Don’t start a business just because you think you will be good at it. Don’t start a business just because other people think you will be good at it. Start a business because that should be the one thing you want to do most in life. 6:06:40 AM comment [] trackback []
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Tuesday, November 29, 2005 |
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One of the arguments is how much luck does entrepreneurship plays in the person success, and amongst the things (more…) 6:14:43 AM comment [] trackback []
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But for many entrepreneurs, the business is more than that. Beyond just something to earn money, it is where you find your friends, it is where you find your identity, it is where you find your fulfillment. Many familes, especially Asian ones, led a truly bizdrivenlife – the business is where the family rotates, and patriarchs find identity and place in society because of their business, and the overwhelming objective is to find a small business (more…) 6:11:37 AM comment [] trackback []
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1. Somebody launches something The author says if you do 3 first instead of 2, and 2 will come. Try to be passionate about something, and be really good at it. That’s all there is to it. It is the same piece I wrote a few months back – the CEO should not concentrate to grow the company. He should just instead focus on making it healthy - because when it is healthy, it will grow.
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a.) First, is that do you use your own money or other people’s money. I guess how you go about it depends not only what you plan to accomplish, (more…)
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Over the course of business, I met many people who lament the fact that their businesses has stayed small. And they tell of friends or people they know who they believe are less capable than them who are reaping better rewards or managing bigger businesses. Well, first, it does not matter how good you are if you don’t use what you have. You may be more capable, but if you are not going out and using what you have ( which for sure means getting out of your comfort zone, and taking a risk) , you are effectively not going to benefit from it. One of the better quotes I read is that phrase, ” A person who does not read good books has no advantage over one who does not know how to read.” The other one is that many of the people have to gain more confidence, and have (more…) 6:04:36 AM comment [] trackback []
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Monday, November 07, 2005 |
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While I do understand that there are some businesses that are always on the lookout for the hottest and new technologies, the point is that at the end there are many technologies that are ‘hot’ but hardly (more…) 7:43:47 AM comment [] trackback []
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However, as time goes by, there are times when opportunity presents itself, or a crisis presents itself when the best course is to use credit, so apparently the best policy to make sure you keep your credit line as high as possible. For instance, you are given 5 credit cards with 10,000 dollars line each, and your balance is $6,000. You may think that since you use only $6,000, you can cancel 4 of your credit cards. But that is not so good. It looks like you are using $6,000 of your $10,000 credit which seemed that you are overextended. However, if you continue to use only $6,000 out of $50,000 that you have, then you are only using 12 percent of your available credit, which looks better to creditors. As long as it is not too expensive to maintain the credit line, and make sure that you are prudent in using it, the advice seems to be to get the credit line, but to utilize less than 50 percent of it unless necessary. 7:37:22 AM comment [] trackback []
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The goal is to generate passive income. How do you distinguish that? Active income is the amount you earn based on your skills and time. Passive income is the amount you earn from your investments and assets — income that hopefully (more…) 7:36:21 AM comment [] trackback []
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005 |
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More than half of US Small Businesses don’t use Accounting Software One of our businesses is to sell accounting solutions to small and medium businesses. According to Small Business Trends, more than half of US businesses with 1 to 99 employees still don’t use accounting software. That means in the US, and more so in other parts of the world ( I reckon that the figure is higher — even upto 98% of SMBs in some parts of the develping world still don’t use accounting software) , there is still a huge market for this. I will cover in other posts details about how accounting software can benefit businesses, but I would like to discuss the thought that contend that businesses who sell small business solutions (more…) 10:59:46 PM comment [] trackback []
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Planning Carefully where you want your Business To Go A pilot would never leave destination without a flight plan, but so many business people do so! You cannot just go into business like a game of chance. If you cannot visualize your success, it will be harder to get there. (more…) 10:57:10 PM comment [] trackback []
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The Rise of the Entrepreneurial Class Small Business Trends wrote that ” A wide range of people today see themselves as entrepreneurs, — everyone from Martha Stewart to Snoop Dog to college kids to retiring Baby Boomers” . In other words, “entrepreneurship is a huge underexpressed force” today, even in large companies. More …. 10:54:22 PM comment [] trackback []
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Sunday, October 09, 2005 |
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Moving Bizdrivenlife I am now updating and moving to the new bizdrivenlife site here. I will still maintain this site as a mirror site for some days and weeks, but most of my new posts will be at the new site. In the next few days, I will also transfer the www.bizdrivenlife.net so that if you are using this as your marker, you will be redirected there. If you are using my feedburner RSS to download my posts, which is as follows: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ReflectionsOfABusiness-drivenLife, then I have redirected it to download from the new site, so you don't need to do anything. However, if you are not downloading anything new, pls. go to my new site, and subscribe to the Feedburner RSS on the upper left corner of the blog. I hope that by moving my blog into WordPress, I can be more flexible, and it will be easier for you to search, locate the information you want, as well as notice the better organization of the new site. The same 8 subcategories will still be there, and I have taken also the liberty of transferring some of the top posts the last few weeks there. My selected writings for the last one year is also there. I am hoping with this new setup, I will be able to more easily communicate with you, and scale even better heights. As usual, thank you for your support, and your comments are always welcome.
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Friday, September 23, 2005 |
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Showing off Your Cards -- and your Personality My grandfather used to play mahjong (chinese classic tile game) with my uncles and friends every week at the house. When I was small, I would remember the sunday and holiday afternoons when my uncles, and their friends would come in, and start aggregating in the room. I guess in other countries, people have regular poker or bridge games the same way. One of the interesting facets of watching the game is that people not only have different strategies on how to win, but you also see different interesting personalities at work. It is a good time to see how people react in different circumstances. There was the jolly one who always keep his cool, and here was the fast tempered one who would bump his head on the table when he makes a mistake. There are people who are the best people to be with when lady luck smiles, but they are the people to avoid when they have a bad day. There are people who play to relax, and there are people who play to win. Mahjong is not only a game of chance, but there is also an element of strategy. You can strategize to win, or you can take your chances to maximize your win. Some of my grandpa's many friends always say that people show their best and their worst when playing mahjong, and the theory is that when somebody is courting your daughter, you should never say yes, until you have gotten your future son-in-law to a few games of mahjong together. A perceptive player can immediately glean into the personality of the person on how he plays. Is he a risk taker? How does he take pressure? How does he react when he wins? How does he react when he is losing heavily? How does he conduct himself when somebody makes a move that makes him lose? And how much strategy does he put into the game? There are also paranoid players who choose not to organize their cards, and while try to visualize the arrangement in their minds because they are mindful that some players will be able to infer their other cards ( or tiles) on hand through where they pull out the cards. There are those who risk it these by taking care to organize the cards properly. I guess in some way or another, we show off our personality, and it is usually in those off moments that people make a decision on how they really perceive us. I remember one writer who says that he could read a lot into a person by just observing closely how they go to a restaurant together. There are people who are definite on what they want. There are people who choose to order what they always order, and there are people who don't mind what is ordered, or is always game to try something new. There are people who order without looking at the menu, and there are people who scans the menu for something new, even if it is their 20th time in that restaurant that year alone. And there are some people who don't bother to look at the menu, and just starts to grill the waiter on what is the best food to recommend. I also observed something when it comes to meal buffets. There are people who go out and gets just enough, even if they can get more. There are people who takes in more than their usual, because it is free. There are people who finish what they take, and there are people who amusingly takes in a huge amount, and finds out that he got more than he could take. There are also people who force themselves to finish what they have taken even if it was obvious they were full. What are the other off moments in which interestingly, you give yourself and your personality away to an interesting observer? do you use these off moments also to understand people better? Is it good to make conclusions on your business associates based on their off moments?
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