Why is the Business of Life Approach Important?

I have been reading self-improvement books since I started serving my national service in the Singapore army. My friends used to make fun of me saying I was insecure. They, of course, preferred to drink and party. The truth was that I was searching for a success formula in life. I also had many weaknesses that I wanted to address.

After reading more than a hundred self-improvement books, I have yet to find a holistic approach to achieving success in life. This is why I researched into creating the Business of Life model - where it is about you running your life like a business with profit motive in mind. You also operate your life like a business entity with its own key departments and business functions to ensure smooth operations and growth.

Many books define success as getting rich. But keeping it is another issue which is often not discussed as part of the success equation. To achieve massive wealth, best-selling authors recommend that you start your own company, invest in real estate or in the stock market. Let's take a look at each of these ideas from the Business of Life perspective.


To Be Rich, You Need to Start Your Own Business
While I agree that running your own business is definitely one path to becoming a millionaire, the reality is that many of us are employees and will not dare to start a company. Even if we do consider venturing into a new business, we are often discouraged by dismal statistics of the high rate of businesses which fail within the first three years. 

The Business of Life Approach
You must first run your life like a business before you are ready to run a real business. The  Business of Life approach I am advocating teaches you how to do this where you need to ensure that the key departments in our life - Leadership, Sales/Marketing, Finance, HR, IT have to be in order.  The lack of strong organisational hierachy and business foundation are the reasons why many ventures fail.

Property Investment Makes You Rich
How about investing in real estate? We often hear or read about many cases of people who struck gold buying property. With capital appreciation, it is definitely a viable option to wealth creation as buying a property means getting into good debt - the ultimate form of leverage, but it's a long-term commitment and your money gets tied up. Yet we also hear of people who over-commited and find themselves in financial ruin when the market collapses.

The Business of Life Approach
People who get burned when the economy goes into tail-spin are likely those who are not financially saavy or who lack good understanding of personal finance.  The Business Life approach is about running your life like a business and ensuring that your finance department does its job. It will not necessarily guarantee the prevention of financial disasters but it can mitigate the negative effects of any economic turmoil. There are no shortcuts, you need to think like a financial manager or at least have basic financial skills whether you like it or not!


You can Makes Lots of Money Investing in the Stock Market
Agreed. In good times, many people can make a pile of money, so much so that some of them become complacent, over-confident and greedy. When the market unexpectedly turns on them, they get caught with their pants down and panic by selling their stocks or making hasty decisions, resulting in huge losses in their investment portfolio.

The Business of Life Approach
To have a better chance of success here in the business of your life,  the CEO within you must be a strong leader with clear goals and realistics targets. Business leaders do not make subjective or emotional decisions. In addition, the finance department within you should do its job and ensure that you invest in equities that have strong fundamental with realistic returns versus chasing stocks based on tips or market rumours.

Now let's assume we get rich through one or all of the above methods...
What happens if your health fails or if you cheat on your wife. Perhaps, you do something silly or unethical, then what? 

Right, your success falls apart no matter how rich or successful you might be.


Why the Business of Life Approach is so Powerful
By borrowing business concepts and metaphors, and them applying them to our daily lives (down to even modelling how a successful business is run), it provides all of us with a simple business model which most of us will already have been exposed to in our working life.

5 Key Areas 

1. CEO - Self leadership
2. Sales/Marketing Department- how you market and sell yourself
3. Finance Department - how you manage your finances
4. HR Department - how you manage your own welfare (including your health and family), personal growth and resources available to you
5. IT Department - how you use innovation and technology

With the above areas as examples, the Business of Life approach can be used:

• To provide a clear roadmap to success
• As a model to explain why people succeed or fail in life
• To assess which areas (or departments) that one is weak in and therefore seek improvement
• To inspire us to learn from business lessons and resources to make as much money as we can
• To share business success secrets that you can apply to your own life
• To make the point that educational qualification and professional experience alone are not enough for you to achieve financial abundance or independence