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

As we know, making money, especially making plenty of money, is the goal of everyone. But because everyone is focused on making money, other things like environment, morals and health are ignored. Just look at the rapidly deteriorating air and noise pollution in cities like Beijing and Jakarta and you'll know what I am talking about. Today the corporate buzzword is "Making Healthy Money". Like what Jack Ma, the founder of www.alibaba.com and www.taobao.com says, making healthy money will also lead you to making more money in a sustainable way .  And when your health is better, you can make even more healthy money and so the vicious cycle goes up .  By the way, ' healthy' includes not just physical health, but also mental and spiritual health. Here are 5 Ways that You Too Can Make Healthy Money in Your Job or Business Now: Use computer systems and e-commerce systems to reduce wastages, improve communication and excess stock.   Reduce negative stress among

Just because managers are successful now does not mean they will be doing well in the future. Based on  training  over several hundreds of companies in 12 countries since 1996, the following 5 are the  Must-Have Qualities that all Modern Managers  are Expected to have:  1. Follow From the Front This is about removing roadblocks from the paths of employees to help them to succeed.  It is beyond managing people to empowering and engaging people .  It is about jumping with the people. 2. Make Use of Technology like chatrooms, Facebook and Linked-in The modern manager will know what is happening faster from internet than reading newspapers, because the internet is instant while the print media is about yesterday. 3. Lead by Example Do not just give out instructions, but be the first to follow your own instructions.  Go to the scene to get the real feel and lead from the front. 4. Embrace Vulnerability Instead of playing it safe, managers must now have t

We all know how hard it is to find a  good boss.  If you happen to be one, you can do the following 5 things that will make all your  employees  want to work for you without remuneration: Believe in them .  This must be the biggest reward for any person, for we often see doubters but hard to find people who truly believe in us. You believe that they can do beyond what you’re seeing now, that they are self-directed and can be trusted at all times. Such strong faith will turn all ordinary employees into extra-ordinary employees. Train them . Yes,  training  is considered a luxury in many smaller companies but all big MNCs over-train people. The 3 most important skills that you should equip your staff include  communication skills ,  people management skills  and  leadership skills . You must train people without condition.   Do not demand that they must return the benefits to the company, for doing so is not really training but just a trading transaction.  True train

As we know, Sun Tzu does not advocate a martinet-style of leadership. Instead, he states that a leader must be strong enough to executive the strategy in the organization. On the other hand, the leader must also be confident and trusting enough to allow his team to carry out the strategy successfully.  It is thus both HARD and SOFT: Hard on the Problem Soft on the People .  There are 5-Ways to Sun Tzu Leadership: Build Your Character, not just Your Image .  To Sun Tzu, a leader must be courageous, sincere and yet humane. But a leader must always  appear to be in control  of the situation, exuding confidence and assurance at all times. This confidence is not a facade, but based on true inside confidence. In short,  if the leader has even one doubt, his followers will have several . Lead with Actions, Not Just Words .  The best way to show your character is not to talk about it, but set the example. Talk is cheap.  You should never say one thing and focus on another

In our management and sales courses, we use this famous 4-Step RAST Model to teach our trainees in problem solving. I shall use the case of Getting Your Team to Achieve Their Goals as an example: Step 1: Recognize the Problem Recognize that there is a problem, and don't be egoistic or pretend that there is no problem.  The problem here is that our team is not achieving the goals, and we must not accept this as norma l but recognize this as a problem. Step 2: Actual Reasons for the Problem We need to find out the Actual reasons for the problem, and not be blinded by some non reasons like opinions and 'everyone is doing this' type of excuse.  We must be thoroughly objective in finding out the actual reasons, and not be swayed by some subjective hearsay.  In this case study, we find out that the actual reason for the team not achieving their goals is a lack of competency and confidence. Step 3: Solutions for the Problem With the actual reasons out, we can pinp

Of all the words in the English language, Love is the most mis-understood.  Many mistaken love to be attachment, lust, affection or relationship kind of love. We know that love is more than that. We also know what Love is NOT. Love is not about possession, condition and blind faith .   Many say that love is an inner feeling, and when you express that feeling to the outside world, that feeling is called an emotion. We define love as promoting the welfare of others.  It is to serve others, not ourselves .   It is to use your heart, not just your brain or your body. There are 7 kinds of love that we can use in business and at work: 1.  Showing Kindness, Care and Concern (non material benefits) 2.  Welfare and Material Benefits (e.g. money) 3.  Commitment and Loyalty 4.  Trust and Confidence in People, especially when the going is tough 5.  Empathy (to feel what people are feeling without them telling you) 6.  Friendship and Comradeliness 7.  Non-self, i.e. put ourselves be

As we know, management is an art and not a science, and the best managers do not manage at all, for they make people better than themselves .   I follow the 8-Path Wisdom in Management as follows, using how to ensure people hit their targets as a case study:  Right Understanding Do we have the right understanding on the reasons for people not hitting their targets?  Is it due to lack of skills, motivation or attitude? Right Intent Is hitting targets our intention?  Or making people perform at the highest level possible our intent? Right Action What is the Right Action to Take if Lack of Skills is the reason for people not performing at the right level?  Let's say it is weekly training, plus monthly new challenges.  Right Effort What is the most positive action, every day, in both ourselves and our team?  How can we engage our people so that their  efforts becomes more effective? Right Speech How do we