Diversifying Ruined

Was chatting with one of my secondary school friend when he gave me this link. Below is extracted from the web site.

Children from rich background have it easy. Many doctors come from rich families. Rich kids go to elite schools. If they work sufficiently hard, they can almost guarantee themselves a good life - get good high-paying jobs, inherit parents’ fortune, and the “virtuous” cycle repeats.

I’ve said before that it takes luck and a lot more hard work for the poorer students to catch up.

But what are the options? Suppose they are not smart and lucky enough to get into an elite school. What should they do?

These are my suggestions:

Go to a polytechnic for your tertiary education. Less stress there, and you learn practical skills.

Work for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Yes, I know the standard advice from HR experts - one must try to get into an MNC, because your resume will look very nice. My argument here is that you can learn very different things in SMEs. Read on.

Learn as much as you can about the business in the company you’re working for. If possible, observe closely how the entire company works - sales, operations, logistics, human resource, accounting, finance, suppliers, vendors, etc. Because it’s an SME, it should not be too hard to know about almost everything about the business.

Mix with like-minded people in the company, people who are as hardworking, smart and ambitious as you are.

Save up.

Together with your like-minded friends, start your own business. Compete with your ex-bosses. (Now, if you think this is unethical, let me say that this is only as unethical as joining a competitor. If you think that is also unethical, I have nothing else to say.)

This is how many “tow-kays” got started.

If you had chosen the MNC path, do you think it’s as easy to start a business? What you would learn in MNCs are corporate things that won’t help you start a business. Your experience in an SME should help make the learning curve much less steep.

You can’t start an MNC, but you can definitely start an SME.

Work hard, work smart, and with a bit of luck maybe you’d be a millionaire in your 30s - as rich as an investment banker.

Now, do you agree with the writer? I do. As discussed with him over MSN, one of the reason I mentioned was that the average and poor is they dare not dream. Whereas for the rich, they often mixed around with their family's relative, business friends etc where they get to know and learn how the rich talk, behave and slowly learn from them. They have already inculcated in them the postive side of starting a business and that it is possible to be as successful as them! Opportunity like this does not arise easily for the common. Hence, they dare not even dream or think of starting a business, fearing of failure.

Now, another problem which we agreed was people started planning for their life too late. He proposed a plan to a few of his close friends that he will pool a sum of money together with them to buy properties. All of his friends' replies was negative and even stated that they would put the money in the bank instead. This same mentality applies to my side here too. If you belongs to this group of people, what I suggest is to get yourself a copy of "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. Its nothing than an inspirational book to get you started.

Next, I mentioned this "dream" of mine to him. To find a few like-minded people like us, who want to break free from the rat race, to be financially independent, get together to brainstorm for ideas to make money. Everyday when I walk down the street, I realised that there are many money making opportunities, however, most are out of my reach and I do not have the motivation to do it. So, if you are like me, perhaps we could get together and work things out. Because I believe that one needs to let his idea been known in order to get the motivation and discipline going.

Comments are welcome.