Business and Money Tips

I had a good conversation with my friend that day who complained to me how many problems he has: family, business, work, finance and health.  I told him that actually he has no problems because all his problems are created by himself.  At first he wanted to throttle me, but later when I explained to him calmly, his mind started to open up. At the end of our conversation he was so elated and thanked me profusely.  I promised him that I would stand by him no matter what happened.  He asked me to share what I taught him, that's why I created this post on my blog. People make problems out of no problems in 5 ways: Craving, Possession, Clinging, Closing of Options and Never Negotiate. Craving is the Beginning of Problems    People craved for things, which is not the same as desire or wanting.  It's okay to want or desire things, but when you crave for things you become so hard up that you become irrational .  You just want to have things because that's what you want.

As a Trainer with over 17 years experience (part time since 1996, full time since 2001), I realized that there are 2 types of training in this world.  By training I don't just mean attending courses or lessons, the most common training in the world is direct experience or on-the-job training as known in the workplace.  The 2 types of training are Narrowing the Mind and Broadening the Mind Training.  Type 1: Narrowing the Mind Training This type of training narrows the mind, that is, the mind becomes more narrow after the training.  By 'mind' here I mean the thinking, both conscious and non-conscious .  This type of training, instead of letting the trainee knows what are the possibilities, restricts him to fewer possibilities .  For example, some corporate trainers teach people only certain fixed way of doing things and disregard other schools of thought.  They are dogmatic and usually claimed themselves to be 'gurus' or some form of special intellectual peo

We know that things come about on their own.  Once we have done our work, we can leave the law of nature to deliver the results.  But you must first do your work, like plant the right seeds and provide the right soil and environment so that your tree can grow easily. Same as in management of people.  The seeds you plant today will grow into bountiful trees tomorrow.  You plant seeds by putting in the right systems so that your people can grow from the systems.  Your  systems should not inhibit growth.  For example, if your remuneration system rewards everyone the same regardless of their contributions, good people will not grow. There are 7 Ways that You Can Make Your People Grow Faster: Give them a Clear Sense of Direction of Where Your Company is Going Let them Set their Own Goals on When and How They Can Achieve the Company's Directions Your Remuneration System should be 70% Fixed and 30% Variable so that there is sufficient motivation to perform .  This will als

By now the whole world realizes that Apple's iPad Air has broken another new record for tablet sales.  Many people wondered what makes Apple successful while others like Samsung and LG are still fighting hard? According to my teacher Andy Ferrari Norman, there are 5 Selling Rules to follow: Non-self. Yes, selling is about not focusing on yourself but on your customers .  You need to find out what customers want and give it to them.  Selling is not about the seller's ego but making customers heros.  Apple has obviously focused on the user's experience and not the brand awareness.  The App Store it created is second to none.    Impermanence : selling is about creating new things every now and then and making things non permanent .  That's why Apple has product upgrades every 12 months or so. Interconnectedness :  As everything changes, everything in this world is connected.  Apple pays attention to the connectivity of things : its apps work with its hardware and

Unknown to many people, many people are actually adding work at work and not adding value.  You see, when one person is untrained in his work, he is not only not doing his work, but adding work to his colleagues.  Similarly, when people have poor inter-personal skills , they create work friction and lots of misunderstandings. As a result, their bosses have to step in, run team-building trainings, and put in extra manpower, all just to get the house on order. Studies done by International HR consultants indicated that only about 30% to 50% of people are actually adding value in their work.  The rest are just adding work!  Worse still, some employees are adding trouble at work.  For example, they make careless mistakes and mislead customers.    So the key to success in management is to ensure that your people are adding value at work.  Here are 7 ways that all employees can do to add value in their work: Do Self Quality Control and Self Audit .  This will ensure that things ar

One of the most confused communication in the business world, be it in sales or advertisements, is the concept of benefits.  Often people mistake features as benefits, and many also mistake advantages as benefits. As we know, a feature is a characteristic of what you do. Like your company has 5-day week and 14-days annual leave.  This is obviously a feature and not a benefit.  A feature can be considered as an advantage if such a feature is not common.  But in today's world, 5-day week and 14-days annual leave are too common to be considered an advantage. What about benefits?  They are not general things but things that mean something to people .  That is, p eople do really benefit from them .  So using the above example, if a person wants a career that offers fast promotion or good incentives, 5-day week and 14-days annual leave will not mean anything to him and are thus not considered benefits to him. In short, benefits are special to the person.  So a same thing may be a

By the way, we are all in sales, regardless of whether we do selling as a career or not. For sales is not just about selling products and services but more of selling ideas.  For example, if you need your colleague to help you out in your work, you need to sell him the idea that helping you is good for him.  If you can convince him, you have made the sale. The most and often overlooked secret in sales is to be in front of a qualified prospect when he is ready to buy, not when you need to make a sale. You see when you are desperate to make the sale, you will be selfish and only look at your own interest. You will ignore or downplay the prospect's interest.  And your prospect will notice this, and he will not buy from you because he sees that you are just a sale pusher, not a problem solver. A salesperson can only succeed if he is seen as a problem solver.  For all prospects have 3 problems, money, happiness and time.  Everyone in this world wants more money, more happiness a

You have all heard about people making headlines in winning awards, making the most money, achieve highest sales and being the first and the largest . We seldom heard of people winning awards for things such as help the most people, being the most honest guy and making the most sacrifice for others. Yes, our world overvalue things such as make the most money, be the first, win titles, aim for bigger things and go for fame and recognition.  But unknown to many, such things are actually of low value.  This is because it is extremely easy to achieve such things.  All you need to do is to put in lots of efforts to achieve them.  But it is very difficult to achieve the higher noble things in life : build character, make a difference, care for people, teach people and understand people with compassion.  Such noble things are often undervalued.  That's why no awards in this world are created for them. If you were to look back to your school days, you will undoubtedly recall the t

All managers must avoid 2 deadly pitfalls: 1. Control Too little control or too much control is a problem . Too little control would mean not having rules, but most often we see rules not followed and management never do much about it. For example, many companies have rules on working hours, but ask yourself how many management actually ensure that people come to work punctually? Many people have got used to being late, and the common excuse is they work late, so they can come late for work. Many don't know that this is causing some issues in teamwork, e.g. if some people are not here by 8.30 am, how am I going to get certain things done without them? So as a manager, make sure that you set the rules of the game. A good rules of the game is Values. Values like honesty and 'Go Extra Mile' must be laid down and followed by all staff. 2. Losing Their Voice It's easy for people to lose their voice after working in the company. Initially new employees a

In just one short year since joining Yahoo in July 2012, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, has turned around a failing company into one of the re-born stars in the internet. Today, Yahoo regains the number one position as the most visited website property in USA, overtaking giant Google. It’s mobile products are considered cool once again and its quarterly revenues and profits are increasing.   Unknown to many, what Marissa Mayer used the tactic of “ Loot a House on Fire ” 打铁乘热, tactic number 5 of The 36 Stratagems . She fixed the weak Yahoo’s culture, hired a bunch of highly motivated and talented product people, and went on a buying spree, acquring 21 mobile start-us in 12 months. The biggest purchase was Tumblr US$1.1 billion. What's next? Blackberry? What'sapp? Dropbox?   In fact, Sun Tzu Art of War or 孙子兵法 uses many tactics of deception. Such tactics, however, must be in line with overall Tao or 道 of the company’s mission: to be a strong Product

Ambitious people tend to give people the impression that they are too focused on their own success and will manipulate others to achieve their own goals.  Many such people, including some poor salespeople, tend to look upon every transaction as an opportunity to make a sale and get out. On the other hand, Empathy people are those that have a long term perspective. They always think of others before thinking of themselves. They do not think of closing the sale as much as they think of opening long-term customer relationships. A good salesperson balances between ambition and empathy.  Because he knows that if he is too ambitious, he will frighten away customers; if he is too empathetic, he will not be assertive enough to ask for the sale. There are 5 ways that good salespeople balances between ambition and empathy: Ask Questions and Never Make Any Assumptions .  When you ask questions and listen to the answer, you put yourself into the other person's shoes.  One can never

As we know, a person spends 2/3 of his waking hours working and commuting to/from work. Also, all our education is to prepare us for a better working life.  Because of work, we are able to enjoy the lifestyles that we want.   Yet many people feel unhappy when they are at work.  They only look forward to Friday.  It doesn't have to be this way.  In our training, we teach about these 4 Ps to be Happy at Work: Perceive, Pick-up, Prepare and Proceed. Perceive The first thing is to change the way you perceive your work.  Do not perceive it as work, for this will only bring you drudgery and misery.  Instead p erceive your work as an opportunity for you to learn the most important skill of all: dealing with people .  When you come across difficult people at work, perceive them to be your teachers teaching you the finer points about human relations.  By changing your perception from negative to positive, you will get enlightenment immediately .  Work is no longer a chore but a j

Mention the word 'branding' and most people will only think of international brands like Facebook, Google and Apple. In reality, we are each a brand, as a brand simply means what you stand for. Today we may be a not-famous brand, but tomorrow we could be reaching out to people we never thought of before, as long as we build our brand in 5 easy ways: Know What We Stand For.  Yes, what we stand for are usually our deepest passion and innate desire to help others.  Like me AndyTheCoach, people know that I stand for coaching and teaching, for I gave up a high-figure Director post in a Japanese MNC 13.5 years ago to go into full-time coaching and training.   Do That Few People Do .  It doesn't need to be something big, all you need is that you don't do what others do and you dare to do what others don't do .  Like Steve Jobs in 1997, when he took over the interim CEO position in Apple Inc, he took just a $1 salary but asked for huge amounts of stock options tha

Yes, the best communication you can ever have in this world will give you everything that want, be it money, success, happiness and peace of mind.  This communication, when given in a timely and targeted manner , will turn any suspicions into trust.  People will start to understand you, give you business, and most importantly, give you what you want. What is this 'best' communication?  How much does it cost you?  Many times this communication cost just your thoughtfulness or mindfulness.   It does not cost you any money . The best communication in this world that you can give to anyone is Giving . Yes, not just giving anything, and not just giving for the sake of giving, but giving something that is both useful and relevant to the person receiving it.  And giving without any conditions or expectations of rewards.  In short, self-less giving. What can you give to people?  There are 7 things in this world that everyone needs and wants that you can give immediately: L

Commonsense tells us that there is no fire without wind, and everything happens due to causes and conditions. Yet many still believe in lottery and think that they can break laws as long as they are not caught.  What we teach in our training are all commonsense, yet they are not common practice.  The following are 5 Most Ignored Commonsense: 1. Multiple causes vs Single Cause   It is A, B, C, D, E that leads to F, G, H, I J, and not A leads to B. You cannot just advertise and expect business, your people must also know how to close sales or there will be no business. Of course your product must be right to begin with. 2. Better than Late Than Never is Stupid!  But the moment you say 'Later', you are closer to never. It's better to 'Just Do It' as what Nike said than to wait for conditions to be perfect. 3.  Time Simply Has No Value It's not time that has value, but what you do to time that has value.  How often we hear 'time is