Business and Money Tips

How Sun Tzu Helped Costco Win Big in China while Others Failed When Costco entered China, many doubted it could succeed. Retail giants like Tesco and Home Depot had already failed. But Costco surprised the market — its Shanghai store opening in 2019 drew such massive crowds that it had to be closed early for safety reasons.  As of 2025, Costco has maintained growth in its sales despite tough market.  How did Costco win where others stumbled? Let’s analyze through 5 key strategies from Andy Ng’s book  Win Without Fighting with Sun Tzu Art of War . 1. Win Before the Battle (Preparation is Victory) Sun Tzu: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.” Costco prepared meticulously before its launch: It studied Chinese consumer behavior for years. It secured Alibaba’s Tmall partnership to reach millions online before opening its first physical store. Membership pricing was set at only 299 RMB/year ($45), far below Western standards, to remove barriers an...

Forward to Win Without Fighting book by Andy Ng When Andy Ng invited me to write the foreword for this book, I paused — not because I hesitated, but because I recognized the sacredness of what he was offering the world through these pages. Win Without Fighting with Sun Tzu Art of War is not merely a book on strategy; it is a blueprint for inner alignment, authentic leadership, and transformative peace in action . In a world obsessed with hustle and domination, Andy revives the forgotten power of clarity over chaos, wisdom over warfare, and purpose over pressure. As someone who champions the PLG (Purpose, Love, Gratitude) framework globally , I see in Andy’s work a powerful convergence: Purpose:  the Dao that aligns teams beyond KPIs. Love: the Yin energy that dissolves resistance. Gratitude: the calm anchor that transforms challenge into wisdom. Andy doesn’t just teach Sun Tzu. He lives it. And he refines it — integrating ancient Eastern principles, the Yijing, and the ...

People Set the Wrong Goals and Achieve Them!  The worse thing that ever happens to anyone is NOT to never set goals, or to set goals and never achieve them, but to set the wrong goals and achieve them!  Many people don't even know that they set the wrong goals.  Sun Tzu in the Art of War first sentence said that the Art of War is very important, for it determines your life and death.   The entire chapter 1 of the Art of War talks about planning. It says that you must do this right or you will die.  He listed the 5 criteria for any goals.  They are Dao Tian Di Jiang Fa.  So when you set the wrong goals, you are on the wrong path.  Worse still is to achieve your wrong goals!  What are wrong goals? 1. Make a lot of money ($xxx) this year  2. Get promoted in my career 3. Get elected as President of my association 4. Get my child to score A in his exams 5. Slim down 5 kg The above are examples of wrong goals.  To know if your goals ...

This article was originally published at Inspire Beats. I’ve always been a fan of the Art of War. The Art of War has been around for thousands of years and I’ve applied its strategies to anything that I do in life. This includes marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, and just life in general. The Art of War is broken down into 13 intensive chapters. Even though it might just sound like a simple war strategy book, every single chapter could be applied to closing deals and increasing sales. Let’s take a quick look at each chapter and how it can be applied to a sales team at a rapidly growing startup. Detail assessment and planning The first chapter talks about detail assessment and planning. The chapter explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership and management) and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Whether yo...

Some people commented that learning WeChat is too technical and dry.  In my courses I said that WeChat is a Chinese tool.  That day one student asked me how to use Sun Tzu Art of War, a famous Chinese wisdom, in using WeChat.  Sun Tzu said that there are 5 elements in the Art of War: Dao, Jiang, Tian, Di and Fa 1. Dao: Purpose . What is your purpose for using WeChat?  If it is just to sell to the people from China, you have a selfish purpose and people will not buy this idea.  To me using WeChat is to go back to my roots, not just as a Chinese, but as a human.  This is because WeChat is a human tool.  WeChat is the only tool that you can connect with people on a personal basis, with personal touch but without physical touch. WhatsApp can also do this, but it has less tools than WeChat 2.  Jiang: Leadership .  You can use WeChat as a leader and not as a follower.  For me I use WeChat to make myself a leader by forming W...

Sun Tzu (or Sūn Zǐ in pinyin) was a 500 BCE Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. Many great leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan studied his work and became legendary leaders. Many corporate leaders paid thousands of dollars to attend courses to learn Sun Tzu secrets. We believe that you too can learn master Sun Tzu secrets and apply them to your work easily.  This is because we take the essence and compile them into a Half-day course that will leave you with just enough materials to serve your bank’s customers and lead your business to greater heights. Since October 2010, we have trained over 1,137 leaders coming from countries including Indonesia, Philippines Cambodia, Japan, Sri Lanka and even China. How does this military classic apply to your CUSTOMER SERVICE? To ‘win without fighting’ in customer service is to serve your customers wholeheartedly and yet you n...

As we know, social media marketing is about social first and marketing second. Same for Sun Tzu Art of War: it is about art first and war later.   'Art' in Sun Tzu Art of War refers to how we do things, while 'War' here refers to winning in the business battlefield. Social media marketing is about how we do and not what we do.  For example, it is not about how nice your photo is on FaceBook but how you post your photo: do you post it with a positive or negative angle? On the surface, Social Media is a 201x thing, while Art of War belongs to 2,500 years ago. Yet they both share a common origin: the Yi Jing (or Book of Changes) written 5,000 years ago: life is about evolution. Social media is always evolving, while Sun Tzu Art of War is too evolving with the times as Sun Tzu advocates flexibility as the key winning strategy. Today I shall look at the 5 Elements of Sun Tzu Art of War and they can be applied in our Social Media Marketing.  Know Yourself Know Your...

We at Asia Trainers believe that you too can learn master Tzu Sun Art of War secrets with just two hundred dollars. This is because we take the essence and compile them into a 4-hour course that will leave you with just enough materials to lead your team to greater heights. Since October 2010, we have trained over 1,137 leaders coming from countries including Hong Kong, Japan, Myanmar and even China. The most valuable lesson out of his 13 chapter of 5,000 words must be found in the 3rd chapter: Win Without Fighting. As translated from The Art of War: Generally, in war the best thing is to take the enemy state whole and intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the entire army is better than to destroy it. Hence, to win on hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is supreme excellence. In short, win without fighting is the best. How does it apply to your sales? "Enemy" here refers to not your compe...

By applying Sun Tzu Art of War's 5 Elements of 道天地将法 , we can improve our negotiation easily in this order as follows: Purpose 道: The purpose of your negotiation is not to get the best deal for yourself, nor is it to squeeze your customer or supplier.  Sun Tzu said the highest ground shall be your purpose, so in business our purpose of negotiating is to have a long term win-win relationship .  Because if we are only interested in one-off deal, we don't need to negotiate, we just adopt a 'take it or leave it' attitude.   Boundaries 天 : Know your boundaries, i.e. your limits, what you can give and what are absolutely non-negotiable, like your integrity.    Details 地 : The devil is in the details, never leave details to another day, for it is only at the negotiation table that you have the opportunity to get what you want, including the details. Always minute down the details for you cannot rely on faint memory.  Lead   将.  Yes, you have to...

Human beings like to fight even though they know very well from past history that fighting never work for any parties.  Just look at the devastation World Wars I and II and the on-going wars today and you'll realize how silly we are. Psychologists said that fighting is an animal instinct, for people have this scarcity mentality and they are too attached to the notion of having things and that's why we cannot let go. Yet wisdom from over 2,000 years of ancient civilisation including Sun Tzu Art of War, Zhuang Zi, Confucius, Lao Zi and Sidharta Gotama 'Pali Canon' told us that at the end of the day, the winner is the one that wins EVEN WHEN HE DOESN'T FIGHT .  In fact smart companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple know and practised these No-War Strategies.  In particular, Facebook is a latecomer in social media but they did not go out to fight head-on with pioneers like MySpace and Friendster.  Instead Facebook created a perfect photo-sharing and time-l...