An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Have you watched this show, Pursuit of Happyness. I watched this inspirational show last weekend. My gosh, this show will goes into my “Top 10 Inspirational Show”.

It is a true story of Chris Gardner (Will Smith) overcoming all odds to become a successful business man in life.

He started off broke, with a son; yet he never give up. He persisted, focus on his goal, doing his best, making full use of his time, until he made it. (the way he makes his cold call is amazing)

On the softer side, the scene which showed him staying in the toilet, and when he was accepted as a stockbroker touched my heart.

He mentioned one quote to his son, “Never let others tell you what you can’t do. Even if it’s me”.

Does that statement hit you? Isn’t there time when your friends, parents, spouse tell you, “you can’t do this, you can’t do that.”
You stopped doing because you didn’t have the support of your love ones.

But you don’t live for others. You live for yourself. No one else is responsible for your life except yourself. Why do you need others approval to live the life you want? Why do you need other’s nodding of their head to walk the next step? Don’t you feel miserable living on someone else’s dreams or expectation?

After watching this show, I told myself, no one should have any excuses not to be successful. If you think your problem is big enough, wait till you watch this show.

What can be worse than without a place to stay? Maybe you really do have a bigger obstacle. But it’s not about the size of the obstacle, but what you do with the obstacle?

Who do you become from that obstacle?

Found something interesting today. I was introduced to this service while visiting my usual forums. It’s a service to do up your signature online. Now you can have your signature nicely placed in your emails, blogs or website.

My live signature churns out nice signature for you.

This is mine.

I like the feel of this design. Very simple feel.

You can use their free service to churn out your signature. Basically you will be using their built in wizard to create your own signature. It’s so easy to use their wizard. Oh, you got to register as a member before you can use that service.

1. You key in your name into the template.
2. It churns more than 100 designs of your signature.
3. You select the one you like the most. (It’s too painful for me to go through all the designs. I stop after the viewing 20 of them)
4. You select the color that you favor.
5. You select the slope of your signature (low to high).
6. Viola….you got your own signature online.

If you are someone who wants a very unique signature, you may want to use their paid service. They will design your signature, adding nice touch and feel to it. It cost only $19.95 - $24.95. You paid once, and you can use it over and over again.

Discussion on:

Most People Spend Their Time Earning A Living Rather Than Designing Their Lives

It started off with discussing of the word “success”. What is success mean to individual? By the standard of the society, success is the amount of money that you make. But is that correct?

Success is a subject term. Different people hold different definition to it. Then we swung to the topic we were discussing. Success is the ability to design our lives today. Today? Not tomorrow, or next five years? It’s TODAY.

A distinction for me here. Designing your life in the future is like setting goals. You have not achieved it yet, hence you won’t feel success. Resulted in struggle.

Designing your life today means you achieve what you planned today. It can be anything. It can be a 20 laps swimming, chit chat with friends in a coffee house. These do not come in accident, but you planned for it to happen, with a purpose.

Too many people are caught up in the money game. Designing their life means to earn x amount of money by when. That is not wrong. However, by setting this goal, struggle creep in, gradually they realize they are left with little freedom.

For example, someone wants to own a huge house with plasma TV and a swimming pool in it. When he achieved it, he got to work harder to make payments to the house. This caused him to lose much freedom, and unable to enjoy that plasma TV and swimming pool.

This is not to imply that you do not plan for the future. It’s to strike a balance in life. While working and adding value to others, design your life in such a way that you get to enjoy along the way.

While you are working hard, stop by taste some strawberries, so that you won’t miss life. There are a lot more things in life other than working and achieving your goals. Design your life so that you can taste those strawberries daily.

Discussion about Bucky’s in this flip chart: Bucky is a living by this principle. He designed his life exactly the way he wanted it. He went on to do his experiments even though he was broke. That was what he wanted in his life, that was what he thought was important.

It takes courage and faith to design your life the way you want it. While most people are going to work for somebody, you must have that courage to step out and say, “I’m gonna do what I feel that is important to me.”

One of our members here decided many years ago to close his shop on Sunday, so that he can conduct Bucky’s discussion group on Sunday morning. It seems to be a huge sacrifice, but he is designing his life the way he wants it.

Designing your life is not about struggle along the way. It’s about enjoying your life. Are you designing you life today?

When I was a recruit in the army, they taught me how to fire my M-16. Get ready my position, aim on the target, and FIRE.

I always been a rebellious person, trying to do things differently. Out in the society, especially into my business, most of the time I practice is ready, fire, aim.

Most of the time I will get myself ready for the opportunity (ready), take action first (fire), then do correction (aim), and learn.

To me there will be lots of time to aim. After firing, I can do all the corrections I want, learn from all the learning experiences.

However, most do not think in such a way. Most do what the army teaches, but somehow they didn’t fire the shots. Why?

Aiming for too long don’t do you any good. Most aim for a long time, trying to get the perfect shot, as long as they don’t get that perfect shot, they will not fire.

If they do not fire, they will never get to hit the target.

Business opportunities are everywhere for you. You can try to aim for the perfect shot, but in the end you may end up without a shot at all. Missed opportunities.

No firing, no targets hit. Some aim and aim and aim, but never took any action. Analyze until paralyze.

In the real business world, you don’t aim and aim. You fire off then aim.

I was invited to HSBC to conduct a financial intelligence workshop (Cashflow) for their Financial Advisor.

Though they are in the financial industry, that doesn’t mean they understood what financial intelligence is.

Though their job is to advise their clients in financial planning, it doesn’t mean that they are able to build wealth. They may not be practicing on what they preached.

How do I know that?

Individual knowledge, experiences, behaviour was revealed in the game. In the 4 hours session, no one get out of rat race. One of the reasons is the inability to work together.

I believe this is due to the culture of the industry. Each financial advisor are concern with their own sales, which is not wrong, of course. That may result in thinking that playing the building wealth game alone, which is obviously revealed in the game session.

Robert Kiyosaki (RK) mentioned that, building wealth is a team sport. I truly believe that, as you can find it real tough to get out of rat race without working together with other players in your group.

The inability to differentiate assets and liabilities shocked me.

One guy who was obviously screwed up in the game was happy with the result in his life. I know very well, his financial result is screwed up as well (based on how he played the game). I decided to pin him down, here is the account:

He: I am happy with my result in my life. I just bought a house for investment. It’s an asset to me.
Me: That’s very good. Would you want to share with the rest how do you generate wealth from this investment?
He: Oh, in 5 years time when this house appreciate in value, I sell it to make money.
Me: Oh, so what do you do with this house now?
He: I live in it.
Me: Does that mean you are taking money out of your pocket to pay for the house now?
He: Yes. But it will make money for me in 5 years time.
Me: How can you call it an asset when it is taking money out of your pocket?
He: It is an asset. When I sell it, I can make money.
Me: So what if in 5 years time, the property market drops? Then do you need to continue to pay?
He: Yes.
Me: Since you have to continue to pay, then it can’t be an asset right?
He: If I can’t sell, I will take money from my other investment to pay for it. So I don’t pay from my own pocket. Then it will still be an asset.

By this time, I could see some of the players have that weird look. I achieved my purpose in drilling him. It’s a learning point for the rest, may not necessarily be for him.

I follow RK’s philosophy closely. You make money when you buy, not when you sell. Assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take money away from your pocket.

So all financial planners out there, please do not recommend those saving plans, endowment plans to me. A miserable 3% ROI is not enticing enough for me to put my money with you.

And Financial Advisors please educate yourself financially before advising others. There are some who already got their assets and liabilities wrong.

Cont’ from Drama night round 2.

Reached Fabulous, realized my good friend, Andrew left. What the crap? Left in such an early hour. What the heck? I’m gonna enjoy myself anyway.

Carolyn, Adel and Vasu was already there. Vasu throw a super challenge for Adel and Carolyn. Good for me…hahaha. Just reached, and there’re shows to watch.

Of course, these girls are up to it. Seems like no sweat to them at all. Jean joined us half an hour after I reached.

As the night goes, I got really “high”. How do I know that? Because I can’t sing anymore. Usually, I will sing a song or two. But that night, I knew I can’t do it.

Still I’m happy. heehee. Got to talked to my drama girl. Although it’s only for 10 seconds, but that’s enough.

Don’t think too much. All these drama are contained and controlled dramas. Those dramas will not leave that place. Anyway, there’s really nothing happened after being there for so many times.

Seldom I will get so high. What a night! Think will wait for another four months before I had these controlled dramas.

Part 2 is absolutely something I do not want it to happen. After the wedding dinner, I admit I was tipsy. Walking along Orchard Parade Hotel alone; catching the train to my next drama place.

Walking towards me were four Malays. They were tipsy as well. The moment they walked pass me, I felt a pain on my head.

One of the freaking Melayus hit my head. I turned while we were still walking away from each other. All my power language came out, “#@@%!&@*&^@@%&%@*&*!^!$#$$. English, hokkein, mandarin all mixed together.

We were about 20 metres apart from each other. They wanted to chase me. Of course, I’m not that stupid. I continued walking to the train station. I will be stupid to go up on one against four.

F**k those malays. I mean only those four, not all the malays. Some of my good friends are malays, and I respect some really good ones.

I’m on my way to my drama night part 3.

Watch out for the next post.

“The Secret DVD” is one of the fastest moving movie in the States. If you have not watch it, I highly recommend this movie. If you want to be highly successful individual, The Secret DVD is a source of inspiration.

This movie featured successful individuals like; Bob Procter, Jack Canfield, Joe Vitale etc, sharing the number one secret to get whatever you want.

The movie goes round on one simple secret, “Law of Attraction.” You can create whatever reality you want, attract whatever things that you want.

A powerful movie to build a positive mindset, helping you to see that your mind is a powerful tool. You create what you think, so be careful what you wish for.

Recently I saw people talking about The Official Secret Seminar. This is a gift to some people, as they are requesting for the “how to do it” after watching “The Secret DVD”.

The seminar is developed to equip you with the proper wealth building tools. With The Official Secret Seminar, you are able to learn the wealth building techniques that can help you build a vast amount of wealth.

Now you can learn directly from these masters like Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for The Soul), Bob Proctor (creme-de-la-cream success coach) and Michael Beckwith (popular spiritual leader).

This seminar may be the turning point of your life. Find out more about The Official Secret Seminar.

Last night was a night filled with dramas. I truly enjoyed myself. Although I always keep dramas out of my life, but to have controlled dramas spice my life a little bit…

It was a good friend’s wedding. A friend of 17 years, used to hang out, play mahjong together.

Well, personally I hated wedding dinner. But a friend of 17 years, even I am reluctant, I still got to dragged myself there.

Fortunately, all the people on my table were old classmates. We have not met for about 10 years. That made the night slightly interesting.

It felt good to meet all the old friends. It started with all the touch and go conversation, “what you doing?”, “are you married?”

After a few glasses of red wine (lots of cheers), everyone started to open up. We started all the joking like we used to. And even discussing on the cute babes present in the dinner.

More glasses of red wine down, we shared about how we really cherished this friendship that we build. Everyone was “high” by this point, because we started to chat up with the waitress who’s serving our table. A girl from Nayang Poly, that makes her interesting.

By the time we were leaving, most of us were already tipsy. All of us are going for round 2. Although my round 2 is not with them, I know that I am going to get real high tonight.

This wedding dinner is only a name. I found that the real purpose of it is gathering of old friends to catch up with one another.

Well…round 1 is over….watch out the post on round 2….

Phew…finally after hours of exploring, I got everything done.

1st I was unable to import all the postings from my old blog. After figuring out the way to do it, only the comments appeared, the postings were not seen in the actual view of the blog.

I tried many ways, and I found a way. AND, it’s a long and tedious way. That old blog is giving me problems with that method. My GOSH, if anyone come into my room to talk to me at this time, I would have shouted.

With my persistent character, this issue was overcome.

Next came the domain mapping. I was using my personal domain for my old blog. Now I got to transfer that domain to wordpress. How to do it? I really have no idea. I figure I got to cancel that old blog account first.

Finding all the buttons around the admin in my old blog. Got it…canceled.

Now, it’s over….everything is done. Major construction work is finished. Left with minor adjustment.

Postings were successfully imported, domain mapping is a success. To me a technical idiot, this is a tedious tasks. But the thought of having a better looking blog made me happy.

The previous one was visually non appealing (beside my photo) compared to the new one.