Startup and Entrepreneur – The Samurai Coach

The #1 app for building habit of being effective

I was inspired by Peter Drucker when reading the Effective Executive on an airplane. Being a tech guy, I was inspired to create an app to help myself and others become more effective.

My team was inspired by what it can do for others and released the first version with lightning speed.

Interestingly enough, even testing the app, I built quite a few good habits and had better control over my time. Some of those are built into the app such as: walk 10,000 steps daily, wake up by 6 am, read 30 minutes a day, prioritize my day,….

I know it can do the same for you.

You are invited to check it out at:
https://achieffective.com

And share your feedback. We are already working on the next version to incorporate many feedbacks we received.

Please like our facebook page to get latest news and articles on habits:

https://www.facebook.com/achieffective/

Warren Buffett series #1 – When you know you are ready to manage other people’s money?

You start very small and get an audited record.
Once you get the confidence that if your parents come to you and give you all their money, you will invest for them. Then you are ready.

When you know you are ready to manage other people’s money?

Warren would not have formed his first partnership if he thought there was any chance that he would lose the money.

What he was worried about was not how he would behave, but how his partners would behave. So he invited them all to a dinner and showed the partnership agreement form.
He told them: “Here is the ground rules as to what I think I can and how I want to be judged, and if you are in sync with me, I want to manage your money, because I won’t worry about the fact that you will panic if the market goes down or somebody tells you to do something different. So we have to be one the same page. And if we’re on the same page, then I’m not worried about managing your money. And if we aren’t on the same page, I don’t want to manage your money, because you may be disappointed when I think that things are even better to be investing and so on.”

You don’t want to manage people’s money until you have a vehicle and can reach people who are in sync with you. You ought to have your own ground rules.
It’s enormously important that you don’t take people that have expectations of you that you can’t meet.
It might mean that you turn down a lot of people.
You start very small and get an audited record.
Once you get the confidence that if your parents come to you and give you all their money, you will invest for them. Then you are ready.

About me and why this series:
I got a life-changing experience studying Warren Buffett’s annual letters in 2013 after 10 years of speculating, market timing, charting, and forecasting. I started investing in the Vietnamese stock market in 2015 with what I saved from my engineering job. In 2018, I decided to study Warren Buffett’s investing again by going through all of available Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting videos. It has been another life-changing experience. Warren Buffett’s teaching is a real germ and yet not many people replicate. Hence, I am committed to share what I learned.

You can subscribe to my blog to follow the series of what Warren Buffett has been teaching in his annual meetings. I attempted to modify but keep as much as possible what he spoke.

Stay connected to this blog to get latest articles on leadership, career, investing, personal growth

Join 11,548 other subscribers

Habit of success: figure out what works and do it

Figure out what works and do it.

Figure out what doesn’t work and stops doing it.

This is incredibly simple. And yet, like anything simple, it’s incredibly hard to do consistently.

When I first learned martial art, I did a lot of things that don’t work. For the last 13 years since I joined Musokai Karate, I learned to do more what works and less what doesn’t. And it’s more like climbing a mountain with no top. The climber learns to enjoy the climbing and the views on the way. If the climber ever loses the focus of doing what works, the climbing itself becomes incredibly tough and it’s only getting tougher and tougher.

When I got into the corporate environment, I learned a few things that don’t work such as gossiping, bullying people, following what everyone else is doing, being a lone wolf… And few things that work: personal development, teamwork, leadership, customer-focus,… Yet, it’s just too easy to be busy with doing what don’t work. Figuring what works and doing it becomes a mantra that separates being successful and being miserable.

When I figured out that being in a declining and bureaucratic environment doesn’t work, I moved on.

When I figured out that being a victim doesn’t work, I chose to be an owner.

When I figured out that being an effect doesn’t work, I chose to be a cause in the matter and takes a firm stand.

What have you figured out in your own experience that don’t work? What are you doing about it?

It’s really a choice to choose doing what works. And overtime, it becomes a habit: figure what works and do it.

PS: Check out http://www.achiezy.com if you need help from great coaches. You don’t have to figure out everything like I did till I discovered that a coach can really help.

Zhang Xin – the fearless woman who built Beijing

Zhang Xin is the co-founder of SOHO China, the largest real estate developer in China. She’s worth over $3 billion in net worth.

Zhang Xin was born in China in 1965. At 14, she left for Hong Kong with her parents. At 19, she decided to leave Hong Kong for England to pursue her education by herself with the savings she saved from working at a factory. She spoke very little English at first. She took English classes, worked part-time to support herself, and got herself into Cambridge university. After graduation, she worked for a company in England, which was later bought by Goldman Sachs. Zhang Xin was transferred to New York.

Zhang Xin’s mind and heart was with China. She left Goldman Sachs in 1994 to go back to Beijing (her parents still lived in Hong Kong). She got married to her husband and together they founded SOHO China. The rest is the history.

What made Zhang Xin successful is her daring to take on projects no one wanted to take on. When people saw risks, she saw opportunities and excitement.

A question worth focusing

In front of me is a master.

I came to see the master in a moment of struggle. In reality, I was at a cross-road. The master can detect my struggles by looking at me in a complete stillness.

The master: “I see that you have been struggling. It seems to me that your attention has been on how you will survive.”

Pausing for a long moment, the master continues: “You will probably survive.”

The master: “and you also focus too much on how to be successful…That’s a wrong question.”

Pausing again for a longer moment, looking at me in complete calmness of a master, he continues: “The question is how to be useful.”

With that, I am enlightened. A great teacher changes my life in a matter of seconds.

Stay connected to this blog to get latest articles on leadership, career, investing, personal growth

Join 11,548 other subscribers

Other popular articles:

About the author: Hoan Do is a certified leadership coach, a value-oriented investor, and an entrepreneur. Hoan led multiple teams at Symantec Inc. across the globe delivering world-class solutions to protect consumers and businesses. Hoan is an expert in building highly performing teams. He believes that the best leader is the leader that could grow his followers to be leaders. Hoan has trained many leaders via mastermind groups, workshops, and one-on-one coaching.

If you would like to have a conversation, open your email and send me an inquiry at coach@hoanmdo.com