An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Yesterday, an article about more young people are caught in $50,000 debt was published in Straits Times. Today there was an article again on how to equip with financial skills.

There are many methods that was discussed but mainly it was mentioned that financial skills should start from young. Some suggested that it should be taught in school.

I agree that financial skills should be taught in school. However I thought that financial mindset is more important than financial skills.

Why is mindset more important than skill? Give you an example.

All of us know that saving money is important. Saving money is to safeguard us from rainy days and also for our retirement purposes. Since we know it is important, why are there so few who actually save or invest their money? This is a mindset problem.

Once the mindset is right, the skill is easy. Because the first step is to spend less than you earn. Yet in today’s world, young people are spending more than they earn. How can anyone achieve financial freedom if he is spending more than he earns.

The root of this problem comes from consumerism. With all the advertisement from commercial organization, it’s takes quite a bit of will power to resist the temptation of spending.

If you want to be rich, how much time do you invest in learning how to be rich? Be it reading, learning from someone else, attending seminars, looking at investments etc. Do you actually invest time in activities that will get you rich?

On the other hand, let’s look at spending. How much time do you spend in watching advertisement on TV, reading advertisement on newspaper / magazines? How much time you spend on shopping or thinking of what new gadgets/shoes/handbags to buy?

I boldly say that most people spend more of their time thinking of spending their money than creating wealth.

Just look at the newspaper. Every pages of the newspaper consists of advertisement asking you to spend money. But there are only few pages that are of investment and business related.

While we are reading newspaper, subconsciously we told ourselves to spend more money. If we spend most of our time absorbing the “spend money message”, how can we ever save and invest?

To reverse this, you may want to start investing more time in “making money message”. The easiest way is to start reading the correct stuff. Business news, investment article etc is a good start. Get a financial mindset book from the library is an alternative as well.

Start immerse yourself in wealth growing information, and your wealth will grow.

Here are additional helpful tips to gain financial knowledge:

1. When hiring a person to work for you, hire one who is more knowledgeable in the position you intend to hire him/her for. This way, you will have less worry if he/she is able to perform the job. You get to learn from the person, and you’ll have more time to attend to other moneymaking ventures. Don’t think the person might be a threat to your business, as long as you pay him/her well. Otherwise, he/she need not work for you in the first place.

2. Changes, especially those that involve bargains, can spell profit. Take for example in a supermarket where there is a “sale.” People’s most likely reaction is to buy and stock up. It is normal reaction but peculiar when analyzed. In the stock market, when there is a price crash, people tend to shy away. This is contrary to what happens in the supermarket. Why?

Perhaps, we will never know. On the other hand, when prices in a supermarket go up, people shy away. Again, in the stock market, when prices go up, people start buying which shouldn’t be the case.

3. Part (or shall I say a big portion of) financial knowledge is knowing the difference between an asset and a liability.

Actually, an asset or a liability depends on the person looking at the thing. What you think is an asset, could be a liability to another person. As mentioned before, anything you own that earns is an asset; otherwise, it is a liability.

4. Oftentimes, we stick to the conventional way of doing business: “This is the way it is done here.” For all we know, the conventional way might not be the best way. Look at it another way, the unconventional way. It could save money, and money saved is money made.

5. High emotions (fear included) can sometimes suppress financial knowledge. Do not let your financial ability submit to your emotions. Overcoming emotions is, per se, part of the learning process. Similarly, making financial decisions without proper training on finances is disastrous.

Gain more financial ability is simply having more options for opportunities that come your way. In the same manner, a higher level of knowledge can help you spot opportunities other people don’t see. What you can’t see with your eyes, you might see with your mind.

Money comes and goes. But unlike money (although this is what we’re aiming for), financial knowledge stays. The nourishment it needs to stay keen is to keep it accurate and up-to-date.

If you feel like you’re being pushed around, stay smart, exercise self-discipline, and keep updated. Be alert and look out for “double standard” information (information that requires double checking). It is better to reconfirm than be sorry later.

The basics of financial knowledge should have been taught in school; but it hardly did, and it looks like it hardly will. This explains why the poor and middle class comprise the majority of the populace with its gap from the rich ever widening.

If a person winds up with a lot of cash without financial ability, this person is bound to find his/her money gone soon. We’ve heard of athletes who earned millions during their prime and movie stars who amassed untold fortunes only to grow old broke.

Having financial knowledge is truly vital to maintain and grow your wealth.

It feels freaking good to be rich. Money is just a thing, it’s the user of money attached a meaning to it. Why do I need to have so much money?

It feels good when I am able to donate money to the less fortunate. It feels so good to look at any charity organization, thinking to myself, “I would love to help them” and out come the cheque. With the money that I have, I have the ability to help more people. I must say my spirit was in joy when I am able to do it. I wonder do Warren Buffet or Bill Gates felt the same way.

It feels good when I can go to any shop, buy the things I fancy without worrying too much of the price. It can feel damn miserable to have to worry about price, it hurts the soul. Did you know that when your soul is in joy and abundance, it’ll naturally attracts more money?

When you feel good about yourself, about having the ability to purchase your “toys”, you too attracts opportunities. On the other hand, those who feels lousy and miserable will have a challenge attracting opportunities. You wouldn’t buy things from a salesman who looks like a zombie, would you?

You probably heard of this a thousand times, “the rich get richer”, well it is the case that the rich has a different mindset and belief about money. Yes, it’s true that they look for opportunities rather than obstacles. It may also be true that because they feel good about being rich, thus attracting more money.

It feels good to pamper myself with good food, 1st class transport or a better lifestyle. These are events that soothes your soul. The soul will want more of it, thus manifesting more money to enjoy them again.

I love to have more money because my soul deserves more. My soul have to feel good, so I can influence more people into doing good.

Let’s discuss just one method to help build your business. It is so simple that you may not believe that it is so simple. So what is it?

Simply by telling others that you are good at doing one thing and one thing alone. Your customer are just like any human being, they want to the best for themselves. They want to know that those who are helping them solve their problems are good and reliable business people.

So it comes down to consistency. Keep telling people the same thing on what you do, even if you may have expanded your business, industry or service. You want others to have an image or perception of you being the figure in your industry.

Your customer also wants to know that the people they are dealing with are experience and knowledgeable enough to help them. Don’t be shy to announce to the world how you can help them.

Some of my friends have moved from industry to industry, business to business - business hopping. They have this idea of if it doesn’t work in 3 - 6 months, then it’s not going to work. In the end they achieve nothing, they lose their credibility, no one trust them.

You may have several businesses, still just promote your core business. Once they get a chance to know you better, then you can share about your remaining business.

Now there’s a catch to just telling people that you are good at doing one thing. That is you must be really good. Well, at least you must be improving all the time.

Keep doing what you are good at, very soon people will start knocking at your door.

Regardless one’s earning power, some people lose money easily. Some may be earning a five figure sum per month, yet are in debt. Some may be earning much lower than that, but are financially free.

The conclusion - it’s not about how much you earn, but your mindset about money. The way you think about money drives your action.

“High risk high return”

Are you one of those with this mindset? What is the likely action for having this mindset? They probably lose tons of money. They are the gamblers; most gamblers usually lose money.

This group of people believes that to make more money, they got to take on more risk. They probably put their money on anything that is high risk, and they probably lose their money as well.

High risk high return is not always true. In fact, the rich involve in anything that is low risk. One of the secrets of the rich is that they put their money in places where it’s low risk to them yet give them good returns.

“Blinded by greed”

Some lose money because they become too greedy. Greed blinds them, causes them to make the wrong decisions. Their desire to make that $100 more may cause them to lose more.

A friend used to be making $2000 of passive income every month. Blinded by his greed, he decided to change his winning strategy, hoping to make an extra $500. In the end, he got burned, lost all his capital, and never get back to the market. Greed got the better of him.

Many people are not contended with what they have; want to get more, thus changing the usual way of doing things. However, that increases their risk tremendously, and with one false move, it wiped them out completely.

“Money is hard to come”

Those with this mindset are the toughest group of people. This mindset is probably been planted when they are very young. They might have heard it from their parents, and this message is mingling in their sub-conscious for a long time.

This group of people will self sabotage their bank account. Do you know of someone who suddenly has to pay some big ticket item when they have some money? This group of people has a difficult time to keep money in their bank account.

Because of this sub-conscious, they manifested those special spending. When they have some money in the account, suddenly their car broke down. They got to part with this extra money. Their sub-conscious is telling them “money is hard to come by”, so when they have some money, it manifested a situation where they got to spend that money.

Losing money is all started from your sub-conscious. Get that right; the rest will take care of itself.

There is a free report by Russell Brunson going around lately. This is going to a big hit, Russell is going to get very famous. Why do I say that?

First, he challenged the norm. He mentioned that online marketing has reached a bottleneck. While many are marketing their business online, Russell went the other way - marketing his business offline. He showed results in his offline marketing, a high volume sales on his subscription.

Secondly, Russell has shared some of his marketing tricks in his report. I leared some great ideas from his report, and I will be implementing them into both my online and offline business. I must say I did overlook some of the ideas he had.

Lastly, when you pass is book to your friend, Russell is going to give you $1 for every friend you passed the book to. This is going to make him very famous. By the end of the month, he probably has a database of 40,000 people.

Though Russell has some great ideas, I do not agree with all he said. He mentioned in the report that PR doesn’t work very well online. I have to disagree with that. I still feel that PR does work for online business as well.

Would you want to find out more about this report? Would you want to learn some new ideas? Download your report here

Good news! Internet Marketing rocks for the past 1 week. Made some affiliate sales that is very encouraging. It encourages me to want to continue in building this internet business.

Consistency is one of the major factor for this success. Consistency in updating and promoting the main site, millionaire idea. The number of subscribers are increasing weekly, traffic to the site is maintained.

Consistency in promoting different affiliate program. My method is more of a pre-sell promoting rather than directly selling. I leave the selling to the creators of those programs.

Though I did all the work that is needed to be done, I leave the rest to the Universe. A distinction I had is to detach from the result. The more I am attached to the result, the more unhappy I am, and it creates zero result. When I detached from it, the opposite happened. I am happier, and making more sales than ever.

There are three top affiliate programs that is making the majority of the money. Sitesell, I used this program to build my internet business, and also promoting this package. This has so far been the top affiliate program of the three.

Then I had Adam Khoo’s Audio Program. A high value audio program that Adam shares his experiences of a millionaire with you.

Lastly, I had eWealth. This a my latest add on, and it has become one of my favourite, because I earn not by selling, but by signing up people for free. And it offers a 2 tiers commission.

I will continue to leverage on the internet to add value to others, in exchange, earn money for myself.

Are you free from debt? One of the most important keys to build wealth is to get rid of your bad debt. Having debt means it can get pretty tough to be financially free. It will be even tougher if the interest rate of your debt is high.

I’m not implying that you can’t have debt. Some debts like car loan or mortgages can’t really be help. But the interest rate to this kind of debt will not really kill you.

Credit card debt is mostly has the most impact in your journey in building wealth. 24% interest rate per year is going to set you back pretty bad in your wealth building process. If you own the credit card company $5,000, just the interest alone will cost you $100 monthly. The credit card company is just making your $100 monthly by doing nothing. Is this worth it?

If you are without this credit card debt, you will have $100 extra every month to invest to grow your retirement nest. Faithfully invest this $100 monthly, in 20 years time, you could have a substantial amount for your retirement.

If you are in any form of debt or looking for better interest rate on mortgages, you may want to visit debt management.

You may also visit What is an IVA and
debt consolidation

Few days ago I posted an Cost Per Lead program from a eWeath forum. I have a confession to make. I am starting to make some money from this forum.

This is an awesome program. No selling required. This forum is targeted at Affiliate Marketers. All topics in there are on affiliate marketing where many members share their tips and success stories regarding affiliate marketing.

While the newbie like me learn from those experience marketers, and at the same time refer more people to join this forum. $2 per lead is not a huge amount but the 2nd tier commission is enticing enough.

If you are looking for additional source of income, this may suits you. Give this forum a shot, it’s free anyhow.

I found this forum, eWealth that is a discussion place on affiliate marketing. This is a place for newbie to learn about affiliate marketing, and also a place for experts to share their experiences.

Contribution in forum could build traffic to your site too. It is one of the marketing method to build your online business.

On top of that, you may want to join their affiliate program. For every new member you brought in to the forum, you will be paid $2. In my opinion, this is a damn good deal. A deal not to be miss.

Yes, if you sign up from this link, I will be paid $2.

Go to eWealth to learn more about affiliate marketing, and earn some money for yourself. Most importantly, it’s free to join.