An Entrepreneur’s Journey

The reason I decided to attend Business School For Entrepreneur (BSE) is not so much of the business part. I wanted to have a deeper self discovery. Though after Money & You and many rounds of logistics in Money & You, I had pretty much of a discovery about myself, I believe I can go deeper. I believe when the stakes are high, tension is tight, more of me will be surfaced.

And I am damn right!!!

I learned to be more aware of my own reaction and feelings. This learning came at the right time especially I was reading “Way Of A Peaceful Warrior” that talks about self and awareness. I learned to ask myself better questions, learned to observe my own behaviour, and why I behave in a certain ways.

I learned to control my reaction, well, ok…not successful always..heehee. But one thing I am very sure, I learned to observe that reaction.

I am thrilled to re-discover myself.

I sat in to SPIN selling workshop conducted by David for the past 3 days. I attended a few sales training for the last five years, and they basically drive the same thing - customer focus. Asking the right questions to find out more about the customers before moving in for the closing.

Asking the right questions is the key to successful sales. I learn about asking questions in almost all sales training I’ve attended.

Day 1 of SPIN, I thought I am attending something similar. It touched in fact finding, discovering problems, provide solutions etc. Well, I was damn wrong. Further into the course, the topic went deeper. I gain much distinction on asking questions, advantages and benefits.

In SPIN philosophy, they believe in selling without selling. The key is finding out the problems the customer is facing, and helping them to solve it. What’s important is phrasing of those questions, and getting the customers to talk.

SPIN also do not preach on price concern. They believe if the sales presentation is done well with the SPIN method, the customers won’t be concern about the price.

Though SPIN is an effective sales process, but it takes lots of practice to master the questioning techniques.

Also in today’s competitive market, be customer-focused rather than product-focused. If you like to talk about your product features, you may want to start asking question based on your customer needs. You will see the change almost instantaneously.

I’m an avid reader, so are many of my friends. All along I am looking for ideas, inspiration, skills when I read a book. Why do I read that much? It’s to get something out from that book. Investing my time to read a book, getting something out of it is not too much to ask for after all, at least that’s what I think.

This morning while I was reading “The Monk Who Sold His Ferarri“, this statement in the book hit me.

“It’s not what you get out of the book, but what the book
can get out of you that will ultimately change you life.”

Isn’t it so true? We have the kind of mentality that we got to squeeze juices out from a book. We are educated from young that the objective of a book is to transfer information or knowledge. That’s what a book is all about. With that mentality, after investing time in reading a book, we want to draw as many lessons as we can from it. I guess there’s nothing wrong in doing that and we shoud continue to do that.

The additional thing to be aware now is - who you have become after reading. It makes no sense to get the lessons and messages from the author but your life do not change, you do not improve. I knew of people whose life remains the same after reading some books. It maybe the case that they are not thinking hard enough while they are reading, or they are simply lazy to push themselves for the change.

With this statement, my life will surely improve and transform. Everyday is a day of learning and experiencing.

I had an distinction on standing in front of the room from my last entrepreneurship training. I learned a trick from Dom in the last ITP which is to stand away from the participant when he/she is asking a question.

Most trainers will have the tendency to move in to the participant who is asking question, however, Dom showed me a different way to do that. Dom practices walking away from the participants when they are asking a question.

The reason of him doing that is so that he can enrolled the whole room into the conversation. Usually when a trainer moved closer to the particular participant who is asking a question, it can become a conversation between the participant and the trainer only, and actually lose some of the participants in the room.

Dom wants to enrolled the whole room by moving away from the participant who is asking the question, he wants to get all the participants to be involved in the conversation.

This is such a powerful technique that I believed that no other Train the Trainer’s course will cover.

And I had a distinction on using this technique. To apply this technique, the trainer has to be very powerful from within. The trainer got to have the clarity and beingness to support the participant who is asking the question.

Walking away from the participant, creates a distance between the trainer and the participant. It takes greater energy to support whoever is asking questions, it takes even more energy to enrol the whole room.

I applied it to one of the recent training that I conducted, and realize it’s not as easy as it seems. It requires a lot from me to stand away from that particular participant, refrain myself from moving in.

This is one huge distinction I got. I always thought it’s easy, but I have a tendency to move in to participants who are asking questions. Now this is one thing I must work on.

I must continue to work on myself to achieve mastery in this area.

Met Yiming for dinner last night and we had a wonderful chat and learning together. We discusses about M&Y, BSE, business, personal issues etc. He shared with me this special lesson which is now deeply embedded in my heart.

He told me an experience that he had in the past. Yiming is a nice, polite, friendly, quiet guy. He has a heart of giving. Whenever friends from other countries visit him, he will surely bring them around, accompany them. I can testified for this, because I’m one of those friends.

And there was this time when a few of his friends, who are successful businessman from the States visited KL. As usual, the kind Yiming drove them around for sight seeing. Those friends then passed him some money for petrol and his time. Yiming being courteous rejected the gift.

His friends then took the opportunity to teach him something so powerful that shift his mindset.

It’s good to have the heart of giving, but at the same time you must learn to receive. If someone offer you a gift, accept it with gratitude. This person is also practicing the act of giving. By receiving, you allow this person to give.

Hey, in that case, it’s a cycle. Giving and receiving is a cycle. If this cycle is stop along the way, it will start hogging the energy. This stops the energy from flowing, lesser and lesser energy will be flowing to you, which will end up you having lesser and lesser of what you want.

That’s not all. If energy stop flowing to you, in fact it does not actually stop, it changes direction. It simple flows to someone else who do not have a block. It will flow to someone who can keep the cycle going, that person will end up with a lot more.

Open your heart to give and receive, keep the cycle flowing, and abundance will flow to you.

Thank you Yiming for the great lesson.

A friend of mine has an issue with being perceived by others. She is often worried about how other people sees her. She is very conscious about the way she looked and behaved.

She always wants to be the good girl, doing what others are doing, behaving in a way they called it the social norm, so as not to attract any attention.

To me personally, living life this way is a restriction. Having to live under the eyes of others is not my way of living. I feel the best thing about being a human is the freedom to choose, to do the things that I want to do.

Living a life worrying about what other perceived me, makes me feels like being locked up in a prison. That kind of worry restricts me from being who I am. I am who I am, take it or leave it. Those who appreciate who I am will come, those who are not, get out.

There is nothing wrong following the social norm, because that makes you a “normal” human being. You’ll be classified as a “rebel”, if you are caught doing something abnormal, like speaking out or tell the truth with compassion.

I no longer want to play the “normal” human being game. Playing that game and mostly I’ll lose myself. I no longer care how other perceived me, because I am who I am.

Someone asked me this; when you are seeing somebody, is it your eyes that see it or your brain? When you talk to somebody over the phone, are you talking to the physical form or the meta physical form?

I pondered over it and I wondered, that person who perceived me in their mind, are they seeing the physical form of me, or is it their mind and reality that sees me in that way? Hmmm….I wonder…

Just came back from Money & You and Instructor Training Program. Being a logistic supporting the program had always gives me opportunities to gain distinctions in my personal growth.

I’m glad that I’ve change the approach. Building rapport and having fun. Yes, fun. My objective for my own is to have fun in this logistic. I had fun throughout the 4 days. Human being is here to have fun and adding values. And I just become a human being again.