Today’s economy is much better than in late 2008 and throughout 2009 but the fear is always there. You can be at the peak or the bottom but still you would not know what is going to happen.

Here is where we are now:

Being through the peak in late 2007, I didn’t do anything throughout the recession until now. While I’m glad that the economy is back to the black side, I want to be more proactive in managing the stocks.

You know what’s the best investment for me now? ASB. Yeap, it’s virtually as risky as Fixed Deposit (which is risk-less) and the rate of return is 2.5-4 times better that FD. Plus, you can withdraw and invest without paying any additional fee(investing is RM1 per transaction if you do it online (M2U)). That’s liquidity, which for me is far more important especially if sometimes I’d need money to roll in some short term business.

Compared to Public Mutual, you’d need around 5-6% for initial investment and 1-2% annually. Thus, you can’t take in and out your investment as easy as you’d wish.

So I think what’s best for me is to use ASB as my hedge during bad time and as a holding place for business fund during what I call ‘business inactivity’. :p

If you are on some speedy broadband you might notice that this site load much faster now. Currently irwan.biz is now accelerated  by W3 Cache and Amazon S3. Normally it would take around 9 seconds to load a page but it’s now reduced to 4 seconds. You can use tools.pingdom.com to see what’s loaded here.

If you have a wordpress blog, you might want to try these two combination out. I’m not sure whether I can come out with a tutorial or something but stay tuned.

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Regarding my current job, there have been some shift of job context as I’m more focus on partners management, newsletter/blog copywriting, coupon/promotion, sales and billing, new site redesigning and all other random stuff that in some way, related to marketing.

It has been fun so far, especially when there are new guys/gals coming in. I can now delegate some task over and participate in bigger projects that need a group of people to get it done. We have a new guy in marketing, Ian, who will oversee traffic acquisition, SEO, overall site improvement and so on.

You guys will see more posts on Joomla, web application, design and marketing as those are the topics related to my current job. Don’t worry I will be touching previous topics like investment and business.

I think that’s all from now. Until the next post.

For some people reinvesting for growth is a clear choice but for young entrepreneur like my friends, it’s not always the best choice.

As you expand, you will become more and more CEO-ish. I mean, yes, you are a CEO before, but in a small company, you probably do a lot of the job yourself. You can afford to have finger in every pie. As you grow bigger, there is a rational bound that keeps you to more important tasks, which are usually managerial tasks. You spend less time doing the real job, which is most probably your passion.

The bigger your company is, less personal it would be. This is good or bad depends on how you see it. In a small company, keeping in touch with everyone is easy. A meeting might hold the whole work force. You see their face everyday. Decision making doesn’t take much time as there aren’t a lot of levels in command. This is not the case in big company. You will rely on senior officers to give you  inputs on different departments. You probably won’t even see other employees’ faces.

With more people in a company, you will face a lot of influence, either bad or good, especially from seniors who are probably older than you.  It will be more difficult to make decision, introduce something new, venture into a new business model or having fun in the office. You have to act serious to gain their respect. There will be politics too so you have to know when people are trying to win over you just to get you on their side, for example.

Of course, there are a lot of good reason to grow large. And some of the companies manage to keep the fun in the workplace, (i.e. Google, Facebook). What I mention above are just some points that some might overlook in the excitement of growing his/her company.

As for my friends cases, I actually advised them to grow their business, but also to be careful not to lose the reasons of why they started a company.

As for me, while I have had the opportunity to run a business cycle, make difficult and risky decision, make real profit, lose real money and some other things, I haven’t had the opportunity to run my own company yet as I feel there are still a lot to learn by working in other companies. Some might think that experiencing failures first hand is a good teacher. I think that’s true but if you don’t learn anything from it, it might be as well an excuse for such failure.

Right now I totally not interested in ASB/Mutual Fund or any kind of slow investment now. The reasons? It’s slow and I’m better off using the money for something else.

Keyboard: I rarely played them lately. Erm.. last time I touched the keyboard is like 3 months ago. I’m still enjoying songs from Rob Costlow though.

Audiophile: I’ve stopped purchasing new audiophile stuff. Currently, my top of the line is Sennheiser HD650 and Zero Dac. It’s gonna cost a lot more to upgrade and I haven’t a solid reason to upgrade.

Blu-ray: Not spending much on buying/selling bluray because it’s time consuming. My friend is taking care of it. Visit rentori.com.my for more info.

So what’s new?

Car: I’m picking up Honda City in Mid March, so I’ve spent sometime with HC3msia.com as a member and met others in a Teh Tarik session. Fun fellas. I might be focusing my business to Automotive stuff in near future but nothing in plan at the moment.

Nexus One: Not really a passion but it’s my main business now.

IKEA: lol.. I’m moving into new rental apartment and I spent some time thinking of what to buy for the new place.

Work: I’m an internet marketer/social manager/business development in a local company now. Kinda love this job actually. The workplace is near(Midvalley!). Colleagues can’t be better, boss is generous and pay is quite okay. I’m learning a lot. Not just learning, I actually discovering a lot of cool stuff in marketing online products. This is a world class company and I’m proud to be part of it.

Health: I’m joining Celebrity Fitness and have workout 2-3 times per week. The result is quite satisfying now and it’s inside Midvalley.I play Futsal every Saturday, and sometimes alternate it with Badminton. (btw, I saw Datuk Lee Chong Wei in Midvalley today)

That’s all I guess. Getting the new job is one of the best decision I’ve ever made. Well not quite a tough decision, but I can’t imagine doing other thing that what I’m doing right now.

Alright.. till the next post

In business environment, one company can’t do everything by itself. It needs help. That’s the reason Business-to-Business(B2B) exists. So businesses are looking for expert companies that excel in a certain area of their needs.

If you are a software provider, people are expected twice as much from you. First, you are an expert programmer. Second, you are an expert of what your software do. Let’s say your software is providing Human Resource Management System(HRMS), you can’t just rely on your strength as programmers alone. You have to be an expert in HRMS too. The reason is simple, if your customers are paying for HRMS, they are looking to depend on you for their HRMS needs. This is even more important if you are providing software as a service (SaaS) as you need a single solution for every customer. That means,  your solution has to be best, a trend setter, industry standard, to manage human resource.

That’s not only it. Since your platform is web based, your websites must be user friendly, secured, fast-loading, easy to use(high usability) and comply with WC3 standards. Those are  area of expertise and you need to be among the best of each one.

That being said, building a software is not about putting all the functions together. It is about meeting your customers expectations. If you don’t know what your customers expected, ask them. Make some surveys, let them fill in all the blanks in your mind. If you don’t talk to your customers, you will be a blind in a desert. Instead, be the expert in every field that you are in.