There is a Chinese saying of life experiences reflect movie stories and movie stories reflect life experiences, (人生如戏，戏如人生), it is due to the meanings and principles (and of course Donnie Yen and Wing Chun) that I found in Ip Man 1 movie that if I were to decide between Ip Man 2 and Iron Man 2, I would choose the former but since the price of a movie ticket is not really out of the world, unlike housing, it will not be much of a dilemma to watch both in the movie theaters.

You need to listen to this music as you read this post in order to have the feel.

1. Being in a crisis forces creativity thinking and innovation out of you

Ip Man is a movie about Wing Chun superb techniques, the history and story of Wing Chun holds important implications for us all. Without the crisis in Shaolin Temple around 400 years ago, Reverend Ng Mui will not have escape and force to innovate and there will not be no Wing Chun, no Ip Man and no Bruce Lee. While it is unfortunate that the Shaolin Temple is destroyed by the Qing Government at that time, along with some profound Shaolin martial arts, the great blessing in disguises is that one of the world’s greatest martial arts is born as a result of it.

Think about it, without retrenchments, without job security, with iron rice bowl, will you have venture out and eventually business multi-millionaires.

2. There is a formula for success

One of the key reasons behind the success of Ip Man movies, other than good plot, theme music and fighting scenes, is the stirring up of nationalistic feelings among the Chinese. The first person to use this strategy to boost box office sales in the Chinese movie market is none other than Bruce Lee in his 1972 Fist of Fury. The whole story line is similar to the first movie in the sense that got the bad guys belong to some races that oppress the Chinese during the turbulence last 100 years of China history. The difference between the first and second movies’ bad guys is none other than the first is Japanese and the second is a British. Also got around the same number of fight scenes with a final showdown and family oriented scenes.

I know that got people with surname Yip, feel very proud of their surnames after watching Ip Man 2, when the profound blocks, punches, kicks and techniques enables a shorter and smaller sized Chinese to defeat a larger westerner, the Chinese whole world over felt that Kungfu belong to the world but Wong Feihong, Huo Yuanjia, Yip Man and Bruce Lee belong to the Chinese people.

为了生活我可以忍，但污辱中国武术就不行 – I can endure to earn a living but cannot stand insult to Chinese Kungfu

Hung Jan Nam(Sammo Hung’s Character in Ip Man 2)

Ironically, it is the British controlled Hong Kong that saves Wing Chun from extinction as due to a man (by the surname of Mao) and his cock ideas, Cultural Revolution, that almost destroys the rich heritage of Chinese Culture, including and especially Chinese martial arts like Wing Chun.

Be it movie or other fields of endeavor, there is a formula for success.

3. Philosophy or beliefs of a person leads to different outcomes

The distinctive differences in fighting style between Taekando and Wing Chun are evident. In Taekando, it is believed that legs are the strongest weapon of the human body and hence the using of legs more often. While Wing Chun is designed for a weaker person and supposedly shorter in height also, to overcome a stronger person and it doesn’t make sense to use legs often since, you are supposedly physically weaker than the other feller and his legs are most probably stronger and longer than you.

In addition, when you are shorter and kick higher than waist level, not only center of gravity is temporally raised higher, reducing stability, more vital parts are exposed to attacks. While the beliefs behind Wing Chun is that kicks above waist level reduces stability by raising the body centre of gravity and if the kicks, especially high kicks does not happen to strike, a Wing Chun expert can easily advance close to him and finish off with double quick bong san, tan sou, etc., or 来留去送 which is why Donnie Yen in the Ip Man 1 and 2 fight scenes only use kicks as a finishing move, after Jin ShanZhao, Japanese General or Mr Twister has been traumatized by machine gun punches.

As a result of differences in the thinking and philosophy between these two schools of martial arts, there is different in outcomes of the way practitioners of them react to the same fight scenarios.

The extreme opposite between Eastern and Western Philosophy leads to wide differences in the practice of medicine and martial arts. Western Philosophy is traced back to Aristotle reductionist thinking, that is reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things while Eastern Philosophy is more of influenced by Taoism concept of wholeness, yin and yang, and that all living and non-living things interact and counteract one another.

We can see the difference in medicine, in the treatment of poisonous bite by a snake. Western medicine may sought to develop an organic compound to neutralize the snake poison by analyzing molecular formula of the snake poison and then synthesis another organic compound to neutralize it. Traditional Chinese Medicine from one of the core Taoism philosophy, 五形三界，相冲相克，all the biological and non-biological objects interacts and counteracts one another in this realm, means that within the vicinity of where the snake lives lay the antidote for the snake’s poison, most probably in some of the plants.

In the movie Ip Man 2, the Mr Twister martial arts skills – western boxing is none other than some simple blocks and punches. A result of reductionist thinking? While that of Ip Man’s Wing Chun is more complicated when the whole martial arts system spring from considering the whole system and of course built on existing Shaolin martial arts at that time. Which is also why Bruce Lee decides to use the Taosim Yin Yang symbol for his Jee Kune Do as the philosophy and concepts draws heavily from Taosim philosophy.

The moral of the story at the end of the day is adopt different philosophies so that one can use each when problem solving because sometimes reductionist thinking in more effective in this circumstances and sometimes, expansionist thinking is more effective in another circumstances, like mixed martial arts, using skills and techniques from different styles for different fight scenarios. The practice of medicine today is also moving towards using western and traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of various diseases.

We can see this in two different thoughts when it comes to investing in equities, like some feel technical investing is better while others prefer fundamental analysis. Both can actually combine and use at the same time.

4. Using of mantra to simplify learning, remembering and application of whatever things you learn in life

Unlike martial arts from other countries like Japan and Korea, Chinese martial arts, including Wing Chun, usually contain mantras to summaries all the key philosophies, core concepts and principles in four letter Chinese words. The beauty of China girls Chinese language lies in four words can transmit deep and profound meanings that will take more than four English words to convey. We shall see some of these four words mantra from Wing Chun and their meanings, together with all the life lessons that can be reflected from it.

Think about it, be it creative thinking, critical thinking, programming, engineering problem solving, real world business problems, aren’t that we need to go through certain thoughts processes, methods of analysis, as a result, coming up with mantras for methods of solutions enables fast and effective recall of the mental processing strategies required.

5. 永春绝技，源起少林 – Wing Chun Superb techniques, originally originates from Shaolin

The first line of the mantra recognizes Wing Chun roots in Shaolin. As mentioned before, the acquisitions of appropriate knowledge of a field must come first before innovations in that field can occur. Reverend Ng Mui study Shaolin martial arts throughout all her life. As such, the knowledge and insights gained would be deep, profound and enlightening because she literally faces martial arts every day. It is by standing on the shoulder of giants that she can see further. In other words, it is by sitting on a large pile of knowledge that Ng Mui is able to derive and invent a much better fighting system than previous versions.

6. 拳打中线, 两点之间, 直线最短, 以弱胜强, 拳入三关,　任我行走 – Fist hit centerline, shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the weakness can overcome strong, once cut into centerline, can attack anyhow I want

When you are fighting with someone much larger in size and taller in height and with muscles here, there and everywhere, like Mr Twister, it is obvious that the only way to survive is by attacking the person vital points which lie along the centerline. If you are much large in size and height, and opponent does not know any martial arts, you anyhow beat can also win by common sense. However, this is not the case in real life situations as in not every time the other feller is of smaller size and shorter height than you. In addition, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, when not only your legs are shorter but hands also; it makes sense to deliver punches using a straight punch along the straight line.

We can see this in the jobs and careers that we pursue, just like a physically weaker person need to hit along the centerline so that there is much higher probability of winning, if one is not that good in talking and sales, it is also wiser that he or she does not involve himself in things like network marketing and commission based financial adviser, and screw himself because the most crucial element require for success happens to be his greatest weakness. There are many ways to make millions, one do not necessarily have to be in network marketing or financial adviser that needs to requires excellent verbal communications skills for success.

In the movie Ip Man 2, in the final showdown between Yip Man and Mr Twister, the grandmaster eventually win by cutting into Mr Twister centerline and whacks aggressively using some techniques and forms from Hong Gar. As you can see, once one cut into centerline using Wing Chun techniques, Yip Man can use the more damaging Hong Gar forms to impact greater injuries.

This is like in investing in stock markets, when various benchmarks showed that stocks are seriously undervalued, it is time to start aggressively buying into.

7.连消带打, 以攻为守,　以守为攻 – Simultaneous attack and defend, attack is defend and defend is attack

To merge attack and defend together is a novel concept at that time and to this day, there are not many martial arts styles that stress and emphasize much or contain techniques of simultaneous attack and defend.

As with actual fighting, look at the job scope or task in your everyday job and businesses, are there two tasks that can be done at the same time without sacrificing the quality of work.

6.招无虎鹤, 法无五行, 只谈线位, 力与角度, 蓄劲似蛇,　发劲似猫,　朝形似鸡 – Forms contain no Tiger and crane hand forms, no specific patterns, only about relative positions, strength of force and angle in the application of force, preparing to exert force like snake, applying force like cat, standing stance like chicken.

While history has it that Reverend Ng Mui invent Wing Chun after observing how a crane fight, Wing Chun does not contain any Crane hand forms, unlike Hong Gar which still retains the five animals hand forms from which the Hong Fist style is derived. Wing Chun deviates substantially from the martial arts of that time in that it do away with directly mimic the movements of animals and choose certain elements from animals fight for applications in human fights. One can see Crane in Bong sau, ding sau and snake in Huen sau, bill gee, etc, but the hand movements in Wing Chun do away with crane and snake hand forms, Tiger hand can be seem in Hong Gar used by Sammo Hung when he is fighting with both Yip Man and Mr Twister but Wing Chun has do away with unnecessary forms and movements that directly mimic animals movements.

There are many aspects or elements of an area that can be applied onto another area or field of studies. One should recognize whether if certain elements can totally do away and only apply those that are the most suitable.

9. Importance of mastering the basics, 永春小念头 – Little Idea

所为永春真妙法，必需先从小念头开始

Wing Chun Siu Nian Tou contains some of the most important blocks and punches which aspiring Yip Man and Bruce Lee must learn and master well in order to fight like them in real world actual fighting. At first sight, it seems that the patterns of Siu Nian Tou are nothing much impressive and one at first really wonders if they are of practical usage in actual fighting.

We can see that in investing and engineering, mastering the basics is also equally important for success. It is by understanding what are light transmittance and the unique properties of fiber optics., all the fundamental Physics concepts that the following NUS students can come up a device to capture Sunlight and only transmit the light minus the heat energy of sun.

Before you can be like Warren Buffet, one must first understand and grasp the concept of time value of money well, the basic terminologies used in financial statements and concepts like price-earnings ratio, dividends yield, etc.

10. 下三路手,　以脚消脚 – When kicks are below waistline, use legs to neutralize legs (or kicks)

One of the fundamental Wing Chun principles is when kicks toward you are below your waistline, you use legs to neutralize the leg attacks. This illustrates the importance of systematic problem solving. Fighting is like creative problem solving in the sense that both are dealing with a dynamic situation. So that when a certain problem situation is similar to another, one can always use the same techniques.

11. 禅宗绝学,　旨在修身 – main objective of Wing Chun is to cultivate oneself

While Wing Chun got deadly effects when truly mastered, one should aware of benevolent and compassion. The Chinese word for martial arts is actually made up of two words, one is stop and the other is war. The original intention of martial arts is to stop warring.

In the wet market fights, when Ip Man finally got a chance to display Wing Chun Butterfly knifes, we can see that he flipped over the knifes to the blunt side just before the hacking begins remembering that they most probably have a mother or wife at home, because he knows that the group of them will most probably not be his match.

One should always be aware of the original intentions and sacred duties of various professions (if you belong to them), graduates from Medicine faculty need to take a meaningful Hippocratic Oath, future lawyers also need to take a similar oath of upholding the justice while engineers need to remind of their duties in life – that of improving the life of humanity through science and technology.

Too often, however and unfortunately, people learn martial arts and develop more violent tendency, lawyers instead of upholding justice ended up only help rich people to win court cases regardless of actual circumstances, doctors knowingly prescribing Subutex even though it is an addictive drug.

12. 肉身成佛 古今几人 无为无我 无界无终 – since the beginning of ages, how many people ever become invincible in fighting, (exact words meaning are how many people ever become Buddha since the beginning of ages) there is no boundary to the ultimate level of martial arts, no boundary where learning stop

The final words of Wing Chun mantra mention another profound fact of life, that of lifelong learning, one should live until old and learn until old. Knowing all the Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu, Biu Tze and Muk Yan Jong does not make you a Yip Man and Bruce Lee, neither to attaining black belts a few dans in Karate or Taekando. As what academic professors say even though they already got Phd or doctoral degrees in their respective fields of study – the more I know, the more I don’t know. There is really no boundary to the degree of knowledge that one can acquire.

We now know why Bruce Lee made a certain statement, given the profoundness of Chinese Kungfu.

I am here to tell you that China is the ancestral homeland of all martial arts.

International Kungfu Superstar Bruce Lee, during a speech given in Edison Technical School

13. Everyone got a God-given talent and a place where the heart is

Had Sammo Hung being born in a particular city state, he will most probably ended up as a doctor or lawyer if he is good is his academic studies or as a toilet cleaner/taxi driver if he does not fare too well. If the career option available to Sammo Hung is university or it’s the end, not only will there be no Ip Man, there will also not have the hugely successful vampire series of movies during the 1980s and early 1990s which create an iconic character of a vampire expert that up to this day, they still cannot find someone to replace Lam Ching Ying as the vampire and ghost expert.

There is a Chinese saying; 十年树木，百年树人- it takes ten years to grow a tree but 100 years to know the outcome of an educational system. It is a joke that barely less than half a century when a particular education system has yet to produce a single Nobel Prize winner, some people can self congratulates them for creating a good class education system when cracks or problems already started to surface.

Had you seem and realize that more wealth is created for humanity if the education system is more of helping to discover each child inborn talent and passion rather than one that overly stresses on academic achievements. Had Reverend Ng Mui not devoted herself to deep study of martial arts (a supposedly non-economical activity by today’s perspective), due to passion and gained a deep understanding of Shaolin martial arts due to talent none other than commonly defined notion of academic achievements, there will be no 永春绝技. The Japanese feller who compose this piece of music for Ip Man may well become retarded if he were forced to study some courses like Medicine, Lawyer and Accountancy that were supposedly brings better career prospects and earn more money.

I will write the word Kungfu into English Dictionary.

International Kungfu Superstar Bruce Lee, during a speech given in Edison Technical School

Bruce Lee almost graduated with a first class honors in Philosophy from  University of Washington when he decides to quite school and open martial arts school,

He said, if my life purpose is to let the whole world know what Chinese Kungfu is, what do I have to afraid to lose?

14. Morality and professions should not have differences in status

“今天的胜负，我不是想证明我们中国的武术，比西洋拳更加优胜。我只是想说，人的地位，虽然有高低之分，但是人格不该有贵贱之别。我很希望，从这一刻开始，我们大家可以学会懂得怎样去互相尊重”

Yip Man(Donnie Yen’s character in Ip Man 2)

In today materialistic society, people have the tendency to value fellow humans on the basis of his monthly income and net worth, or by his profession, or even by the way he look. But since morality should not have the distinction of high and low, so should job and profession. In some country, even engineers are deemed to be of lower status than doctors and lawyers by virtue of income and stability in income.

This is very similar in meanings, though not entirely similar to “one of the best well known sentences in the English Language”, from United States Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Ip Man should wear Iron Man suit and Iron Man should learn Wing Chun so that they will become invincible. The combination can be called Ipron Man 2 so that people will not have to become indecisive as to watch which movie.

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We always heard that productivity is important if employee wants to do well in his career and companies want to do well in their businesses. To use an engineering perspective to explain productivity – amount of work done per unit time. I know it should be called power in physics and engineering. As you can see, the more work you can do in the same unit of time, the more productive you are. High productivity is good whether as an employee or managing own businesses.

However, doing more of work per unit time that does not lead to increased revenue is useless. High productivity is not the whole story but high productivity in doing things that matter is the whole story.

Let us look at the following aspects of a business in layman explanations and see that one need to do work that adds value in each aspect if one were to improve both career prospects and revenue of a company.

Marketing – what the target consumers want

Advertising – letting the target consumers that you have what they want

Production – Able to produce it with reasonable, acceptable and required quality

Sales – Simply sell

Order fulfillment- transporting the goods and services customers after sales are made

Pricing – what target consumers are willing to pay for the goods and services

Every one of us, including completing businesses only has 24 hours each day, which is why the increased in work done per unit time, i.e., productivity, need to be in improving the six areas mentioned above.

For instance, improving productivity in attempting to improve an already great product is not as effective as letting more of your target market know what they want which is doing more work for advertising side.

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1. Place Google Adsense ads or some other types of ads at the bottom of every web page. This will make the ads less intrusive and when people become tired from online job search, they may click on the ads at the bottom of the webpage.

2. Use a subdomain of the main website to host an online forum to generate pageviews and hence advertising revenues from job seeker’s discussion topics and users generated content, for example, like forum.domainname.com.

3. Transplant ideas from ebay search engines, if I do a product search on ebay, I can arrange the search results by highest price/lowest price, newest listed, distance of sellers, search according to categories. I can pay to have my product listed on top of search result pages when buyers searched.

In the same way, online career portals can improve their services by arranging the job search results by highest/lowest salary, new jobs listed, distance of working location from job seekers home(since job seekers already submit where they lived when they first signed up with the job portals) and most importantly can ranked according to number of applications. Of course, the standard feature of dividing jobs into their respective categories.

In addition, can have an option for job seekers to pay a small fee to have their resumes listed on top of the others like the case for ebay where sellers can pay some money to have their products listed on top of search results.

Ebay auction shows number of bids, then online careers portals can also show number of applications for the jobs ads. Things like how many applications got higher/lower/same educational qualifications and salary amount request than the rest of the job seekers.

This will further enhance the competitive advantage of online job portals.

4. Have the option of hiding away contact details of job seekers. This is to prevent insurance companies and agents or even spammers from data mining and provide greater value to job seekers.

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Bearing this in mind, let us now look at top three considerations when starting a business.

1. Imperfect world = Infinite problems = Uncountable business opportunities

We don’t live in a utopian society where every person needs and wants are satisfied, where there is no illness and other unpleasantness of life. As I mentioned in previous post, money is everywhere because problem is everywhere.

Do take note and take advantage of the fact that we live in a not so ideal world which means there will always be opportunities to make money, it is just that you have not see it. Although Friendster and Yahoo solved the problem of online social networking and online search, but Facebook and Google solve them better.

Remember the success of business is directly proportional to how many people face the problem and how well the business solve it. There are many retail businesses before Wal-mart, but only Wal-mart is able to supply products cheaper and at convenient locations.

2. Start to look around, discover problems, and then think to solve it.

As I mentioned before, money lies in widespread problems faced by many consumers. Sometimes, a million dollar problem is the one face by oneself as in the case of “Liquid Paper” which is invented by Bette Nesmith Graham.

Bette Nesmith Graham found work as a typist; she unfortunately wasn’t a very good one and developed a white tempura paint to hide her mistakes. Using her kitchen and garage as laboratory and factory, she gradually developed a product that other secretaries and office workers began to buy. While continuing to work as a secretary, she educated herself in business methods, promotion, and research until she was satisfied that the product she had developed was really worthwhile. She then offered Mistake Out to IBM which turned it down. Undaunted, Bette Graham changed the name from Mistake Out to Liquid Paper and kept selling it from her kitchen-garage for the next 17 years. By 1968 she was making a profit. And in 1979, the Gillette Corporation bought Liquid Paper for $47.5 million plus royalties.

Image Credits: Liquid Paper

With the new economy, there are problems faced by netizens online too and the volume of people facing a particular problem is high.

3. Customer is king

The key to success in business, to success in solving customer’s problems is of course focusing on customer.

“We all have one boss, and that’s the customer. And customer can fire us anytime he likes by simply taking his business somewhere else.”

Sam Walton

This does not mean focusing on customer’s boobs or his girlfriends, it means focusing on

a. Needs

b. Wants

c. Desires

d. Problems

e. How much the customer is willing to pay for?

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I admired his aspirations but apparently Warren Buffett did not really believe that it will since he did not invest a single cent into the company at the end of the day. Well, it may be that he seldom invests much outside United States.

Buffett has a habit of auctioning a lunch every year, with the proceeds going to Charity. This is an economical way for other types of celebrities who are not investing legends to do charities work also.

How about that for rock stars, Hollywood stars and even better, since Paris Hilton always surprises us with some steaming videos, why not she auction one night of herself?

Anyway, lunch with Warren Buffet is a good way to increase the value of one’s share holdings in a public listed company. If you are the founder and holds substantial shares, consider having a lunch with Buffett, then sells some shares when the stock prices rise above its intrinsic value (determine by yourself), after the publicity of the millions dollars lunch is off, can buy back at a lower price than the selling price.

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First things first, I am not a fan of chasing technologies, wanting the latest Intel Pentium processors, running on the latest Microsoft Windows operation system. In fact, from the specifications of new computers that I observed, less than $1500 can buy you a relatively good PC, with discrete graphics card and latest Intel microprocessors, coupled with at least 3 years onsite warranty, will be very good. Unless you are a hard core gamer, or need to use advanced engineering softwares, there is absolutely no need to buy a new PC every 3 years, the more economical life cycle should be every 5 years.

After the 3 years onsite warranty is over, if components like keyboard, monitor, system memory and hard disk breakdown due to electronic failures. One can easily purchased separate new items for them and replace the faulty ones. They are not that expensive now, as a result, depending on which specific component breaks down, for less than $50, or even $100 for a LCD monitor, can use another 2 years before another version of Microsoft Windows Operating System like Windows 8 is out, you may even skip one generation, but just don’t skip to the lousy ones like Windows ME and Vista.

Why Windows 7 will be better than Vista?

Based on historical data, an fxxk up operating system will be followed by a better one. Think Windows ME (or Windows Millennium Edition), that is before Windows XP.

Vista is by every standard comparable to ME, and beta tests of Windows 7 showed that it is free of most problems found in Vista and faster also.

Another important reason to postpone purchase of new PC from now until Windows 7 is out during October 2009 is (though got free upgrade now), like Windows XP, it will be on the market for quite sometime, the reason for this prediction is that actually, it is not much different from Vista, and Microsoft has spent quite some time and money developing Vista previously. Last time, there are many versions of Windows release every year before XP is on the market for another 5 years – the longest so far.

It seems like those who bought into Vista is like being screwed, there is no much difference in terms of appearance between Vista and 7, only that 7 will most probably got less problems than Vista and run faster, but not necessary better in terms of performance than XP.

The irony of their advertising messages on Microsoft websites – Windows 7 rocks.

The reason why Windows 7 rocks is simply because Windows Vista sucks.

We do have to learn why a less than ideal product can gain more than 90% of its market share and went on to make its founder the world’s richest man for more than a decade.

The following video is the first of a series of videos on Microsoft history,

The History of Microsoft – 1975

The rest, a series of videos, is available here; this type of historical documentary is quite informative and interesting,

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/History/The-History-of-Microsoft-1975/

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The reason why there is money to make, or specifically speaking, why greater wealth can be created is simply because there are problems to be solved that are faced by humanity.

Discovering business opportunities is discovering other people’s problems.

Excelling in employment means effectively solves problems faced by company.

Look at following list of businesses and see what problems they remove from humanity.

1. Thomas Edison 1093 patents filed during his lifetime

The world’s greatest inventor has a motto when it comes to inventing physical objects – anything that don’t sell, I don’t invent.

Why would you buy anything if it is not useful to you, reduces and eliminates any unpleasantness in one way or another?

It will be useful to know how he knew that what he is going to invent will sells.

2. Ebay

I have a problem with old stuffs lying around my home. They are worthless to me but I will be happy to cash them out for $10. Not only I can do my part for the environment by not sending them to a refuse dump site but can also earn some money.

Almost everyone has this problem as me. Who solves it first?

3. Amazon

Reading is important if one wants to become rich but my local bookstore don’t always have the book that I want. My local bookstores don’t have hundreds of customer reviews for opinions before spending $20 on a book.

4. Google

Gmail solves the problem of free web based emails without intrusive banners ads problem.

Adwords solves the problem of finding targeted consumers with more effective customer’s acquisitions costs.

Adsense solves the problem of finding relevant ads for my small and unknown websites problem.

5. Domino Pizzas

Tom Monaghan solves the problem of I want my hot pizzas in 30 minutes.

6. Wisewealthbook

Solves the problem of save wisely, insure wisely, spend wisely, invest wisely, get rich wisely and live wisely problem.

What is the volume of people that face this problem?

The more it is, the greater the business is worth.

How well do you solve it?

The better it is, the greater the business is worth.

There are still cures for illness waiting to be discovered, more effective ways of doing things for all sorts of business, manufacturing and industrial processes to be invented.

Money is everywhere because problem is everywhere.

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The traditional Think and Grow Rich book mainly mentioned that to become rich, intensity of desire is important as it will leads to sustaining persistence.

But little is mentioned of how to increase desire as illustrated in a post written earlier about the key to superhuman persistence.

In general, if you want to become rich, other than intensity of desire, creative and critical thinking are two other important mental skills that you need to learn and master over time.

Don’t ever have the idea that these two types of mental processes are some inborn talent. No, they are not and neither do IQ – the traditional notion of intelligence. Everyone can increase their IQ scores the second time that they take the test using principled problem solving and awareness of types of questions asked and percentage of each respective types being asked in each IQ test.

Making money is essentially solving other people’s problems.

Let us take a look at governmental regulations in requiring all cigarettes manufacturers to place graphic images as warning labels on their packs. This is simply to use fear of getting certain illness to dissuade them from smoking.

There are many ways that you can look at this world, but in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to identify problems that segments of consumers faced.

People who want to smoke will still want to continue smoking even with the graphic images. But they have an additional problem; they too like you want to avoid those images with tumors in mouth, throat, lungs and penis, yet at the same time want to smoke.

The issue is smokers have already been addicted to smoking due to its addictive elements like nicotine. With the gross images, it just only create additional mental burden on them.

The money question is,

How can you help smokers avoid the gross images without giving up smoking?

I remember from my grandparents generations since young that though there is no gross graphic images on cigarettes pack, smokers of that generation customarily take out all the cigarettes, throw away the box and place them in cigarette cases.

One foreseeable business opportunity is that there will be increased in demand again for this classic types of cigarette cases.

This is like . . . . . .

The surfacing of deadly sex diseases like HIV, AIDS, etc does not really stop people from having casual sex. Instead, profit minded individuals come up things like condoms and premium services like screening prostitutes for all sex diseases and charge a higher price for clients willing to pay more to ensure that they don’t get the diseases.

With absence of an effective cure for AIDS, and yet humans cannot seem to practice abstinent, one can foresee that sales of condom or other related products and services that can prevent sex diseases without giving up sex can only increase.

Though I am using negative examples as in both are not some ethical practices, but what I am trying to illustrate is the thought processes behind think and grow rich.

P.S. The author of this post do not condone smoking and casual sex as they are detrimental to a person overall well being.

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You can don’t see the advertisements of course, but you won’t get what you wanted badly at that moment in time.

While the methods used may not be ethical but the methods and general principles behind in developing those methods can be used ethically for a good cause, or at least to promote your legitimate businesses.

As in we also can learn from email spammers a lot of ideas that can be applied in other areas.

Imagine stepping inside the shoes behind people behind these online quizzes, be it on Facebook or other websites, your strategy is offering individuals a service that can potentially boast their egos – I am a genius. I’m charismatic, kind and understanding, while mining data along the way.

By capturing their attentions using means deployed in these online quizzes and even games – engaging IQ questions where everyone of 21 years of age most probably know the answers, one can plaster related advertisements right across their faces when their mind is the most focused.

What this means is that small business owners and even Fortune 500 companies can consider develop facebook applications that are related to their products and services, and employed similar ways to mine their target consumers’ data.

Here are some general rules to follow,

1. Come up with questions that will result in gathering data that your particular businesses would want to know to increase sales.

2. Start playing Facebook applications and see which of those interesting and ego boasting applications can insert those questions.

3. Then place similar types of simple programs on your companies’ websites.

Like this free IQ test, TheFreeIQTest, plastering a large “The average IQ is 100. What is yours”, together with an Albert Einstein photo – a well known personality in Physics who is generally regarded as a symbol of intelligence due to his ideas that revolutionized the whole of Physics.

Anyway, it is not really because of the thing IQ that Albert Einstein came up with Special and General Theory of Relativity. It is because of the questions that he consistently asked himself.

Like the famous F = ma equation, which one of you will ever question, if kept on increasing the force, will the acceleration also increase proportionally until the physical object exceeds the speed of light?

Most people, if not all, even those with IQ above 160, will just simply take that F=ma as the absolute truth and apply it to solve examinations problems and get As at the end of the day.

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