Do you want to get rich?

Commit this into your memory:

"There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.

A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.

Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created."

The above quote is taken from "The Science of Getting Rich".

If you think that I am too "materialistic", think again. Without money, what can you really do? How can Bill Gates help the poor if he does not have the money. He even accepted Warren Buffet's money to be able to help the poor better. Money is not the problem. Not having money is the problem. Without money, how much can you help the world?

I admire people who goes into poor country to help them to build things and educate them. All these are extremely admirable spirit, but, I am sorry to say that the impact is limited. Only scales like what Bill Gates do, with certain long term plan and strategy can create a greater impact.

My point is, don't be shy of wanting to be rich. I want to be rich also.

Survival Skill #23: Don't be shy of wanting to be rich. Be proud of it instead.

Living in the Real World?

Ever thought of committing suicide?

I had a couple of friends who always told me the same thing. Something when they travel on a business trip, one funny thing cross their mind. How nice if the plane suddenly crash down and everything is over. No more worries.

Strange thing for me is that I never really think of that. I am the so called "kia-si" (in Singapore it means "scared of dying" or "no guts") type of person, I believe. What is this world all about? Has this been just a dream after all? What is real and what is unreal? Is it all in our mind only? Who can be sure of that? Eveything you see, you feel, your hear, your smell could just be imaginations only. All may just be in the mind only. What is really REAL?

But then, just thinking back. Is it important that we need to know all these? So what if we are living in a dream? So what if what we see, feel, smell, hear are just illusions? So what? Life goes on. How is it going to change your life? I don't know. Is it something we should be worried about? Maybe, maybe not.

Whatever you thought and thinking of doing, you are still here reading this blog. Just live and let die. OK. It time to go back to work...

Survival Skill #22: Leave the worries to other poeple...

Learn to Leverage

If you are working in a large multi-national company chances are you will have to deal with contract staffs. There is a new belief that your permenant staff colleagues are your enemies and your contractors are your friends. Why? It seems that these days, the so-called permenant staff's job is to do coordination and management only. Management for them are mainly managing the bosses' expectation. The actual job is mostly done by the contractors.

This is not new phenomena but it is becoming more evident recently. Many large companies do not want to hire permenant staff so that they do not have to fire people often. This has lead to a new strategy that office workers must adopt in order to survive. The skill to develop is to be able to manage upwards and be good to the contractors so that they will do the work for you.

If you have not acquired this skill, you better start looking into it. With such skills, you will be able to move smoothly in your career and make lots of money. You can call this Leverage. Since you are not into business, you can't do the leverage that businessman do. You can still apply the same theory as a salaried man (woman).

Survival Skill #22: Manage upwards and Leverage downwards

Symptoms of Career Crisis

If you have been working for over 10 years and hardly taken any vacations or long breaks to reflect on your future, it might be good that you find an opportunity to do so. It need not be an expensive vacation. Just take your mind off your current job and reflect upon yourself. There are some important things you want to know about yourself and sometimes you do not have the opportunity to do so because you are so engrossed into your job. By the way, someone said that the word "JOB" stands for "Just-Over-Broke". It is not my intention to argue about that because there are people who made millions on their "JOB".

Some of the things you want to look out for in your mid career are symptons of crisis. Here are some of them:

1. Motivation - Are you motivated to do your job? If you are not, that is a negative point.
2. Negativity - You are always not confident that your companies program will work.
3. Interest Level - You don't feel excited about the job assignments. It is boring. But you just do it anyway.
4. Initiative - You never try to think of anything to improve your job. Just wait for instructions.
5. Concentration - You can't concentrate. You always think about other things and always forget to do something.
6. You get tired easily.
7. You dragged yourself to work. Always late. You try to find excuses to absent from work.
   
8. You are very sensitive to rumours. You are always trying to find out more about gossips.
9. You avoid seeing your clients, business partners, suppliers. You don't join your colleagues for lunch etc.
   

If you have more than 5 of any of the above symptoms, you may want to re-think carefully what exactly you want to do. If you really think that your current work place is not right for you, you really need to start to be more active to get in touch with recruitment agencies (secretly). You may also want to actively acquire the skills and knowledge for your next job. Pro-actively preparing your resume and set at least one-hour per day at home to search newspapers or Internet for job openings. Be more active to contact any friends you know and indirectly testing the market. It is easier to switch when you are still holding on to a job.

There is no point to hang around if you have lose interest.

Survival Skill #21: Always Seek Out New Opportunities

Life Long Learning - inch-by-inch

The theory of becoming rich quickly is to be able to leverage on something that
generates income. That has been said thousands times or millions times. But,
how do you actually do it? Best Seller author can give you hundreds of
examples. All these are nothing more than hindsight. But, wait a minute... I am
not saying they are wrong. They are absolutely right and I agree with them
totally. What I am driving at is that knowing the facts is not enough.
Developing the skill to do it is the key.

That leads to the theory of life long learning. Knowingly or unknowingly, we
are learning everyday. Sometimes we learn things subconsciously. That is bad
because we may learn things that are bad for us! Don't you think so? In my
opinion, we must be more self conscious of what we learn everyday. One
suggestion is to have 10-15 minutes every night before you close your eyes to
sleep, reflect on what you have learned during the day. Make a decision to do
better tomorrow. Inch-by-inch, we will get closer to acquiring the skill we
want. Whether it is for making lots of money or becoming a better person to our
family, friends, the society and the world as a whole.

Survival Skill #20: Self Reflection

Surviving the Challenging Time

This is a very busy holiday for me. Juggling 2 jobs is certainly not easy, not
to mention 3. While trying to build an Internet based business for my long term
future, I have a day job and another adhoc part-time "business".

I am trying to complete the day job, a project, as soon as possible because it
is a full-time assignment and takes about 11-12 hours (minimum) of my day time
everyday. That actually does not leave with much time for other things. After
spending another 1-2 hours of the time for other chores and children, there is
only about 2 hours left for my other businesses.

Weekend and public holidays are extremely precious for me. This is the time to
catch up with my other businesses. Weekends however, is not totally available
for me. I still have to spend time to bring my children to ballet class, music
class and art classes. Apart from that, I will have to spend some time with
them. That actually leaves quite little time for me.

My current day job is a project that brings me my bread and butter. I am
grateful to my friend who engaged me into his customer. Having tough time
juggling many things, I am very tempted to give up the day job. But, for the
sake of the income and my commitment to my friend, I soldier on. The reason
that I wanted to give up the day job is basically that this is not a long term
solution. It is a stop-gap solution with no future. I believe the long term
future for me is to be able to build a successful Internet Based business. But
my commitment to my friend will not allow me to give up. I intend to finished
the first phase that I promised and complete the delivery. As fot he second
phase, I am still thinking about it.

I considered myself very lucky that I have many choices in front of me. Even
though I may not be making lots of money, I think I can keep myself fully
occupied and be able to build something for the future.

Now, I just need to concentrate on what I am doing and get it done. In summary,
I need to invoke the Concentration Power to survive this stage of my life.

Survival Skill: Concentration Power

Do Your Read Newspapers?

Wow! This must be the silliest question you have ever heard. Well, you may think that I am nuts. But, I am not. Here is the reason for bringing up this issue. I had read quite a number of books about how our behaviours are affected by the things we see or hear. There is a belief that you mind, your subconscious mind can be affected by constant brainwashing to do certain things. That is the reason many psychologist are so strongly fighting against violence in TV, Movie etc. People, especially children who watches these TV or movies many subconsciously accepting the various thing shown and starting to do what is done in the TV or movies.

Now, come back to the question about reading newspaper. If the newspaper is always filled negative news, your subconscious mind will be influenced by it and you will become negative. When I told my friend about this. He was surprised that I said that because his pastor said the same thing to his church. I am not a Christain but my friend is. Not trying to talk about religion here, but, I just want to say that I am not the only person who thinks likewise.

So, the point really is that we must be careful to Prevent Negative Thoughts Controlling Our Mind. I am not telling you not to read newspaper. The media industry is going to hate me. But, I want to make the point that we don't get too engrossed into reading the news. We need to keep our minds clear and not to be influenced.

Remember, we are facing challenging time and we need to keep our spirit up. We cannot afford to be negative. So, one of the key survival skill that I am talking about is to Fend Off Negative Thoughts.

Survival Skill #19 Fend Off Negative Thoughts

Should I Sell My Car?

I am taking a train to work nowadays. The cost of driving is too high for me. The parking will cost me about $21. The Electronic Road Pricing (ERP - First in the world) will cost me about $5-6 (depending on the time I go home), and the gasoline will cost me about $9-10 depending on traffic condition. That is about $36 per day. My train fare is about $3 per day. I figure that if I can save $33 per day, I can have extra $660 per month. The main reason is that I don't save much time driving. The train ride is about 35 minutes. Walking is about 25 minutes. If I drive, I still have to walk about 5-10 minutes (up and down the office & home). Journey time is about 35 minutes, total time is about 40-45 minutes. So, I save 10-15 minutes per trip. So, in one day I may save 25-30 minutes which will cost me $33. That will convert to $66-80 per hour. Do I earn that much now? Ops! I have a PDA that I loaded with some e-Books that I purchased. I can read them on the train.

My car cost me $101,000 when I purchased it. In Singapore, you can use the car for 10 years. After which you will get be about 15% of the purchase price. That will be about $85,000 over 10 years. That is about $700 per month. Road Tax, Insurance, parking etc will cost around $300 per month. So, the car cost me about $1000 whether I drive it or not. Since I am not driving it to work, I think I should sell my car. It makes a lot of business sense. I guess I have to live with the inconveniences of weekends.

Saving $1,600 a month is quite a lot of money even if you are earning $10,000 per month. I think I will go a put an ad to sell it.

Survival Skill #18: Do Your Sums Right!

Do You Have Self Doubt?

Sometimes, things just hit us without us knowing it. One such thing is the feeling of self doubt. This is specially true when you are faced with some challenges and not able to find any solution quickly. For example, you are in a new job and this is some area of work that you had never attempted. You are at a lost of what to do. You search for various place to find some hints. Nothing! You start to have some self doubt as to whether you are able to handle this job.

This is most crucial time of your life. You had been retrenched for nearly one year and you finally found a job. You want to make it successful. You have no choice. Remember, you are over 45 and it is extremely difficult to land you another job. I am talking about average 45ers. Not those high flyers who are in the top management league. I am talking about people who had been in the mid level management. As you know that the current market is flooded with mid level management, the late babyboomers (those who were born between 1955-1965). The
early babyboomers (1945-1955) are mostly luckier. They had mostly escape the great squeeze and ran off with sufficient amount to retire.

Now, there is no other time that is worse than now to have self-doubt. My dear friend, this is certainly not the time for this. But we always get hit at the worst time. This always happens. Take a break and start thinking, not panicking. This is the worst time to panic. This is the time that calls for great concentration and calmness. Learn to do deep and slow breathing. Do it at
least 3 times a day. Each time, lasting for 3-5 minutes. Try to practise that 5 times a day and after each practice, start to think about solutions. If you can force yourself to do this, you will get great results. I had been through this before. It takes a lot of nerves to stay focus and quit panicking. Learning deep breathing really helps.

Stay calm and survive the most difficult period in your life.

Lookig forward to your success.

Survival Skill #17 Taking Deep and Slow Breathings

Big Challenges ahead...

The world economy is at its peak now. What makes me say that? My observation is based on how the major stock markets are performing. With major stock exchanges indices at it peak now, I am little concern that in the next few months, things will start to change direction.

So, what so you be doing? If you are not into the stock market, you have nothing to worry about. However, if you are heavily invested in stock market, you need to be more alert. The reason being these are very fragile times of stock market. With some economic indicators showing weak signs, the market players are most sensitive now. Any small event may trigger major panic.

My advice is to try to cash out of the market now. Build up more cash and wait for the right time to move in. With interest rate getting higher, it may be more prudent to have a better cash position.

It Is All About Common Sense!

What I had been talking about are mostly common sense, some people said. Well, sometimes, common sense can be quite uncommon.

If you think that these are common sense, then, ask yourself how "common" you apply your "common sense"? If you don't constantly applying those tactics in your life, you can qualify to call them common sense. The key is to implement. The Key is Taking Action. In life, everything is about taking action. Not taking any action itself is also taking an action. What am I talking about? What I mean is that you are making a decision by taking an action call WAIT! Waiting itself is an action. Sometimes in life, we need to be patient. That is different from Procrastination. Procrastination is bad taking quick action is good. But again, it is not always the case.

We all need to learn to make mistake. Learn to act fast and change fast and move fast. Knowing what we are doing and what we really want to do helps us to chart our course and stay in control of our own life.

Are You Concentrating Enough?

Here is the top secret of success. What makes people success is concentration power. Majority of us, including myself, lack concentration power. Most of us are easily distracted by any slightest noice. Ever heard of the story of a greedy tiger who caught a rabbit. Then he saw a deer which is bigger, he put down his rabbit and chase after the deer. In the end he ended up nothing. This is precisely what happens to most of us.

Most of us are Greedy. Short-sighted. We can't focus on something for too long. These are all killer bad habbits. We must change it in order to achieve something. Most successful people are able to keep their focus on the goal for a long time until they hit their goal. Nothing comes with luck.

Try this new strategy:
Choose a target. Keep focusing and staring on the Target. Keep hiting at the target until you finally reach it.

This is a simple strategy that was mentioned here can bring you life long benefits.

Survival Skill #16 : Concentration

Are You Near The End of The Road?

When you are really down, have you ever thought that you are nearing the end of the road? Sometimes, you think that the perfect solution for you is to just jump down (assuming you are staying in a high apartment).

Hold it. It cannot be that bad. Maybe, the opportunity is just round the corner. Have you heard of a story about a man who was searching for gold? He got money from his relatives and friends to purchase equipments etc exploring gold. After digging and digging, at the end, he has no more funding to carry on. He sold all his equipment to another person at very cheap price. This other person is no fool. He actually engaged a geologist to do some investigation before he bought over from the first man. Guess what, he hit gold after digging another 3 feet!

The moral of the story is: when you are about to give up, the real opportunity maybe just 3 feet away!

While we should constantly take a step back and look at the big picture. We should also evaluate our opportunities more objectively. Sometimes, we should even get expert's view of certain subject. It may be worthwhile to consult someone else. By simply giving up without carefully examining the opportunity maybe mssing the gold 3 feet away!

Moral of the Story: Don't Miss Your Pot of Gold 3 Feet Away!

Is Franchising For You?

One of my favourite topic is franchising. I read about and heard about many people who got retrenched in their 40s or 50s went into franchising business and ended up losing their life savings. Frachising is like any other businesses. The difference is that in franchising, you are buying a "working system". However, you also must remember that you are paying for it (usually at a very high cost.)

I had spent about 6 months exploring various franchising opportunities. I spend 6 months talking to 5 franchisors and surveyed no less than 30 sites in Singapore. What I found was that to find a good location is very difficult. I was exploring F&B retail business. This kind of business is heavily dependent on location. There three key words to success: Location, Location & Location. Nothing else.

In Singapore context, typical F&B franchise cost about $200K to $250K. Because of large capital outlay for ordinary people, I never encourage people to take up franchise. I have visited many franchisees and I calculated their earnings etc. I belive only top 10% of franchisees are making good profit. Another 30% are making some profit. Yet another 40% are just above the water. The rest of them, 20% are under the water.

One of the biggest problem of franchising is that you lose the freedom to shape your business. You are not different from working for people. The difference is that you have to pay to work for people. You really need to choose very carefully in franchising. Make sure that the franchisor is of good reputation and the system really works. Go for proven systems like Subway, 7-Eleven, you will have better chance to succeed. Other good franchise maybe Kumon (children education) but all these needs good location. I can emphasise more, Location, Location & Location.

Sometimes, you'd be better off to start a small store run it on your own. In that way you can have your freedom to shape your business.

Develop Good Habbits

We pick up different habbits along the way as we grow. There are good ones and
bads. Each of them shapes our daily life. They shape our personality and
character. If you need to bring up your children, observe their habbits and
make sure they have mroe goods ones and less bad ones. Slowly change their bad
ones into good ones. In that way, your children will be able to live happier
life in future.

What about us, grown ups? Can we also shape our own habbits? I believe we can
if we will. If we can constantly reflect upon ourselves what are our good
habbits and what are our bad ones, we can act on them one-by-one. There is no
need to be too ambitious. If we can tackle one of them each week or even each
month. Starting from the worst. Imagine if you change 10-12 bad habbits into
good ones every year, how powerful would that be? This is what I learn from a
recent book that I read. I am reading that book again. There are too many
useful tips in there and I want to implement them one by one.

This One Tip Can Change Your Life Forever!

Just this tip alone, I believe will give me tremendous improvement to my life.
I am sure it is going to shape my future if I can implement it successfully.
Firstly, I need to be focus. Act on one at at time and change the bad one into
good one. For example, being late for appointment by 5 minutes. That is a bad
habbit. I must make sure I add attional 10 minutes before I head for my next
appointment. In that way, I will always be 5 minutes early. That is an easy one
to do, isn't it?

Next, instead of bursting into answering questions people ask, I should try to
listen more carefully. So, I should be breathing in and counting 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
before I answer any questions instead of shooting off immediately.

Start now, look out for your bad habbits. Listen to your spouse, friends,
children etc. Take note and start to make corrections. I am sure you will
achieve wonderful results.

Survival Skill #15: Develop Good Habbits

Are You Working Yourself to Misery?

In the recent study done my a New York TV program, it was found that people today are just too crazy about the material needs that they would rather struggle with multiple jobs just to buy things that they don't really need.

I saw on a TV program that there was this couple with only one child. They lived in the suburban of New York area. The husband is a technician and the wife juggles two jobs and taking care of a young child of about 4-5 years old. The husband leaves home quite early and travels quite far to work and reach home rather late. The wife wakes up early to deliver newspaper before she goes to a company to work as administration assistance.

The couple basically has not time to rest. They started their day at about 5.00am and end their day at about 12.00am. So basically, they have about 4-5 hours of sleep each day. Weekends are the only time for rest. When the interviewer probed further they realised that they are chasing for something that they don't really need. For example, they have 3 cars. One Ford Focus for the wife. One SUV for the husband and another family car which is 7 seater. Why do they need a 7-seater when they only have one child? Because they have 3 dogs which will follow them when they go outing. Why do you need 3 cars when you only have 2 drivers?

We really have to think carefully what is it that we really want in our life instead of blindly following whatever the media and the peer expectations impose on us. We really need to be realistic and keep those extra money for our retirement. Stop getting crazy pursuing things that we don't really need.

Survival Skill #15: Know What We Want!

What Do You Really Want To Do?

Do you really know what you really want to do for the rest of your life?

Do you have a clear answer?

Let me guess. Maybe you are not exactly sure of what you know exactly what you really want to do. Like millions of other people who are at the middle age, you are still searching for your true self and true passion. Whether you are financially successful or otherwise, I do not believe that you can 100% sure of what you REALLY want to do. The fact is, for many people, even though they are very determined to do what they are doing right now, when something happens, they will re-think. That is what I meant. This always happens. You see many successful people who made changes in the mid-life like going into preaching, doing social work or other totally different things.

If you are still searching for your true passion, I hope you can find some inspiration from here. If you do, I am very happy for you and myself. Happy for you that you would be living a happier life. Happy for me that I have indirectly contributed to someone else happiness.

What if you don't really figure out what you really want to do? To me, there is nothing to worry about. We live our life one step at at time. If we don't have it now, we will have it later. Provide that we keep on finding and never give up or never forget. We will hit the right one. It is a matter of time. Remember one strategy I talk about? Keep focusing on the target until you reach it. For this case, we keep focusing on our search until we find it.

My point is: If you are not sure of what to do with your future, you don't have to worry. It will come to you if you set aside 10 minutes everyday without fail to think about it. Do what you are doing now and do it well. It will come to you.

Faith is everything!

This maybe Controversial!

A friend believe that we should NOT be planning for our life. When we plan for our life, it means that we do not trust God (I am not preaching here. Just keep your spiritual orientation to yourself.) Human wisdom is limited, so, just live life happily. If you plan too much, you are worrying. Worrying is wrong.

I am sort of half agree with what he is saying. I believe that we must have faith. I believe that we must not be too worried. As I said yesterday. Worry means Fear, Fear can kill! But, I believe we need to do something to create our own destiny. I don't want to mix spiritual orientation with my topic here but yet it is difficult not to.

When you plan and execute your plan, you must have Faith in it. That is something I believe. How successful you are going to be depends on how strong your faith is. How strong you faith is determines how strong your WILL POWER will be.

Does that sound logical?

To Your Success!

Fear Can Kill You!

Today, I want to talk about FEAR!

I heard about this cruel experiment done on a prisoner who was condemned to die. He was told if he would consent to an experiment and lived through it, he would be freed. He consented. They wanted to see how much blood a person could lose and still live. They arranged that blood would apparently drop from a cut made in his leg. The cut made was very slight, from which practically no blood escaped. The room was darkened, and the prisoner thought the dropping he heard was really coming from his leg. The next morning he was dead through mental fear.

Don't let Fear Kill You!

Today, our biggest challenge is to conquer our own Fear. We almost Fear Everything. We Fear of Losing our Job! We fear of not able to make our family happy! We fear of not having enough money to retire! We fear of our children not being able to coupe with their future! We fear our investment will go wrong! We fear our parents will fall sick! We fear we may fall sick! We fear of the sky will fall down! What else we can't fear?

We must make our choice: Stop Living In Fear!

When you feel Fear is your inner self. You need to overcome it consciously. Don't be worried if you have stress. Some experts said stress is good. It keeps you going. Have faith in yourself.

Survival Skill #14: Stop Living In Fear!

Reality & Positive Thinking

What is really Positive Thinking? How do you differentiate it from Fantasy?

For example, if you are jobless and you dream of making $5,000,000 in one year. Is this Positive Thinking or just Fantasy? Is this realistic? Compared to hoping to make $50,000 in one year, which is more realistic? Well making $50,000 in one year is something not too difficult to achieve. It is realistic. It is not a Fantasy. You said. Basically, nobody will laugh at you when you said that.

But, human need to be Pushed to achieve more. We need some Pressure to move us ahead. Small amount of stress is healthy for us. That's what many health experts said.

So, what really is Positive Thinking? Is it about denying that there are rubbish on the floor even if you physically seeing them all over your living room? I don't think so. To me, Positive Thinking is about knowing that there are rubbish over the floor and Thinking that you can clean them up in an hour and you actually start cleaning them up. I belive by Taking Action and cleaning them and thinking that you will be able to finish the work in an hour (not afraid of failure) is Positive Thinking.

It is all about setting Realistic Goal, Taking Action and Not Afraid of Failure. These are the 3 components of Positive Thinking. While you set Realistic Goal, you can stress them a little bit. For example, instead of targeting $50,000 in one year, maybe you can stretch it to making $350,000 in 3 years. This is also Realistic since it gives you more time to achieve a much higher goal. You can take on multiple jobs to do that. You can find a few contracts and engage someone else to help you to achieve it. Stretch your imagination and make consistent effort towards achieving it.

I am going to make at least $50,000 in next 6 months. I already have leads and potential contracts at hand. I just need to execute them.

Survival Skill #13: 3 Components of Positive Thinking

What is your plan B?

As you can see that this blog is primarily targeting at employees after 45 rather than self-employed to business owners. I guess, this is the majority of the group now but, it is fast shrinking for people above 45. The reason is obvious.

You need to make a choice. One is to fight on by improving yourself, stay relevant, stay young (behaviourally) and be more competitive (maybe slight ruthless). Another option is to execute plan B. Phase yourself towards self-employed or owning businesses.

Recently there are many people choose options like full-time stock trading, currency trading, real-estate agent, insurance or financial planning, franchisees and some small services outfits.

All those are viable businesses and are exceptionally good for middle-age people who wants to have more control over their time and paying more attention to the family's non-financial needs.

Ask yourself, what is your plan B?

If you are thinking of doing it after working hours, you can consider Internet based Home Business. Selling on eBay, Google Adsense etc may be a good start to make yourself acquinted with the new way of doing businesses in this New Era.

Survival Skill # 12: Execute Plan B