Business and Money Tips

Further to my article on 8 April 2020 on the 5 things that will change forever once the COVID-19 Pandemic is over, there are further 5 things that will also change: Airfares for most travellers will be more expensive, simply because there will be fewer airlines still around.  As air travel has declined by 90% worldwide since March 2020, many of the smaller airlines will go bust.  With lesser supply, plus lesser demand from business class as most corporate people will get used to video and online meetings, fare for the economy class has to rise to make up for the difference.  We all know that business class seats are subsidising economy class, so with lesser class demand, economy class fares will shoot up Cost of maintenance for everything will go up : from simple cleaning to disinfecting, from social distancing to non-stop cleaning, from the common use of masks to high usage of water, expect to see at least an increase of 20% to 40% in your maintenance cost, including your wat

To convert your work from offline to online, you need the following: 1. Convert all face-to-face meetings to online video meetings using FREE tools as follows: For 2 persons (you and one other person), you can use WhatsApp and WeChat video call For up to 4 persons, you can use WhatsApp group video call.  You first need to create a WhatsApp group  For up to 9 persons, you can use WeChat group video call.  You first need to create a WeChat group.  Go to the group chat, press the '+' button at the bottom of your phone and select 'Voice Call'.  Make sure you turn on your video For up to 100 people, you can use Zoom cloud meetings.  Read my 2 other articles on Zoom and Zoom security concerns at the links below You can also use Skype, Google Duo and Line 2. Convert what you want to tell people physically into brief notes and send to people 3. Create Group Chats in WhatsApp and WeChat for frequent discussions among your colleagues 4. Convert your mindset

Ever since people are locked down all over the world due to COVID-19 Pandemic, they start to use video conference tools.  Among all, Zoom is the most popular because it is free, cheap (for the host) and extremely easy to use.  But the initial enthusiasm over Zoom soon dies off because people realised that Zoom is not secure and online video seminars or meetings are not as what they expect . Many also find that quality (not the content) of the meetings are way below physical meetings.  So what's next now? If you don't use Zoom, you can use Skype, Cisco, Gotomeeting, Teamview and Google Hangouts.   I have tried many of them and find that Zoom is still the best because it offers me and the participants what we want: simulation of a real physical meeting. (For how to use Zoom, read here ) How about the security issues of Zoom?  My article here already addressed them.  Based on my experience, plus many people all over the world, as long as you do the security measures, you are

F ollowing my article on How to Use Zoom Effectively , plus recent news on Zoom security flaws, there are 7 ways that anyone can secure their Zoom meetings.  Understand that security flaws in Zoom are also present in other platforms including Skype.  My personal experience is that after installing and following these 7 features, your Zoom meetings will be much safer and you'll have a piece of that peace of mind.  The 7 things to do include: Set a unique meeting password that is not the one that you have used before.  Only inform your users 5 to 10 minutes before your meeting start time Enable the waiting room feature .  This allows you the host to see the people trying to enter the meeting before allowing them access Lock your meeting to disallow anyone from entering once your meeting starts, or 5 to 10 minutes after your meeting starts.  To do so, click the 'manage participants' at the bottom of the screen on Zoom Disable the option for others to join the meeting

With the lockdown from COVID-19, it is very obvious to see the good quality people from the bad ones. B PEOPLE - DO NOTHING Those that treat the lockdown of no need to work and still get paid (although less, but it is okay because of no need to work) from their employer and in Singapore, from the Singapore government (each person gets $600 cash on 18 April 2020) as a pure holiday.  Actually, since January 2020, the whole economy is very slow and their work was already much less as compared to 2019. But nevertheless, they treat this as their well-deserved holiday.  They may stay at home and get entertained the whole day from the many free channels offered by Starhub and Singtel.  Some stay at home and get glued to COVID-19 news and videos, busy forwarding such news to people on WhatsApp and social media a few times an hour.  They know that 99.9% of such news are fake, but they are good news and they feel that by forwarding such news to people they are saving mankind.  Some

(Read the update at here) Looking at what happened to China's Hebei province and Wuhan city now, there are 5 things in the world that will change forever when the COVID--19 lockdown is over: People get used to working and living online for everything : shopping, banking, groceries, tuition, training, seminars, office meetings, networking, social meeting and even dating. In future asking people to come out for your physical seminars,  meetings or events will be more difficult.  But the good news is that your reach is wider now as you can reach out to many people outside your country or territory via online. For example in my company, we used to conduct 4 physical seminars a week at our shop at Fu Lu Shou Complex. During the lockdown period, we hold almost daily online seminars via Zoom and Facebook Live.  Our audience now includes people from KL, Penang, East Malaysia, Taiwan and even New Zealand.   Working from home is more common, with any companies slashing their office sp

(Read also How to Secure Your Zoom meeting ) Other than Zoom Cloud Meeting, you can use other video conferencing platforms like Google Hangouts, Skype and WeChat Video Conference.  Zoom is the most popular because it is free and is easy to use, especially on the phone .  Here's how you can use Zoom effectively: Use a laptop, not your phone or tablet, especially when you are hosting a meeting.  On a laptop, you can see everything: the PowerPoint screen that you are sharing, video of all participants and the group chats.  You can easily type on a laptop and this is useful when you are translating or doing detailed explanations.   The host of the zoom meeting should mute everyone at the settings and only unmute them when they speak.  Participants can indicate that they want to speak by raising their hands before speaking Use earpiece or headsets or wireless earbuds so that you have a better concentration of the voices in the meeting and not be disturbed by the surrounding no

We all know that WeChat users are mostly people from China and they  use WeChat 5 times an hour daily, more than 3 hours a day and often buy goods and services via WeChat.  That’s why many people want to advertise on WeChat. But WeChat is very different from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google.   You just cannot advertise the way you do on the other tools.   There are 13 ways that you can advertise on WeChat: 1.       Incur at least US$20,000 to Tencent Holdings , the company that owns WeChat.  Tencent will, base on your target market, do a Moments broadcast to selected WeChat members .  You can specify who and where you want to target, like target the Shanghainese or the China people in Singapore.  Many Singapore companies including Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Tourism Board and Kaplan Education have been using paid WeChat advertising for years and are getting good results 2.       Register (for free) up to 5 WeChat Official Accounts  with Tencent using your business registrati