God Only Helps Those Who Help Themselves
I met a prospect client today.
His hairs are turning almost all white.
He started out 1.5 years ago, currently hiring a few staff, rented an office in CBD area, have been making losses since day 1, and is still burning Cash !
He is a Caucasian. He is not based in Singapore, only flew in occasionally.
His opening sentence was “Are Singaporeans not proactive at Work thereby having made him lost so much money so far ?”
I listened intently with great politeness and focused on his introduction of his ideas and business passions.
Then, I asked him 4 questions :
1. Have you done your 5-year Business Plan whereby you know exactly Who, What, Where, When, Why, How and How Much you want to do ?
2. May I have your Menu and Pricing of your Service Offering and your Go-To-Market Plan ?
3. Can you tell me your Monthly Fixed Costs and your Monthly Breakeven Sales value ?
4. Who is / are your Closest competitors in Singapore and what are your Strength and Weaknesses relative to these closest competitors ?
To my surprise, his answers to the above 4 questions are the same — ” I am still researching, doing, fine tuning, calculating and making right his bookkeeping mess…”
So, I told him – “if you have not thought out all these 4 questions before you started out, how do you expect your Singaporean staff to know exactly what, when, who, how and how much to achieve ? If you are not Pro-active yourself, how do you expect your staff to be pro-active ? Nothing to do with Singaporeans or any nationalities.
I then asked him, in the Worst case, how much more Cash can he afford to burn and what is his Plan B ?
He stood up, dazed, kept talking to himself, then told me, my questions were pointed and direct, but pierced deeply into his heart.
He then asked me “How Can I help him ? “
I told him, don’t worry, you are in safe hands now…
Let’s start…
