Even though this is just an entertaining fiction story, i believe there is really this kind of people and in fact i think the author is telling his own story through his manga. Many times, manga can be entertainment or most of them are plain childish, but a lot of mangas are actually educational, in this case, it’s telling the reader values in life and career.

1. Dare to dream and have gut to realize the dream – no matter how far fetch is your dream, as long as you are not planning to be spider man, it is possible (Maybe it is also possible to become spider man if you invent the suction cup small and powerful enough to hold you and don’t forget about the mini web dispenser at your wrists). You have higher odd to achieve your dream than winning a multi-millions lottery as long as you have gut to execute it.

2. Be creative and innovative – when your idea fails, you need to come up with more new ideas or innovate the old idea into a new one.  Anticipate to fail many times and be ready to be even more creative and innovative after each recovery and set back.

3. Create your own rule – The two young mangakas later realized that it is extremely difficult to compete in the existing comic genres. More over neither one of them is good in mainstream story (fighting, battle, love story, etc), so they decided not to compete in existing genres anymore, hence they come up with a manga story that can’t fit into any of the genre. It become a success. There are a lot of time we focus too much on the existing competitions and failed to uncover the golden opportunity, some times in order to compete, we have to avoid competition by creating our own niche. The most successful real life example is Apple IPhone being a whole new kind of  smart phone.

4. Start pursuing the dream as young as possible – regardless of anything, time is utmost important. If you want to do anything, you have to start to do it as young as possible. If we are young, we don’t need worry about failure because time is on our side, failure is the least of a problem, as long as we can stand up again. Furthermore, we have least commitment at young age compare to middle age, after married and having kids.

5. Be persistent – no great dream is achieved without hardship. A few failures is not end of the world, more importantly we are able to recover and stand up and fight again.

6. Good allies is important to succeed – we don’t live in this world alone and we can’t do all the works by ourselves. There are a lot of time we need other people talents and time in order to manage and success. When starting a business, many times we borrow money, from relatives, parents, siblings, friends, bank, etc. When running a business, we employ staffs and workers so we have more time to plan and manage the business

7. Be humorous – even there are times we feel pain and stressful, don’t forget to have a sense of humor. A sense of humor can relax those around us and it also allow us to see things in different perspective. A good joke can revitalize our fatigue mind and allow it to think freshly.

Well, what more can i say? even reading a manga there are so many things to learn. I’m sure many of us want to do something that will make ourselves proud in future, the most important thing is to take the first step, keep going and let the rest of the story unfold.

What is your motivation to do business? Writing this article, i have to ask myself the same question. Do you want to start a business just because of the money or the potential profit is lucrative? I have seen many business which are doable and profitable yet the products or services provided by current business players are simply not up to standard, the product and services could be improved to become much more efficient if there is guideline to ensure smooth operation, instead of mere focusing on meeting the target. To be in the business, it means to improve and streamline the available product and service hence hopefully the living standard of people will be enhanced as a result.

Making things possible. Ever wondered how amazing it was for the mighty Midvalley city to be standing proud in the middle of Klang Valley? I know many of us have been to Midvalley but not many would have put much thought on the land, real estate, the concrete wall or how ventilation works while doing the shopping. Don’t take it for granted because there is some one possessed this vision that saw a successful integrated lifestyle shopping mall since probably 20 years ago. The entrepreneur since then draw the master plan, lay down the whole foundation, coordinated development companies and contractors, execute construction and building, coordination workers and employees, brick by brick – hundreds of millions of it, level by level, up to the project completion. The main idea is, if you haven’t realized yet, it is to make some thing possible for other people. Midvalley on the other hand provide people the access to all kind of entertainments and goods under one roof – That means business. Same thing as how IPad are designed, created, manufactured, delivered and subsequently held in the hand of happy you. Or the opening of laundry shop below your apartment save a bit of your fuel cost. What else i can do to make things possible for people?

Sharing the pie. Not every workable business idea is unique. In fact, many businesses exist today is only slight to no variation. Why? That’s because overall in the market, there are equally high demand in the market. While in term of brick and mortar business, geographical location demand is crucial. Even though there are tons of people doing the same business it does not mean there are no money to be made. Food & beverage business for example, the customer flow is geographically dependent as people tend to dine at convenience location in relative to their residence, and even there is enough restaurant to cover peoples intake volume, you can still attract customer by offering different kind of food and restaurant theme. Any products and services that are provided to individual, there is higher chance of spill over because of high volume population, if we assume a business can only serve a specific number of customers at a time. Take manicure shop for example, if there are only two nail stylists doing the nails, the customers who comes in later will have to make other appointment or look for other manicure service nearby if he/she needs it be done in short notice.

Improving life by trading. Price of services and goods are ever increasing because of inflation, yet the rate income rises barely catch up with the inflation. So in order to maintain or reduce cost to acquire such services and goods, international trading comes into picture. Cost of goods traded from countries like China, Indonesia and Bangladesh is lower because of currency advantage. Which item is cheaper if a wok that cost RM5 made locally compare to one that cost RMB5 imported from China? Of course, that also doesn’t mean RMB5 can buy less in China than RM5 in Malaysia. Through trading, we can also acquire new and innovative products that are not available in local market. By introducing new products, we can enhance people’s lifestyle, making peoples life easier and more convenience. New kind of goods and products will potentially create a new market sector that cater for the product life cycle and manufacturing, thus creating more jobs.

]]> http://zenfoosheeseng.com/futuremoney/20100630/the-big-idea-of-good-business-ideas/feed/ 0 http://zenfoosheeseng.com/futuremoney/20100603/using-opm-when-investing-in-real-estate/ http://zenfoosheeseng.com/futuremoney/20100603/using-opm-when-investing-in-real-estate/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:14:42 +0000 Zen Foo http://zenfoosheeseng.com/futuremoney/?p=322 Using other people’s money when investing in real estate. This method is being practiced all the time and it is much easier than many thought it would be. Many people don’t want to invest in real estate because the perception of high capital of entry, but many practices done by many investors, the capital is really very minimal if the investors are creative enough or good in negotiation.

Who are the other people so nice enough to lend us money to invest in real estate?

Bank – If you have credibility and pay you bill on time, for the bank it is why not? just as you swipe your credit card for a few thousand dollar purchase that end up in servicing the high interest each and every month. You might as well borrow the money to make you richer by investing in real estate. Of course it will be back to square one if you get the bank money to pay the purchased properties and then having to service it yourself, the number of real estate properties loan you can service is only limited by your own active income. Fortunately, we can use another people money to service the loan installment – your tenant.

Tenant – The equation of OPM will not be completed if tenant is not included. If you are the landlord, then your tenants are the one who work for you to make you richer. For rental property that fetches zero to positive cash flow, in another word rental income is more than the loan installment plus property maintenance cost, the investment is self sustaining.

If investor can achieve zero-positive cash flow on every rental property, then he/she can keep buying more and more real estate and banks are willing to lend as much as they deem fit. By doing this patiently and with due diligent, many people are able achieve financial freedom and better. So are you still wondering why the rich get richer?