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!