Bob17 – internet business entrepreneur

Few years ago, Me and May went to the Easter show, and in the show schedule, we saw “Lion Show”. Oh Yes, we both agree it’s something we should not miss!

The show starts at 2:00pm.

We waited….

waited….

waited….

waited….

Opps….

the show was actually…….    Paddle Pop Lion Show

There are a lot of financial tips about how to save money. This tip is a bit different, this tip is about your physical behaviour:

“Be Gentle”

It can simply cost you more money when you are not gentle enough:

1. Many products can have much shorter life if you do not treat them gentle enough, you will need to keep spending money replacing those items.
2. Sudden body move can break things such as glasses, or cause injeries, costs money and time.

Few things to avoid:

1. Avoid open/close door too hard.
2. Avoid sitting too hard.
3. Avoid sudden quick move.
4. Avoid applying unnecessarily too much force when using things.

“Being gentle” does save you money, we could be talking thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars saved over few years.

We hear those words all the time:

“I am so busy……”

The followings are my definitions about “busy”:

Great staff: Able to constantly reaching 90% actual busy,
Good staff: Able to constantly reaching 70% actual busy,
Ordinary staff: Able to constantly reaching 50% actual busy,

For ordinary staff, 50% Actual busy = 100% mental busy
If that staff reachs 90% actual busy, then that staff will feel 180% mental busy, which is “super busy”

In terms of measuring staff performance,

Staff measure their own performance by Mental busy,
Management measure staff’s performance by Actual busy,

For example:

Staff A have very low mental busy standard,  30% actual busy = 100% mental busy. 100% mental busy means the staff feels he/she has put so much effort in, and he/she has done so well. But the management doesn’t think so, because the staff only done 30% actual busy.

Staff B have higher mental busy standard, 80% actual busy = 100% mental busy. They keep their actual busy very high, as high as 80%, and generated a lot of true output.

So for both staff, they have the same mental busy rate at 100%, they both think they have done a lot of jobs, but their contribution difference could be a lot, could even be more than twice the difference.

Managers’ responsibility is to identify actual busy and mental busy,

Ask yourself:

What is your mental busy standard? is it high, or low?

I started my first business when I was in the third year of uni, some people asked me how I manage to handle my university life and my business life? Here is my answer:

• My main focus was my business, in terms of uni, my objective was to get a bachelor degree with absolute minimum effort.
• To have minimal effort v.s. maximum return, the ideal mark I needed to achieve was between 50 (pass) and 60.
• Any mark over 60 shows that I have put too much effort.

This was my exam results, it has achieved my goal, most of the mark was between 50 and 60.

It is very important to follow 80/20 principle, it has helped my study and my business. Before I deal with any issue, my first move is to identify “What’s the key matter?” Because if I can identify and focus my effort on key matter, I can always achive maximum results with minimum effort.

When a company’s revenue dropped by 30%, just means the company is making 30% less profit, what’s the big deal?

This is the kind of myth people think. But in business, it doesn’t work like that. Let’s take a simple example below:

Assume a company with revenue at $1M
- the product costs $300k
- staff salaries costs $300k
- fixed costs such as rental and insurance $200k
- advertising costs $50k
Leaves the profit of $150k

If the revenue suddenly dropped 30% to $700k
- assume the product cost will be reduced 30% to $210k
- if they didn’t cut staff, then staff cost $300k
- fixed cost cannot be changed $200k
- cut advertising cost to say $30k
Now the company is having a loss of $40k

Therefore the revenue drop of 30% doesn’t mean profit drop of 30%, it’s much more serious. It can turn a profitable business into a loss making business.

If you are the owner of this particular company, then your only option is to cut staff. That’s why you keep finding “staff cuts” all over the news when economy is bad.

So think again, when the revenue dropped by 30%, it’s a big deal for any business.

After I got my iPhone, I spent $1.19 and installed a game called Flight Control. It’s an extremely easy game to learn. You just have to use your finger to help different aircrafts to land. When there are many aircrafts on the screen, it’s quite a challenging game.

1. I showed May to play the game, she can only land 15 aircrafts, (my best record was 42 aircrafts)
2. A few days later, May landed 62 aircracfts, and I was beaten. @%$#@
3. I worked hard, and got 71.
4. One day later, she got 72, and beat me again.
5. Few days later, she showed me she got 80. I could never imaging she could reach such score!
6. I then worked harder, and got 88. I thought that’s probably the best score anyone can get. 

During a staff gathering, I showed some other staff about this game, as well as my score. and I was so confident that no one can beat this score. I announced, whoever the first person to reach or beat this score at 88, I will give him/her $100.

Few days later, Amy came to me, and showed that she has reached 88. mmmm…  Boss has to deliver his word, so I handed over $100 cash to her.

A few days later Sebastian came to me, with a score of 111. That’s…… errrr….. well done,

He is good…..

I have always been a PC user, never interested in Apple. I tried to play around on the Apple computers, but I still prefer Microsoft windows environment.

When Apple releases iPhone, it doesn’t grab my attention at all, as I just assume “It’s just another Apple product“, so I do not have any desire to buy it. I ignore all the media hype about how good iPhone is. I think a lot of PC users are like me, not paying too much focus on Apple products.

I have always been a loyal mobile QWERT keypad users, because I just feel I can type accurately without any issue. With iPhone, I was assuming that how can I possiblely typing messages on a screen keyboard? That’s why I had no intention to consider iPhone at all.

One day, I walked into the Chatswood Chase Apple store, and spend some good 10 minutes playing on it, I just realised iPhone was better than I expected, I ended up buying it, for the following 4 reasons:

1. The screen keyboard isn’t too bad, because of it’s auto-correction feature, allowing me to type with error.
2. iPhone easily support multiple languages, including chinese language character input. My previous windows mobile device surprisingly did not support multiple languages. With i-Phone, I will be able to read messages sent from Taiwan or Japan.
3. It’s browser experience is far better than any other mobile phones.
4. I did some search on it’s applications, and was surprised by the amount of applications it has.

Now I have got the iPhone 3G, and I think it’s one of the best decision I have made. And Oops… I also convinced our company’s chairman, who was also a Microsoft Windows platform supporter, ended up purchasing an iPhone.

This week quite a lot of media articles has been reporting the launch of WolframAlpha. And they are all saying “Is this the next Google?”

Of course not, it won’t be the next Google.

WolframAlpha is a very different search engine to Google, WolframeAlpha is a computational search engine, it can help you analyse the data, giving you some very useful information, it’s more like a knowledge search engine.  However, it’s not a commercial search engine like Google.

Google is extremely successful because it controls the last mile of commercial info. You want to use some service? You find them on Google. You want to buy something? You research them on Google. Therefore businesses are happy to pay to advertise on that last mile,  I just cannot see how WolframAlpha search engine can attract businesses to advertise.

I will be surprised if WolframeAlpha can exceed more than 1% of the success of Google.