Business and Money Tips

Never Underestimate your Opponent Sun Tzu talks often about deception and also warns about being deceived by the opponent and underestimating their ability.  Art of War also talks about knowing yourself and your opponent to ensure no peril in your battles.  How to NOT Underestimate Your Opponent? 1. Don't overestimate yourself 2. Compare yourself and your opponent in these 5 areas: purpose, environment, support, leadership and methods 3. Overestimate your opponent and do a stress test  4. Be one step ahead of your opponent by not walking behind them. Always do better than them 5. Set and achieve your goals and make your goals bigger than you or your opponent  Customer Service with the Art of War:  Sun Tzu Art of War simplified and clarified and its relation to The 36 Stratagems  How to serve customers from our hearts with Sun Tzu's strategy of 'Win the Entire Nation' Creating Trust and Rapport with Customers with Sun Tzu's 'Know Yourself Know Others' strate...

When you are stuck, you need a professional that can counsel, coach or give you advice. Here we use Art of War to help You Get What You Want You are a Manager, Executive or Director in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. You work hard and are very committed to hitting the targets set by your bosses. Yet you cannot help but feel that competition is getting very fierce today. You also realize that unless you change your strategy, you will be eaten up by new competitors who are all out to kill. How to have winning strategies like Sun Zi Art of War? How to apply the 2,500 years wisdom of the Chinese that led them to win wars after wars? How to apply Sun Zi inspired 36 Stratagems in your sales and marketing easily?  Whether you are new or experienced in business, management and sales, if you too want to make this year a year of winning, not whining, this coaching program is for You This is a 49-minute one-on-one session done online via zoom to help you unstuck and get to where you wa...

How to Win the Hearts of People Like Liu Bei? Liu Bei is today revered as a deity in China.  During the Three Kingdoms period (184 to 280), Liu Bei was one of the 3 Emperors of the 3 kingdoms.   Liu Bei was a great man, not because he was rich and famous, but because he truly cared for people.  He always put people's interests above his.   While Liu Bei was in Pingyuan, a resident named Liu Ping had since long held Liu Bei in low esteem so was ashamed of having to serve under him.  Liu Ping hired an assassin to kill Liu Bei. However, Liu Bei didn't realize his intention and treated him generously, so much so that the assassin could not bring himself to kill him and informed Liu Bei before he left.  Such was the extent to which Liu Bei had won the hearts of the people.  Pingyuan was poor so people were starving and they banded together to commit robbery. Liu Bei externally guarded against bandits and internally he generously carried out econom...

Had a conversation with a friend. He said that my courses are too lame, and lack power. "What do you mean?" I asked "People want solutions to their immediate problems now, like how to do conflict resolution, negotiate to win, and how to get your team to work hard for you". "Actually I have all these courses you mentioned," I told him. These are all problem-solving courses. I prefer to focus on problem prevention.  When you do the right things, be a good person and treat people with respect, all these problems may not appea r. Let me explain why: 1.  Conflict Resolution is unnecessary if we build teams with good communication where respect  is the key factor in everything we do.  Treat each employee as a human being , not a resource that you can take and throw it away. 2.  Negotiating to win i s not right because that is only a short-term win. In the long run, we have to build win-win relationships, and  all negotiations must lead to a win-win , n...

Top 5 Points from Sun Tzu Art of War to apply in your Business and Life (by AndyTheCoach) 1. Know people INSIDE OUT , know who they ARE, not just what they do or have. For example, I know my friend is doing emcee and singing and has a nice car. I need to know who he is as a person, including his likes and dislikes, then it will be easier for us to work together for common goals. 2. Discipline is the key to success. Discipline is not just in compliance with rules and regulations. Discipline is doing something right when no one knows, and it is hard to do the right thing 3. Flexibility is crucial for making the most of new opportunities. Flexibility means being open to many possibilities and not being fixated on your own ideas. For example, I adjusted my courses. From 1-day or 2-days, it can be adapted to half-day or even 1-2 hours zoom seminars. 4. Need to plan for both the Best and Worse-case scenarios 5. Speed is key to success. Need to cut delays and strike while the iron is hot. ...

Longzhong Plan: How Zhuge Liang turned Liu Bei from Zero to Emperor in 14 Years Liu Bei was the distant uncle of the ailing Han Dynasty emperor. From a young age, his father passed away and Liu Bei had to live a despondent life with his mum. He had to resort to selling straw mats and shoes in the market to make a living. Yet inside Liu Bei's heart, he has not forgotten his calling. As a descendant of the Liu family that founded the Han Dynasty (which lasted almost 400 years and brought China to its glory), he saw his country fall into the hands of thieves like Cao Cao, who controlled the Emperor and ill-treated the emperor. The entire nation is divided, with many feudal lords fighting. People are suffering. The solution: Find a way to get rid of thieves like Cao Cao and re-unite China and bring peace to the country and save people's lives. That is his calling. That was the year 207 when Liu Bei was Zero. In the year 221, Liu Bei was declared the Emperor of the Shu Han ki...

Sharing by Australia's Henry If you are in business, sales, marketing, self-employed, banking, finance, or management, we are often taught that to do well in business, we need to have a good product and master sales and marketing.  So we work hard to improve our offering and embark on many sales and marketing ways, including digital marketing, social media marketing and word-of-mouth referral marketing to get as many customers as possible in the shortest time.  However, you will soon realize that despite doing all of the above, high sales and profits elude you.  It becomes a zero-sum game: you put in more time and resources and get a diminishing return.  What is the solution?  Don't chase after customers anymore.  Let customers come to you.  Without spending a cent on advertising and promotion, use sharing.  What is Sharing?  Sharing is NOT about how good your product or you is.  It is also NOT about show and tell.  Sharing is not a...

We know the 3 Kingdoms Period (year 184 to 280) in ancient China had 3 kingdoms: Wei, Wu, and Shu. Today let's talk about the Shu kingdom. Liu Bei was the distant uncle of the ailing Han Dynasty emperor. From a young age, his father passed away and Liu Bei had to live a despondent life with his mum. He had to resort to selling straw mats and shoes in the market to make a living. Yet inside Liu Bei's heart, he has not forgotten his calling. As a descendant of the Liu family that founded the Han Dynasty (which lasted almost 400 years and brought China to its glory), he saw his country fall into the hands of thieves like Cao Cao, who controlled the Emperor and ill-treated the emperor. The entire nation is divided, with many feudal lords fighting with each other. People are suffering. The solution: Find a way to get rid of thieves like Cao Cao and re-unite China and bring peace to the country and save people's lives. That is his calling. He set out to achieve his goal. ...

4th Element of Art of War: Jiang or Leadership Sun Tzu said that the leader must have 5 attributes: wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness.  Today I talk about Benevolence, which in leadership simply means being kind.  He said that if you treat your soldiers as your children they will fight till death for you.  This means you must love and care for them.  Being kind as a leader also means if you treat people like adults and give them an opportunity to excel, they will go all the way for you.  On the other hand, if you treat your people like children and supervise them over every minute detail , like what time they go to the pantry, they will, in turn, give you contributions like children bit by bit.   

Do a Good Job I remembered in 2001, my boss, a Japanese who is also the company's Chief Financial Officer cum Senior Managing Director, called me into his room. He said, "Andy-san, we need to look for one senior person". As the person responsible for HR, I asked "What post?" He said, "Senior Managing Director" I was speechless. "Boss, isn't this your post?". "Andy, yes. keep cool, Do your job well. The Chairman (also the founder in Japan) wants to interview 3 good candidates in 2 weeks' time". I told him, "No problem, I will get it done" In the end, we got a very experienced person and he became my new boss. While I was in Australia handling some issues, he called me and said that since I am so busy handling Finance, HR, and Admin portfolios, he wants to take away my HR function. I said yes, as I think he is now the boss he can decide everything. Soon, this new boss made things difficult for me. I decided...