An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Last weekend has been a fun, amazing and self-discovery weekend. Finally the days that I’ve been waiting for has come. The value investing course or the name of the course is called Millionaire Investor Program (MIP).

Ken and Clive has done a great job sharing their knowledge with us. The biggest take away for me is discovery of my investment behaviour or rather my behaviour in business as well; and understanding those ratio and numbers in the company annual report.

With the knowledge that I got out of MIP, I’ve found one strong growth company last night. In fact, I read up this company a month ago. That time, I didn’t thing it is that great. I picked up its annual report again last night and found out that I almost miss a gem here.

This morning, I sold my loser, and put the money into this new gem that I found.

I think MIP should be a 3 days program instead of 2 days. It seems not enough for many of us. There are a lot more value that can be added into the program. I believe in the near future, it will be a 3 days program.

It has been a while since the last time I updated this blog. In those days of missing in action, there were nice things happening around me. I asked myself one interesting question – “Do I love to travel?” Of course, my answer is yes.

Of course, most of us will answer ‘yes’. I can’t imagine anyone will answer ‘no’ to that question. But I had a distinction recently. When you answer ‘yes’, does your body and soul answer ‘yes’ too. When you say ‘yes’ physically from your mouth, does your mind and spirit says the same thing also.

My distinction was when I say ‘yes’, my spirit got pump up, my mind got awaken. That is truly a ‘yes’.

Last month, I got a referral from a close friend. This company wants to hold a sales training for their sales people. They requested a proposal from me. What got me excited was they are having this training at Phuket. I told myself – this is going to be fun. My mind and soul nodded their head as well.

Unfortunately, the company decided to shelf this training.

Another good news came. There is another company which the deal was closed, change their plan. Instead of doing their training in Singapore, they wanted it in Bintan, Club Med. They invited me over to conduct the workshop and join them for the holiday.

My mind and soul couldn’t stop jumping. This is truly a ‘yes’.

While I love to travel, I also realize that there are times when I am planning for the trip, I was at a lost on which hotel to stay in. To me this is the most important part of of traveling.

A hotel is a place I rest and keep my belongings. Knowing that my resting and belongings is taken care of, then I can have a great time visiting the places of interest.

What I do is to go to Hotel Combined to find a suitable hotel for myself. It is able to list down all major hotels in the area of visiting. This frees me up with a lot of time doing more important things.

New program to expand our business. Our core program used to be “Spirit of Enterprise Program” sharing business concept with the youth. In the time now, we are moving out of this “entrepreneurship” box, we are creating something new.

The tentative name for this 3 days program is called – Success Mastery.

I am done with the initial program outline. There is still a lot to do, like marketing letter, brochures, content etc. I am aiming to finish them by next week. Then another week to tighten everything.

Some called it God, I called it Great Spirit. It meant the same to me. It must be extremely strange for an entrepreneur to talk about Great Spirit. Why I talked about the Great Spirit?

Because It’s there. It may seems like It belongs to the “unknown” to some, but I must admit many miracles happened to me because of the “unknown”.

The vehicle I was in overturn down a hill, and I was not hurt was a miracle. Some business projects that came to me as a surprise was a miracle. Some cheques I received was a miracle.

Ok, I don’t mean you just sit on a floor, meditate and wait for miracles. Definitely someone must take action to allow miracles to happen.

This month we have an increase of inquiries about our business from our prospect. We are after other potential prospects, but these additional inquiries come from another direction, and found us. This is miracle to me.

Someone ever told me, as long as you are moving, you will attract miracles to you. They can come in different forms, have an open mind to accept them. Example if you are after a certain result, but could not get it, don’t be dishearten, because you may have created something else on your left that may lead to the same thing.

Always trust the Great Spirit. As long as you are moving, taking action, you will receive miracles.

Sustaining a business is about bringing customers to buy from you. It cost money to attract new customers, and more effort to convert new prospects.

So how do you save money and yet constantly generate sales in your business?

A simple but important way is to go back to your existing customers. This sound so simple, and you might even thought or practice this method in your own business. But hang on there.

A simple method may not be as simple as it seems to be. This method is effective when your existing customers feel that you really care for them. When they don’t feel like you are selling more products to them, they will buy from you happily. In other words, caring yet selling subtly.

Once they feel that you are squeezing more money from them, this method fails.

To perform this effectively, you have to invest the time to keep in touch with your customers. You contact them when you have products to recommend and you contact them when you don’t have anything to recommend. That means you contact them to build friendship not just to sell.

When you become their friends, mostly they won’t hold up any defence barrier on you.

Imagine if you received a call from a guy whom you bought a car from 2 years ago. After that, he called you every 3 months to pester you to upgrade new gadgets to your car. By the forth time he called you again, your defence barrier will be extremely high. You probably hate to see his phone number appearing as well.

Taking care of existing customer is what we do in my business. I will call my customers to constantly check in with them. I don’t talk business all the time, but more of understanding how they have been, and add more value to them along the way.

The result is – They become our loyal customers. Some of these clients have been engaging us for three consecutive years. And I’ve only been in business for five years.

I’ve got over those perturbation. I am feeling great now. After a week of doubt, finally I overcome the “yada yada” in me.

I am grateful that the Universe sent these challenges to me. Now when I looked back, it’s a test of my strength. It gave me an opportunity to look within myself.

A distinction that I found set me free. The moment I understood it, I felt liberated, I no longer need to carry that burden. I am here just to add value, just to deliver.

I am also grateful to friends who supported me with feedbacks and lessons that I can picked up. All that was being shared in our mini discussion was like a dim light in the dark tunnel. This dim light allows me to see and continue my journey to the end of the tunnel.

I am also grateful to David who is so willingly to allow us to conduct one of his programs. It’s something new to me for this particular motivational program.

I am grateful that everyday I am growing. I remember this statement, the moment you stop growing, you are dying.

I’m not in my best form recently. Facing with new challenges and perturbation raise some self doubt in me.

I know I have to persists on to overcome all these challenges, that is how I can grow. But going through the process can be over heating. There are times that I thought maybe I should choose an easy way out, but that will mean that I’m defeated.

No, I don’t like losing, I don’t like to be defeated. Choosing the easy way out means defeated forever. I’m not someone who can be knocked out without throwing a few punches to my opponents.

Today is a new day to throw some punches.