I attend David Kwan's session yesterday, which was more of a casual sharing session held at Makarios @ Drama Centre - National Library at 7pm. This was the agenda of the session. See below.
Here's some of the things You'll Get:
► Uncover & Tap on Your own Hidden Biz Potentials Instantly
► #1 Costly Misperception that Most Entrepreneurs made about themselves & their Biz Partners
► 3 Killer Mistakes You made unknowingly with You & Your Biz Partners that slow, stop & kill your Bizs Forever
► Direct & Practical Insights that You can apply to Start & Grow Your Biz
► Real Business Opportunities for You to Grab and Explore Quickly
► Network & Connect with like-minded Biz People who will support You & Your Biz
This "Learn & Share" session is for Biz People who're Committed to:
► Take Serious & Massive Action to Start or/and Grow their Biz
► Learn Real & Practical Biz Insights & Apply them to their Bizes Quickly
► Share & Explore Biz Possibilities with Opened Hearts & Opened Minds
► Create Great Value for everyone now and the future meetups, sessions & workshops
The whole event started at about 7.30pm. There were about 20 persons who attended.
For the start, everyone did their introduction - Name, what are they doing, & why they are here.
David mentioned that this meetup although in a casual setting, is for serious entrepreneurs.
Once everyone done their introductions, David Kwan then introduced himself.
Here's his story:
David Kwan started his first business 9 years ago. They were a group of 5 partners working together. Then in the first 3 months, the first big project came within the first 3 months.
Profits was very good, and thought that this was the big thing!
But what happened was, the business went into trouble. Not because of business. Profits were good.
It was the conflict among partners, thus the business died.
A lady who runs 3 businesses, commented, "Before one even considers starting a business with their partners. Before signing any contract, it is very important to trash out any differences, opinions or disagreements. Do not keep to yourself. If not, eventually in the future, when there are some disagreements, your relationship will break and your entire efforts that you put into business is wasted."
Now, David told us to do this first activity: Write down the qualities of your perfect business partner.
1) Intelligent (knows how to strategize)
2) Integrity
3) Passion & Drive to succeed
.... blah blah...
After all the discussion about the perfect business partner, David said that doesn't that sound like looking for a Man-Women Relationship. Well, all these qualities may not come true in your business partner.
Business is also about Timing. You need to Capitalise on the market direction.
- Going against market direction/trend just makes it harder to make money.
3 Mistakes People Make When Choosing Their Business Partners
Mistake #1: We tend to choose our family, friends, community and relatives to go into business with us.
David said, "Business is a weird game, that we get everybody in and die together with us. We ask everybody to put in some money & then if business die, all die together."
Business is a tough game to play, only 90% of businesses survive after their first year. Those businesses that survive after the first year, only 90% of them managed to survive through their 5th year.
We may have our goals and vision in business. But there may be the occasional big contract that may get you so worked up and excited that it may get you off your track and be distracted.
Thus, you need to focus and keep on to your track and move progressively. Don't take on projects that you will not have the capacity to manage even though the money may seem good.
David Kwan mentioned about the Backbone behind a successful business will need:
A) Cashflow
B) Net Profit
C) Business System
Mistake #2: People tend to choose partners who are technicians.
Example: People in IT business, then to have an IT wizard partner. People in the F&B business, tend to have a chef partner.
At least one of the partners must have a business mindset. We may want to let what these people who have strengths in work in areas where they are strong in. If he is good being a chef, then let him be a chef and respect & acknowledge his position.
You can't get an Engineer to become an Artist. You can't get an Musician to become an Engineer.
Mistake #3: People tend to work with partners who are similar to yourself.
You need to have partners to serve different functions or certain roles in a business.
Find Partners who has same vision as you.
-Everybody wherever they are, will always think they are working the hardest.
-If you want to earn more, think of how you can innovate or add value to the company.
-Each person in the company usually think that they work alot but earn little.
David shared a Story of 3 Monks who went together and found a very old deserted temple.
All 3 monks have their own thoughts and ideas about how to get more people to come here to pray.
1st monk - thinks that he needs to market and give out flyers so people will come to pray
2nd monk - thinks that the temple lack content to teach, so create more scriptures to give out.
3rd monk - thinks that temple is not clean and poor design, & starts to clean the temple and do the structure.
Soon after, people start to come in to the temple and started praying more often.
Then one fine day, the monks started to talk among themselves and start becoming calculative about who put in more efforts. Everyone said that they put in more effort than the other. Eventually, they quarrelled and left the temple and the temple went back to its old deserted state again.
Moral of Story: Nobody is right or wrong. Individually they are right, but everyone is wrong.
Now you have 5 fingers that make a fist, every finger big or small plays a part to create that full fist. Imagine if you lost any one of your fingers, all your other fingers will be slightly uncomfortable. That's because, it still takes 5 fingers to create a fist. No one wins, when one of them is gone. All will be affected in some way.
David said, "In business, you need a System to Communicate."
People needs to understand when he do what, what the other guy is doing etc. They need to understand the purpose of why they are doing certain tasks and the purpose of achieving it.
In Business, there are a few key roles and you need to understand who is doing the Operations, Marketing and Administration.
4 Things to Take Note of to Run a Successful Business
1) How Feasible (Ride on Trend)
2) How Profitable (how to get more customers, more sales & profit)
3) How Sustainable is your business
4) Why you and your Team
After the sharing session, David Kwan also shared with me on some business issues. He said that in business, you need to strategize to WIN First, Then Fight.
Not Fight first to Win.
In Business, the odds of failure is too high.
There are ways to set your business to start so strong that Failure Is Not An Option for you even when you have strong competitions, no cash and few customers.
Don't waste you and your friends resources to test whether you can succeed or fail. Once you start, you start all the conditions so you won't fail. Otherwise, don't start at all.
Time is Luxury and Speed is an Essence.
I told him that I seem to have many things on hand, and David said, "List down all you activities.
Break them into:
"Easy to Do", "Not Easy to Do", "Important for Direct Results", "Not Important for Direct Results", "Urgent" & "Not Urgent"
Some of the tasks may be in more than 1 category.
#1) Do the tasks on "Important", "Easy to Do" & "Urgent".
#2) Next work on "Important", "Not Easy", "Urgent"
That's all folks! Hope this is good value to some of you!
Cheers:)
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