Overcome Public Speaking

How many of us are good at public speaking?

I will need to do a 10 minutes public speaking to 50 people by end of next month, but I'm not sure what to speak as I'm not familiar with the topic assigned.

From what I understand, it requiring huge effort and preparation if you want to provide a good and meaningful speech to the audience. On top of that, you have to overcome the fear of speaking in front of audience, forgotten what you want to say, and the response from the audience.

Well, the way you speak normally will influence on how you perform on stage, including the tune, pace and vocabulary.

Anyway, practice will makes perfect. Now just need to think of what to say, and then practice it and wait for the day to come!

Always Exceed Expectations

I touched about a topic on aggressive about 2 months ago. Come to think of it, perhaps it needs to be explained further. I would like to talk about expectation in this post.

When we perform a task or execute a job, there is always an expectation from yourselves or others. Not to mention those who doing less than what is expected. Most of us are used to follow instruction to achieve the task / job's goal, or so call 'do exactly as expected'.

First of all, there is nothing wrong on this as the school has taught us to perform so and the teacher has encouraged us to do so. Unfortunately, doing so may not work well today as the competition is getting stiffer, cost living is getting higher, resources are getting scarcer, and our life is getting tougher. These factors have lead us a need to make a change.

Without change, we may face to be mediocre or even below that eventually. Just look some successful giant companies i.e. Nokia, Yahoo, Blackberry and where are they now. And then you also can look at iPhone, what do you think it's future will be?

The rule is very simple if put this into a job position. Do less than expected, we are not contributing sufficient value and thus you may be an liability and expense to the company. For example, regular late comers, always forgotten this and that, did not deliver task on time. Thus, you may be the first one to be retrenched.

Do exactly as expected, you may just sustaining the value to the company, where you may be dispensable asset and low return investment to the company. For example, you are just doing what is required by the boss or superior. Nothing more than that or less.

Finally, do more than expected, you are possible creating value to the company. For example, you are the top sales of the company and always provide ideas to the team on how to generate more sales. Or you are an assistance that taking more challenging jobs from the boss instead of entry level jobs. The company is earning more than what it gets by paying the same salary if compare to your peer. By making this as your habit, luck and opportunity will start to come to you. The boss and colleagues will also think of you when they need someone to be rely on.

Hence, you may want to consider to be a value creator and do more than expected in order to stand out from others and change your life.

Learning

The stock market and property prices have been growing and flipped don't know how many times since recession of 2008 till today. A lot of people made a lot of money from this recession. No wonder the guru always said the stock and property markets are the best tools for mid to long term investment.

For those who want to jump into the market now, the risk is definitely a lot higher compared to last year, few years ago or year 2008. But we cannot say it is at it's peak now as no one can really predict the market.

In short, stock and property market is a cyclical game, which means there is up and down. There won't be forever go up, or forever go down. In overall based on history, it is going up a lot even it went down some times. That is why I said it really does not matter you buy at the peak as this point, as it is hard to say and you can be right in mid or long term. What if the marker continue to go up for another 30 to 50% after you invested?

Anyway, what we want to do is to make a right decision. In order to make a so called right decision, we have to minimize our risk and understand what we are investing. We cannot be 100% right on all decision, but we can increase our probability of being right in our decision, by understanding what we are investing either based on history or future prospects, as well as the risk we are going to face.

The best thing to do now is to learn. Michael Jordan spent more than 20,000 hours in his life to practice on basketball before he became a legend. Warren Buffet spent all his times to study annual reports and company financial statistics even though he is one of the richest man in the world. All the riches are keep learning in order to climb in a better position and secure themselves.

If you have learned a lot about stock and property market before 2009, you should be a multi-millionaire by now. If you are already started to learn, then you need to continue to learn. That's one of the reasons that how the rich differentiate than the normal and poor people.

Have a nice day, folks.

Burger King vs McDonald

If I let you guess, Burger King vs McDonald in terms of delivery services, who will be the winner?

The answer is.... Burger King!

You must wondering why...

Well, a picture worths a thousand words. Burger King is more rugged and safety!

It's for fun only anyway. This incident is real where McDelivery is hit by Perodua Kancil mini car. However, the local Burger King spokesperson has clarified that the car has been edited with Burger King logo. 

Cheers!

Business Trips

I was away for outstations for the past few weeks so I did not manage to update my blog lately.

The first stop was Singapore, which the schedule is pretty tight and did not even manage to do any shopping.  I'm there for vendor and their clients' site visits together with few colleagues.

One thing I would like to say is, the cost living there is not really that expensive even it is granted the highest cost living country in the world this year. But if it comes to real estates, shopping area i.e. Orchard and hotels, they are really really expensive. The hotel I stayed in Orchard road costs me SGD400 per night! And the fine dinner at a Chinese restaurant for 4 persons cost us SGD200!

My second stop was Manila, Philippine, for a vendor product update and quick tours together with some partners. This was my first time to Manila, it's pretty big but terrible traffic jam, crowded and can see the city needs a lot of immediate improvements on public transports and infrastructure.

Anyway, I was staying in Taguig City, which is the new developed city. Overall it is quite well develop and created a lot of job opportunities for the locals, i.e. call centers, retailers and hospitality. The nearby cities that I visited are Quezon and Makati, not so great but frighten by it's terrible traffic jam. We have been arranged a half day tour the day before we left, which we came to know about Philippine and Manila history.

With close to 100 millions population, I can see a lot of petite females on the streets. But what impressed me is the French mixed local Pinoys, which we only can spot them in the high class restaurants and bars. They are really impressive in terms of look.

My third visits are to Kuala Lumpur and one of the small cities in Malaysia, which I have been there many times, so I have nothing much to talk about apart from MH370 and kidnapping cases. I had a very bad experience during departure, where the flight was delayed for more than 4 hours from 9.20pm to 1.20pm. By the time I reached airport, it's already 4am. What a terrible night!

I'll be flying back to work tomorrow evening. So everything will be restart again. Have a great weekend, folks!

Why Aggressive?

When people said this person is aggressive, I always wondering what does aggressive stands for, why they said this person is aggressive, how does it apply, etc. Well, after working in the business line for a couple of years, I finally understand what does aggressive stands for in reality.

To me, aggressive is you set a clear goal and you want to achieve that goal with whatever method you try and use. Therefore, aggressive should containing proper planning, hard-working, daring (courage) and most importantly, doing something that others don't usually do / not dare to do.

Let me just use going after a woman as an example. Aggressive guy always be the first one approach the woman he likes, by apply proper technique and whatever it works to get the woman's number and heart. Those guys who are not aggressive or shy, they can only see the aggressive guy actions, and envy from there. It's the same for an entrepreneur and investor.

I have to admit that I'm not an aggressive guy, neither in business, investment nor love matter. I'm always passive, play safe, and waiting for others to move first. And that's why all the while I'm just being a mediocre guy, or below the par.

Recently, I realized lack of aggressiveness will make me no way to go, especially in this getting more competitive world. I'm not sure how to start to become more aggressive. There is no use of just saying I want to be aggressive, as I already start talking to myself since 3 years ago.

As a start, perhaps I should force myself to do something out of my comfortable zone and not many people doing it. I know it's not easy. When I face difficulty, I really need to think about my future and make sure I won't get regret if I miss it again.

Let's try and see how it goes. :)

Complaints

Do you like to complain? In fact, complaint is a good thing or not?

A colleague of mine like to complain, but it's all about others' faults, and he himself is all right almost for everything. That's remind me one of the ex-colleague behaviour as well.

Definitely complaint is a good thing to make us and others review where's wrong and how to improve. However, if you keep complaining it's other people's fault, then you should review why it causes other people's fault first. And whether you have the ability to fix it yourself instead of keep complaining the same thing again and again.

Why Ant Won't Get Tired?

A kid asked me last few weeks ago, "Uncle, why ant does not get tired by standing / walking the entire day, but you get tired easily but standing for a while?"

I thought for a while and reply him, "That's because ant is a bug and we are human! Ant is designed to stand and walk without getting tired, but human is not design in that way." Then he also thought for a while and reply, "Oh....".

Well, I'm not sure whether my answer is logic but I'm just thinking, what will be the better answer for this question?

Self Paid and Company Paid Training

I recently attended a 2 days self-improvement training course together with 7 other participants provided by the company.

Overall, the training was okay. But I feel that some things are missing, which I think I will just skipped them. What I want to highlight is the goal of attending a training.

On the recent 2 days sales-related training, we did it in the company training room. The training was started on time for the first day morning. However, it experienced slight delay for the following tea and lunch break. The training ended on time for the first day.

On the second day, the delay is getting worse. It delayed 15 minutes for the starting for both tea breaks, and the lunch break is delayed for 30 minutes. Most of the participants are either came late or took their sweet time doing their works at their desks or smoking out there. And somehow the training is still end on time.

The first day training is quite interesting indeed. I feel like the trainer skipped a lot of details on the second days and left the training not so meaningful. I also feel that the participants are very bad on time management. Some says it has to be hosted at the hotel to avoid this, some says it should penalize for those who are late. But that's not the point, if the person really want to learn something out of it, he or she won't allow the delay to happen and they want to make use of the instructor's time isn't it?

On the other hand, I attended a 2 days NLP training in a hotel at neighbour country's capital back in Aug 2013, which has about 80 participants in total. I paid the entire training myself.

The training period is from 9am to 5pm. I reached there about 8.30am Out of my surprise, all participants are waiting there before 8.50am. Yes, all of them. And all of them returned from the tea and lunch break on time. The training also extended for 2 hours to 7pm and only few are leaving early for 2 consecutive days.

By comparing the 2 different trainings, the later one is fantastic, isn't it?

The 80 participants are mostly self-paid as company normally don't spend money to send their staffs to go for this kind of training. And apparently all of them want to learn NLP and apply in their life. They want to learn something out of the course.

I think with a clear goal in mind, the training outcome will be more fruitful and more worth for the course spending.

Learn Through Mistake

No doubt, we all make mistakes, and I believe we all try to avoid mistakes by doing the right thing. THis is because making a mistake is pain, in terms of feeling and other causes, like loss of money or resources.

Well, I made some mistakes over these 2 months, and few of them are quite heavy. I was so regret and upset when it happened, because they are stupid mistakes. The feeling is really bad, especially they are stupid mistakes. I believe you do experience the same thing, at least once or twice a year.

I'm thinking whether there is a way to avoid this kind of stupid mistakes. The only way I can think of is always on alert, think properly before you do something or make a decision, and don't be lazy to think one step ahead. Proactive and thinking definitely will help to avoid stupid or common mistakes.

However, we are all human. No matter how smart and how many steps we think ahead, sometimes and somehow, stupid mistakes will still happened. Perhaps because we are too focus on other matter or problem and didn't pay much attention to certain matter, or we are upset, sick, and so on.

So the rule of thumb, don't bother about the stupid mistake too much even they happened twice a day onto you. If it happens for the first time, get regret and upset for a maximum of 10 minutes and then try to remember it hardly. After that, just let it go and I'm sure I won't repeat the same mistake again, at least not the coming few months as long as it's still inside my memory. I feel like I'm a better person by using this method.

Okay. I just made another stupid mistake by updated the content to the wrong blog. Hahahaha!!!

We all learn and we will become the wise men. It's Chinese New Year in 30 minutes. Happy Chinese New Year to all Chinese folks!

What Would You Do If You Given a Chance?

What would you do the first thing if you wake up one day in the morning and you are back in 10 years ago?

Back in 10 years ago, I was a IT Systems Engineer working on a huge IT project, from year 2004 to 2005. I really did not like that project because it's very tough. I almost complaint everyday during that period. But it has sharpen my skills a lot from there. When I think back, it is really a waste of time, and I should spend my time properly and do something more meaningful.

Now, if there is really such thing happen on me, the first thing I would go check out the stock market and property market. I remembered 1998 is market crash and 2001 is the technology bubble burst, so 2004 should be the time where both markets is under recovery. No brainer, I will dump all my savings into blue chips under stock market and let them roll, while try to get a bank loan to invest a shoplot in a prime area. Then I'll be a lot richer after 10 years, which means today. Wow, that's sound to good to be true!

On the other hand, I think I'm going to patch up those things I did wrong. Well, as the wise people said, don't repeat the same mistakes again. And if I can remember any past tragedy on myself or others, I will try to stop them and help others, try to make things more wonderful.

And finally, I will quickly change my career from engineer to sales, as it can make me more income.

Yes, that's very perfect. But well, it definitely won't happen. So if I fast forward to 10 years later from today, it's 2014. By that time, I'll be 44 years old. Perhaps wealth, health and family are the most important things during that time. Perhaps I can start to look into them for now, and build it for the future, just like what I want to do when I go back to 10 years ago.

Life is short, folks!

Hardwork to Earn Luck

I read a book recently written by Jimmy Lai, a media tycoon from Hong Kong.

He said, if being asked, luck and hardwork, which one is more important?
He said hardwork is a lot more important. This is because only hardwork can bring you luck.

I'm very impressed when I read his reply. When I was young, I always think that I will be success and get rich when I grow up. However, I don't have an ambition of what to do to get rich when I grow up. Thus, I think it must be luck to bring me forward and I think luck is very important.

Up to today, I'm so disappointed to tell you that I'm not even a millionaire and it's far behind. When I reviewed what have I done over the past 20 over years, I don't really pay much effort to the life I want. My parents pampered me a lot, and I thought because I'm lucky.

Now they grow old, and it's my turn to take care of them. I feel very pressure because they don't have any savings, medical card and the overall cost living at my hometown is rising a lot within these few years. Luck is no longer valid as a reason for me to make a living and it's getting more challenging.

It seems like the only way out is hardwork and hopefully hardwork can earn me some luck, not only my career but also in health, investment and relationship. Let me prove Jimmy Lai is correct.

Play Golf

I love to play basketball when I was young, from 15 to 30 years old. It's a very long period but I just think teamwork is fun. After I cannot perform any more and due to stamina problem, I changed it to badminton since a couple of years back. Okay, I only can play double as I have stamina problem.

After a few years, somehow I cannot excel in badminton due to lack of effort and practice. I treat it as exercise only, but I still want to be a strong player.

Recently, I met a few friends who is playing golf. They tried to convince me to play it, not only as companion but benefit in terms of get to know more people and may help in business. Well, I'm not interested in a one-man show sport as it looks very boring. So I rejected them since few months back.

My good friend even brought me to golf shop to shop for club and wears yesterday. I was stunned when I see the clubs' and shoes price. Well, no doubt it is a very expensive sport and no wonder majority of the players are businessmen or high income people.

Anyway, since my good friend offers me his beginner club for free and I also can obtain some sponsors from my company in terms of free lessons. Why not I give it a try? 

I'm a lefty. After watched some beginner guides from YouTube, I don't think it is an issue of a lefty using normal club and I'll just give it a try. So, I'll just make golf as 1 of my 2014 try list.

Golf, here I come!

Persistence

Most of the wise men will told us that whatever we do, we must have patient and fight till last minute, including going after a woman we like, starting a business, get rid of a bad habit, etc.

It is true. Before you really go for it, please weight the price you going to pay and the reward you are getting. Sometimes. it is a bad investment, i.e. wasted a lot of money in order to get the woman you like, health issue due to working too hard for your new business, etc.

We can always try, but if the reward is not that great, what's the point of being persistence, patient and wasting time? I experienced it many times and now I would like to share it with you.

Cheers.

Happy New Year 2014

Gosh, time flies and it has been more than a year I didn't update this blog!

New year new resolution? Fuck that. Please don't waste our time by having new year resolution, indeed we just need to do what we want to do!

Happy New Year 2014, folks!