Power Lunch
It has been my practise that I’ll go for lunch with people who I can learn from (either contractors, business partner, supplier, customers, etc.) every Friday and ask them a few questions.
Today I went for lunch with #1 freight forwarder contractor in Honeywell; he is in late 40’s, and running this business for more than 15 years. With no proper education form school, his company profits more than one million dollar a year. All of his business come only from word-of-mouth. He spoke to me with Teo-Chew English accent.
I asked him this question: “What are your 3 key success factors that allow your business to be where it is today? If without these factors you will not be where you are today”
He said “1) Work Hard: you got to work hard, while other people sleeping and if you working you will succeed. And keep trying, you won’t know whether you can make it or not unless you try. And I work hard”
He continue “2) Honesty: whatever you promise, you better deliver. Do what you say you will do, and do it. When I say I will pack with this material, this spec, and I do it. Sometimes, I get my man do it and I double check, if they didn’t according to the spec, I’ll ask them to redo it again. My man sometimes scare of me ask them to rework too. And you must be humble.”
“And 3) Keep Learning: in my business, there is no book about packing. And I sometimes do unpacking so I learn from it, this packing come from this country, that country which they are having different style. So I unpacked it properly see what material they use, layer by layer and keep improving my services.”
His excellence workmanship is in packing is a result from his believe “I believe that other people already put hard work in the article that I’m going to pack, so I must do excellence job to take care those articles, so that those hard work don’t go wasted”
This is interesting, isn’t it?
If I were to add his forth 4th success factor, I would say… he has diversify customer profile that allow him to have overall constant jobs no matter overall economic go down because some of his client still doing well even economic goes down. And he’s humble too.
How do you apply his wisdom to whatever you are doing right now, no matter your own business or if you work for someone, give some comments?
Funny. A few months ago, I’ve used the very same Windows theme with ObjectDock at the bottom.
Anyway I think your desktop could be simplified even more.
- Is ObjectDock really necessary? You can use the Start menu.
- Use online calendar (like GCal) instead of Rainlendar, and open it only when needed
- Hide all tray icons
- Don’t display the date next to the clock
Hi qeek,
I love the dock because it’s a much faster way for me to get to the programs I want. After this post I set it to auto-hide though, which works much better (by the way it’s the resource-light Y’z Dock not ObjectDock).
I like having my calender on the desktop because I have to go out for events regularly and I like having the reminders there. Plus it integrates nicely with the GTD method of having only time-sensitive tasks in the calender.
I like having the date on the clock! I know it adds to the clutter but it’s just me – it reminds me of a Mac :p
Thanks for the link to desktopography – superb site and I’ve got myself a nice new desktop. The actual link in your article is wrong i think – it should be http://www.desktopography.net/
Oops! You’re right, Rob, thanks! The link has been amended.
Complexity and disorder is the natural way of things. Real life doesn’t fit into orthogonal containers. Clutter represents uncertainty, mankind’s greatest fear. Learn to accept it, appreciate it, love it!