Medalin called me this morning, to thank me for spending time talking to her 20-something son. He had taken over the family business just a few years ago.
He’d come around yesterday to our office and we shared with him our beliefs and philosophy of running a business. Actually he had come to ask our opinion about something he wanted to do but in the end, it became more than that.
We spoke to him for almost 2 hours.
Perhaps it was the first time he met 2 highly positive people who think that business is not about making money. Business is about serving others, bringing them value, giving them a reason to buy from you. Business is about sharing knowledge, helping each other unconditionally.
Medalin called to tell us that her son was inspired by our words.
That he felt grateful for our advice.
My philosophy is simple – I am here to help other people help more people. If I can share an idea and get them thinking to do more good or touch someone’s life positively, my time on earth will be worth it.
And I’ve been lucky to have known a number of inspiring people who inspire me to work on myself so that I can play a role in creating a better world.
I know people who work tirelessly to help create a better environment by recycling and being green. They are the most hopeful people I know.
I know people who are genuinely kind and happy, willing to lend a hand without asking for anything in return. They just want to be of service.
I know a person who will travel all the way to Penang just to give a 3 hour talk so that other youths can have a chance to apply for a scholarship and lessen the burdens of their parents. Recently I was very pleased to know that 2 young people who attended this talk (which I helped put together) had received scholarships to study in the USA.
I know of people who with the handicapped and disabled, teaching them patiently. And when these teachers see their young charges sing, dance and perform onstage, it’s all worth it.
I know of a successful millionaire who was terrible at school. He used to be the last in his class because everyone called him dumb and stupid. No one cared for him. He was poor, had very low self esteem and always failed in class. His life changed a teacher showed she cared by buying him a bowl of hot noodles. In that small simple act, he felt the world wasn’t so bad after all. He decided to study hard to repay his teacher’s kindness. Today, he is a multi-millionaire and he has never forgotten that lesson.
If you care, you can change lives.
Can you change a life?
Of course you can.
It doesn’t take money sometimes. It could be a kind word, a few minutes of your time, a phone call, a letter, an email out of the blue. You just have to show you care.
Far too many people are selfish these days and will only do something for others if they get something in return. These people will never get anywhere in life with their limiting beliefs.
But when you show you really care (and it cannot be faked), you give hope to another human being.
You never know where that might lead.
The other person might go and infect others with this positive ray of light.
If we have more positive rays of light and love in our community and gradually the world, don’t you think that it could create a more peace-loving and harmonious world?
If it has to start somewhere, it has to start with me.
Musings
Look What I Bought for RM87
Didn’t mean to buy so many books but I could not help myself when I went to my regular secondhand bookstore.
If I didn’t stop myself, I would have bought more. And a few more old issues of the O magazine by Oprah. And In-Style, too.
One of the most exciting finds was this tiny booklet by Gustav Verbeek, a comic artist who lived at the turn of the old century (he died in 1937).
What’s interesting is he only drew 6-panel comics. If you read it one way, you get half the story.
If you read the comic panels the upside down way, you get the other half of the story!
His comics are mainly about the silly adventures of two characters called Lovekins and Muffarroo. Both are odd in their own way. But it is simply amazing how creative Verbeek is because once you turn the picture upside down, a totally new ‘scene’ appears!
You can take a look at what I mean by looking at this drawing of his. First you see how Muffaroo is attacked by a big fish in his canoe but when you turn the comic upside down, you see Lovekins being caught by a giant bird. How amazing is that!
And the story does make sense. And this Dutch-American man did this type of comic every week for the 64 weeks that he was drawing for The New York Herald newspaper.
It’s like the ambigrams made famous by Dan Brown in Angels & Demons. Ambigrams are graphic art where the word reads the same both ways!
Of course, Verbeek’s booklet of 6 stories were a complete steal at RM1.50. I don’t think you can get it anywhere even if you had pots of money.
The things one can get at the secondhand bookstore!
My Time Is Expensive, You Know!
Today, I’ve got a rant. A big one.
I start it with “My time is expensive, you know”.
Hear me out while I tell you why. I am sure you want to know why I’m suddenly so uppity.
Most people don’t think about the time they spend. Yah, we all know we start the day with 24 hours and then we minus out 8 hours for sleep so what do we have left? Some 16 hours right? Then let’s say we work for another 8 and then what do you have?
Another 8 right? Cut out time for makan, bathroom time, travelling time and in my case, some blogging, some facebooking, some other stuff which always pops up in the most crazy moments and there goes the final 8 hours. Oh, don’t forget the crucial stuff – sitting in silent contemplation. My reprieve from the world. Some journalling. Reading. Watching Desperate Housewives.
Now the 8 hours that I dedicate to work – I dedicate to work. But here’s something totally Malaysian which I still cannot fathom till now.
What is it with people who want to meet up ALL the time? I mean, clients especially. Just this week, 3 different people told me, “Maybe we should meet up and discuss this.”
Why do people want to force meet-ups on others when we can do this easily without needing to meet up face to face?
Look. I’m all for meeting up if there’s something conclusive to say and discuss. I do this all the time when I need meetings to help others make a tough call, convince decision-makers, finalize stuff, get people to sign contracts, go for business walk-throughs at the start of new web projects. I mean, I get it when a meeting is really needed because sometimes you just can’t conduct a walk-through without being there in the flesh yourself. That I get.
What I don’t get is when meetings are just a plain lazy way of doing what can be done easily, quickly and effortlessly online.
What I don’t get is why people cannot think straight and ask themselves, “Is a face-to-face meeting really needed? Can I be smart with my time and use a method which saves everyone the trouble of driving over, cursing as we cannot find parking, going round and round the damn lot for 15 minutes and then going up to the meeting room only to have the damn discussion done in 10 minutes? Is this a good use of my time and other people’s time?”
I’ve been in client servicing and I know the kind of people who hope you can drop everything you do and jump into your car and drive to see them just because they are the ‘client’. And most client servicing executives follow their clients’ “instructions” blindly.
I always think – what bloody good is Technology if we cannot use it to make our lives easier? Look, there’s Skype. There’s the phone. There’s email.
If something cannot be described via a Skype call, phone call or email, I don’t think that something can even be discussed in a face-to-face meeting.
If you cannot explain or describe what you want, what do you hope to achieve in a meeting? Sit around and twiddle our thumbs? Chat about the weather?
Most people think money is the scarcest resource. It’s not, babe. You can make all the money you want if you have talent, skills, creativity, brains.
The scarcest resource?
It’s TIME.
We all start with an equal amount of it and if we’re not smart about using it and allow others to dictate how we use it, we deserve to lose time. We cannot get more of it if we waste it.
So while I love face-to-face networking (and that’s why I started WomenBizSENSE with a friend), I know there are times when meetings can be easily conducted with technology. You want to see my face? Use Skype with a webcam then. Want to speak to 3 other people at the same time? Use multi-party conferencing. That’s how we, who volunteer for The Pixel Project, discuss what we need to do.
I’m terribly selfish with my time because people are naturally too lazy to find an easier alternative. And perhaps it’s also easy to justify that “Oh I’m busy. I need to go for a meeting.” The number of meetings you attend do not correlate with the outcomes. You could be running around in traffic jams only to accomplish nothing because you’re too exhausted to even know what’s discussed.
The thing is, don’t let people dictate how you use your time. Not even Clients. Particularly Clients because they think they own you just because you are doing work for them.
Sorry-lah.
I’m in business because I want to decide how to live my life. And sometimes you just have to stand up to people who mess about with your time and essentially your life.
Standing up and saying no is a great practice in assertiveness anyway. Try this the next time someone asks for a meeting in the flesh.
Most likely, when you tell them no and suggest meeting online via Skype, they’ll agree!
Why The Rainforest World Music Festival Needs to Change
I’ve been a big fan of the Sarawak Rainforest World Music Festival for a long time now. I got to know of it in 2002 and even attended for 3 years in a row (2002, 2003 and 2004). In those early days, not even the Penang tour agencies knew what it was.
But then we stopped going.
I did say I loved it. I still do.
I came home and spread the word about this fantastic event happening in the Sarawak Cultural Village, some 40 minutes by car from Kuching city.
Many friends, upon my enthusiastic (OK, mad is more like it) response, would be so envious. I’d come home, rave about the musicians I’d met, the people I’d spoken to, the air in Sarawak, the CDs I bought, the live jamming sessions, the different cultures and languages.
Of course, I’d tell them, “You HAVE to go. It’s one of those things you must do in your lifetime because it’s so much FUN!”
And bless their souls – they did take my advice and go. And they loved it to bits too.
When I am at the Rainforest World Music Festival, I feel I am in another country. It’s not Malaysia any more. It’s laidback, it’s international, it’s cool. It’s also open air, no seats (just bring a mat), informal and come-as-you-wish.
As it’s held in Sarawak (a world totally removed from Peninsular Malaysia), there’s a lot of leeway and freedom. People strut about in bikini tops, Caucasians and locals alike hang out at the beer gardens within the festival grounds.
There’s an insouciant air, irreverent and bohemian.
But the crowd gets bigger and bigger each year, thanks to rabid fans like me. I go and tell everyone because I’m so freaking excited.
Unfortunately, the Sarawak Cultural Village grounds aren’t meant for humongous crowds.
The nearby hotels cannot accommodate the crowds either. And the prices of hotel rooms keep skyrocketing yearly. And it’s alienating the very crowd which helped popularised the festival! In the early days, the crowd was fun, looking for cool music. In fact families came with kids. I could still get a room at the Holiday Inn Damai Beach by calling up my Kuching tour agency. It was a music festival for everyone.
Over the years, I see the party crowds who are into booze are coming in packs. They get drunk, they party like crazy, they are a hazard to other festival goers. Some look like they’ve been on some substances too. They’re NOT there to appreciate the music; they just want music. I bet you they don’t even know who’s playing on the stage!
And let me talk about prices. From those days in 2002 when I could pay less than RM1000 for a 4D/3N at Holiday Inn Damai Beach which included the festival ticket for 3 days, now I have to pay lots more.
I am talking about being a domestic traveller.
I am travelling to Sarawak, another state in Malaysia, dammit. If I have to pay RM2000 plus just to attend a 3-day music festival locally, why don’t I just go to HK or Thailand? Or wait for the Singapore music festival and just take a Jetstar plane down south?
Maybe RWMF just caters to the ang mohs and the Singaporeans.
If it is about the venue, why can’t it be held somewhere centrally in Kuching city? Then the crowd control can be better and there’s no shortage of hotels.
I think RWMF is a great tourism draw but it is losing some of its appeal by alienating the very fans who have raved about it. I am lucky I can get to attend the Penang World Music Festival if I choose not to go for the RWMF.
I just wish Sarawak Tourism Board realizes that lots of die-hard fans are just appalled at the way things are done and the way prices keep going up.
Perhaps we Malaysians aren’t the target audience they want. They’d prefer US Dollars to our measly Ringgit.
More stuff you can get your hands on:
What to prepare if you are going for the RWMF 2009.
If you’re in Kuching, you might as well sample some local food.
If you’re in Penang, try Penang World Music Festival. This year, it is from 20 to 22 November.
For Your Monday Reading
I have many things to blog about but this one, this one takes centrestage for today. I wrote this after we visited St Nicholas Home last Friday.
Happy reading!
My Achy Breaky Thighs
I have achy, breaky thighs today.
Reason? I walked from Cititel Hotel on Penang Road to Midlands One-stop in Pulau Tikus yesterday! All 6km and more. (Penang roads are really NOT meant for pedestrians… so freaking dangerous!)
And all for a treasure hunt.
The walking type. (And I forgot my camera! Hence, no photos! What a pity huh!)
The type where I had to think and walk, which taxed both my leg muscles and my brain muscles. The only consolation I got was the sun was not merciless – I didn’t know if I was happier for the haze that shrouded Penang or not. I sure sweated a lot during the 3-hour walk-a-hunt organised by Bio-Life.
The last walking hunt I did with Cecilia was in Gurney Plaza so that wasn’t too bad. At least we had air conditioning inside the mall.
This Bio-Life hunt was terribly tiring because of the walking! I mean, I do walk quite a bit on a weekly basis – I try to make it 3x a week of brisk walking around Tasik Aman in USM so it’s not so bad. Still, I don’t walk for 3 hours straight so it was crazy!
Cecilia said she had never seen me so red and sweaty. Neither have I!
The humid Sunday aggravated me too. We didn’t win because we got penalised 27 points for being late for 27 minutes!
Was I disappointed? Not really. I learn from this failure, if it could be called one.
I’m a leisurely treasure hunter. I don’t take it too seriously. Of course I am committed to finding answers when I am hunting. But if I win, I look at what helped us win. If I lose, I try to dissect it too and remember not to do the same things in future hunts. Each hunt teaches me a little bit more about myself.
Actually a treasure hunt is a game of strategy. It’s not a race and sometimes the questions don’t make sense and at worst, some answers are arbitrary.
Hunters often scrutinise the hunt organisers because there’s a pattern hidden somewhere. Hunt organisers do repeat themselves inadvertently – even if they are not conscious of it. So “doing” or “studying” past hunt questions helps reveal the mind of the hunt organiser. And most hunt organisers (or COC) have a pattern in their questions, whether they know it or not.
I don’t know if I am a newbie or not but I’ve done a few hunts up till now and since I’m not nuts about it, I can take a step back and laugh at myself and my little foibles. I can analyze how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ I was in each hunt.
Here’s what I found out:
1. A strategy helps.
Like any NFL match, a quick team huddle is needed before shooting off like headless chickens. It’s like sitting for an exam. You get the exam paper, you read all the instructions first before you start answering the questions. Just because other teams are running off does not mean we need to.
2. Splitting up helps too.
If we have 4 people to a team, splitting up into 2 teams of 2 each with each ‘mini team’ working on different questions makes a lot of sense. No point having 4 people’s brain juices working on the same few questions right?
3. Managing time is everything.
In a hunt, we’re racing against time. Answering 30 questions, buying ‘treasures’, etc. in 3 hours or less is the objective. Without getting penalised or disqualified, that is. All the effort will be wasted if we get marks deducted by submitting answer sheets late. Or taking 2 hours for the first 15 questions and leaving the last 15 questions for 1 hour or less.
4. Go with your gut.
I’ve always relied on my intuition each time I’m stumped for an answer. I know that’s not very scientific but it works for me most times. It’s better than trying to be proper and logical about it. (Actually most hunt questions aren’t very logical either. You can justify just about every which way anyway!). So why not?
5. Don’t over-analyze
As adults, we tend to over-analyze answers especially when we get them at first glance. That’s too easy and direct, our little voice tells us. But the over-analyzing does make matters worse. That is why hunting with newbies or people without ‘hunt preconceptions’ are refreshing. They’re innocent babes. Their answers are pure and straight. They don’t try to outsmart the organisers. They don’t try to ‘read’ the organisers and wonder if the organisers are trying to be extra conniving/extra sneaky/extra naughty.
Finally, I check myself that it’s a game. I take part because I love practising my observation skills, I like anagrams, I like solving puzzles that are not related to real-life. I know I can make mistakes in hunts and still live to talk about it. I can sharpen my keenness of sight and know I shall never be able to look at words without anagramming them.
Above all, I like teaming up with different people and ‘reading’ them. Call it my dose of sly psychology!
By the way, if you’re the armchair sort of treasure hunter, try out WebMazers which organises online hunts. Same taxing questions but in an online format for lazy bums to try. Did I mention cool prizes are in store for each hunt?
More hunt adventures:
A-hunting we will go!
My first hunt experience!
How to Savour Langkawi
Got back about a week ago from a truly relaxing trip to Langkawi. Most times, we go and meet a whole bunch of clients. Good for them but terribly frenetic for us. Friends do not believe us when we say we are really working when we go to Langkawi.
This time though, we decided to reclaim some semblance of a holiday for ourselves.
It was time for a real break.
This time, we didn’t want to stuff too many clients into our 3-day trip. In fact, we didn’t meet any except Kak Su whom we lunched with at Wan Thai on Sunday, hours before we left Langkawi. (Even meeting Kak Su wasn’t such a planned event. We’d gone for a quick breakfast at her Cafe Molek but her staff, Sal, said she wasn’t around. As we were leaving, we saw Kak Su driving by in her dark blue Volvo.)
Kak Su is more of a friend than a client though we did start off with a business relationship. She is the owner of Villa Molek, a boutique villa resort on Pantai Tengah, Langkawi. It’s tastefully done up, hidden yet accessible. We had great fun designing her website because she had a great ‘product’ and good selling points too. Plus she gave us full control, trusting us to deliver not only a visually pleasing website but one that generates good results too. But that is another blog post for the other blog.
So what did we do?
We took our time to savour Langkawi.
The food of this island is exceptional especially if you know where to look.
Our clear favourites are Sun Sutra (for a romantic western-style dinner with excellent wines), Sunday (for Chinese stir-fry dishes in a Thai-influenced ambience) and The Loaf (for a totally awesome breakfast experience by the marina where the yachts berth).
Some people exclaim that The Loaf is expensive. Well, it is of course but don’t discount the view. The view, the quality ingredients, the slow breakfast, the good cutlery. Don’t these count for something too? Otherwise, a cheap nasi lemak bungkus breakfast at some rundown warung down by Pantai Cenang is available too.
Remember I mentioned Wan Thai? It’s a halal Thai restaurant in the heart of Kuah town, popular with locals and foreigners. The lady boss (who is Thai by the way) is soft-spoken, gentle, unassuming and ever-smiling. Oh and she is so beautiful with porcelain skin! (How do Thai women get so pretty? They eat so much of chilies yet their skin’s super smooth like taufufah!).
Wan Thai is a MUST visit place, especially before we board the ferry back to Kuala Kedah (we often drive from Penang to Kuala Kedah and board the ferry from there instead of doing the 3-hour Penang-Langkawi ferry ride). I love to order their “hor muk” or seafood otak-otak served in a young coconut. This way, you get the otak-otak AND you get to scrape the young coconut flesh after!
Another new place we now visit for breakfast is Kak Su’s Cafe Molek, adjacent to her Villa Molek. It serves good food at reasonable prices plus there’s wifi connection! (Heaven sent for IT people like me and Nic).
Considering that there are dirty, slum-like places serving similar continental breakfasts along Pantai Cenang/Pantai Tengah and charging the same prices, Cafe Molek gets my vote any time because it’s cleaner, it has proper tables and chairs, it’s airy and quiet and the food’s good too.
This time, we also dined at a firm favourite of our friend James. James loves Orkid Ria, a seafood restaurant on Pantai Cenang. Orkid Ria is a really happening place for dinner. It is always packed with people. The atmosphere is a bit like a cleaner, modern Chinese kopitiam though noise levels can reach deafening volumes.
The food’s good too especially if you love rice with seafood dishes like deep-fried soft shell crabs, baked lobster, steamed tiger prawns etc. According to Uncle Loh, the seafood that you see displayed each night are freshly caught and delivered just before the restaurant opens for dinner. Prices are reasonable so it’s really not difficult to understand why Uncle Loh (the owner) gets so many customers each night, high season or not!
Will It Be Bye Bye Too?
I’ve been blogging for a long time now. I started in 2002. I feel rather ancient now that it is 2009.
7 years.
Yikes.
And I am surprised I am still blogging. I thought I would have run out of things to say, write, have an opinion about. But it shows that I have a lot to say!
A friend pulled the plug on one of her blogs recently.
I’m not surprised really.
As I emailed her, I said I understood perfectly the idea of ‘killing’ one’s blog. It’s not that we run out of things to write about.
It’s something deeper and far more strange.
When I started to blog, it was just my online journal. It was therapy without paying for a shrink. I could unload all my thoughts and feel better immediately. I could get on with life once my issues were on the blog. I could rant and rave and get pissed and peeved and shout in blogosphere where no one could hear me.
Or so I thought.
The thing with blogging is, at some point, one starts attracting readers/visitors/strangers/people who google something and find your posts.
They read, like what they read, and bookmark your blog and come back again. They leave comments, become your friends. They email you and they start having a relationship with you – this connection is a friendship. If they come to Penang, we make a date to meet and we hit it off once we’ve chatted over lunch or dinner. They add my blog to their blogroll. We are now blog pals.
And soon, they become fans. Huge ones. They visit your blog daily. They keep count on the times you’ve forgotten to write! They remember where you ate at, what you did on your holiday, who you bitched about.
That’s when the pressure sets in. The pressure to keep blogging even though sometimes all you want to do is switch it off and get on with your regular life. (Of course, if one does it for the money, that’s a completely different story. But as you know, my blog has none of those.)
So I get it completely when Lydia says she is focusing on one blog and leaving the other. It’s far easier this way.
At times I wonder if I would say goodbye on this blog too. Maybe one day I would. Once I have nothing to say, nothing to blog about, then I would really consider taking Mayakirana off the world wide web.
Do you have a blog? Have you ever considered NOT blogging in the future? Or ending the blog in some strange way? Enlighten me! 😉
Shiatsu for Dad
I’ve been planning to visit St Nicholas Home for a while now since I met Joyce who works there. I would probably do it next week when I get back from Langkawi.
Anyway, in case you did not know, the St Nicholas Home for the Blind (or to be politically correct, the Visually Impaired) has some service offerings in the form of massages and reflexology sessions. The masseurs are visually impaired.
For this Father’s Day, Joyce told me there’s an ongoing promotion for June where their foot reflexology sessions are going for an absolute steal. (RM28 for 1 hour, complete with a foot bath. Normally you pay RM38).
Foot reflexology might not be everyone’s favourite so you can take your dad for some shiatsu body massage (acupressure massage) at a mere RM30 for 1 full hour of relaxation. According to Joyce, the regular price is RM50.
The key is – honour your father as well as take this chance to help the visually impaired earn their living. I think that’s most commendable!
The promotion lasts till 30 June so contact Joyce at the below number to book a session for you and your father!
SNH Wellness Centre
18, Mano Close, 10250 Penang, Malaysia
Tel: 604-229 0800 ext 118
H/P : 016 4817 960 Ms Goh
Business Hours: Tue – Sun from 11am – 7pm
Close on Mondays
June is for Me, Me & Me
I have been strangely missing from this blog yeah?
It’s odd sometimes. As a writer, I write for everyone and everyone in my lingo means paying clients as part of the whole website design package. After all, that’s what I’m good at.
But it does not mean that I’m not tired sometimes.
And when I get tired, my poor blog gets neglected.
Oh and besides writing of course, there’s a bunch of stuff. Like my recent jaunts to KL for seminars. It seems May was the month for self development.
I met Robin Sharma and thought, what good luck! I was like some nervous school girl. Some might say that what Robin teaches is already available out there.
I think we all miss the point.
The point is, he’s a reminder. He reminds us to be leaders. He reminds us what we need to do. Some teachers don’t need to teach us new tricks – they remind us of what we know but have not truly practised.
Then a good friend rings up the week after I get home and asks if I am keen on listening to Robert Kiyosaki and his team of advisors in a 3-day special in KL.
How could I say no when the deal was so good?
So you see, no wonder I’m bloody missing.
But I am feeling pretty good about myself these days, perhaps in a way attributed to the seminars. One cannot help but be buoyed by good vibes when you’re learning with eager, supportive friends.
No, actually I am feeling good because this is June and we’ve decided to dedicate the whole of this month to ourselves. We’re not taking any new clients this month (we’re overloaded as it is), we’re trying to finish up whatever we need to do as we want to really focus on US.
US as in the company, our vision for the future, the clients we want, the clients we don’t want (yes, there are people we’d rather cull from our list of clients), what we do and what we are not doing. Also the kind of people we want to partner with.
You see, lots of people come to us wanting to JV with us.
Some have really good ideas while others are just plain awful. In the past, we’ve entertained them all.
Because we are so damn kind.
Yes, kindness is not always beneficial especially when it eats up my time. And I keep saying, time is the most precious asset for me. I’d rather Skype than meet people who do nothing but waste my time. Sorry but as I grow older I know I cannot please everyone so I might as well please me.
Coming back to the partners, yes, everyone wants to partner. But not everyone can be a good partner.
A good partner is one who comes with excellent if not super excellent qualities. It has to be a fair exchange of skills and experience, not one partner leeching off another. Robert Kiyosaki stressed this factor as one of the 3 important factors of running a successful business. Many people just want a free ride and free lunch if you let them!
When I went for the Robert Kiyosaki seminar, I also observed that there are 2 types of people – the absolute cynics and the absolute fans. One type was skeptical of everything and resented the speakers’ viewpoints and always had a “I know that” retort ready.
The fan type was always cheering and pumped up as if they were on steroids or on a perpetual sugar high.
I’m new to this seminar stuff so I was keeping my mind open and listening not only to the content but also how the content was delivered.
I saw some very good sales techniques used by the speakers which resulted in a woman bugging me to sign up for a seminar (yes, cross-selling and up-selling seminars after a presentation or talk was considered normal) because if 2 people signed up, there was a rebate of RM100.
If she signed up on her own, she’d miss that discount. I refuse to be bugged. I wasn’t even sure I’d be free on that particular date in July and I wasn’t going to hang about KL all the time! Damn. And I didn’t even know her! But I did know that she was like a buzzing bee, never letting me go. In the end, I walked away and she gaped like a goldfish!
I don’t mind the selling techniques employed – it’s just the way some presenters did it that made it me feel rather cornered. Robert did it in a classy way. No hard selling. He was the savvy educator, driving home the fact that we all need to learn to be financially savvy. He did talk about his books and his Cashflow board game but that was it. No 10-minute countdown nor frenzied buying. (You must check out his new book/site called Conspiracy of the Rich.)
Robert and his team spoke for the first 2 days and left after that. The final day (the 3rd day) was pure and direct hard sell. I didn’t mind Gregory Secker, the guy who came on to talk about forex trading. He was candid.
But what bugged me was this Internet marketer (whom I shall not name at all) who taught 7,000 seminar attendees how to copy and paste from Ebay into a blog. Apparently, he’s had tea with the Queen of England, he knows Paula Abdul and he’s rich beyond his dreams. Does that change the fact that he showed us all how to cheat, live online?
Some people might not be offended by the live ‘cheating’ demo but I was! While making money was the topic of the day, there are legal and ethical means of doing it. Why would anyone stoop so low to copy stuff from eBay or Amazon and paste them into a blog?
If making money was so important, I could name a few other easier options in life – sell pirated dvds, open a brothel, do drugs then. Whatever. After all, it seems like the end justifies the means.
That truly spoiled the event which I had enjoyed 2 days before when the Rich Dad team came to speak. There’s classy selling and then there’s this.
So yeah, I still get mad when I think of the live demo. But meeting Robert Kiyosaki made the trip and seminar great. The rest of the speakers on the last day were not bad at all except that one speaker who irked me.
I even enjoyed Ewen Chia’s presentation which was honest and direct in his own way, though drawn out it was. I was getting tired and grouchy as his was the last presentation of the 3rd day and it was getting late (we ended up getting out at past 9pm!).
T. Harv Eker will be speaking at the same venue, Mines International Exhibition Convention Centre (MIECC) Seri Kembangan this 12 to 14 June. He’s another dynamo on stage. I loved his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. He completely changes the way you view money and re-wires your money DNA. Go get his book if you can’t attend the seminar. Worth every ringgit!
Oh ya, Selamat Hari Gawai! Marrying a Sarawakian Chinese means I get to know what’s happening over in the Land of the Hornbills. This whole week will be a major holiday in Sarawak as almost everyone shuts down their business to celebrate the harvest festival merrily with lots of potent home-brewed moonshine called tuak.
Gayu guru gerai nyamai everyone!