Ricky’s Online Business Blog

It’s finally countdown to 2009 now.  Happy New Year everyone!

No matter whether you are working, running your own business, studying, home-making, retired or somewhat in between, I wish you achieve new heights of success in career and life in this new year!

People say it’s going to be a bad year.  Many will lose their jobs.  Disposable income will become less and less.  Businesses will suffer.  So on and so forth.

We can read or hear so much bad news everyday that some people I know started to automatically develop a response of “immunity” and even “rejection” to these negative bombardments.

According to some really successful people, now is actually a great time to do many things, including developing your business.  So instead of lamenting on the economic situation, let’s learn to take advantage of it - we don’t have such opportunity many times in our lifetime!

So instead of expecting bad things to happen, let’s together hope for and work for good things to come up in our life, work or business this year!  Well, according to the law of attraction, we get what we expect.  We reap what we sow, starting first in our minds.

At the end of 2009, I wish I will have lived a fruitful year.  So I wish for you.  God bless you a successful year ahead!

Selamat Tahun Baru!

新年快乐,心想事成!

新年おめでとうございます！

We know a business exists not only to earn money for its owners or shareholders. It seeks to create “values” for all stakeholders.

It gives value to the employees as a good employer and workplace, to the customers as a provider of goods and services value for their money, to the owners for their effort and money well invested, and to the society at large as a responsible corporate citizen to help in sustainable development.

Similarly, why do we individuals exist in this world? Why are we born into this world? For what purpose? I believe, apart from coming to eat and drink, to work and enjoy life, we are here to create values for others.

There’s a Chinese saying that “a tiger dies and leaves its skin, but a man dies and leaves its name” (虎死留皮,人死留名). When we are gone, we will not take away any wealth and materials earned in this life. But we will leave a “name”, or better called our “legacy”.

But the “name”, “legacy” or “reputation” left is not for our interest, but it’s a by-product as we seek to fulfill our purpose in life. And I believe our purpose here is to bless others, that is to bring good things to others, to create values for others by our existence on this earth.

And to be able to give values to others, I’ve been taught not to always look inwards to myself too much, but to look outwards to pay attention to what others need.

This is just what I have learned. I don’t want to be just a traveler in this world, and I’m learning to be a blessing. Let’s create values for others!

I often receive question on how my business came about and what I’m doing now. Perhaps I’ll answer here once and for all This is a very brief history of my business. If you have further query, please feel free to contact me here.

In 1999, I started BizPartner with 2 other partners when we were university students. We provided all kinds of IT services we knew such as selling and repairing computer, computer training, computer networking, web design, and so on. There was no focus at all.  Naturally the business was not good and soon my partners left me.

I carried on and narrowed down to three major services - computer training, web development and SMS marketing. Before long, I became the top reseller of a hosting company as I managed to get quite a number of customers to host their web sites with me.

In 2001, I registered the domain name bizpartner.com.my (so late!) and started to focus on web hosting services only. Since then I’ve been providing domain name registration, web and email hosting services until today.

In 2002, I launched NextLevel Tutor Network, a home tuition portal for Malaysia and Singapore. The business model was quite different from other players in the tuition industry, and it did shake the industry a bit at that time. The web site went on until today, although many similar sites have emerged.

In the same year, I also launched RichQuote.com, an affiliate web site selling products on personal finance. For a while, it was quite successful as I became the number 1 affiliate around the world earning US Dollar everyday. However, the business model was quite controversial. To avoid any trouble, I later decided to sacrifice the money and turn it into a very normal web site. The site has since disappeared into oblivion, though still earning a little of income every month.

In these few years, I also launched a few other online businesses, some mine, some joint ventures with others. These include an online photo album about Malaysia, a web hosting service using single-level marketing, and so on. I also helped form a company which sells an IT outsource solution. Unfortunately these ventures didn’t work out. But at least I tried

So started in 1999 as a general IT service provider, I changed to become a developer of online businesses as years went by. I no longer wanted to provide IT services (except web hosting), but to build automated (or nearly automated) Internet businesses so that I have free time to do other things.

But starting from 2004, although my little business still went on, I started to get involved in certain non-business activities. As a result, I spent too little time working on business that it has remained stagnant until this year. I’m now very much left behind. Just look at many young entrepreneurs today, some one decade younger than me, they are already doing very successfully!

This year in 2008, I decided to give up many good activities to refocus on business (often “good” is the enemy of “best” use of my time). The relaunch of RickySoo.com as a business blog this year was a milestone as I decided to devote time working on the business again (not just in the business). I’m trying to learn up everything as I did in my early years, and I believe I can catch up.

As a start, I’m now working first to transform my existing sites, and will later work on some business ideas I have kept for years. If you have good ideas and need a technical partner to team up, you are welcome to contact me here.