Skip to main content

No Wonder HomeFix Fails: 6 Criteria of a Sustainable Business

As you may know, I have been in business since the age of 5. Since I left my last employer in the year 2001, I have been running my own business in training and consulting for the last 19 years, out of my total 32 years of working experience. 

People inevitably ask me what is a good business that you should get in.  Here are my 6 criteria:
  1. Everyone is a potential customer. You don't want to do business where you have to hunt and select your customers. If everyone can be your customer, you don't need to select any more. There are also very little selling and marketing needed. 
  2. Don't depend on selling to friends. It's more complicated to sell to friends, and no matter what, no one has limitless number of friends. You want to be in a business where you can sell to anyone, anywhere and at anytime
  3. Your product must be affordable to the masses.  The current business I am in involves an outlay of only S$149 or US$127, which is considered affordable in today's context. 
  4. An international business that does not depend on location.  You can sell anywhere via WhatsApp, Skype, WeChat, Line, FaceBook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Recently I closed 3 cases via WhatsApp, and last month I closed 5 cases through my FaceBook Group
  5. The business must give you limitless upside, yet you have very little downside. That means minimum outlay and preferably no monthly or periodic maintenance
  6. You have some inborn talent and passion for this product and business.  This is important, for you must be able to ride through the business ups and downs. Without passion, there is no profit.
Based on the above 6 criteria, to me, there are 6 businesses that I could be in, although at present I am only in one of them.  Let me know your comments, thanks.
  1. Training on soft skills for individuals
  2. Training on soft skills for companies
  3. Consulting for individuals
  4. Mobile number analytics and change
  5. Mind training
  6. All sales and marketing businesses

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What an Executive Coach and Business Coach Does

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years.  Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself?  At least I have better discipline".  It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...