BASICS OF FINANCIAL FREEDOM

I've been to several Financial Planning and Financial Literacy seminars in my hot pursuit to financial freedom – up until now, but this guy has something to say at the corner – Mr. Henry Ong of Business Sense, Inc.

How and what is it really to be wealthy?

A quick mental reflex will tell you that wealth is all about lots of money, dude! Like Manny Pacquiao, isn’t it? Like lots of Volks, Astons, hot big wheel hummers? House and lots spawning everywhere in the archipelago? Maids at your beck and call? Fine clothe lines? Latest gadgetries? Jewelries? Lots of savings in the bank?

Yeah, why not?!

They might be an obvious objective evidence of your hard work or frugality. But that is just half-slice of the pie. Because according to Mr. Henry Ong, a Registered Financial Planner, as he may suggest cutting cost and expenses out of your income might cause you to miss a lot out of your life – he said a “quality life.” Perhaps, quality foods, amenities, time and even health to yourself. This is where the philosophy of Aristotle strikes the bell, “the mean of virtue.” Anything that goes in excess or in extreme end is a vice or not in line of manly virtue. Same is true with over frugality and stinginess. You are foregoing a lot of things quality to you and your loved ones because of your imminent fear of the coming rainy season.

You might be excused to think of the coming rain, but Mr. Henry Ong seems to suggest that being wealthy is not actually motivated by fear. I toss to this idea that a financially wealthy individual is also a psychologically, spiritually, physically and emotionally healthy individual. I logically believe that being healthy on the other aspect of one’s personality speaks a lot about how financially free a person is and will be.

Being financially affluent and spiritually broke is not wealth either. Being financially rich and physically sick is not wealth either. Being financially flushed but relationally broke is not wealth either. Being financially loaded but having delinquent children is not wealth either. Being financially heavy but having your social security at stake is not wealth either.

We are so familiar with so many individuals who are so obsessed with their work, trying somehow to please and impress their officemates or a big boss, pressing their nose against their work at a solid 8-hour and consecutive 8 hours overtime. Ok, they earn no doubt including the murky grin of their boss – only to end up pressing their butt against hospital beds, signing bills and scrapping all earnings for the medical dues incurred.

If you have to realize you seem to work for nothing but for a doctors fee or for anything else. We have to remember that before anything else goes to the sink sewer, what profits above all is yourself – before anything and anybody else.

Mr. Ong believed that it’s ok to have fancy cars, houses, dines or any expensive properties as long as you have the means to maintain them. They are not wealth at all if at the back of the same coin are accumulation of liabilities caused by them.

Being wealthy for him is not (just) all about those things, as obvious, I have my lots of elaborations above. Together with him I believe that being (real, and really) wealthy is all about being:

• Financially Independent – that is, you are free from worries or work pressures. In other words you are not obliges to work eight hours a day and yet able to earn and pay bills and other obligatory miscellaneous life expenses.

• Able to manage money well – a (financially) wealthy individual is able to manage his incomes to wherever it is to go.

• Able to multiply incomes – it is basic in every financial education I’ve learned that a financially wealthy person is the one who is able to multiply his income – sorry but not much on saver buffs!

• Able to secure his profit from any loss – one of the best way to test a person’s financial acumen is not just to multiply his income but to secure them too. Because no matter how genius you are in multiplying your income you have to learn to guard it from loss. Say a Nicolas Cage effect, he is one of a highly paid actors in Hollywood and yet cripples down his finances.

• Able to give more – I believe that a financially free individual is the one who is able to give more. It is a basic principle that you cannot give what you do not have and so a financial freeman is able to manifest it through giving as an outlet of his being financially overflowing.

• Able to do what his heart’s desire – a pampered vacation to Boracay, El Nido or a fancied 80 days around the world, you name it but it’s one of the manifestations of a financially free individual. Again, being able to do what you want without the pressure of a burning obligation of work life (except perhaps if you enjoy what you are doing, well they say it ceases to be work). It includes the renaissance of your abandoned hobbies. Being able to work generously but enjoys the pamper of your bed at whatever time you like to wake up.

Well, that’s a lot of talking and there are lots more to mention.

You’d ask how am I gonna do that? Mr. Henry Ong suggests you really have to plan your way to it. It means like looking for a knowledgeable person to help you - such as Registered Financial Planners.

Secondly, is to develop, imbibe or imitate wealthy minded individuals (who are actually wealthy by now).

Third, is one of the crowned values of a wealthy person, no other than discipline. Mr. Ong suggest you save and invest without sacrificing the quality of your life.

And lastly, find ways to increase your income streams. We are not advising to increasing your job, as what I have been thinking those days but ultimately to say – that you’ve got to be an entrepreneur to do that!

That's a sure bet to wealth.

Common sentiments tells us that nobody made it by just working on a desk or having jobs till time is through with them. Except, if you exceptionally belong to “the lucky sperm club” as what Warren Buffett said. Or else you are a company's bigwig or a prime holder, that’s it!

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5 REASONS WHY “CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT” IS WRONG

Have you been in a situation where in one customer gets irate because the store is not selling pen? The man keeps arguing triumphantly and at the top of his lungs, “gosh, PENSHOPPE don’t sell pens?!”

It’s an old joke junk on my document list actually. Of course, Penshoppe is a clothing line company not a pen manufacturer or distributor even though the name itself suggest for a pen store.

Would you rather believe that a customer is totally wrong despite the adage “customer is always right?” The statement is blunt and absolute. It says “always right” not “some” or at least “few.” It doesn’t give a leeway or at least a dichotomy between a right and a wrong customer – fading out an employee’s burning torch of a comely customer service – believe it or not.

The term was coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the owner of the Selfridge’s Department Store in London in 1909. This simply to let customers know that they’ll get the best service in the queue and to let the employee render the said maxim to the customer absolutely.

At first glance nothing is wrong; service is your means of satisfying a customer’s want and you do it by letting your employee meek to the imperative “customer is always right.” And that he should give a customer match sticks in case a he loves to set the store on fire.

Few companies doesn’t buy this ideology – including the editor himself, for after few unitary concessions they’ve found out that it leads to bad customer service after all, though you might want to please customers. Nevertheless, as the philosopher Aristotle said that the “mean of virtue” dictates what is a good man, so does the mean of virtue of customer service. By “mean of virtue” we strike the balance between a customer and an employee, not of customer alone. Here are few shots turning down and lighting up the dark side of “customer is always right.”


1. IT MAKES EMPLOYEES UNHAPPY
This proves that the adage itself is customer centered. It doesn’t matter of what and who you are in the company as long as you please your customer – end of the line – even up to the extent of the client’s capriciousness.

Let’s take it from Gordon Bethune of Texas, a corporate director and formation guru who turned Continental Airlines from its chaotic and worst working arena to being the best if not the finest of it.

His logic is simple.

He sides with employees in dealing with fastidious costumer instead of just broaching, “huh, customer is always right!” In the airlines, “just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees,” he asserts.

Honoring a customer asking for recompense of the lack of anything whimsical on the table doesn’t make sense or worse calling forth the employee’s welfare in the company. Later, we’ll find out why we take considerably the side of the employee instead of the customer. It doesn’t mean that we are sparing the rod for unbecoming employees doing lousy jobs. Nevertheless, reasoning that customer is “always right” is worst and counter-productive.

2. IT GIVES ABRASIVE CUSTOMERS AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE
It’s clear as glass; business maxim such as this will obviously give abusive customer more access to employees’ tender emotions and sense of dignity. It adds more weight to an employee’s yoke of carrying on his job. Worst, is yet to come with his paycheck that doesn’t get even with his daily fare.

“Customer is always right” principle would also mean that abusive customer scrapes better treatment than those who are not. What makes sense to me is when you rather treat a nice customer so that she or he would keep coming back. Abusive or rather fussy customers are very expensive to maintain financially and interpersonally. They tend to suck up all the energy and patience that you have.

3. SOME CUSTOMERS ARE BAD FOR BUSINESS
If “customer is always right” makes a customer feels good does it means that you can please everybody? I don’t think so. Even a narcissistic principle like this fails to please every customer that doesn’t want to be pleased. Some are not even customers; they’re just there for mere sarcasm. Thus, a company loyal to such belief is more tantamount to losing employees – business suffers as an outset.

Here we realize that the more you please customers inordinately, the more you realize that you are losing your business, and not just business but people around you who helped you reach the summit of your company’s potentials.

I guess we really have to be used to the fact that “not all customers are right.” We have to be grateful if majority of them are really right customers and the minority belongs to the vile underworld of business.

4. IT RESULTS TO BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE
I guess here we already have the jest of our exegesis. If the first principle is customer centric now it’s employee centric. It means the world revolves around the employees now.

According to my research, Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, with it’s CEO Hal Rosenbluth put’s emphasis more on employees and put customer second, “put your people first and watch ‘em kick butt,” he exclaims.

There is a certain principle that asserts, “you cannot give what you do not have.” What your employee cannot have in the company he cannot give to the costumer. Try to be obstinate to your employees and same or even worst thing will reverberate throughout your company. Rosenbluth firmly believes that when you put your employees first, they put the customers first.
Now, the crux of the matter is no other then HAPPINESS. When an employee is happy, at ease and comfortable in his work due to the management’s good company with them, they naturally exude a warm character towards their customer.

Happiness is one of the language of the soul and the lifeblood of customer service. Rosenbluth observes that when an employee is happy he tends to care more about other people, obviously including customers; they have more energy, therefore more enthusiastic and more fun to talk with, hence attracting more customers; more so, customers that are happy are highly motivated and learn things more easily.

However if the opposite of what have been mentioned above prevails in the company, real customer service becomes skin-deep, employees do things for the sake of doing no more no less – you won’t see fire in their eyes.

5. SOME CUSTOMERS ARE JUST PLAIN WRONG
End of our story. Bosses and executives getting side to bad customers are entertaining bad ideas. It shows how disparate your business is! As if you’re willing to eat frogs just to please a customer and then fire a top performing employee just because once he has offended or hadn’t pleased a customer.

A demise of an employee to his job might even be expensive rather than losing a customer, practically considering its training and time spent to hone a certain field of work.

To employees who are experiencing the “customer is always right” phenomenon in a company and have actually experienced a cup of tea swooshed your face, loose yourself away from that job and then run like hell! That company will make you a pincushion of all bad words, curse, bitchy and profane exploit of the customer while they get the profit for themselves.

Nevertheless, “customer is always right” as long as it really redeems the righteous one.

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7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE EMPLOYEES

This is an adaptation of Stephen Covey's celebrated book, “7 Habits Of Highly Effective People.” As an employee too, purging on the field, I just happened to see people as employees and these employees are people themselves – just the malleability of terms.

The Way We See the Problem Is the Problem... If you have a problem, the actual problem is that you are looking at it as a problem. It could be something else, such as an opportunity. When it rains lemons, make lemonade.

When we lose our job, we almost all of us see it as a disgrace – a problem – as we do. Only few handfuls realize that it's an opportunity. I myself passed through that certain circumstance of losing a job. When I lose my job, of course I was so downhearted thinking back of the time when I have pounded much effort, time and money just to avail that job. Nevertheless, I believe we do have a choice. That loss did never nailed me on the corner, still counting few calories more and a best foot forward, I found myself scribbling few words here...

HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE
One of the indications of a highly effective employee is when “he sees things that is suppose to be done, and then did it.” This rings a bell more on initiative. But it is more than just that. Seeing the thing that is suppose to be done and then doing it takes the language of your being, it doesn't happen just a reflex of your limbs. It takes a choice, a decision a preponderance of the values you've grown with. Take this, just a simple picking up of a piece of candy wrapper on your stairway back to work is a simple but deep resemblance of the perennial values you've been thought since you were in grade one – besides that you care about your workplace.

Being proactive is being responsible – “response – able.” Able to response and being responsible for what you do. This contrasts with reactive individual or employee. Proactive employee acts based on principles and acts on the circumstance and thinks fast on a solution. While reactive employee reacts and blames on people and what's going around them and panics inordinately every time he meets one.

As an employee, I do have my Job Description. For what, well as a rough estimate of the scope and limitations of my workloads. On the other way around it's like quoting you to focus on the area or your influence and control rather than something outside the arrest of your creative tentacles. Nevertheless, in the work arena if you see your plain a little bit further and want to walk an extra mile, then dare it! Being proactive means a lot to a proactive warrior, not just being responsive but being extensive in his coordinates in giving a hand.


HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
Perusing the book up to this point, you'll be invited for a night of wake in a funeral only to find yourself lying straight on a casket face-to-face with yourself. And the eulogy goes about you while you lie awake with them unattended. Your friends, relatives, wife and other loved ones has taken their part in the eulogy. Ironically, you've heard them and heard those words wherein you can do nothing about them now. It could be bad or good or just nothing.

Nonetheless, in our corporate workspace, it doesn't work in this fashion. Suppose you're about to leave the company for any reason there is and won't mind anyway of what they have to say since you won't be coming back on such premises again. But if you do, what kind of “eulogy” would you like to hear from them? Obviously, you wouldn't want to hear the other way around. And the things you want exactly to hear are those you have to work it out. But more than just a stuff on their imagining and much ado on what they'll have to say, for me, it's all about doing the right things that is suppose to be done and doing the things that is expected of you.

To begin with an end in the mind is an introspection of the future you virtually accomplish here and now. When an employee first seriously applied for a job, he actually prepared twice more than he may have been answering his employer's query, thinking at the back of his mind, that he's actually on for a job the next day. Thus, the the carpenter's adage, “measure twice, cut once.” Prepare and plan as much as you can, before executing an action.


HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
Sounds more of time management and priorities, but again it's more than just that. When set to your life more than just an employee or worker on the field, this third shot is a corollary of the first and the second habits. First, being you as the engineer, second being you as the planner or architect with hands on the blueprint and this one being the execution of it all.

Now, since you have made up your mind and you have with you the plan, it's another stance to put first things first in the list – priorities after priorities. To an employee working in an environment full of schedules and activities queuing up the line, it's not so unusual. In a one fell swoop, an executive can mentally tally all those activities of the day – as pushed on him by the management. While other employees would rather cram and start the day like hell. If you are clear about your work dimensions then you'll have a clear view of what you are going to do and kick ass on a Gofer's Credo: “Just tell me what to do and I'll do it.”

Instead, practice a Stewardship Delegation. Stewardship delegation may remind you of one of an employer's requirements “can work with less supervision...” This delegation delves deep down within you where the steward became his own boss and posits in you those creative energy in harmony with those principles for a desired result. Accomplishing something with less supervision indicates an employee's maturity in his job. He can handle more results with less supervision, while the other, more guidelines or supervision, fewer results.


HABIT 4: THINK WIN/WIN
This habit invites us to a more interpersonal effectiveness. It says, “think win/win,” not “win/lose” or “lose/win.” A workplace is a very competitive environment if not cooperative or both. In a competitive environment we are preconditioned to understand things in polarities, that is a win/lose environment. “My winning would mean your losing, my losing would mean your winning.” This is based on power or brute, and the fittest will survive! Nevertheless, in a cooperative environment it doesn't work like that. It's like a link in a chain, everybody holds and important role that nexus them to the end of the chain – a goal. Everybody agrees mutually and feels good about it and mutually enjoys the fruition of the desired results.

This may also be reflected to a leader who knows how to recognize and reward a win/win behavior on his subordinates.


HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
This is what Covey said, “high emotional bank account.” This is where emotional quotient takes the lead. This is where almost everybody gets poorer – listening. And this, like any other worth praising skill, is a skill itself. In a workplace where different individual shares same time and space, save individual character, conflict would most likely to arise. When conflict arises, it's because one character projects against another character and sword fighting tolls like clash of the empires. Unless, one retracts his paradigm projection(character you have grown with) and put one's feet into another's shoes, only then should conflict lies at ebb and individual differences brought as one. This is I guess is the toughest of all the habits. It takes a lot of your ego!

It is during this habit that you have to give what Covey says “psychological air” to somebody or to your fellow employee. He has a lot of things to say perhaps about himself, about you, your fellow workers or just anything else.

Bear these three things in mind before you step into the line of giving your “prescription” or advise, listen, listen and listen...Things could be so delicate. 'Cause you might actually be giving your prescription based on your own paradigm not on how they have walked on them. While opening himself towards you is much more dangerous, since he might be opening himself like an unguarded wound open for attacks, he becomes vulnerable, frail and mimed.

Just remember, next to physical security is psychological security. No matter how deserving or undeserving you are, being understood, being affirmed, being validated and being appreciated is readily accepted by you.


HABIT 6: SYNERGIZE
After we've reconciled individual differences, synergy is the oneness out of the many. As real friendship means for Aristotle, “friends are one soul in two bodies,” so does synergy. It brings us closer to one another in total confidence, if understood and followed the right way. If on habit five you've placed yourself into another's being and invested on individual differences, then marriage of individual characters and personalities do happen. Reaching a goal through communion of individuals in a synergistic fashion is more smooth and fulfilling. Synergy means that the act of the whole is greater than its part. Nonetheless, what is a whole without it's parts? And that's what we're done with the previous habits.

If you as part and parcel of the whole do matter in the making of these habits, how much more is the whole. This works well in brainstorming a solution for a problem. Obviously, two or more brains are better than one.


HABIT 7: SHARPEN THE SAW
It's time to take a break! Reward yourself for what you have done and is still been doing. Remember the old adage, “all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.” Take time to sit back and relax. Sharpen the saw means improving the well-being of your physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional faculties. For without this, none of the above habits will do either. These faculties are your saw they also get torn-out and dull ripping your goals. So be gentle with yourself.

Coupled with consoling or prizing yourself for what you have done is the improvements you are going to do with these faculties. It must evolve.

For your mental faculty, learn something new; read books, attend yoga exercises – get informed!

Physically, you can actually jog, get a gym habit, eat balanced meal, get a doc and so on.

For spiritual, well as a professed Catholic, I have this spiritual obligation knocking on my door every end of the week.

And emotionally, hanging up with friends that makes sense makes a difference on your emotional as well as social well-being. These faculties are complementary. What happens to the other do happens to the rest.

Having a good night rest defines how you will start another day of work after this, for while you live, what is a soul without a body?

Suggested reading: 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

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