An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Building wealth to retire young and rich has been my goal since 2003. That’s the year a few of us started our youth training business. Our business mission is to inspire as many youth as we can.

All along I knew that I have to save money to invest. I have to move to the “I” quadrant, the investor quadrant which Robert Kiyosaki has wisely mentioned it in his famous book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I have to make my money works hard for me.

I have worked hard for my money, last July I finally made my money worked hard for me. I started with value investing. Learning from 2 of my close friends, Clive Tan and Ken Chee.

Remember that late last year was the financial crisis followed by Lehman Brothers collapsed. It created a domino effect where suddenly all banks were in trouble. Then AIG, and then the whole world. All this while, I was quietly waiting with some of my value investing friends, waiting to scoop up great deals in the stock market. Ok, we didn’t really quietly waited, sometimes we cheered when market went down some more.

While many are so fearful, complaining about the stock market, claiming they have to reserve whatever money they have for tough times ahead; I bought more shares. And I bought again and again.

I was thinking for the long term. I thought to myself, “once we are over this turmoil, I’m going to make lots of money from the investment.” So I’m not thinking anything about the investment at least till the end of year 2009.

Two days ago, it got me excited again. I got my first dividends from one of the companies that I bought. Hey, this is not bad. Many claimed to have lost money in the current economy, but here I’m making money. This is a real passive income, my first passive income.

I’m going to plow this money back to my Financial Freedom Fund for more investment. Let the magic of compound interest does its work. I study my portfolio again, and realize that there are another 2 of the companies I invested giving dividends.

Thanks for my two friends who are conducting the Millionaire Investor Program. The program showed me how I can also be an intelligent investor. If you are keen to attend the program, just contact me.

Our company has been conducting programs for St Anthony’s Primary for the past three years. This year the students is having a presentation during the last session of the Innovation Program. I have consolidated all five videos here.

I dedicate these to all the students involve.

It’s common for any business to have challenges along the way. Some will face challenges that are bigger, some will face challenges that are new.

My business is facing new challenges right now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good challenge. Overcoming this challenge means growth for the company, a new breakthrough for the business.

Well, initially everything seems fine. Things are going according to plan, many meetings were set up to get everything right. While I thought we had iron out all things, a sudden change causes us to change everything. All the meetings were wasted, plans threw out of the window. We had to start all over again, from scratch.

We had to re-think our strategy. Re-plan the process leading to the actual project. And time is not on our side. Of course I do have the option to postpone the project, but I choose not to. Postpone it seems like an easy way out. It makes the whole plan so much easier but we won’t learn anything from it.

I chose to push for it, making it happen on the original date. Even if it didn’t work out well, I know I didn’t let myself down. Of course I will have learn something from it.

Dance With My Father by Luther Vandross always brings wet my eyes. My father is still around, and I love him very much. This song always remind me to appreciate his ever presence in my life. He has given his all in his younger days to provide the best for me.

Here is the piano version of this song. I thought it was an awesome performance by this guy.

I’m a fan of Canon D by Pachelbel. I’m always looking for the different version of this piece.

I found nice one, peaceful ones, high pitch ones, rock ones. And I found this – funny one. It was a good performance, and they performed it in a very light-hearted way. A different emotion of Canon D.

Most of the times the performer exudes peace, love or sad into the music. But this is fun. It confirm one thing, music and facilitating a training is the same. The content itself is dead, but the performer or facilitator brings meaning to it.

Enjoy the performance.

From this month, my expenses zoom right up the sea level. Because this month I got myself a new toy – a car. It’s a car that I liked very much. Why do I say that? The first car that I got few years back is not a car I liked. I got it for the purpose of transport only. But this time it’s different. This is the car that I enjoy driving.

Of course the rise of expenses is not something that I’m happy about. This expenses is an opportunity cost. I will probably lose a huge amount by not investing those money. Say my new expenses went up by $1000/month. If I invest this $1000, with a compound interest of 5% which is very conservative. In 20 years time, this amount will grow to $2653.

I come to realize that if I keep focusing on the expenses of the car, I’m not going to feel good about it. My spirit will suffer everyday, thinking about the losses of opportunity. So I’m going to let this part go. I will just enjoy the drive. If I’m going to spread this cost through out my family, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Having this car really makes life more enjoyable. Like I am having my In Camp Training last week. The camp is at some hard to assess location, and carry all the equipments there is a hassle. Driving there makes it so easy.

It may be uncomfortable on the finances, but I’m going to increase my income. Some discomfort is going to help me grow financially.

I do feel blessed to have a car where I can support many others.

Keeping to agreements is basically a no brainer to build trust and strong relationship with others. But somehow it can be tough to some people. I know of a few friends whom have no qualms about not keeping to simple agreements.

I don’t intend to discuss about people who don’t keep to agreements here. While there are some has the habit of not keeping to agreements, there are also some who wants to keep to agreements but at times there are situations that tempt them away.

An experience that happened to me recently. There was a tentative booking of my time to support a team building training. Then came another booking that falls on the same day. And the later booking was willing to pay a much higher fee. What did I do?

I turn down the 2nd one though they were willing to pay more. I could have just switch over using money as the reason. However, I just couldn’t do it. There is something more important than money that is at stake here.

Keeping to agreements like this may seem a big thing. But really it’s not that big at all. There is something much bigger, much tougher.

That is keeping to agreement to self.

Keeping agreements with other can be easy because how others perceive you is very important. There is an external force to push us towards keeping those agreements. Keep agreements to self is at a much higher level. When nobody is looking, when there is no one to account to, what will be your decision?

When you make an agreement to yourself, do you keep it? When you decide to wake up 30 minutes earlier to work out, did you do it? Or do you go, “it’s ok, I’m tired. I slept late last night. I’ll jog tomorrow.”

When you tell yourself, “I’m going to reduce my TV time to invest 1 hour of my time in reading,” did you do it?

It’s easy to keep agreements with others. Mainly because we respect others, and we want others to perceive us as trustworthy.

Isn’t it true that we should keep agreements with ourselves even more? It’s not easy, but it’s a must. Don’t you think we should respect ourselves? Don’t you think we deserve to be respected much much more?