I remembered joining the MBA course for 4 purposes: to learn, to develop, to network, and to enjoy.  I have always kept reminding myself on these throughout the MBA journey.

• Learn - I have learned much about business, its various areas and everything in a whole.  The last case study submitted was a consultative paper in which I learned to apply many things in the course to provide solution to a real-world problem.
• Develop - I should have become a better thinking person, thanks to certain good lecturers in the course.  But I’ve not been able to improve my communication skills including presentation and public speaking.
• Network - I might be one of the most connected person in my business school.  The last count on friends known through the course on Facebook stood at 318.  Unfortunately, most are shallow relationships and I hardly have more than a few buddies to speak of.
• Enjoy - After absence from school for years, I indeed have enjoyed the campus life.  In fact, I enjoyed every process including the stressful schedules to submit assignments, prepare for presentations and sit for exams.

• Financial goal – Increase my net worth for a certain amount.
• MiC (Masters in Communication) – I need to become a master in communication, the very thing that I missed out developing in the MBA course.

I guess I’m quite clear of what I need to achieve this year. How about you?

First Semester

• Positive Mindset
• Personal Branding
• Conversation
• Socializing

Second Semester

• Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)
• Non-verbal Communication
• Presentation
• Practical #1 – Toastmasters Club

Third Semester

• Humor
• Public Speaking
• Leading
• Practical #2 – Assertiveness

Fourth Semester

• Persuasion
• Selling
• Negotiation
• Arguments

I designed this “curriculum” out of fun and quest for self-improvement.  I can use it as a self-imposed self-development course to improve my communication skills.

Imagine each semester takes 2 months to complete. Then I can focus on two courses in a month.  For example, in the first month I can improve on Positive Mindset and Personal Branding.  Then in the second month I can work on Conversation and Socializing.  The course will finish in eight months or within a year.

Is there any exam?  Of course, no.  But to make it work and make myself accountable, I’ll need to read, learn and put into practice in daily life.  Then I can use journaling to record and reflect on my progress.

How would you improve this course?  Would you like to design your own course too?

我会发着呆
然后忘记你
接着紧紧闭上眼
想着那一天会有人代替
让我不再想念你

On a social level, I find it easier and more comfortable dealing with girls than guys.  I have more and closer female friends than guy friends.  Normally you may see me associating with girls more than guys.  I think this has something to do with my childhood upbringing.

But when it comes to working, I find it much more difficult dealing with a lady boss than a male boss.  “Boss” here is not limited to workplace but also other settings such as a team leader working together for non-work purposes.

Perhaps it’s because the few lady bosses I have had in the past are all quite strong leaders, even stronger than many male leaders I have come across.  They often have very high expectations out of me.

From personal experience, it has not been very pleasant experience working with lady bosses.  But thanks to these lady bosses, I have learned much and corrected myself from the experience dealing with each and every of these strong personalities.

Personally, I prefer working with male boss.  But I’m not in control of who will be assigned as my boss.  Perhaps God gives me a difficult boss in order to train me up.  So I should take whoever assigned to me as my leader.

I guess in future, women leadership will be very common, that perhaps one generation from now, such survey on lady boss is no longer meaningful any more.

It is a fact of life.  We need to deal with anyone who come into our life.  I guess the problem is more on “managing our boss”, rather than the lady bosses themselves.

We were trained for positive thinking.  One compulsory reading we must have was Think & Grow Rich.  We were trained to visualize success and think “if I think I can, I can”!

I believed in the “law of attraction”, though it may not be called this name at that time.  I believed I could achieve anything I wanted, anything my mind focused on and attracted.  At the age of 19, I thought I was at the top of the world.

But things did not turn out well:

• My group collapsed.  Many downlines migrated to another network marketing company.
• The company also folded itself in a few years.
• I lost money and trust of many friends.
• And many other setbacks in life.

Recently I made a presentation on the concept of self-efficacy.  It is the belief that we can complete a certain task completely.  It also refers to our general trait that we think we can succeed in a variety of situations.

To make a long story short, while self-efficacy is very important, it is not everything.  We humans have limit on what we can do, and we need to be humble enough to recognize our limit.

However, as Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, proposes that as we focus on what we can do now (our circle of influence), and not on what we are concerned of but can’t do now (our circle of concern), we will stretch our circle of influence bigger and bigger.

Please go through my presentation and see if you can find out anything or not

• You do not know why you are blogging.
• You do not know what to blog about.
• You do not know who your target readers are.
• You do not know what you can offer to readers.
• You do not feel happy and at peace blogging
• You blog because others do, or others asked you to.
• Your blog is just a copycat of another more established blog.
• Your blog is not serving what you intend to achieve.
• Your blog conversion rate is too low.
• Very few people read or subscribe to your blog.
• You find blogging eat up too much of your time and energy.
• You find blogging become more important than other things in life such as your job and relationships.
• You find blogging working against your life objectives!
• Do you have anything else to add?  Please feel free.

Actually this is a checklist for myself.  I started blogging since years ago on Google’s Blogspot.  Since then, I have stopped and restarted a few blogs.

During my previous blogs, I could easily answer yes to many items in above checklist.  When one blog was not working, it’s time to take a hard look!

At last, I settled down with this blog since April 2008 and it’s been one year plus now.  Hopefully it will stay long this time

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！

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!

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 (2008).

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.

Butterflies feeding on flowers

I didn’t know butterflies eat pineapples too!

Here are a few funny warning signs for visitors

Don’t pull me from feeding!

Don’t catch me!

Don’t take away my lunch!

The last photo reminds me of a best-seller book called Who Moved My Cheese, in which a rat feeds on a big chunk of cheese everyday, but one day suddenly finds it missing. Now imagine you are a butterfly and one day find your lunch missing? How naught that fella is

In real life, things are always changing. We shall not assume our cheese or lunch is always there everyday. Especially in the current financial turmoil, our lunch can suddenly disappear. Better be prepared than sorry…

These fireflies are little insects which emit light on their abdomen.  They emit light for mating purpose.  But I read that one type of female fireflies use the light to attract male fireflies to them and eat them up!

I was there in Kuala Selangor in 2004, now again in 2008.  There were not many fireflies four years ago.  But to my surprise, there are even less now!  What happened?  I don’t know.  Four years ago I saw people catching them while watching.  Or maybe that place is no longer an ideal habitat for the fireflies.

While waiting on the jetty, I could see a photo showing hundreds of fireflies beaming their light.  I don’t know when the photo was taken, and for how long exposure time it was taken.  But I’m sure people would have an expectation of watching so many fireflies by the river.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.  If you want to see how satisfied the customers are after visiting a place, look at their faces when they come out.  Do you see a lot of smiles?  Do you think they will go out telling their friends to come?  Sorry to say but watching fireflies is a one-time business only.

What will happen if the day comes there is no more firefly in Kuala Selangor?  Less tourists will go there.  There is even a firefly resort built near the jetty to accomodate tourists coming for fireflies.  Do they have to close shop then?

Well, hopefully they could do something to preserve the fireflies.  Otherwise Kuala Selangor will no longer be on the tourists’ map for fireflies.  But if the “extinction” is expected sooner or later, then perhaps it’s time to change business model not to depend so much on fireflies any more.

Sometimes, we may need to proactively “disrupt” our business first, before it is disrupted by others.

It all started out in a small village in war-torn Malaya.  A young man lost contact with his father and survived with his mother selling cakes.  He had a crush on a girl, only to lose her until 10 years later.  Unfortunately, when they met again and really fell in love this time, the girl was forced out of the village, after being found out she had been used by her father to cheat guys for money.

The man had since stayed single for the whole life. He kept on writing letter to the girl, but has been keeping the letters since he didn’t know where to post.  At a very old age, he managed to see his lover, now an old woman, for the first time after decades, but also for the last time.  He finally dropped dead in front of her, but not without the satisfaction that his wish finally came true.

This is a two-hour stage show called 落地生根 (“came to this country and be rooted here” in my own translation) in the Pesta Tanglung 2008 (Mid-Autumn Festival) in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).  From a love story in the foreground, we can see in the background a history of our forefathers who came from China and took root here in Malaya.

It is not the “thereafter they lived together happily forever” kind of love story.  The story line is very original and quite unexpected.  The love story was so touching that we could hear the audience crying as they watched

It is also a drama filled with singing and dancing, including many “old songs” decades ago.  But it didn’t bore us at all.  Very good use of the right music and the right dance at the right time to express the kind of emotion and circumstances as the storyline develops.

I was an actor and drama director on stage before.  But I’ve never seen such a masterpiece so perfectly done.  There are so many excellent actors and actresses there that we could hardly pinpoint who was the best, not to mention their costumes, the stage props and so on.

The official web site says it just right:

此舞台表演绝非一般舞台剧，其剧情感人非常，是晚演出定必让你赞不绝口。请万勿错过。

(This stage show is absolutely not a normal show.  The plot is so moving, that the performance in that night will be worth many praises.  Don’t ever miss it!)

This is a night well spent, for just RM8!  I wish they could perform more than once, and perhaps in other places too.  I will definitely recommend my friends to watch it.  The UKM team, whether on stage or off stage, are really worthy of all our thumbs up for them.  Amazing!  Well done!

国大各位台前幕后的朋友们，你们的舞台演出令人激赏，你们的幕后工夫令人感动。我从未见过如你们那么棒的表演。我不是国大生，我以前是来自马大的。但我为你们感到骄傲，明年还要再来支持！

不好意思，很久没写中文，见笑了

in just a few sentences and short span of time, you need to catch his or her attention and leave a good first impression. Perhaps he or she will want to hear from you again and become your customer, or develop a business relationship with you later.

That is called the elevator pitch, a little sales pitch in as short span of time as an elevator ride.

When people ask me such questions, I normally answer “I’m an Internet business developer”, “I run a few dot com web sites”, “My main business is web hosting”, “I operate an education portal” and the like.

Non-technical people may reply, “Oh I see. So you design web sites!” Sometimes I just said, “Something like that lah!”, although I’m not a web designer. But it seems this is more understandable to many people.

Anyway, I have failed to explain and failed to impress them. Lost opportunities

So now I need to think of a better pitch. Do you think these are a little better?

• To business and finance people – “I develop Internet businesses that generate positive cash flow within 6 months for its owners”
• To non-technical people – “I build businesses that operate on the Internet. Learning to earn money in my pyjamas” :-)
• To bosses, sales and marketing people – “I sell products and services on the Internet using the latest technologies”
• To technical people – “I develop dot com web sites with PHP and MySQL”
• To hosting customers – “I provide you a platform to put up your web site and email accounts on the Internet”
• To people in education industry – “I do a little match-making in the tuition industry. Are you interested to be matched?”
• To my mother who doesn’t know what I’m doing – “As you can see, I sit in front of computer everyday to earn money!”

How about you? What is your elevator pitch? Feel free to introduce yourself!

I’ve been holding certain things very dearly too.  But when I look into these things, I could find that they may not be as valuable as I’ve been thinking them to be.  Are they really that important?

Sometimes these things can even keep me from focusing my time and resources on the most important life goals.  They may be good things, but may not necessarily the best ones in life.   The enemy of “best” may be called “good”.

Perhaps sometimes we need to learn how to let go certain things, so that we can no longer be bondaged by them any further.  Surely there will be pain forgoing something which have been very dear to us so far in life.

In the four actions framework (Eliminate, Reduce, Raise, Create) according to the Blue Ocean Strategy, a business may need to examine what it offers and find out what is not really important and necessary, and learn to eliminate them (but raising and creating other values).  I heard that if there is no pain and resistance to do so, then there is not really eliminating anything.

Similarly there will be pain and resistance to let go something which have been valuable in our life.  But if we don’t learn to stop going after these things, we can be like chasing after the winds, achieving nothing much at the end.  Let’s say NO to these things so that we can say YES to more important things!

The blue ocean strategy is not only applicable to businesses, but in other contexts as well, though we can’t apply everything directly in those settings. In particular, the four actions framework is useful in planning our own personal life.

Whether we like it or not, everyone of us is a Me Inc., and we are the CEO of our own life. We do have a mission to complete on this earth in this life. And to achieve this, we have been bestowed with resources such as time and money.

The four actions framework can be used to differentiate ourselves (or our business) from others yet at a lower cost. It asks four main questions – what to Eliminate, what to Reduce, what to Raise and what to Create (ERRC)? Let’s take an example how I might want to plan my expenses:

Eliminate – In recent years, I have developed a habit of eating out in expensive restaurants with others, that now I patronize these places even when eating alone! I don’t have to spend so much when eating by myself. I need to cut this expense completely!

Reduce – I need to reduce buying seemingly useful but actually unnecessary items such as books and magazines. I don’t have so much time to read all of them!

Raise – I should spend more on high-leverage expenses which give good returns in long term. For example, taking classes to educate myself in business, finance and technology can go a long way toward success in life.

Create – I may want to consider some investment instruments such as shares, which as a risk-averse person I never tried. Of course, getting educated first in these is essential to avoid losses.

I find it helpful to that many things in business and life can be applied through this ERRC model. Is there anything you want to get ERRC’d too?