An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Another disappointment match by Liverpool. Against strong teams like Man u, Arsenal or Chelsea, they can’t win. Now they can’t win the lower teams too. If they can’t win Aston Villa, Middlesbrough, Man City, Wigan, and now West Ham; I wonder who else they can win. It seems to me Liverpool standard of football has drop to the level of the amateur.

Spending so much money to buy expensive players doesn’t work. Look at Arsenal, they didn’t spend money this season to get any star players ever since Henry left, yet, they are doing so well in the league.

Looking at their performance this season, I doubt they can even get into the top 4 this season, especially a few teams has improved this season, like Man City.

Benetiz may have a problem on buying players. Only 2 players whom he bought succeeded in Liverpool - Alonso and Mascherano. Even Torres, the most expensive player Liverpool ever bought is below par.

Benetiz, maybe you should start listening to the fans from the start. Your rotating policy obviously is a flop.

How do you win a competition? How do you build a great business? How do you achieve success? CONSISTENCY maybe!!??

Life is actually a marathon, it was never a sprint. A sprint means a burst of speed for a short distance, achieving a great timing in that short distance but burned up all the energy, thus unable to go for another run anymore.

To achieve success, you can’t do a sprint, you have to do it the marathon way. Though I had not run in any marathon, I do run in cross country ever.

Day in, day out you do the same thing, you tell others the same thing. Continue doing what you had been doing regardless of any challenges - that is consistency.

If you are in business or want to be in business, consistency plays a huge part to your business and your life. Building a business is a long term affair, never a sprint. Rain or shine your business goes on. You don’t stop because today you don’t feel like working on your business. While you stop building your business, the world doesn’t stop for you. The rest of the world is moving, building as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you can’t take a break. Of course you can rest. I would suggest an intentional rest. Meaning to say the rest day is planned. For example every Sunday is a rest day. That is consistency. For inconsistency means I rest as and when I feel like it.

Consistency applies to life and character as well. A friend who is into cars for a long time, I will consider him the expert in cars. Whenever I need advise on cars, he’s the person that I will go to. Consistency build trust. It builds your character and reputation.

When you met someone who constantly changing what he does every 3 months, what is your trust level in him? It shows a lot of character of this person, isn’t it?

Success doesn’t comes overnight. It takes years and years to build. It takes consistency to last those years.

Had you ever faced these questions:

“Who are you?”
“What do you want to be?”
“What is your purpose?”
“What do you want to do?”

I do. I constantly asked this question to myself for two reasons. First to counter check that I still love what I do. Second to counter check that I’m on the right path,

I am very lucky that I am able to discover this love - “to inspire.” Finding this love, determines why I am doing what I’m doing now. Running a business gave me an opportunity to experience many things which then allow me to share it with people as a trainer / speaker.

Unfortunately, some are not that lucky, they could not find what they love. They are moving in circles, going one big round and ended at the same place where they started.

Sometimes I wonder, maybe the Universe wants them to go through this process because they need it. Also maybe they have to try many things before they can find what they love to do.

I would say before you decided to jump into the next opportunity, take some quiet time to think why you want to get into it. Get all the emotions aside first, you know why? Because when a new opportunity presents itself, usually it will come with hype, charging your emotion to a new high, deceiving you that this is the best opportunity.

But once you get all the emotions aside, and you still love the business, there is a high chance that it’s for you. There is a high chance that you discover your purpose.

“Unleash Your Spirit Of Innovation” Workshop started last Wednesday. I had a great time conducting this workshop, especially the first session. There is a total of nine sessions, with the first session being more of a team building session.

With all the training by David, I felt more competent of conducting a team building session better than last year. Thank you once again David.

It’s a great satisfaction to see each team gel together and completing the task given to them. Most importantly, they did it in a fun and interactive manner.

However, after the first week of “ra-ra” moments which I am good at creating, the subsequent weeks are filled with work for the students. The end result of this workshop is to create a prototype of a new product that help solve some problems. This is always exciting because you really don’t know what will come out of it until the last day of the workshop.

The trainers for each group play a more important role in this workshop than other workshops that we conduct. In this workshop, the facilitators are with the students for 90% of the time; whereas in other workshops, it’s the other way round. To know more about other workshops, please check Actionpreneur

That means the trainers do have a part to play in the creating the prototype. I am blessed that there is a group of committed trainers taking the groups. Knowing that the students are in good hands, I have a peace of mind.

It is into the second session of the workshop, now I’m looking forward for the next session as the macro idea of the prototype will be gradually appear.

Over the last 3 weekends, I’ve been visiting Malaysia for team building training. Thanks for the invitation by David whom gave us the chance to learn and support him.

It has been a great experience visiting all these new places in Malaysia - Johor, Ipoh, Kuantan etc. Understanding a bit more of the culture of the different State, eating the famous food and tasting the coffee of different places.

Interestingly, whichever States I’ve been there, the people has a similar behaviour. They are more relationship based people. Though results are still important, they tend to build relationship first before anything else. This is something very different from Singaporean.

In the last 3 weekends, I learned so much from David. Vasu and I had lots of fun visiting the different States in Malaysia. We had fun driving, flying, telling jokes on the journey, buying some interesting food from those States, watching football together etc.

Someone once told me that one day I will be sick of all these traveling. Probably he’s right, I may one day get sick of the traveling. But as of now, I don’t hate it, I love the excitement of visiting new places. Until the day that I hate the traveling, then I will consider a different path.

Also I want to thank my wife, Jean. She has been the ultimate support behind me. While away, I know that she is taking care of things at home, especially this few weeks has really been a busy week for her. Thank you darling.

So far in the year of 2008 things have been going well. I am manifesting more wealth, health, joy and love to come flowing to me.

David Tan, a special teacher who is extremely generous to the people around him. He is always in his joyous mood, being true to himself. When he is training in front of the room, I can feel that this is the real him. He need not put on a mask or be someone else. He is totally congruent as a person or a trainer.

Once again he shared about the right path. If you are on the right path, there will be flow with very little struggle. If the path that you are walking on is full of struggles, then something must be wrong. It is the tap of the Universe. Because life is not meant to be a struggle.

With this, my path is very clear. In fact, I had already made up my mind. Now after David’s reminder, I am sure that my decision is a correct one for me.

I am filled with joy that my path is crystal clear now. I know where should I walk to have fun in life, to enjoy life to the fullest. Of course work has to be done, but there is a huge difference between enjoying in work and struggling in work.

Fortunately for me, I had decided to throw away those work that adds struggle to my life. and fortunately for me the Universe dropped some training engagements to me that add joy to my life. Even more fortunately, the Universe send me an angel in the form of David Tan to give me guidance.

Thank you Universe.

It’s over. It’s the last day of the ice cream business for me. I chose not to go into phase 2 of the business, that is to become a distributor for the brand.

I must admit that I learn tremendously over these 2 months dealing with ice cream. Mainly on the business aspects of it like marketing, sales, operation and teamwork. It allow me to be exposed to a different area of marketing - an area that I’m not familiar with before. Also I gain a lot more confidence by selling to hundreds of new people everyday.

The biggest gain I had from this project is to know Dennis and Clive better. The synergy we created was simply amazing. I see that we are complementing each other’s weakness. Three of us were not calculative with each other, we shared how we felt with each other along the way, helping each other to grow, yet without invalidation.

And we know that with that correcting of one another, we won’t hold anyone to heart, we won’t have any hard feelings. Also we are all people with drives and integrity, who can make things happen.

I will definitely miss the time we had in the ice cream van, but we know the three of us will definitely be in a same vehicle again. Maybe a plane!

A different translation of one of my favourite song, You Raise Me Up. I’m not sure what language it uses, but the words are so meaningful.

A must to read the words. I like that statement, “There is no difference between you and a child in Africa, Asia, America…”

Beautiful words, enjoy!

The Universe has been kind to me, giving me the opportunity to experience the different roles in business. Beside my core business as a training, I am given a chance to be a distributor as well.

If you are a person who know primary school maths, you would have know that model drawing is part of the maths problem solving requirement. The challenge with some kids, especially younger ones are they spent too much time drawing the model due to their motoring skills in that young age.

With that challenge, someone invented model drawing sticker. Instead of draw, the kids can use stickers. That is to say, instead of spending too much time drawing a perfect boxes, the kids can peel out a sticker, use it as boxes.

Here is the illustration.

I love this product because it can be tied up with what I do, and tap onto my existing customer base. Also it gave me a chance to experience being a role of a distributor.

The plan to distribute this product is divided into 3 phases. Currently we are in phase 1 - to place it in tuition centers. Phase 2 is on the way, and phase 3 is not there yet.

We are blessed that a few tuition centers has agreed to placed the Model Drawing Sticker in the centers. They feel that it add value to their students, especially their Primary 1 to 3 students.

These are the following centers that carry the Model Drawing Sticker.

Educove Tuition Center
Blk 237 Choa Chu Kang Central
#B1-63
Tel: 6763-7737

Excel Teaching Group
112 East Coast Road
#04-07 Katong Mall
Tel: 6346-6601

IDEAcademy Pte Ltd
Blk 134 Jurong East Street 13
#03-307H
Tel: 6563-6693

Seedtime Learning Centre
Blk 279 Bishan St 24
Tel: 6553-0093

Sin Swee Huat Book Centre
Blk 325 Woodlands Street 32
#01-147
Tel: 6269-1476

And the centre who bought in bulk for their students.

Mind Matters
900 South Woodlands Drive
#05-01 Woodlands Civic Centre

In fact it is with a lot of help that I am able to bring this product to the market. Many friends has contributed to this result. Thanks you Jessica, Rebecca, Howard, Cathy, Shirley, Adrian Soh, Adrian Choo, Bookshop Uncle and Jean.

Without all of your help, I could not have push this out. Thank you.

Been too busy to update on this blog. Finally, I had the chance and the energy to write something today. Over the past week, there is ups and downs like the wave. Great news is the downs are gone.

Ice cream business is not doing well after Christmas. The daily sales is pathetic. Fortunately, it’s over. Over last weeks, the sales improved, Dennis and me were blessed to find good location, and lucky that those aunties are in a buying mood.

Right after this ice cream project, up coming is the innovation workshop that Actionpreneur is conducting for a primary school. They are our client last year, thus I am very happy that they got us to do it for them again. We are very blessed.

Also all the weekends this month will be spent in Malaysia. Vasu and myself will be supporting David in the team building workshop in Johor, Penang, Kuantan etc. In fact I just came back from Johor yesterday.

And the new product that we are distributing, (Model Drawing Sticker) is picking up. Jean is doing most of the work, and I must say she did well.

Good things is happening because I am looking forward for good things. I don’t go around looking for bad things or negative feelings. I only want to feel good and happy. I am so bless that right now, I am feeling good.