Punggol Park Toastmasters Club 20th Anniversary Message

As part of Punggol Park Toastmasters Club’s 20^th Anniversary, I contributed the following message as the Division Director, Division G (2020/2021). 

Punggol Park Toastmasters Club is a club with history.  It produced Singapore’s first world champion of public speaking, Darren Tay Wen Jie.  This is an achievement that has inspired Toastmasters in Singapore.  Since then, we have had Manoj Vasudevan as champion, and we have had Wiwiek Najihah binte Hairudin as a finalist.  Now, we have Ng Kin Foong, who has dominated the speech contests in recent years, and is knocking on the door as the next world champion.  That is the legacy of one club, inspiring others. 

Rhetoric is one of the oldest skills of humanity.  It is the basis of our civilisation.  In Toastmasters, Punggol Park Toastmasters Club was one of the temples of rhetoric in the community.  It is a fixture of Division G, and its members are a pillar of the community.  Punggol Park Toastmasters Club has a proud tradition of its members serving in the District.  It gave District 80 a District Director, in Patricia Lum, who now serves at Toastmasters International level.  It gave us many Area Directors and Divisional Council members. 

Punggol Park Toastmasters Club is not a club anyone joins to merely be a better speaker.  It is a club with history, and people join to be part of that history.

Quora Answer: How Can Singapore Have an Iron Dome System from Israel, When the US Does Not Have It?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How can Singapore have an Iron Dome defense system from Israel, when the US, which is Israel’s biggest ally, does not have it?” 

The United States has procured the Iron Dome II, and is currently being trained in it.  The Iron Dome system was officially developed by Raytheon Technologies Corporation of the US, and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.  That is not the whole story. 

Singapore has the Iron Dome because it saw a strategic need for it.  Singapore is between two halves of Malaysia – East Malaysia and Peninsula Malaysia, and there is little that we can do to stop Malaysian satellites passing overhead and having an accurate topographical map.  Malaysia has multiple-launch rocket systems as well as artillery.  The MLRS system is unguided, and they have not invested in their artillery capabilities due to budget constraints.  Singapore, however, does not play dice with national security. 

It is suspected that Singapore’s DSTA was involved in the development of the Iron Dome, and Singapore funded it.  Israel’s economy is weak because of decades of being on war footing.  They do not have the money to fund such a programme by themselves.  The US were not going to fund it because they saw no need for it then, and viewed it as a potential rival to their Patriot system.  It made sense for it to be developed, and field tested in Israel.  No other nation involved in the development of the weapon system actually had belligerents tossing rockets across the border. 

Now that the system is proven, the Americans suddenly found a need for it.  They stepped in and started funding improvements that met their specifications, including an increase in range from around 70 km to 250 km, and the ability to track more than one missile at a time from different trajectories.  This is a forward defence system to be deployed overseas, to protect American installations and assets in conflict zones.  This is especially pertinent with the proliferation of advanced drone technology, as demonstrated by the Houthis, in Yemen.  While the Patriot is effective, it is also expensive.  A Patriot PAC-3 missile costs around US$3 million each, while the Tamir missile is US$40,000.  It is not cost efficient to shoot down a Qassam rocket that costs US$800 to build with multi-million dollar missiles.

Quora Answer: How Do You Obtain Necessary Capital without Surrendering Ownership in a Business Idea or the Company?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Suppose someone has an idea for a new business that will cost $100,000 to start, but generate $250,000 annually.  However, they have almost no money to invest.  How should they obtain the necessary capital without surrendering ownership in the idea or company?” 

First, they have to develop the idea, and put it into a business plan.  This means they need at least four things: an executive summary to explain it in two paragraphs, a financial plan to show the projections and the cost, an introduction of the team and their roles, and finally, an exit strategy to give an idea of how they want this to end for the investor. 

Second, they need to spend time practising their pitch.  In four to six minutes, they should be able to explain to the investor what the business is about, and what they are offering for the investment.  If the investor puts in capital, they get an equity stake.  If they extend debt financing, they have options for convertible debt at a later date, with coupons payable at agreed upon intervals.  Sometimes, the investor would request board representation. 

You maintain control of your company in two ways.  The first is to keep the majority of the equity, and only release enough of it to reach the next stage of fundraising, or until you have raised enough that you do not require further fundraising.  The second is to ensure that you have majority board representation. 

If you have a good idea, and the ability to execute it and make money out of it, you should not be the one coming up with the money.  Investors are plentiful; good ideas are not.  Getting an investor is like a marriage.  If that investor does not fit, look for another one.

Quora Answer: Should a Non-Disclosure Agreement be Part of a Shared Business Plan?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Should a non-disclosure agreement be part of a shared business plan, if it is part of a financing agreement?”

The non-disclosure agreement should be signed before you start giving out details of how you run your business to potential investors.  There is no point in giving it out at the same time – they already have your business plan. 

Investors have a legitimate right to understand how the business intends to create that return on investment, but they do not need to know everything.  The business plan you provide to the investors should have enough details for them to do a proper due diligence, and verify that what you have is viable, but not enough that they can say thank you, and do it on their own without you.  In such a case, an NDA is not going to be helpful because you probably do not have the resources to take legal action.

Quora Answer: Do Startup Founders Earn Less Than Their Employees Trying to Get the Company Off the Ground?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do startup founders usually earn less than their lowest paid employees during the first few years of trying to get the company off the ground?” 

That really depends how much your lowest paid employee gets, and it is depends on many factors, including your relationship with your investors.  I have run companies, and we raise funds for projects.  As directors, we pay ourselves first, because our time, our effort, our network, our expertise, is worth something, and it is a cost to the business.  If an investor cannot understand that, that is an investor we can do without. 

This comes down to how you negotiate the deal, shape the conversation, and structure the relationship.  The investor is not merely putting money into an idea, a product, or a service.  They are investing in the people who came up with it, and set up the company.  In our case, they are investing in us.  Money loses leverage as the company grows and the business gains traction.  It is only logical that an investor would seek to extract as good a deal as they can when the power dynamic of the relationship is mostly in their favour. 

On the other hand, the investor understands that we have options in financing, and we can walk away if we do not like the deal, because we have the idea; all they have is money.  Without people with our ideas, they do not have the opportunity to make money from investing in this end of the spectrum.  It would be illogical for us to work for free, in the hopes that the business might make money some day.  That is playing the lottery with your personal finances.

Quora Answer: Do You Think Every Country is Responsible for Providing for the Needs of the Poor?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do you think every country is responsible for providing for the needs of the poor?” 

The citizens of a nation are a resource.  Utilised well, they contribute to the development of the nation, and its economic growth.  For that to work, people need to be enfranchised, and have the possibility of social mobility.  This is what motivates them to work and contribute to society.  To get the best of people, they need to be equipped to contribute.  This means funding healthcare and education, and subsiding it for the lower social strata. 

The poor who are disenfranchised do not contribute to society.  They are a wasted resource.  People who have no hope of bettering their lives will become a drain on the state.  They contribute to crime, they become a source of disease, they are a cost.  If they are homeless, they are invisible to the system.  When there are enough young people who are disenfranchised from the system, they become a threat.  This can be as mundane as petty crime, to organised crime, all the way to insurgency. 

It is not just a responsibility for a state to take care of the needs of the poor, it is practical nation building and economics.  Contrary to how some may characterise it, social welfare and a social safety net is not charity and handouts; it is investing in people as a human resource because every person has a potential to contribute to the greater whole.

Quora Answer: Why is Singapore Offering Couples Thousands of Dollars to Have a Baby?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why is Singapore offering couples thousands of dollars to have a baby?”  

Singapore’s fertility is low, below replacement level.  As such, there needs to be a policy shift to address this because it is becoming a problem.  These problems affect the stability of the state, and the security and cohesion of society. 

When the demographics is so skewed, we have an uneven tax base, since the people who will be drawing for medical and other reasons will start to exceed the people contributing to the economy, which is unsustainable.  This can be seen in the CPF, and especially Medisave.  Medisave and the Shield plans work because it is front loaded.  This means the younger people, who statistically make less claims per capita, pay just a bit more to keep the costs down for older people, who statistically pay more per capita.  As long as there are more younger people, it works.  When the number of older people increases relative to the number of younger people, the system starts to break down, and it feeds medical inflation.  This is carried over, on a larger scale, with our taxes.  We need more people paying taxes to offset the cost of keeping retirees alive, and in relative comfort. 

One alternative is to increase immigration of younger, skilled people, which makes perfect sense logically.  Unfortunately, the electorate, as a whole, is not logical; they are emotional.  What they see is a threat to the mythical status quo and their livelihood, without realising that this immigration is meant to support their livelihood.  This makes the level of immigration we require to be politically untenable. 

As such, the government has to go back to coming up with policies to encourage younger Singaporeans to have more children.  This was always the primary policy, but because of the demographic crisis, it is not enough.  Those young Singaporeans born are not enough to fix that demographic time bomb, and they will not be contributing members of the economy quickly enough to stem future borrowings, possibly from our Reserves, to maintain some semblance of our standard of living. 

When we factor in the cost of climate change, and the infrastructure development required to cope with it, along with the manpower, we may not even have enough in our Reserves, which would explain new legislation that authorises future governments to borrow specific to this, and raises the fiscal limits of other borrowings.  Eventually, we still need to come back to immigration to address the issue.  In the meantime, we have little option other than to throw what money we can spare at the problem, and find ways to incentivise Singaporeans to procreate the next generation of tax payers.

Quora Answer: Why Do More Countries Not Emulate Singapore’s Successful Form of Government Management & Planning?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why do more countries not emulate Singapore’s successful form of government management and planning?” 

It is a question of values.  Different cultures value different things, which means priorities in development are different.  To emulate Singapore’s style of government management and planning requires adopting those values, which is not tenable in most places.  Some say that this is because Singapore has a unique proposition as a city state, situated at a geographically strategic place, but they miss the point.  When those values are adopted, most of these situations can be planned for. 

Firstly, Singapore’s government emphasises accountability.  Some mistake it for integrity, but integrity cannot be quantified.  Accountability can, through processes, systems and audits.  This means there is an emphasis on documentation, and exacting attention to detail.  This would require a civil service that recruits on the basis of those values before references and networking.  This was how it was done in the beginning. 

Accountability also means that just as the rewards are high, punishments are also harsh.  There is very little room for failure, because Singapore had little margin for that failure.  This meant every decision was weighed against profit and loss, victory or defeat, as if every interaction was transactional, and weighed against a strategic chess board. 

Secondly, there was an emphasis on meritocracy.  The primary purpose of meritocracy is not about justice or social mobility.  It is a means to break existing power structures, since this meritocracy was measured according to specific values, and a colonial language, as opposed to local ones.  People who were educated to rise to the top of such a meritocracy would have, in the course of that education, adopted those values. 

Everybody else was educated enough to become a cog in a growing economic machine.  This meant, in the beginning, an emphasis on the hard sciences, engineering, law, and finance.  When that foundation was met, we needed expansive thinkers, which explained the gradual increase in emphasis on social sciences and humanities. 

Thirdly, we always planned for the next three decades, or more.  It is not enough to plan for the now, because we would always be playing catch up with our neighbours who have better resources.  Rather, we planned for what we projected will be, and ensured we were there before everybody else, so that we became world leaders in specific areas. 

For example, our neighbours had oil and natural gas.  We had none.  So we made sure we had an educated workforce that would be able to man refineries, and brought in that expertise by inviting MNCs in a time when most other nations were being protectionist.  Singapore became the fourth largest refinery in the world, even though we had not a drop of oil.  We did not have to spend money drilling and transporting the oil.  People paid us to refine them, and we sold it for further profits. 

For example, Singapore is an exercise in social engineering.  Lee Kuan Yew and the first generation of independence leaders sold the pioneer generation the vision that we could be better than we were, but we had to make sacrifices.  That generation did, and that laid the foundation of what we have now.  This involved national development, security, and social engineering planning for the next several decades, so that we built on the work of each generation in a systematic, calculated manner, to move up the value chain. 

These are just three of a long list of values required to replicate the Singapore experience.  This requires a collectivist mindset, where the needs of the whole outweigh the wants of the individual.  It is shaped by harsh penalties for non-compliance, and economic rewards for adherence.  The government delivers a modern, wealthy city state with the possibility of social mobility, and the people contribute at all levels of society for that greater good. 

This is a society that produces engineers, scientists, accountants, financial advisors, and bureaucrats.  This is not a nation for free spirits, anarchists, libertarians, and individualists.  This is a society that values education for a purpose, not philosophers and artists.  The Singapore of the first fifty years of independence is not everybody’s flavour, and that is why it is not easily replicated elsewhere.  It worked here because when Singapore was newly independent, it was thought to have had little prospects.  We had nothing to lose.  It will not work in a nation with hundreds of years of history and tradition.  It will not work in a society with an abundance of a specific resource, since they have other options.  It will not work in a society that is stratified along inherited class structures.  These societies need to have a paradigm shift and change their values. 

Now that Singapore has arrived, somewhat, at the world stage, it has the means and the resources to admit and fund things that were considered luxuries in our formative years, like the arts, and humanities.  Now, they are another means to the next stage of development, and in the fourth industrial age, we need to shift our thinking beyond systems, and prepare for a future that would not admit the sort of positioning we have now.

Quora Answer: Should I Report Someone, as a Radical, for Posting Hateful Messages against Israel?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “I saw a Malay kid, in Singapore, frothing in mouth for Palestine, and posting hateful message against Israel.  Is he about to be radicalised?  Should I report him to the authorities?” 

What are you going to report him for?  For having a political opinion different from yours?  How does that make him radicalised?  Radicalisation is the action or process of causing someone to adopt radical positions on political or social issues, that post a security threat to the state.  Like many people, he has a position on the Palestinian conflict, and he is exercising his right to an opinion, albeit in a less than elegant manner.  None of that is against the law, or a threat to Singapore. 

When a rightwing government in Israel provoked a conflict to keep an embattled prime minister in power in order to stave off the prosecution of his corruption, the State of Israel would expect it to create drama all over the world.  That is democracy and freedom of speech at work.  The only people who are invested in this superstition of Israel as a holy land are extremist Christian Zionists, and allied Jewish groups from that side of the political spectrum.

The Battle of Karansebes: A Spectacular Failure in Communication

In management, discipline and communication is key.  Size alone, and an abundance of resources is meaningless without control.  Having people, no matter how talented, without discipline, is worthless.  Organisation without cohesion is chaos waiting to be unleashed.  There is no greater example of perceived strength falling apart to failure that the Battle of Karansebes.  This was the most spectacular friendly fire incident during the Austro-Turkish War of 1787–1791. 

Even prior to this conflict, the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not manage its diversity.  It was a polity of Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Romanians, Bulgars, and every other ethnicity, with their own language and their own culture.  This meant that while the empire could draw upon huge manpower reserves, it could not integrate them into a cohesive whole.  The army was like a conglomeration of regional units with multiple chains of command, all in their own regional languages.  They even had their own uniforms and colours.  It was a circus with guns and cannons. 

It was 1788, as the Turks advanced, the Austro-Hungarian Empire mobilised an army that was approximately 100,000 strong.  They set up camp around the town of Karansebes.  In the current age, it is the city of Caransebeș, in Caraș-Severin County, part of the Banat region in southwestern Romania. The vanguard of the Austro-Hungarian army was a contingent of hussars.  They crossed the Timiș River to scout for the presence of the Ottoman army.  They found no sign of the Ottoman forces. What they did find was a group of Romani people, who sold then schnapps. 

Hours later, a group of infantry crossed the river.  They encountered the hussars, and the alcohol.  They wanted some of that schnapps.  An argument ensued because the drunken hussars refused to share what they had bought.  It escalated.  The hussars set up makeshift fortifications around the barrel, and both sides raised their weapons.  Somewhere in all that, a shot was fired.  Both groups started fighting. 

Amidst all that, it was alleged that some of the infantry began shouting “Turci!”, meaning “Turks!”.  They wanted to scare the hussars off to steal their schnapps.  It worked.  Too well.   The hussars fled the scene, thinking that the Ottoman army had arrived.  The infantry also retreated.  The fleeing groups went through the camp, which alerted the other portions of the army, comprising people from other parts of the empire, who barely understood each other’s language.  In an attempt to restore order amidst the chaos, the Austrian officers, who spoke German, started shouting, “Halt!”, “Stop!”.  In all that din, some of them heard “Allah”, the war cry of the Muslim Turks. 

As the hussars fled through the camps, a corps commander, it is said that General Joseph Maria von Colloredo-Mels und Wallsee, thought that it was a cavalry charge by the Ottoman army and ordered artillery fire.  The entire camp awoke to the sound of battle.  Thinking the Turks had overrun the camp, the troops started firing at each other, thinking they were the enemy.  The entire army retreated in disarray. 

Two days later, the Ottoman army arrived.  They discovered dead and wounded soldiers, and surveyed the scene of a battle in wonderment.  Someone had routed the mighty Austro-Hungarian army to flight, and it was not them. 

This story illustrates in spectacular manner the importance of communication.  It does not matter how big your team is, how much resources you have, and how grand your plan looks.  When different parts do not communicate effectively, it does not take much for it all to fall to pieces.

The Art of Persuasion in the New Economy

Aristotle's Ῥητορική, Romanised as Rhetorike, is the text book of rhetoric.  I define rhetoric as the art of putting forward a coherent, cogent argument, for or against a position, to persuade the audience.  In essence, it is the art of persuasion. 

The Toastmasters programme is based on Rhetorike, broken up into the various projects and Pathways.  In an age of interconnectedness, where ideas themselves have become a currency for acceptance, and passport to socioeconomic elevation, rhetoric has increased in value exponentially.  In this age of hyper-competitiveness in business, it is art of persuasion that closes that deal.  It is the fine line between success and failure. 

Rhetoric is the basis of our civilisation.  The moment one man was able to persuade others towards a common cause, from banding together to hunt bigger game, to building the Pyramids, civilisation began.  As we move into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, more of our GDP is generated through ideas, because we are now a knowledge economy.  In a knowledge economy, every single person needs to master the art of persuasion.  This is necessary to exercise market leadership, personal values, even being part of the national conversation in a digitally connected world. 

Where the art of rhetoric used to be a soft skill, it is now a foundational requirement for success.  To illustrate that point, in “Getting There: A Book of Mentors”, author Gillian Zoe Segal interviewed Warren Edward Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and one of the wealthiest men in the world.  He said, “In graduate school, you learn all this complicated stuff, but what’s really essential is being able to get others to follow your ideas.” 

He also said, “I don’t have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don’t have my diploma from Columbia up there either — but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.  That $100 course gave me the most important degree I have.  It’s certainly had the biggest impact in terms of my subsequent success.” 

He also said, “If you’re a salesperson, you want people to follow your advice.  If you’re a management leader, you want them to follow you in business.  Whatever you do, good communication skills are incredibly important and something that almost anybody can improve upon, both in writing and speaking.” 

Successful people recognise the art of public speaking, or persuading, of convincing.  It is the art as old as language, the ability to tell a story, and bring any audience on that narrative journey.  There is a reason why storytellers and bards were so important in many cultures.  It is words and ideas told in the form of a story that created their world.  It is words and stories told by us that move people to getting us that deal, to listening to our advice, to buying our ideas. 

Only people who recognise the value of a good story, and the art of selling an idea will see the value in Toastmasters.  And only those who are able to take it seriously, and apply those skills practically, in their work, in their professional and personal life, in their interactions with others, will find that common thread that binds us all, to move others to a position that benefits us.

Quora Answer: Why Do Athletes & Lottery Winners Rarely Have Established Wealth?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Both lottery winners and professional athletes rarely manage to turn huge paydays into long-term wealth.  Why not?” 

This is about financial intelligence.  Acquiring a lot of money is not going to help you if you lack that financial intelligence.  We consider the circumstances of how this wealth was acquired. 

Lottery winners acquire their money in an instant.  This is by chance, regardless of their current financial state, and financial savvy.  What happens is that they spend more money, acquiring goods, and experiences, but do not consider the inherent costs of it, and create something sustainable.  For example, perhaps a lottery winner takes that money, and buys a huge mansion.  They think they have acquired an asset.  They have not considered that the mansion is a cost centre to upkeep and maintain.  That is a drain on their finances.  This behaviour is repeated with the purchase of cars, and largesse to friends and an entourage.  They spend on food, and ramp up their consumer behaviour.  Inevitably, they arrive at the point where the costs go up, and their wealth diminishes exponentially.  Since they bought many big ticket items on leverage, they are now in debt well beyond their ability to pay. 

Professional athletes, on the other hand, acquire their wealth through their talent.  Whatever the sport, that talent does not involve money management and finances.  Very few professional athletes invested much of their time into that area of knowledge since much of it was in honing the skills that get them paid well.  Over the years, they acquire specific habits which are expensive.  As long as they are earning that large wage, it is not a concern.  However, once they retire, or their career winds down, if they have not invested much of it, they are still paying the cost of a lifestyle they can no longer afford, and many of them end up in penury. 

Breaking that mould, whether a lottery winner or an athlete, or anyone who has such a sudden increase in wealth, involves buying financial knowledge through engaging the services of financial consultants, wealth relationship managers, tax consultants, and accountants.  And then having the discipline of sitting through those update meetings and sticking to an investment plan.  Financial consultancy is serious business, and if people do not take their own wealth management seriously, they will lose it.

Quora Answer: Which Books Should I Read to Learn How to Make Money?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “I am in my 20s.  Which books should I read, to learn how to make money, and, overall, become a “winner” in the hierarchy?” 

I read a lot of books.  I am also a financial consultant, with more than a decade’s worth of experience.  This allows me to avail myself to resources, and training within the system.  None of that taught me how money works, and how to be a “winner” in the hierarchy. 

Everything I truly learned about finance, how economic and monetary policy is formulated, why things are really done, is because of who I know, my network of contacts, and clients.  This is where my true education began.  It is my high net worth clients who taught me how financial instruments actually work, how bankers actually think, and how money works differently for the lay man, and for the wealthy. 

Therefore, if you are truly interested in being a “winner” in the hierarchy, choose your friends carefully.  You should work on building your network, and your reputation, and learn to be useful to people who are at the top of the hierarchy.  It is important to learn how to fake success, and be seen as one of them, until doors open, and you are truly one of them.  And once you have arrived, be discreet about your success, because powerful and wealthy people like to work with discreet professionals. 

When it comes to having high net worth clients, you must understand that the wealthy have no reason to deal with you.  No matter how brilliant you are, there are a million people who have just the right combination of brilliance, competency, and discretion.  You are not special.  As such, find people before they become successful, and build a good name with them.  Or, get involved in social organisations where the wealthy pretend to give back to society, and build a reputation of ruthlessness, competence, and discretion.  Once you have one such client, the rest will come, because successful people like to work with successful people. 

Real education in the world is not found in books.  Book knowledge, classes, and workshops can give you a foundation of knowledge, but it is networking, and the ability to articulate a position, and communicate effectively, in speech, and in writing, that opens doors.