Richard Yong

Not being what you aren't - A Warren Buffet Story.

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

That's a $200 billion dollar company's website.

They are a reinsurance and investment company. They know that, and they make sure you know that, they do it by making it clear what they do not do.

Here are some things they do not do:

• Web design
• PR
• Logistics (AGM, first Saturday of May)
• Executive lounging
• Excitement
• Buy expensive things (They bought a company once, the CEO was late... looking for unexpired parking meters)
• Hire writers

I think there's a story here around being who you are being made up of what you do, but more importantly what you do not do.

It's a dificult thing, and it took me six years of dawdling before I realised who I wasn't going to be. I wasn't clear about what I wasn't willing to do, and in return I ended up being everything to everyone, the Jack of All Trades. If you let others control your destiny, you end up being and doing what others want and not what you want.   

Can you imagine how uncomfortable some companies would be if they dropped their PR division, or fired their homepage designers?

It's the difference between the Doing Men, and the Maybe and Sorry Men.

Are you clear about who you aren't?

Are you clear about about what you won't do?

Some thoughts for Monday.

Flickr Cred: Thomas Hawk

The title is once again tongue in cheek. I was reading some scrawled pen marks in 'The One Minute Manager' by Blanchard and Johnson, it said 'No one does nothing to you, you do it to yourself.' Nice meaning, odd writing.

Oh and Activision blew analysts expectations away, putting on over 15% on Friday.

Doing the right thing - Lenovo revisited, a cautionary tale on the Sorry Men.

Doing the right thing is almost never about just doing your job.

It's easy to do your job, it lets you say I'm just.

I'm just a customer service assistant, packer, accountant, finance clerk, cleaner, checkout clerk or security guard. But that's how you lose the plot.

I've had an ongoing debacle with Lenovo.

On the face of it, it's a simple business.

Build and sell laptops. If you had to write a plot summary for the Lenovo movie, those would be the 4 words.

Some people they hire are fantastic. But everybody in Lenovo has a 'title.' That's great if it gives you something valuable to do, but not if it robs you of power. Worst of all, it should never distract anybody from your business (which is to build and sell laptops, just in case Lenovo staff read this and forgot).

Here are some real life quotes (not strictly verbatim) from Lenovo staff:

'I'm just in sales, I don't know technical, you'll have to ask the engineers'

'Sorry I know the website might say it's available, but it's actually not, there's no option in my process'

'I don't know about that sir, you'll have to ask someone else'

'Sorry sir, that's not possible it's not part of the process'

'Sorry sir, that's not in our policy to receive pdfs in emails, only faxes.' (Anyone spot the irony here?)

'I'm just in customer service, you'll have to ask repairs for an ETA.'

What if they started focusing on doing the right thing? They might take a leaf out of Vodafone and Optus who had the following to say to me:

'Look you are a great customer, I know we're not wrong here, and you're not wrong, we're sorry you had a problem, and look it's a waste of time for us to escalate this to management... I'm not suppose to do this, but look lets just waive the fee this once okay!'

'Oh it's disappointing that you're cancelling your account Mr. Yong, but let me check with my manager right now if we can waive your exit fee anyway, you've been with us a long time! Please wait one moment <brief pause> It's been approved, thanks for your patience sir.'

The conversation changes. Completely.

It's Friday, so relax. But on Monday, think about doing the right thing, not just your job description.

Next time you get asked what you do, whether you're the cleaner or the CEO, you might say 'I'm helping mums and dads save money,' or 'I'm helping make and sell the best laptops', 'Helping kids grow into good people' or 'I'm making sure our customers want to use us again.'

A hint for Lenovo: Fire everyone with the job description 'Sorry - that's not my responsibility', then spend that money on hiring half the number of people and give them the job description 'Goal #1 Help Lenovo make and sell laptops. Goal #2 Create and retain customers. Goal #3 Spend saved 'Sorry Men' money on creating and keeping good customers.'

You'll have spent $0 dollars more, and gotten rid of the Sorry Men.

Work Voyeurism - Perspective

Okay, so I live in an apartment right next to some office blocks.

I have a bad habit when it's late at night, of peering over at my office colleagues to see who is still at work.

Without fail, the lady in the picture (taken at midnight) is always there, even Fridays.

I decided it could only be down to a few reasons.

• She really really loves her work, it's everything she dreamed she would do when she grew up
• Her family will die if she doesn't work
• She is finding the cure for cancer
• She is stopping world poverty

I really really hope so...

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one - John Lennon

Are you ready?

20% of world growth came from the EU, US and Japan last year.

40% came from China and India .

48.7 million. The total number of Indian graduates in 2005.  To put that in perspective, the entire population of Australia is not even half that.

So... Are you ready?

• Are you ready to compete with the world, and not just your peers?
• Are you ready to compete with people who are just as smart, just as hard working, hungry for a challenge and willing to work for half the price?
• Are you ready for a changing world? It's going to change, even if you don't.

We idolise the old guard that lord over old businesses, because they've made it. And good for them. Those rules don't work anymore. Unless you're working towards something new, something better, you might just be in a holding pattern to replace the old guard. And if you're doing that, you might find there isn't much left to inherit.

Do you want to live in fear of losing your power base and have to fight to maintain the status quo? Or do you want to be out at the fringe, building a new power base and challenging the status quo with something new, something better, something good... Maybe even something remarkable?

So... Are you ready?

Flickr credit: squacco

Why Kinokuniya hates books, Apple hates computers and how to kill money.

Bear with me, this one isn't really about books, computers or about killing money.

Kinokuniya hates books.

Kinokuniya would rather have no books on its shelves. It's true. If they could have it their way, they would have a shop so small, it would only stock books that are looked at or sold. Unsold books sitting on shelves costs Kinokuniya big time and they don't like it one bit.

What cost, exactly? Every dollar spent buying, housing, presenting, packaging and transporting books is working capital not invested in growing or developing the business.

Apple hates computers.

Gil Amelio (ex-CEO) liquidated two billion dollars worth of Apple's computer inventory and turned it into one and a half billion dollars of cold hard cash. Why? Working capital. A dollar in his pocket is a dollar free to spend on decisions. Anything tied up in unsold computers sitting in warehouses is dying money.

Amelio realised the opportunity and freedom of working capital.

Okay. So this is basic business management 101 for any business with inventory right? Basic stuff right? Liquidity is king yadda yadda, right? Right. Well let's take a different look at working capital.

Consider working capital in our daily lives. Not a common water cooler topic I'm guessing, but bear with me.

Consider every single thing you own as inventory. Also consider that your money might be dying.

Consider that for the lucky person, you have two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and two feet. Anything you own or use can only be used one at a time. Every single thing outside of your senses is not being used (let's call it 'warehoused').

Anything you own has a value, and if unused or under utilised, it's dead money. Heck, even if you sold something you didn't use for ten cents and stuck it in the bank, it'd be doing more than money being warehoused to die.

A good example of unused stuff is my library of over 100 books, lots of books I've bought over the years have been read once and shelved. Wasted working capital. First, it's a waste of my money, second and more importantly is it's selfish. If it's sitting on my shelf, nobody else can read it either. Dead, warehoused books. I've trimmed it down to about 25 now.

Apart from unused stuff, there is under utilised stuff too, a $1500 fish tank that I used to look at for 5 minutes a day and clean for one hour a week. I've stuck it on sale. That $1500 buys a heck load of entries to the best aquarium in Australia (over 55 visits actually) and no more cleaning!

When I look around now at the stuff I own (at least what's left of it) I see piles of unused capital or things I value highly. I spent over a thousand bucks on a camera, and have not regretted a single penny, but I regret buying my unused Playstation 3 (but don't worry I'll be selling it at a profit).

So why would anyone personally want working capital? I mean we're not walking, talking businesses.

Well, personal working capital buys opportunity and freedom.   

Working capital for the urban battler means freedom to choose what you do with your career, your time, your entertainment and your education. Nothing is warehoused and wasted. Your resources are either used to make great decisions, or invested into things of value. It's shedding the exuviae of life.

So what if we don't have working capital? Well... no freedom and mental slavery. Being forced to do things we don't want because we have no choice. The kicker is, it almost doesn't matter how much you earn. Just look at some companies who earned a lot, but didn't have any freedom to choose (Apple and IBM are great examples of companies who turned those ships around).

Many people have asked me if I'll be okay for money. I'll be fine. I'm no millionaire (yet), and it's got nothing to do with how much I earn, or how many assets I own, It's about the fact that I've set myself up with enough working capital to make free decisions.

Working capital buys opportunity and freedom. Warehousing does everything but that. It's not just me saying it, but successful businesses, everywhere. Don't resign your money to a cold lonely death!

Flickr cred to paul+photos=moody

Cut the overhead. Sleep better. How I pay $50 a year in mobile phone bills.

I've met corporate workers with no time,a frenzied schedule of things to do and a life on schedule. I've also met unemployed people with bucket loads of time, but nothing to do. So it's a a conundrum, how can you work, afford the things you want and have the time to do what you want? It's simple, if a little audacious:

Do what you want, as work.

It seems crazy, there are bills to pay, and the work you want might never pay the bills. The phone, the car, the mortgage, the credit card, the vet, the doctor, the this, the that, the, the, the. the list goes on.

I don't disagree at all. Money is a concern, but how much is enough? a lot less than most people think, but you need to think first. Most people go to work, then spend what they earn. I propose a better solution. Work out how much you need to spend (and invest), then go and earn it. It doesn't matter whether or not you love your work, because once you reach enough, the rest is a bonus, and buys you freedom of choice. You work on your terms, terms of what you do, where you do it, how you do it and when.

It's not about ascetism. I'm ambitious about my financial goals. It's about doing what you need, even if it's not that great to meet the necessities, then having the time, energy and resources to focus on the important. This is different for each person, everyone has unique dreams of building a business, spending half the year surfing, travelling the world, spending time loving and nurturing children and family or giving time to charity. I've seen too many people drained, with great financial resources but so much overhead that they ran out of energy to live, be healthy, be loving, be good people, let alone dream.

Well here is another audacious idea. Cut the overhead. AKA cut the crap. I recently spoke to Anthony Herro of Herro Solicitors in Sydney, and he said the single biggest factor of struggle in small businesses is overhead.

Here is how I've gone to a minimum overhead life, and these rules apply as much to business as they apply to life.

• Say no to fixed costs. In business, fixed costs are the devil, they are unavoidable costs that come whether or not your business is making money. These become an expectation of your income. For businesses, these are things like rent, for people, these are the cable TV bills, the 24 month mobile phone plans and the devil of all fixed costs, personal loans (cars, holidays, whatever.) These are the bills that enslave you to work to continue servicing them. Ouch.
• Say yes to variable costs. In business, variable costs are those that change with your level of revenue. These are things like raw materials and utility bills. Personally these are things like charges per use and buying outright. No financial ties. Not using it? Don't pay for it. It's dodging the monthly repayment contracts for the internet, phones, cars and any other expenses.

In reality, it's difficult to always kill off all fixed costs and move to variable costs, but you can reduce them. Here are ways:

• Don't subscribe to anything. Cable TV sucks. Mobile phone plans suck. Leases, loans anything with the word 'repayment' or 'instalments' suck.
• Maximise your pay per use services. Pay by the call and you'll start using your mobile less (contrary to popular belief, you don't need to call every missed call back or reply to every single sms). I've gone to $50 a year prepaid mobile service, and I use Skype and VOIP for my calls. I pay less for calls, and I only pay what I use. It's scalable to use.

Fixed cost is the whip that send you to work, there will always be a minimal amount, and it's different for each person (rental, mortgage, food, hygiene, etc.) Variable cost is the stuff you can say no to unless you use it.

Cut the overhead. Be scalable and be free.

The dance or the balcony?

Dancing or watching?

Rosamund Christie, executive coach and adjunct professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management recently spoke on cultural diversity and team building. She raised an interesting study by Ronald Heifetz (author of Leadership without easy answers) at Harvard, on the challenge of adaptive leadership and how team members and managers can perform with more awareness and direction.

The concept of the balcony and the dance floor is explored by Heifetz, the distraction, the bright lights and the constant action of the dance floor is the metaphor for the day to day 'on the ground' flurry of work and meetings that lead us astray of our goals. Heifetz believes most leaders spend too much time in the dance. The balcony view, is the step back approach, looking from a far, seeing the big picture and making sure everyone is dancing to the same tune.

Dancing and watching can happen at the same time.

By being mindful while in the flurry of activity, a more strategic view can be taken. It gives more meaning to our day to day actions and there is a plan and direction to our individual actions. The dancers are the individual bricks, and the balcony view is the blue print. You can't have one without the other.

It's easy to get caught up in the minutiae of to-do lists but take a step back and ask, is the ship even going in the right direction?

Flickr credit: Lillian3000

The Economy of Ideas.

The following is some food for thought from a very good man.

Here's a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

- Seth Godin -Two Years Left

Here is some more food for thought. In the last 5 years...

• A student became a millionaire selling a million pixels. (that's less than an A4 page)
• A guy traded a red paperclip for a house
• Two guys became billionaires by helping people find stuff.
• Two other guys became billionaires showing off other people's home videos (and made no money doing it)
• Two other guys made money by cussing and drawing comics about videogames.

There is a new economy out there that values people's ideas. The new economy doesn't play by the old rules. The old linear model where hours worked is used as some yardstick of productivity and pay is a prehistoric throw back from the industrial revolution.

Let's start playing by the new rules.

flickr  photo courtesy of stephano m

Calling, career, vocation, job.

Calling, career, vocation, job. The four types of work. They all mean different things, and work can be made up of several of them. Teaching is a good example of work that can be a vocation and a calling.

A calling is doing the thing you love most. I'm not sure you would even call it work anymore and you would probably have a sneaking suspicion that you're being payed too much to do it. You don't read about it all the time, however yesterday I read a very high profile case in the Sydney Morning Herald, about Dr Kawashima, the creator of Brain Training for the Nintendo DS.

Dr Kawashima says some odd things we don't normally associate with a 9 to 5 job, he says, 'my hobby is work,' and on holidays, 'If I had such spare time, I want to do my research.' The good doctor has a career, a vocation and a calling.

Finding the right calling doesn't sound like an easy thing. In fact, it sounds like something that you would be lucky to find straight away. It would definitely be odd to define your entire life by decisions made when you were 18, 22 or even 40 years old. But it's damn easy, and it's what so many of us end up doing.

It's easy to fall into careers and then follow them out of habit, history and comfort, but the question is, do you want a job, a career, a vocation or a calling?[

The Prestige

I recently sat down with Peter Pychtin of North East Quadrant Consulting, and our discussion segued into one on running a business and earning money. Peter made an observation that making money is neither good or evil. I agree, it depends on what we do with it and using money to conspicuously consume is a much less useful way of spending then using for sharing and constructing and building.

Prestige, pride, vanity. We all have it in some shape, that big red sports car, the branded bags and hundred dollar sunglasses. They show others how well off we are and our rank in society. The problem is it doesn't make one iota of difference about how content  we are with ourselves.

In Affluenza, Clive Hamilton writes that Australian incomes have more than tripled since the 1950's, house sizes more than doubled (with less people living in these double sized houses), real GDP (a fancy acronym for the value of the economy) has grown more than six fold, and yet relative happiness has stayed unchanged. 58 years, and we haven't gotten any happier.

The problem with pleasing other people, or buying more things is that it doesn't bring happiness. Prestige is about what other people think of us. Happiness is how we feel about ourselves. Prestige is easy to come by, your job, your wealth, your trendiness, your body, your looks, your makeup. You can buy prestige with a simple swipe of a credit card, and marketers know that, and every message being blasted in our ears is that happiness is somehow just one purchase away.

Prestige is easy to confuse with happiness, because if other people think we're happy, we must be...

Right?

Ten year old Millionaire

I made my first hundred dollars selling trading cards, at the age of 10.

I had wanted to buy  the cards for months, $15 for 60 6X9cm cardboard pieces. My dad could hardly believe it! he thought it was extortion, however he has never witheld anything from me. I vividly remember my father reluctantly handing me three crisp $5 notes. I had hit the jackpot... until I realised that 60 cards wasn't going to be enough.

Knowing there wasn't any more funding to be had from my family, I decided that I would have to make my own fortune, especially when I heard that rarer cards could be worth up to $200. Very quickly, I became more interested in the buying and selling of cards than collecting cards.

I began to trade common cards for rarer cards, and scout for potential 'clients' (other kids) who were rich and wanted certain cards. I began to make frequent trades and sales of cards, at times up to $80.

I thought I was a millionaire, a ten year old with a few hundred dollars! I rolled my earnings into more cards and saved some, and my collection and wealth quickly grew.

This was my first real experience with making money, and I didn't understand at the time why my friends were mowing lawns, cycling their way through paper runs, gathering cans or working at the local pizzeria for 'small' sums at a time, what took them months to earn, I could earn in one day. At the same time, I respected and admired their consistent effort, especially those who woke up early to go on paper runs.

This experience taught me a few important lessons while I was young.

1. Look for the demand.
2. When something is popular, look. Don't touch. (a valuable lesson for my later forays into the stock market)
3. Working hard and long doesn't necessarily make you any more money than other 'jobs.' But it is more consistent and stable.
4. Work can be fun, especially the adrenaline rush of deal making.

This was the beginning of my experiences with money, and why I've always tried to look for something different. I've learned that I am not satisfied with the act of earning or receiving money.

Income I make must be an exact, direct extraction of my hard work, blood, sweat and tears. That's the satisfaction and contentment I feel that I made something happen.

Kanye West said it best. Good money's earned.

The three little lies we tell ourselves about work.

Most of us as children, as students, and as workers come across three beliefs about Work that become so ingrained in us they feel like reality. Worst of all we use them to rationalise  whatever we're doing, even if it doesn't make sense:

1. Work must be boring.
2. You have to be smart and know a lot to be successful
3. You have to work hard and be stressed to be successful

From young we are told that we need to study things we don't like, because some how it's good for you. If you work hard (and if you're lucky, you know a lot and you're smart) you'll get good marks, and when you grow up, those marks become money. and you will be successful in life.

People have a masochistic tendency to undergo pressure, stress and bore as some kind of badge of honour.

A lot of people I know fell into their lives, fell into their jobs, careers, study. It's easy when you learn values like the three little lies to think that whatever it is we're doing that it's somehow okay, because 'thats just the way it is.' But it isn't... and life is far too short to accept things as they are.   

I've got one point to say about the three little lies of work.

Life isn't a trial run. 

If we're lucky we get 80 odd years. Once we die, as far as we know, it's over. All that pressure, stress and bore will mean absolute squat. squat.

I challenge you today to think:

1. Are you doing what you love, or are you working towards it? Once it is about doing what you love, work isn't about trying to compete, earn more, know more or about the grind, it's about happiness. It's not about trying to earn more money, be more powerful, it doesn't become about working faster or harder anymore, it becomes about being excited.

2. Is the life story you're writing the one you want to tell?

Mark Twain once said - 'Twenty years from now you will be more dissapointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.'

Explore. Dream. Discover.

Image credits: maveric2003