Sen Ze’s Business In Your Pajamas! Blog

I told many of my friends back when I was studying in the UK for my law degree and later when I was doing business on the Internet as an Internet Entrepreneur that while I’m Chinese, I don’t know, nor have I ever been trained in, the martial arts.

I don’t remember how many times I’ve been asked this question, but it was like if you’re Chinese, knowing how to fight with your bare hands and legs is in your blood. That’s not always the case.

My elder brothers, however, were bitten by the martial arts bug in the 1970s (I’m the fourth in a family of 6 children) and they quickly took up karate and taekwando and participated in competitions, while I was simply too young to understand what the excitement was all about.

Their reason for picking it up was due in large part to one man who single-handedly caused the greatest interest in the martial arts to explode around the world.

That man was Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee was an incredibly skilled martial artist with a superbly-toned body who could place his fist one inch away from his opponent and cause him to fall to the ground in one quick punch from that position (with no back swing). See below:

He could also do push ups with one hand - using only the thumb and index finger of that hand!

If you’ve ever done push ups, you’ll know how difficult it is to do it with one hand, never mind 2 fingers! See below on this feat he demonstrated in 1964:

But most of all, he could fight. And he could do it very stylishly that completely thrilled his audiences.

And today’s Business In Your Pajamas lesson is inspired by this giant of a man whose influence in the martial arts field continues to be felt today, more than 30 years after his death in 1973 - after having completed only 4 films. He was working on a fifth one at that time.

If you have never seen a Bruce Lee film, here’s your chance to see why this great became a martial arts icon, the greatest martial artist ever to have been seen on the silver screen. Click the Play button below twice to play the clip. Do it now and view this clip in full, because you wouldn’t be able to get the full impact of this post otherwise:

Now while Bruce Lee had great skills and abilities in the martial arts, the chances of him being recognized far and wide with just those talents alone were limited to the number of people who could see him in action.

He needed leverage - and that leverage was provided by the film industry. However, by no means did he start out as Bruce Lee, the martial artist on the silver screen. In his early days he was “Kato” the sidekick to the hero, the Green Hornet, on American TV!

When the chance came for him to display what he had to offer the public in his debut martial arts film in Hong Kong called “The Big Boss“, he took it by storm, by adding many more entertaining elements on top of his talents.

In doing so, he had astutely created a new film genre, and positioned himself (the product) as the only martial artist worth spending your time in the cinema with.

Such was the impact he created that the world today still speaks of Bruce Lee and martial arts in the same breath, even though the martial arts are a few thousand years old.

Bruce Lee was a very charismatic figure, both on film and in real life. Although he wasn’t a great actor, he was a great actor when he was fighting - and it’s the fights we all look forward to watching in his films.

He injected a lot of personality into his characters. You’ll see him most often as a revenge-seeking, furious man on a rampage to right what was done wrong to him or those close to him. He would use his bare hands and legs and an array of weapons to display what could be possible. He made famous the battle cry that would normally be heard while he was fighting his opponents using whatever means he could.

The entire combination resulted in some of the most astounding fight scenes ever recorded on film that also started a huge revolution for the martial arts movement around the world.

No silver screen martial artist today even comes close to Bruce Lee’s skills and abilities displayed more than 3 decades ago. Not Jackie Chan, not Jet Li, not Claude Van Damme, and certainly not Steven Seagal.

Here’s a classic fight scene between him and numerous thugs in a cave seen in his first and only Hollywood-backed movie, “Enter The Dragon” - which was released after his death which occurred not long after he completed it. View it and then see if you can figure out the Pajamas marketing lesson I’ll soon be discussing:

This is the only movie where Bruce Lee speaks in his own voice (and not dubbed by somebody else). It’s considered a classic martial arts movie, perhaps the best ever made in terms of its star appeal, storyline, action sequences and Bruce’s techniques on full display.

Get the DVD of this classic below:

What could Bruce Lee teach anybody about business? See below:

If you want to create a great impression on your Prospects/Customers’ minds, and maintain your position there, make sure your products/services are top-notch.

This isn’t to say you can’t make lots of money with products that aren’t top notch (think Microsoft and Apple - and you’ll immediately know that Apple makes a better computer Operating System than Microsoft but the latter makes more money with its inferior version), but if you can create the very best product you can with a little more effort, do it!

Add as many elements as you can to your product that will make your Prospects say “WOW!”. This makes your product stand out immediately and creates a great impression on your Prospects/Customers’ minds, who will then look forward to your next product.

Bruce Lee does this with his awesome skills, high-flying kicks, extremely fast punches (so fast, the Director had to actually slow some moves down so that we can see them), his battle cry, his gracious foot movements (borrowed from the sport of fencing), his amazing sculpted body and his charisma.

And oh - with those two sticks linked together with a chain, called a “nunchaku“. You saw how it was used briefly in the earlier clip of the fight in a cave. Check out the next clip below as he ramps up the use of this weapon another notch or two in a masterful display of all things possible with it. Bruce Lee fans will never get tired of watching him use it:

Now the nunchaku isn’t a very dangerous weapon. That knife in your kitchen is more deadly.

And it wasn’t a popular weapon either before Bruce Lee took it and made it his own, by recognizing it for its visual impact in his movies, and then coming up with the various moves for it, that totally thrilled all those who watched him handle it. The nunchaku became synonymous with Bruce Lee and was his signature weapon.

There is a lot every entrepreneur could learn from Bruce Lee just by watching him do his stuff on screen.

On a grander scale, Apple’s iPod, Google’s services and Pixar’s animated movies all have that WOW factor in generous doses. Those companies are leaders in their respective industries despite stiff competition.

On a smaller scale, Internet Entrepreneurs with great products that give lots of value to their Customer - and I don’t mean those piled-on bonuses that come with them. The products themselves must be top-notch not only in the way they function, but in their ease of use, the value they provide, and the way they look.

Very often many components that make up a great package are missing, when a little more effort on the part of the Internet Entrepreneur would raise its perceived value significantly.

Incidentally, I can count on the fingers of one hand just how many great products I have bought in the past that wowed me despite having spent $150,000 or more on them so far.

This isn’t to say that you can’t make lots of money with a product that doesn’t truly wow your Prospects, as Microsoft’s Operating System aptly demonstrates in comparison to Apple’s.

Conversely, if you have a product that truly wows your Prospects, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be raking in the big bucks automatically. Sony’s superior Betacam video format that lost to the VHS format in the 1980s is a case in point.

However, when you know you have the best product and you want to increase your chances of success with it, you’ll need to behave as though your product isn’t that great to start with.

Because when you think you don’t have the best product, you can then force yourself to think of other ways to get your Prospects to buy it over your competitors’ better product nevertheless.

If you can figure out how to do this for a not-so-great product, you can then apply the same strategy to sell the not-so-great product, to the actual great product you have.

And in so doing, increase your chances of success manifold, and even eliminate your competition altogether.

This is a Business In Your Pajamas strategy nobody tells you about.

More on how you can do this in my next post. Stay tuned.

Warm Regards,
Sen Ze

P.S. Go to the Bruce Lee Foundation at www.BruceLeeFoundation.com and discover more about this great man’s philosophy and other stuff related to his expertise.

P.P.S. You can link to this post by using the URL below:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/bruce-lee/creating-great-impact.htm

Oh wow…my Toshiba notebook finally died on me about 3 weeks ago after 4 long and faithful years of service. I used it almost 24 hours a day every single day, except for a 2 1/2 week period when I was in Europe for my vacation (using the profits from my Internet businesses!) when I left it at home (reluctantly, I must add).

Thus the delay in my Blog posts as I have to buy a new Toshiba notebook and re-install the 4 dozen or so programs that I use regularly. I am still doing this every single day, and will continue to do so for a while yet.

In the process, I discovered some awesome alternatives that will enable me to leave my notebook at home at any time and still be able to do what I needed to do to run my Internet Businesses. More on this revelation in my future Blog posts.

However, I can tell you we live in the 3rd wave of Internet revolution where the humble Browser will be taking over some of the software we currently install on our computers. Microsoft is the company that will be affected the most, unless it takes quick measures to counter the threat posed by its rival 800-pound Gorrilla.

That Gorrilla is Google (who else?).

But more on this later as I wrap up the discussion on AirAsia’s runaway success that I started 2 posts ago at http://SenZe.com/business-blog/airasia/airasia-factors.htm and http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/airlines/AirAsia.htm - by asking you whether you remember the spectacular burst of the dotcom bubble some years ago…

Where start-up companies with nothing more than big but unproven ideas were attracting BILLIONS of dollars in venture capital funding to start and grow their business on the Internet?

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS were in turn spent on hiring lots of people, renting huge premises, leasing heavy office and computer equipment in quite a few places around the world.

Hundreds of millions of dollars more were spent on heavy advertising in the media to draw the public to their web sites.

Never a day went by when you didn’t hear of “this dot com company” or “that dot com company” screaming out to you for your attention for you to avail yourself of their products or services.

If you were lucky enough to be caught up in the frenzy, you’ll remember very clearly what that feeling was. Everywhere I looked I saw ads for a dot com.

Some were very nice to look at with extremely catchy tag lines.

Unfortunately, most of those companies’ business models were based mainly on the hype surrounding the Internet, unproven big ideas and the “First Mover Advantage” - with the ultimate reward for their founders and backers being a listing of their companies on the Stock Exchange.

Multi-millionaires sprung up overnight from Internet ventures that got listed which excited the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs even more, which resulted in even more billions of dollars being pumped into new Internet projects.

Because at that time it would appear that the journey to millionairedom was just a few months away, rather than the years it would take the conventional way.

Venture Capitalists were on the prowl to fund a good management team with a big idea that had the Internet involved in some way.

Because the Internet was very new then, nobody would know whether those big ideas would bring in the gold. However the game wasn’t to see if they would - the game was to list the dot com companies as quickly as possible at all cost, and get rich from the exercise.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before things became clearer to those involved, with very painful consequences.

Here’s the lesson in this fiasco that went directly into the marketing books of shame.

No proper business model that wasn’t going to be profitable in the long run was ever going to survive any hype generated for it.

In other words, if a business cannot make enough money to offset the cost of running itself, no amount of hype or the application of the “First Mover Advantage” is going to change that fact.

Now the First Mover Advantage is a concept that says that if you’re the first to be seen everywhere offering your product or service on the Internet (even though you may not be the FIRST to do so, only the first to be SEEN to do so), you’ll gain a great business advantage over all your competitors who came onto the scene later, or who were there earlier but only advertised themselves strongly after you came onto the scene.

By being first, you’ll get the most number of customers and you’ll make the most number of sales and you’ll be the preferred choice for your Prospects to do business with, because it’s always easier to remember the first company to offer a certain product or service.

This belief in the First Mover Advantage concept caused hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on HUGE media campaigns very quickly by Internet companies during the dot com boom.

They were advertising everywhere - on the Internet itself, on television, radio, newspapers, bus panel, billboards, and just about any spot you can think of that could hold an advertising message.

They advertised during prime time in the media (like during the Super Bowl, for example), the time when a single ad could cost millions of dollars.

Most of those companies were wound up in no time, when it became clear that they were burning up more money in operations and advertising cost than they were earning them in pursuit of the “First Mover Advantage”.

The end result?

The only ones who got filthy rich were the Advertising Companies (if they were paid before their clients went bust), and the lucky few who managed to list their companies before the bubble burst on them.

Now you may think that the “First Mover Advantage” concept isn’t a valid one.

But you would be wrong.

The problem isn’t with this concept, but the fact that their business models weren’t profitable in the first place.

Nobody had done their business the way they had on the Internet before - so nobody would know how it would turn out.

The hype of untold riches apparently suggested by the hyper-growing Internet became too much of a tempation until all good reasoning and business practices were ignored or glossed over in favor of the “First Mover Advantage”.

But then let’s look at AirAsia.

It was already a profitable company in its FIRST YEAR of operations.

This is even more remarkable when you know that the airline that AirAsia took over to be able to operate its business had a $10 million debt before it was acquired!

The low-cost carrier model isn’t a “new and unproven” model. It was already working very well in Europe in the form of RyanAir and EasyJet - and the founders of AirAsia saw a huge virgin opportunity in Asia for the same type of airline to operate in since neither of them were in Asia (they still aren’t) due to barriers for their expansion to this region.

Thus AirAsia took took a proven model from elsewhere for the travel industry that’s virtually the same everywhere in terms of needs and applied it to a different GEOGRAPHICAL market, making certain adjustments where necessary.

Armed with a proven business model that emphasizes cost savings both in what it offers its Customers and in its operations, it then set out to create the First Mover Advantage as best it can with its very simple and effective tagline that says, “Now Everyone Can Fly“.

I saw AirAsia’s billboards at certain strategic locations (like bus stops) when I was in Macau and Hong Kong recently (and yes, I flew AirAsia to Macau and then took a Hovercraft to Hong Kong) . It advertises its low fares regularly in the media (mainly newspapers). Its CEO gives interviews to the media and other special events regularly to tell AirAsia’s remarkable success story and growth and the media lap them all up since its story is a sexy and successful one.

It has become Malaysia’s pride side by side with the country’s other world-class airline, MAS (Malaysia Airlines). It also moved quickly to gain a foothold in its neighbouring countries by creating partnerships with them in the form of Thai AirAsia and Indonesia AirAsia. It is now flying into parts of China.

But what about its competitors? It has Singapore’s Tiger Airways, Australia’s Jetstar Asia (owned by Qantas), Thailand’s Nok Air and 1-2-Go, and Phillipines’ Cebu Pacific, India’s numerous players called Kingfisher, SpiceJet, IndiGo, Air India Express, Air Deccan, Premier Air, Air One, Air Dravida and Jagson Airlines, Hong Kong’s Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, Macau’s Viva Macau and many more for company.

The huge Asian market certainly has room for more than one player in the low-cost carrier business. While AirAsia has done very well so far, the First Mover Advantage is clearly its main business strategy which led to crucial partnerships with other countries.

The key to the First Mover Advantage isn’t to be the first, but to be SEEN to be the first - and in this aspect we can safely assume that not all the above airlines “get” it the way AirAsia does.

Here are your key Business In Your Pajamas lessons in this post:

1. Do a proven business model in a DIFFERENT location that have your Prospects, but with few or no competition
You can discover proven business models done in the Internet World with my Mini-Encyclopedia found below:

Click here for the Mini-Encyclopedia Of Low-Cost, High-Profit Internet Business Models.

However since you’re on the Internet, you really have only one location, so you’ll use those proven business models for your own “niche” instead. An Internet Business Model that works for one niche (say the “fitness” niche) will work for another (say the “romance” or “dog lovers” niche).

2. Create First Mover Advantage
It can be done without paying for advertising if you know how to use free publicity techniques to have your business seen all over the world in various media outlets. AirAsia’s founders made full use of the media by giving interviews that tell a lot more about how they operate. They get full coverage worth millions of dollars, which costs them nothing exccept their time in giving the interviews.

You can do the same thing too, as I have done for myself in the past on many occasions - even appearing on CNN News!. Check out how this is done easily below, right now:

Click Here To Get Publicity In The Media Worth Millions Of Dollars For Your Business - Without Having To Pay For It!

There are of course many other factors other than “First Mover Advantage” in the success story of AirAsia so far despite intense competition now, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Cheers!

Warm Regards,
Sen Ze

P. S. You can link to this post by using the following URL:

http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/AirAsia/first-mover-advantage.htm

I talked about AirAsia’s ingenious, Pajamas-style marketing strategy that made them Asia’s most successful low-cost airline so far by simply turning lemons found in their business into lemonade. See my last post on this –> AirAsia.

However, there are many other factors that contributed to their success. Just in case you’re wondering, AirAsia was profitable in its first year of operations.

This is quite a feat especially when you consider the huge capital outlay required in getting planes, paying its pilots and other staff plus a zillion other expenses that seem to crop up when you’re starting off, especially when it’s an airline.

Here are some of those factors:

1. Travel is a HUGE industry
Billions of people around the world move from one location to another for various reasons every single day. This will continue to happen until the end of time. If you were to start a business, Internet or otherwise - one way to increase your chances of success is to start within an industry with lots of Prospects, find places they’re not being served properly, and then offer your products/services to them.

2. People will travel again and again
You get repeat business from the same Customers. There is no better business than repeat business. This is why it’s a good idea to target business models where the customers naturally become repeat customers either through choice or even better, through a lack of choice.

3. Asia is a HUGE market
Asia is the world’s largest continent. It has BILLIONS of people living in it. It covers about 30% of Earth’s land area. A small percentage of this market is enough to make AirAsia very happy for a long time to come.

4. AirAsia followed an established business model
The low-cost airline model was copied from Europe, which was in turn copied from the US. The experiments have already been conducted by those who blazed the trail earlier. Starting a low-cost carrier in a huge virgin market correctly just about guarantees success provided its cost can be controlled well.

5. The low-cost carrier model keeps costs down to the bare minimum
This is one of the keys to its success. Keeping costs down can take many forms and I simply can’t tell you all of them.

However, here are a few:

Most flights are about 3 - 3.5 hours max. This enables AirAsia to use the same set of crew to make a return flight from the arriving destination back to the departing destination, carrying another load of passengers in the process - all without any further increase in the cost of the crew.

There is also no cost for accommodating the crew at the arriving destination since they’re back home on the same day, within an 8 - 10 hour period (which is about the same amount of time some of us work in our jobs). And because of this, there is no additional cost for paying the crew “subsistence allowances”.

With the tremendous cost savings, AirAsia plans its destinations very carefully, flying only to places that can be reached in 3-3.5 hours. However, if necessary, flights of 4 hours’ durations or longer can be considered if it makes business sense to have them.

Also customers are encouraged to purchase tickets on the Internet so there’s no need to employ numerous staff to manage ticket counters although it’s not fully Internet-based yet. No tickets are issued, only a ticket code and the fight details that the customer prints out himself.

There are many other ingenious Pajamas-style cost-minimization activities, but the above alone save AirAsia millions of dollars in salaries and costs every single month.

6. A profitable business model
AirAsia operates a fleet of Airbuses (model A320) with a passenger capacity of 180 (with plush leather seats).

If each ticket costs $200, then with a full load, one plane will earn $200 x 180 = $36,000 per trip. With each crew going on 2 trips a day (to and fro) with 2 full loads, each plane earns $36,000 x 2 = $72,000 per day - without any or little increase in staff expenses!

If each ticket costs $300, then 2 trips with a full load of 180 passengers will earn the airline $300 x 180 = $54,000 x 2 = $108,000. Now multiply that by 10 planes a day each doing $108,000 (as a quick example) and AirAsia earns a cool $1 million a day!

Of course, planes are not full every day, and AirAsia may not be flying 10 planes with round trips a day, plus AirAsia does a lot of promotions with low-cost seats - but the above is a very conservative calculation since some journeys can cost $400 or $500 per seat (and still be cheaper by 50 - 80% compared to the regular airlines), depending on the destination.

With it targeting 60 planes to be in operation by 2011 - you can easily imagine the amount of profit it can generate!

The key to more profits for AirAsia is more routes and more planes. With this in mind, it is already hoping to be operating 100 Airbuses eventually!

7. With such low prices - everybody CAN fly
Low-cost carriers can easily tap into a new source of Prospects where they didn’t exist before - those who couldn’t afford to fly the usual airlines. Now if you have a few bucks (if you wait for the Special Deals) or a hundred or two (instead of a thousand or two), you can fly to regions around you regularly without having to lose your shirt .

This is in addition to the millions of flyers who are now switching to low-cost carriers because of the cost savings (especially the frequent flyers), and corporations who are now sending their executives to meet up with their business partners the new low-cost way (who cares how their company sent them over?).

In my next post I’ll talk about another crucial factor in AirAsia’s phenomenal success, which brings you back to something quite familiar that involved the Internet and billions of dollars down the drain.

Stay tuned.

Warm Regards,

Sen Ze
P.S. Join The Pajamas Revolution Here

P.P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://senze.com/business-blog/airasia/airasia-factors.htm