Sometimes...life is about paying the bills...

Someone close to me was handed a letter by a lawyer earlier. Reason being.....he was reluctant to pay his credit cards bills of about few thousands for the last couple of months.... I read that letter and just shook my head....This guy said, he is least worried upon looking at the letter. I asks him so what are you gonna do about it? He said...'nothing'...hrmmmm

Another story, a friend told me that someone related to him, still in his/her late 20s has accumulated of about RM20,000 of outstanding credit card bills. That's only after a few years of working.

Yet another story, a friend of mine who used to be my classmate during my uni year, has accumulated of almost RM40k of outstanding credit card bills. He has 4 credit cards if you wanna know...

Myself, I used to have 4 credit cards before. My cc bills at one time a few years back could be somewhere around RM15k. Alhamdulillah, I settled 'em all and now I only have 2. One is for my personal insurance together with kecik's insurance and another one for personal usage (fuel & groceries) with a credit limit of RM5,000. Why RM5k? I don't need anymore than that. Plus, I had to make sure that I don't overspend on things that I do not need....hehehehe....

So, what's the point of me telling all these stories?....well...what i'm trying to say is, if we are not careful with our spending especially having more than 1 credit cards in hand, we are basically digging our own graves. We don't actually feel anything when we swipe those cards but reality kicks in when you receive the statements at the end of the month. We thought that we'll be ok just by paying the 5% minimum payment. Actually we are not. We are only joking with our ownself and buy ourself some time to pay. Who makes the money at the end of the day? Obviously the bank lah.

I remind myself everyday about not spending on unnecessary things and I still do every now and again. I like what my dad jokingly said to me about life..... 'sometimes... life is about paying the bills'. TO a certain extent, I find it very true. When you open your mails, it's either electric bills or phone bills or astro bills or credit card bills or any other bills. The mails could also be an invitation for you to buy stuff as well. Hahahahaha. Very seldom when I open those mails, there's a cheque for me. Perhaps, only one or twice if I can remember correctly.....

Anyhoos....I don't know or have any idea on how some of them are going to settle those credit cards bills. Some of the figures are quite big. Perhaps big enough to start an investment property portfolio. Perhaps, if one were to keep RM10k in ASB, he or she might get at least 5% return on that RM10k. Control your expenses my friends. That's all I can say....

Have a nice day

Management Issues...

Let's assume that you have a business that has turnover of about 5-6 million per year. And your total staff force will be about 30-40 people....You also have been in business for the last 15 years or so...You are thinking of improving your sales and obviously you'll need to employ more skilled employees and open up a new division (department) to ensure that you'll achieved your objective...You will then call up for an interview and someone from a competitor answered your call. He said, in order to beef up the department, he will need a team. In short, he is saying he has to bring his entire team from his current company that consists of 4 skilled workers and 1 support staff. You thought it was a good idea and decided to go ahead with the idea.

Hence, now that you've employ a few 'skilled' workers that you believe that can take the company to a higher level than what you have been used to for the last couple of years. Obviously, for the first few months, you can't expect any improvement or a surge of business from this new departments as your workers are still trying to cope and adapt to their new working environment, culture and ways.

Fast forward to 1 year. From the management reports and accounts, you don't see any significant improvements. The only business that comes from them are the businesses that you've been getting before they came in...On every meeting or review, the same questions has been has ask and obviously the same answers will be heard. Such answers like 'it will take time, it's very difficult to penetrate the market,' are the norm... You then realised that their overheads are now much more than their production. In short, you are starting to make losses month after month.

Losses after losses...you finally instructed the general manager to finalize the plan to ensure the survival of the department. The department is now not self sustaining..in other words the department needs help from the other departments to pay their salaries ..their monthly productions does not justify their high salaries and can only covers about 30-40% of their monthly overheads...you don't need to be a rocket scientist to acknowledge that the department are not doing well...meeting after meetings later,you were shocked when the GM suddenly wrote a resignation letter to you as he has failed in his promise made to you a few years ago...after thinking thoughtfully, you then approved his letter...after a few weeks, his assistant manager then wrote a resignation letter as well...you again approved it....

2-3 months later, after the 'team' left, the department has remained stale...nothing much happen but you still receive businesses for that department in a lesser extent...you thought that you had a team that can finally push your company to a greater heights but unfortunately it was all 'indah khabar dari rupa'...you thought with all their qualifications and experiences, you will at least be on par with your competiors especially in that line on business....at least now, you don't actually incur losses for that department as the production is sometimes 2 or 3 times bigger that it was as compared to some of the TEAM's monthly productions...

YOu then felt happy that you no longer incur losses from that department but you then received 2 letters from the Industrial Relation department stating that 2 of the 4 employees from the TEAM stated that you have unlawfully dismissed them...

Imagine this...they came to you for work and you gave them the work. When they can't perform you ask questions why they can't perform. When you ask them to put out a plan, they wrote in a resignation letter. You then begin to wonder on which part are they unlawfully dismissed?

You then have to go to the Industrial Relation office to offer your explanation. Not once but a few times. In short, your productive working hours are wasted as some of your time are spent answering questions in the IR office. You insisted that what you've done are all according to the country's law and you stand by your decision. They wrote a resignation letter and you accepted it. There are no elements of force what-so-ever when they sign the resignation letters....

Just imagine, these guys went to see you for work and when they work you pay them on time. When things get a little rough, they chickened out and then resigned. For some strange reasons, they decide to get free money by bringing the company to the industrial relations and to some extent, to the court...

You even heard that one of them plan to buy a luxury car with the money that he is going to get from you if he wins the case...

When face a situation like this...how do you react and what will you do?

Presentation....

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be part of presentation team to one of our principal. Our purpose there is to give a simple presentation of a project that the principal wanted to embark in the near future. So there I was, in this mega board room full with top-level management people from the organization. As the presentation goes on, I had a brief look on their faces and something tells me that some of them are not interested to hear what we are offering. I might be wrong or whateva but my gut feelings tells me that. You know, sometimes when you talk about something to someone and you can tell that the other person seems uninterested to what you are saying....so that's basically how i felt.

Anyhoos, I think the presentation went ok. The questions and answers part was very interesting. Especially when we talk about our fee scale. Hehehe. The presentation only took us about 30 minutes or so. I wouldn't know what our chances are in getting the job but I thought we did well in expressing our interest as well as how ready we are in getting the job done.

However, sometimes, things are not easy as it seems in getting a business deal. THings are not THAT straight forward. Especially in Malaysia. ( I can vouch for that, unfortunately). We can talk and talk about how good we are, how our products or services can help them, bla bla bla, but at the end of the day, it all depends on the MAN who has the DECISION MAKING power....if the MAN said yes, the people down the line, no matter what they say, they have to follow the MAN's instructions. Even if the products or services offered are crap!! If the MAN said NO, no matter how hard we tried in getting the business, we can say 'so long and bye-bye to our efforts...

A couple of months back, I can still remember this lady, I call her Mrs X. She's a nice lady but when we talked to her about our interest in serving her organization, she came out with reasons after reasons on why she thinks that we are not capable in doing the job. (that's what I thought, anyways...). Reasons, like you do not have your personnel, not enough staff, not enough equipment, bla bla bla.... you get the sense that no matter what you said, no matter how nice your company profile is, you won't get the business....As at today though, things has changed a wee bit, we are starting to get small jobs from her. That's a good start I think...

It seems that in business, you will always be in a catch-22 situation. Moreover, if you are on your own and you need people to help you run the organization. The nature of our job is purely giving services to our principals. Hence, if we don't get any job from our principals, then there will be no business. Zero. Nil. In saying that, sometimes, we have the people and the equipment ready, but because of reasons known only to God, the principals will always come out with various reasons why they won't let you do the job! Irony eh? Yeap, it happens and will happen again in the future....

Obviously, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background especially in getting a business deal. I'm not going into that but as you might have now it, it happens. I think, it happens in every industry at every level. Unfortunately..Until the day when all 'these background' dealing stops, only then hopefully, we can move forward as a better nation...but now...to a certain extent...it sucks....

Have a nice day.......