As a businessman, I’ve been astute and some might say, ruthless, in my pursuit to be the best in my industry. Every business person with the aspirations of being successful know that the point of business is to be better than your competition. So from day 1, I weeded out my competition with much ease, in fact, monopolising the avast antivirus reseller market in Singapore and possibly ASEAN.

The problem with monopoly is that you forget sometimes that you’re successful not because the product is good (which it is btw), but because of your business acumen to control who does what.

As I divest from internet security into my first love, web development, and an area where there is much competition, I realise that competition is not something to be feared, but required, in order for a company to inspect its capacity to deliver the goods or services to its clients. So while there are plenty of smaller businesses popping up in the past few months with services that go for unsustainable, ridiculously low prices, I’ve not moved to quash competition, but instead, leave them be. A good business is one that focuses on itself and its customers. Not its competitors. The more you focus on your competitors, the less you focus on your own business and products.

So, if there are going to be 20 more businesses in a limited market that is going to pop up over the next few months, then good for them. I hope they have a brilliant experience running a business as I’ve had and I wish my competition well.

The market dictates who survives. And the ones with unsustainable low prices, usually don’t. The ones that do however are those that focus first on product/service experience, and qualify that with a sensible pricing schedule. Anyway, big business don’t come to small players. And while I’m a small business, I’m an expanding an growing one.

The next week or so, I’ll be announcing my company’s expansion into web development-proper. Some of my friends in the industry already know I do web development, so that will be no surprise. But Verbeter Group doesn’t actively advertise we provide such a service and perhaps it’s now time to reveal the secret I’ve been hiding for very long.

Meet the company with the world’s best WordPress talent, under one roof – Verbeter Group. We’ll expand our current headcount from 3, to cater to another 10 people, based in Indonesia, all of them specialised in WordPress theme development.

We’re highly focused on WordPress, and we probably will not do anything other than that. But there’s more, and I’ll only go public when I issue a press release next week or so.

What else is on my mind these few days? Well, worrying about the future I guess. Expansion comes with a different set of concerns and I’ve been doing business for quite long already. There are things I want to do, and things I’ve not yet finished. So, it’s probably time for me to be more disciplined and get my act in order to make sure I have time for all the things I want to commit to.

Then it dawned on me. The only competition that I should have focused on 5 years back, was myself. I guess I’ve been limiting my abilities and my capacity with things I shouldn’t bother with. So now, let’s break that glass ceiling and be all that I can be. And I hope, you do the same too.

See larger image No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Paperback) By (author) Alfie Kohn List Price: $20.95 USD New From: $7.96 In Stock Used from: $0.71 In Stock

Absolutely nothing!

This is my dinner for tonight. It’s called Nasi Goreng USA. It does not come from America. Neither are the ingredients distinctly American.

There are many variants of this dish. Originally, it contains prawn, squid and chicken. The more common ones I’ve seen only contain beef.

This is the Indian (note: Singapore/Malaysian Indians. You will not get this dish in India either!) version. It contains only vegetarian fare except for that omelette.

If you want the standard beef fare in this version, you need to request for it.

Bon Apetite!

1. It’s your life. Chill. Don’t worry about it so long as you actually plan all your projects properly.
2. Listen. Sometimes the criticisms you get are golden. Sometimes they are rants. But there is always room for improvement if you just listen.
3. Make it a point to notify your gan cheong spider* client with your progress once you’re done.

*gan cheong spider is someone who panics and rushes at most times, unnecessarily.

I was busy developing stuff as usual when I got an email notification from Twitter. SDP is now following me??!

Must be because I criticised opposition’s lack of understanding at using New Media.

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I was reading the BBC and I discovered the spam produces 17 million tons of Carbon Dioxide! How’s that for a good reason to ditch email? But as it is, 90% of online communication is done over email. It is indispensible in the business world as is akin to breathing. When I first started a business, and was using a Windows machine, and Outlook Express for email, I was amazed at the amount of crap I get everyday just managing electronic messages.

According to statistics of the day, 70% of email you receive each day is spam! A person spends 15 minutes a day on average dealing with spam. What I didn’t guess was this damning statistic at the amount of energy spam consumes. I didn’t think that far, as to the amount of power the servers needed to process this email, network to network, ip to ip.

One thing that I do at Verbeter is to think of solutions to improve the way we do business. It’s entrenched into my company culture that I created. Verbeter is a Dutch word, meaning, continuously improving. And I find or create solutions that improve the way we do our business including saving the environment.

Being a digital company, I’ve been able to do my bid in reducing my carbon footprint. For example, the antivirus that I distribute, Avast Antivirus, only comes as an electronic download. Its my policy, in fact also part of Alwil Software’s policy, to only distribute electronic download versions. This is our way to save costs, but most importantly save the environment.

Doing all these zen-ish things help me find my nirvana, and reducing the amount of spam in my business has boosted my productivity greatly. Do you get spammed often? What about viruses? Have you found your nirvana?

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