Plan B - What is that?

You Can Make (or Lose) Some Money On Internet

When you are retrenched, the first thing in your mind is to find the next available job as soon as possible. But, my advise to you is not to get overly concerned. In order to get new employment, you may want to reflect upon yourself to see what are the skills you have and the experience that can sell yourself. If you had been in the sales, you should not have any problem. However, if you are technical person like Engineer, Programmer, Project Manager, Software Developer, Production Management, and other more technical or technology oriented persons, then, you really have to take a good look at yourself and assess your skill sets. While you may take your time to reflect up on yourself of what you really want to do and what you can do, you can start something simple to make some money.

The fastet way to start online business is to become an Affiliate Marketer. That means you become a sales agent and earn some commission. Just go to Clickbank.com and open an account there. Then from there market place, you can search for a product that you want to sell and get your hop link URL from there.

Then you can open an Adwords account and you can start to place your add there. Each time someone clicks on your ad, the person will be sent to the URL for the product that you are selling. If he buys, you earn. But if you pay too much for advertising, you will lose money. As simple as that. Doing business means you must take some risks. Internet Business is like normal business. There is risk of losing money.

Cheers!
http://www.bizgenerator.com

While You Are Employed

Try to Keep Your Current Job

What is the most important thing to do when you are still employed? The key thing to do is to protect your current position. Every dummy knows that.

Protecting your current position calls for some of the following common sense.

1. Constantly Upgrade your skills.

2. Keeping your eyes and ears open

3. Looking out for signposts

You need to constantly upgrade your skills for your current job but more importantly, your future job. Be aware of potential changes that may happen to your organisation that may affect your current position. Be aware of what possible future positions you may be heading towards to. If you are like what I was, without any career path for future in your organisation, you should be focusing on skills that will make you employable outside of your organisation.

Don't keep your heads down working hard. Companies don't rewards hard workers these days. Hard work may not pay. Works smart. Be conformed. In order to do well, you must conform. You must speak the same jargon as your boss. If you can't do it, you can hire contract staff to do it. Come on, there is no secret these days that only contract staff are doing the actual work. The so called “permanent” staff are just playing the politics. That is their main role. You can't blame yourself for doing that. In any case, you are rewarded more playing politics that doing actual works. Actual works are for contract staff. Don't you get it? Keep your eyes and ears open and learn quickly these skills.

Look out for signs of problems. If you have access to companies financial well being, you should have an idea when the business may become unsustainable. Make contacts to head hunters (employment agents) and explore possibilities.

Market yourself in your own company if you think it is worthwhile to stay. Whatever good things you have done must be noticed. Appear positive always, especially when you are in front of your bosses. Nobody likes negative people. Only you know what you are talking about.

Develop your plan B

If you find yourself having problem developing skills that is needed to take you into the next phase within your organistion, start to explore opportunities outside. Look out for other opportunities in other organisations. Contact friends, customers, suppliers who may be able to provide you with that opportunity.

Again and again, I want to stress, Manage Your Finance.

Start to scrutinise your expenses and calculate your real wealth. That is how many moons you can survive with your cash when you are booted. Many financial consultants would advise that you have at least 6 months of buffer. My suggestion is to have at least 12 months. If you can maintain current life style for 6 months, that is all right. If you can change your life style and stretch it to 12 months, that is even better. I have seen people (typically mid managers) taking 6-12 months before getting the next income. I am not talking about job here. If you start something of your own, your income may flow in 12-18 months later and may be in such a small quantity that is not even sufficient to support your reduced life style.

Oh, yeah, I have updated some ads in this blog. These are called Google Adsense. That is one way of making money on the Internet. If you click on these ads, I will make some money. So, you can help me to make some small changes by clicking on these ads whenever you visit my blog. :)

If you are looking for home business opportunities, you can visit this website called Biz Generator at bizgenerator.com.

Maintaining Your Life Style

You don't have to sacrifice you life style when you lose your job!

That is a BIG LIE!

You HAVE TO sacrifice your life style unless you have sufficient money to maintain your current life style for another 35 years (assuming you will die at 80).

The True Title of this Post is "Managing Your Expenses - part 2: How to go about it".

Life is a business. You need to manage your CASH FLOW. If you do not know what Cash Flow is, never mind. Simply explained, it is basically how much money comes in and how much money goes out from your pocket and bank accounts. Money comes in is income, money goes out is expense. More money coming in than going out means you have a positive Cash Flow (very good!) If you have less money coming in than going out, it means you have negative Cash Flow (problem!)

If you do not have an income, your pocket and bank account will deplete. You have negative Cash Flow (CF). You must try to reduce the rate of depleting. Since there is no income, the only way to slow down depletion is to reduce expenses.

Here are steps to reduce expenses:

1. List down in detail all the expenses and classify them into things you pay daily, monthly and yearly. You must include all expenses like food (break down into breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, snacks), transportation (husband, wife, children, public & car loan, gasoline/petrol, taxes, services), phone bill, Internet bill, Credit Card Bills, power, water, gas, home mortgage or rental, TV, subscriptions, childcare, school fees (itemised), money to parent (in detail), donations etc.

2. Sum up all the expenses that you paid daily into monthly figures by estimating how much you would be paying every month.

3. Divide the yearly expenses by 12.

4. Now you have your itemised monthly expenses. You sort them in descending order. That is, the highest goes to the top.

With that you will be able to see clearly what to cut. The rule of thumb is to cut the nice to have items like Cable TV subscription, movie, ice cream, restaraunts, beer (alcohol), holidays, etc. Depending on which country you live in you may sell your car. In some countries, having an old car is better than public transport. If that is a big expense, you get rid of it. You can always buy back a better car when you have better income. Here is what I did. I sold off my condominium that I was paying mortgage (over $2,000 per month). The rental income is less $1,000. So, my CF improved by $1,000. The interest amount was around $1,300 per month. So, this is money losing business, no point keeping anyway. Certainly, I held back buying my digital camera (I drop the old one on the floor and not working anymore.) I may buy back the digital camera if I really need it for my Internet Business.

After going through this exercise, you may be able to cut your expenses by 20-30%. Now, if that is not enough, you may squeeze more out of it. For example, talk to your bank to re-structure your mortgage. Talk to your insurer to change the payment scheme. Cut down the nice-to-have courses for your children or hold back for awhile. Teach your children instead of sending them to tuitors.

Remember: Accept the Reality. But keep your spirit up by having FAITH! (survival skill #1)

Survival Skill Number 4: Managing Your Expenses.

Your Finances

The first thing to take control is the Financials. When you are faced with challenges in your income side of the equation, you certainly need to look at the expense side to balance if off.

The last few topics I talked about were FAITH, THINK & QUICK INCOME. Yes, you must have faith. Once you lose faith, you lose everyting. You need to really think of your next step of action. One urgent step is to control your finances. Next step is to decide to be an employee or to seek out to be self employed or start a new business.

Let focus on the finances now. While most people may not practise it. It is important that you have a Income Statement or Profit & Loss statement. In this case, if you are out of job, you Income Statement is one sided. Only expenses.

So, now you need to look into your expenses. You need to list down in detail what are you monthly expenses. All the daily and yearly payments will be summarised or pro-rated into monthly expenses for easy management. Daily expenses are summed up and average value is use. These includes housing payments, transportation, food, school fees, insurance, utilities, taxes, and all other expenses.

After summing up the monthly expenses, using the amount of cash you have, you will able to work out your wealth indicator. That is how many months you can survive with your current cash you have. With that, you will be able to know your own position.

After doing this exercise, you will be able to know what to cut when you need to.

So, the Urgent thing to do is to develop survival skill number four: MANAGING YOUR EXPENSES!

Who says being retrenched is not stressful. It certainly is stressful. But with faith and doing appropriate actions, you will get to where you are.

Survival Skill Number Four: Managing Your Expenses.

Is Your Wife Working?

Welcome to the Club!

Soon after I was laid off last year, I visited a friend who (let's call him Mr. H) was running his own Telco service company. Mr. H was laid off 2-3 years back and after thinking for a
few months, he decided to start this company. That was another story that I want to talk about in term of starting business. What I wanted to share here is only one interesting aspects of the meeting.

We went to a coffee store at the ground level of this office building for a chat. Soon after, we were joined in by another couple of guys of middle age. I guess their ages around late 40s & early 50s. You can see their seasoned faces. Mr. H introduced them to me, but, I could remember their names (look, I have this problem of memorising people's names). But, one interesting introduction line Mr. H gave was worth pondering upon:

"Look," he said, "we belong to the group of people whose wifes are working! Welcome to the club!" Then we all laughed.

This is quite a strange phenomenom. It seems that, in Singapore, males of middle ages find it more difficult to land themselves jobs than the female counter part. In this case, my wife was laid off 10 days before me. She got a job within a month. Well the fact is her annualised income is now about 55% of the previous earning. For me, it seems different. I don't get any offer for any
kind of jobs like that even though I indicated my interest.

When I looked around me, I suddenly realised that many of my friends who are not working basically supported by their wifes. So, what is the reason? The fact that the wifes are working makes them less enthusiastic to land themselves jobs? Something else?

Anyway, the key point is, I call it survival skill number 3:

QUICK INCOME!

Key survival skill here is to get one of the couple to get a job as quickly as possible. Even if the income is not able to cover the expenses. One of my wife's ex-colleague who was laid off at the batch when into depression. He has five children and wife has never for the last 5 years. One of the children requires special attention (medically). Here is the issue. He is not willing to accept a job that will pay him less than what he needs to support the family. Many ex-colleagues tried to match him to jobs but not quite successful.

Here comes the key point of discussion: Why must employer pay you enough to support your family?

Listen up, guys, nobody owes you a living. Not even the government! Employer is going to pay you the PERCEPT value of the job. Your employer will pay you $10,000 per month answering phone calls if what you do will secure $100,000 of business every month. Otherwise, please expect $1,000 per month.

Mr. H is quite lucky that his wife's job seems to be stable and quite highly positioned, so no worries for him. He took his time to set up the company. Spending about 1 year to develop the software needed. Then, marketing the services. In total, about 2 years, he was not "drawing any salary" (not having income). Until about 2 year later that there of Net Income to the company and he started to give himself salary". That was a long wait but his business is improving.

Think about it.

Survival Skill Number 3: Get Quick Income for Family.

What to do when you are retrenched?

You don't have to rush!

Since I am experienced, I am here to share with you some tips I learned.

Depending on whether you are prepared or not. Some companies / manager are kind enough to give ample notice (unofficially) so that you are pschologically prepared. These are kind souls we should appreciate. Some managers are lacking in self confident and humanity. They may give you a surprise. My wife's retrenchment was planned over 3-6 months. Her department was to close down. She was initially offered to relocate to another country. There were lots of discussions and payouts were already determined well in advanced. No surprises at all. People get their money and go. No hard feelings. Some peole who were not affected even wanted to join them and asked for early retirement. But they were declined since the company thought the they were still needed. This is good. Open, frank, nothing to hide type of management style. Employees understands the rational and accepts the offer without much resentment. Of course that does not mean that they are not worried about their future.

My was a surprise. I was given one week to clear up my outstanding works and my compensation was also minimal. That is the different between companies or managements with human touch or without. It also reflects the confidence level of the management. Even though they gave me a hit, I was more or less seeing in coming 2 - 3 months before. I told my staff to look for new job because he was new (less than a year) and definitely not able to get any compensation. So, he managed to get out 2 months before I was hit.

Why I had been sitting around for 9 months?

My answer is, there are too many things to try!

Yes, once you are out there, you suddenly realised that there are so many possibilities that you can make a living. So, my advice to you is to stop and

THINK!

The biggest reason that I spent 9 months not doing anything productive (I am using making money as measurement of productivity) was that I jumped into things too quickly. There wasn't enough thinking. I tried too many things without thinking through.

You see, for me, I am not interested to get a job anymore. So, I spend 3-4 months exploring franchising opportunities. I combed various places for shop spaces. I talked to a few master franchisors. I did my spread calculations. I when to various locations to count human traffics at different hours. All these works are for me to do feasibilities study. After few months of hard work, I concluded that none of those opportunities I explored are feasible. Then, I jumped into stock trading full-time. Again that took me another 3 months to realised that it may not be something I love best. Then, I came across Internet Marketing. Something I am very confident and committed. (Please visit http://www.simplemindset.com, http://www.bizgenerator.com & http://dragonation.blogspot.com) I believe that my future is in Internet Marketing. I also started to do work on my old trade (IT Consulting). I teamed up with my University Classmate to work on IT consulting services. (Please visit http://www.probaseconsulting.com).

All these takes time. I spend 9 months of my time doing evaluations etc. See, I used to jump into things quickly. Now, I want to think first before I do anything. Now I am sharing this with you, So, listen up. You can short cut all these processes by simply taking a step back and

THINK! (survival skill number two)

Before you decide what to do next...

Gook Luck!

Survival Skill Number Two: Think Through

First Day at Work after 9 months

If you are feeling squeezed, you are not alone!

30th August 2006. First Day at work after 9 months. What a change! This is a 2-month contract to help a customer to design a new software application.

Nothing spectacular about work to talk about. I'd been in IT industry for almost 20 years. Whatever is there is nothing new. Lots of evolutionary innovations. No quantum leaps.

Over to lunch at a cafeteria at the basement, after finishing my lunch, I noticed someone appearing to be familiar. So, I approach him. True enough, my ex-colleague whom I had not met for over 10+ years. He looked haggard somewhat. So, I asked him, "how are you these day? Are you working aroud here?" "No, I am not working here," he said. "I am looking for a potential client in this building. I am doing my own training business."

We sat down and talked for a while. The outright thing he told me was, "I am struggling to make a living. Life has been very tough over the last 3 years." He is over 50 and he holds a Master in Arts degree. He was a training manager in my previous company. He teaches soft skills.

After lunch, I met yet another ex-colleague who is working in the client that I am servicing. What a small world. He was retrench before and he is accepting this lower position here. He is not in my category. He is just couple of year shy of 45. Life is not as rosy for him as well. But, he has faith. He believes that GOD created him and will not let him live in poverty. If he happy with his life? Not quite but something keeps him going and he has less stress. The conversation with him allows me to confirm one thing that I had been reading about: Have Faith in order to succeed. Regardless of your religious orientation, FAITH is an important factor that keeps people going.

What do you really need to survive after 45?

FAITH! (survival skill number one)

Have Faith, my friend, for without which, nothing is possible. The pot of gold the down there waiting for us to dig it up. We must have faith.

PS. I am not a Christain and I am not preaching Christianity here. When I said FAITH, I am talking about you believing in yourself and your dream.

Survival Skill Number One!