Category: Business

Categories
Business Career

Start the career I

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Recently a few friends completed graduate study, and got full time positions. They asked me the question: how to start in the new company? Or put in another way, how to win the trust from the boss/coworkers, and do well in the new company?

While I don’t think I am expert on all these, I do believe I have learned a great deal in my past six years. So here are my experience and lessons (some are learned from the hard way).  

First, business is very different from the school. While in school a student is measured by scores or GPA; in business an individual contributor is measured by performance (or contribution, or results). In school a student can simply do the homework, read the text book, work on the projects, prepare/take the test and get “A”. Note all these tasks are assigned by the instructors. The only thing a student can show some creativity is the project, in that case he/she can get some bonus points if he/she do really well. In the company the boss (manager, project leader) will typically give some guidance for the work, they may even give detailed instructions for the new hire, but in my mind, if a guy/girl really want to do well, he/she should be more proactive. This means working closely with the boss and coworkers, define what needs to be done, and deliver it.

Let me emphasize this again, what matters is the “results”, not how hard you  work, not how funny your joke is during lunch break, or how many common hobbies you and your boss share. The reason is simple, business is for profit, ultimately everyone in the company should strive for that goal. I remember Jack Welch once said, a company without profit can not give back to the share holders, the employees and the community. Very much true.

OK, back to the topic. To be successful, I believe two things are equally important: work hard (the real work) and make the work known to others (marketing, communication, customer relations). When I first started, I put lots of emphasis on the first portion and did not take the second portion seriously. As I gained more exprience, I began to appreciate the importance of “speak up” or get “buy in” from the management or customers. The reason is also simple: if one doesn’t speak up during a few meetings, people will not ask his/her opinions later on; without the management’s “buy in” your work and effort could be wasted because the results may not be what the customer wants.

Categories
Business Fun

Cell phone problem

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I did not realized my cell phone did not ring until yesterday. I was suspicious of my missing calls in past a few days. But as I normally set it to “vibrate” mode and it did vibrate when I wear it, it disguised the real problem. Basically my Motorola V600 did not ring and the speaker phone is broken.

I decided to get a new phone. I don’t need a fancy phone, as long as it works, I mean, it rings when somebody calls. But soon I found out I need to either sign up for a two years plan or pay high fees for a new phone. That sucks. So what did I do? eBay. I went to eBay and bought this Nokia 6010 phone for $54.00.

Nokia 6010

Meanwhile, while I am anxious waiting for my new phone, I have to wear the phone more often now.

PS (Aug 29): got the phone for a few days now and loved it. I remember my first cell phone is also a Nokia (candy bar style). I liked its simple user interface. The sound quality is also good. There are many fancy cell phones on the market these days, but do I really need those features?

Categories
Business China

Shaq Shaquille O’Neal to wear LiNing?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This is going to be huge, if proved to be true. Here is a link about the sponsorship news.

A few months ago I saw an article on WSJ talking about LiNing signed up Damon Jones of Cleveland Cavaliers. I don’t have the link of original WSJ article but here is a press release from LiNing’s own web site. The rationale behind LiNing’s move was to fight off the international brands such as Nike’s growth inside China.

Now with Shaq’s help, LiNing is one more step closer to their goal.

PS, I saw Damon Jones’ blog here.  

Categories
Business China Saint Louis

Small is beautiful

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I like ice cream. The one I liked most is not hagen daz, it’s a little known place called Ted Drewes. If you do a google search on “st. louis frozen custard”, it will show up on the top. It’s located at Chippewa, very close to my old apartment. This is a very popular place in St. Louis. In the summer evenings, you can see lots of people standing outside of this store, waiting in line or just eating the ice cream. This place opens even in Winter, here is its web site (warning, its’ web site is slow).

At one time I wondered that since this place is so successful, why not go ahead and expand, open more stores in St. Louis, if not nationally? Turns out the owners of Ted Drewes keep it small intentionlly, so that they can keep the quality and community feelings. For them as long as the business is doing well they feel they have enough to live on. In another words, they potentially give up the oppertunity to be very rich.

I think in China there are also similar stories, here is just one I saw yesterday. Remember the corner “noodle store”? Or “dumpling store”? We all have our favorite stores, right. I still remember one where I went for graduate school in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, last time when I visit Shanghai, I saw more and more franchized stores, I am not talking about, McDonald, KFC, Pizza Hut (those are well known ones); I am talking about “Chatea”, “Xiao Mie Yang”, etc. I am not against those, but I like the small specialty stores better.

Categories
Business Technology

Make money using Google AdSense

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I am not going to explain how to make money using Google AdSense. Here I just put a real world example: a successful web enterprenur got a check from Google. Guess how big is the check: almost 1 million Canadian dollars. And here is the link. The nice thing about his web site is that he runs it by himself. So after he paid the web-hosting, and other service fees, he can put the money into his own pocket (after paying tax). Certainlly this is a very rare case. Also don’t think he built the web site and the business overnight, as a matter of fact, I believe he has done this for more than 3 years.

Not everybody can be as good or as lucky as him, but I think Google AdSense does provide a new revenue stream for many start-ups.   

Categories
Business Life

No exit strategy

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Watched the Charlie Rose Show with Warren Buffett  Part 2. One interesting comment from Warren Buffett is “when I decided to buy a stock, I intended to hold the stock for life. I don’t have an exit strategy”. This is really something. In the reality I think Warren does sell stocks from time to time, but I think in most of times he hold a stock for a long time. He has the patience. And he is confident about the organic growth of a business if he decided to buy after doing his research.

On the other hand, when we look at the dot com and current web 2.0 craziness, how many are really going to “hold the company for private” for a long time? I think many people are looking for VCs or IPOs before actually start it. We can apply this to our own career path and personal life too. Sometimes when there are no exit strategy, we have to work hard to make sure things work.

Categories
Business

Charlie Rose show features Warren Buffett

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Charlie Rose, the famous TV talk show host at PBS, has this 3-part series show features Warren Buffett. The show is played in PBS station in late night. Here is the link of Google Video for Part 1 (it’s free as of now).

I watched it last night. Here is an interesting comment I heard from Buffett: how old a person starts your own business will largely determine if he/she will be successful in  his/her own business (when grow up). Buffett started at age of 6.

Since we can not roll back the time machine, why not we take his other advices, such as love what we do (passion), and focus.   

Categories
Business Technology

Bill call quits

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, the richest man on the world (12 years in a row), announced his semi-retirement from his Microsoft day to day operations job last week. As we know Bill Gates is the icon of technology industry in last 20+ years, I think his quits at this time is very interesting.

First I want to say I have great respect for Bill Gates. I know a lot people don’t like or even hate him for various reasons. But think about this: this is the man who pushed PC to the office and home, and the ways we work or entertain: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, Word, Excel, Power Point; Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, the Solitaire game and so on. He only took 6 days vacations from 1978 to 1984. Before that he quit from Havard Univ. and started the company when the other co-founder Paul Allen told him “you are going to quit, this thing (the PC revolution) is happening without us”. The rest is history.

Secondly, I think the time of his retirement is interesting. This is a difficult time for Microsoft, its stock MSFT has been stagnant for years and has been down sharply recently since the 2006 Q1 earning announcement. Besides the Vista delay, Xbox supply glitch, missed boat on “online music” (vs. iPod), the biggest problem is that it seems like they lost the “Web Search” and rapid-growth online adversing to Google. On the top of that, it appears as we enter into web 2.0 era, the Windows OS and Office suite seems more and more irrelevant. As people spend more time on Browser, for leisure or for work, it does not matter which OS, or browser they are using. Microsoft needs some fresh ideas in this new era. As much talented as Bill is, at age of 50 and a 30 years veteran in software industry, he may not be the best person for this change.

Finally, I think Bill deserve this retirement because he has done so much to the industry. Now he is going to use his experience and chrisma to help the world, I believe he will be successful and wish him do well.

Categories
Business Technology

Google Web 2.0 and User Experience

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Google is making buzz again this week, with its spreadsheet. I don’t want to talk too much about it because they already got plenty of media coverage. What impressed me most is not the technology itself, but its marketing tactic. Google says it’s only open to limited beta testers, and here is the link . I think a lot of people signed up because of curiosity. This is very similar to its Gmail invitation only sign up. I still remember a while ago my friend called me and asked if I need a Gmail account, because at that time one person can only send 10 invitations (now it’s 100).

Gmail is certainlly very convenient. Its “group same topic mail together” feature works very well for group discussion. Note group is another good feature from Google. Sometimes when I got stuck with a problem, I searched it and found discussions closely related to my problem. Bingo. Another Google product I like is Google Map (now called Google Local), I used it for driving directions; and I could even see the tennis court in my community. There are lot of mashup of Google map, one famous example is housingmaps . This brings up a very hot topic these days: Web 2.0. According to wikipedia, web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages.

Continue reading “Google Web 2.0 and User Experience”
Categories
Business

Reality check

Reading Time: 2 minutes

One big news in the business world last week: Microsoft missed its earning estimate for this quarter and guided down its earnings for next quarter and next year. It caused the Microsoft stock (MSFT) to drop more than 10% on Friday. It was the largest drop in one trading day in 5 years. I did not own MSFT stocks. But I was expecting MSFT go up from its trading range in past 3 years (24 to 28) because its upcoming new products: Windows Vista and new Office suite. This news kind caught me in surprise. I have similar feeling for Intel and Dell because every time when Microsoft releases new OS, it will spur the upgrade of PCs.

Obviously I was wrong. The convention wisdom does not work any more in today’s business environment. The competetion is intense in the new areas of growth for Microsoft: online services, game, media, etc. Nowadays even Microsoft is talking about sacking. This reminds me the GE “20, 70, 10” rule which invented by Jack Welch. Basically GE will get rid of bottom 10% of its work force every year. A lot companies followed the suit, but some did not get the soul of this rule. In the talk given by Jack a few weeks ago at Washing U. at St. Louis, Jack explained why: at GE the managers are honest (or direct) to its employees, they will point out what the employee needs to improve constantly. If the employee did not improve performance as recomended by his/her manager, he/she already knows about the situation and will not be surprised if told to let go. He pointed out in some companies the managers are too nice, they would say “everything is good” until hard time comes, in which case they have to lay off lots of people. The sad thing is in that case, those employees are already in their 40s and 50s and it’s hard for them to get new jobs.

Continue reading “Reality check”