I’m not sure how long I’ve known Robyn, but I know it’s probably about 2.5 to 3 years.

I first got to know her through my blogging efforts and later she invited me to join the MyBlogLog Advisory Group.

I don’t think a whole lot of people are aware that Robyn racked up about $200,000 in consulting fees in the year before joining Yahoo! and relocated from Virginia to California to take up the position.

During the Friday Podcast, I found out how Robyn got started (generating $30,000 a month from a single physical product), how she branched into consulting, including taking on projects for some of the biggest companies out there, and how someone aspiring to enter the business/web consulting field can get started.

As always, there’re lots of gems in this one.

Check it out:

I was checking out Shoemoney’s post “Elite Retreat Ticket For One Lucky Winner” .

Blogging Guru Dave Taylor, SEO Specialist Aaron Wall, Forum and Communities Specialist Lee Dodd, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, Dave Taylor again!

Forum Guru Lee Dodd has posted at his ForumTrends blog that the 4 gurus: Shoemoney, Dave Taylor, Aaron Wall and Lee have decided to put up one ticket for the event (valued at $4,850 by the way).

Just head over to Lee’s blog, read the instructions and best of luck!

The deadline’s Dec 11th, noon CST. There’s a couple of hours to go.

I’d have loved to try for the contest, though the event clashes with a family holiday.

Ah, well, maybe next time.

If you do enter the contest, and win, post a comment!

And maybe even read my project entry: 10,000 in your list in 30 days? Andrew Wee goes guerilla!

You would know that besides the prizes (who doesn’t want to spend a week in Costa Del Sol in Spain for a week?), the main benefit is the blog traffic that results. And if you’re lucky, you’ll increase your loyal reader base.

Such is the case, after I check out Joe Hauckes’ ProBlogger entry:6 Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase PageViews.

One thing lead to another, and we started talking (in the comments section) about his ProBlogger.net post: Home Business Links from ProBloggers How To… List

And then it spilled into the next thread: Link Baiting?

Where together with Lara Kulpa from Anubis Marketing, we had an interesting conversation which spanned to 42 comments (as of the time of writing this post).

But wait, Joe’s launching something interesting:

A blog carnival!

Check out Joe’s post:Working at Home Blog Carnival

Some information from Joe to take note:

• I would like to present this project each Friday morning, so submissions will be accepted until 11:59 pm EST Thursday night every week.
• It is easy to participate. Just submit an article you have written that may help someone else who is Self-employed. It can be for those who are home based, work at home, telecommute, or any other type of entrepreneurship that you like.
• You can write about your personal experinces, they can be humorous, serious, successes, failures, lists of to do’s (don’ts), whatever you like.

If you’d like to go to the blog carnival, you can find it at: Working at Home blog carnival – Oct 6, 2006 edition

I plan to take part too, though at this point, I need to resolve a blogging product issue (Ewen Chia’s Auto Blog Income Generator special edition delayed) first.

At this point, you’re already familiar with features-based selling and benefits-based selling,
shouldn’t that already help secure the customer?
You’re right, these are really powerful selling techniques and sales trainers like Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, Blair Singer have become rich off them.

But, there is one way to substantially increase your sales closure rate.
Again, my partner is going to nag at me, because I’ve already given it away for free in the Best Kept Business Secret course at BizExcellerator.com.

I’m starting to believe him, that giving people stuff for free, means they’re not likely to read it or take action.
Only when I charge them $1,000 for the course, will there be a stronger commitment for action.

I’ve been involved with Stuart’s Internet Marketing training recently, and only a handful of participants have taken action. Maybe you should charge more for the training, then you’ll have more people taking action, Stuart!

But here’s a real-world application of the sales insider secret.

I got a lot of it from my real estate mentor, Edwin Teo.
Using this technique we sold a good class bungalow in November last year.
If you’re familiar with property, there’re only a few hundred of such properties in Singapore.
Because the supply is limited, and the pool of people who can afford such properties is also limited, it’s difficult to close these deals.

But if you do, boy oh boy, a major payday!

In fact, the fees for this deal was in the high five figure amount.
Imagine this, a SINGLE deal amounts to more than what 80% of Singaporeans make in a year!
Just ONE deal.

Now here’s the secret.
“Needs-based selling“.

That was simple wasn’t it?
Go forth and embrace success.

I told you it was so simple and straight in front of your face that it’s a surprise more people aren’t successful.

If you need to, re-read the section on “Abraham Maslow Hierarchy of Needs” at the BizExcellerator Best Kept Business Secret course.

Successful selling, specifically seeing a quantum increase in sales (where we’re talking about sales increase by 5 times, 10 times, instead of 30% or 50%), requires a major paradigm shift.

The sales approach needs to go from product-centric (features or benefits-focus) to customer-focused.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs will help you pinpoint with laser-like accuracy the basis of greatest need and meet it with your product.
Even if you have the world’s best quality mineral water-based ice cubes and you’re selling it to an Eskimo, you’re going to need a lot of luck.

If you have a low-priced energy-efficient igloo heater, I’m fairly sure you’re going to be top salesman pretty soon.
Commonsensical, isn’t it? The application is more challenging though.

This paradigm shift will net you greater results.

To put the hands-on spin to Maslow’s framework, consider the following:
1) All human beings have needs
2) Meeting higher level needs may enable you to price your products and services at a premium
3) Emotional components are more important than intellectual appeals.

Emotion vs Intellect
Do you typically make decisions based on emotion (how you feel about a product) or intellect (your rational opinion about it).

Although you may sometimes use intellect as a basis, most of the time it will be based on an emotional decision.
For example, among the food choices, our diet might best be met by a high fiber, medium carbohydrate, low fat food combination. Maybe boiled barley and soy milk. Since this is our optimum food choice, we should be eating the same thing every day.

But we don’t!

Instead we crave (an emotional response) salmon, french fries, chocolate cake, ice-cream, because we want (an emotional response) rather than need (an intellectual response) these foods.

Is this logical? Shouldn’t we eat the ‘best food’ every day?

Our bodies will be in peak condition, won’t it?

Instead, emotion overrules logic!
Needs-based selling if executed correctly, will:

• have a high emotional component
• be customer-centric (but still must have some product focus too)

If you have questions regarding:

• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• needs-based selling
• emotional vs intellectual appeals

please leave a comment.

If you might find crafting of needs-based selling appeals, or examples useful, drop a comment too.

Needs-based selling is a very powerful too.
Because many people aren’t using it (or using it well), you will see massive increases in your results if used successfully.

Test it out and do report your results.

On to today’s topic.

Have you ever done anything new that you’re real excited about? (ok, silly question).

Were you really hyped about it?

It may have been starting a new relationship, going to a new school or starting a new job.

Remember how your first day was?

Simiarly, you may have had your Internet Marketing success hopes go up after attending an Internet Marketing seminar preview. The presenter might have said something along the lines of:

• Do you have a neuron, three fingers, one working eye and a computer with Microsoft Word? Yes! you can create a website!
• Did you know that Bert Ingley plays Madden NFL 06 for a living and makes great money!
• (fill in name) Internet Marketer just bought a TV station, succeeded in auctioning for a town in California, has 257 high-performance sports cars and hasn’t even driven half of them! or (insert your great achievement/expense here)

It’s easy to get mentally trapped. Get a euphoric high from hearing about this.
Darn it, if they can do it, so can I.

You might’ve signed up for the course, expecting to receive five figure paychecks like clockwork.

You go for the course, you go home, thinking to yourself, I can do this, I can do this!
You clock up 18 hour work days.
You are meeting people every day, exchanging ideas, you’re going to take over the business world.
Watch out Google, Yahoo! Ebay, Yahoo
You do this for 20 consecutive days.
You are exhausted, but never mind, everything’s just waiting for you.

You were super psyched, everything seems new, the world might’ve even seemed brighter.

Then bleep. (or hiss if you prefer)
What happened?

The Honeymoon Effect is what happened.

That’s when all the hyper, and gloss, and glamour, and thoughts of instant riches suddenly get ripped away. Cold, hard reality is revealed. You might have a ‘oh darn’ moment, or if you’re a little more honest a ‘oh shit, what have I got myself into’ moment.

What seemed possible, seems less possible. Maybe even impossible.

The honeymoon effect typically manifests itself as soon as an hour after you come up with the idea, or about a month into the project.

Is the honeymoon effect bad?
Not necessarily. It keeps out a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs.
It poses as a barrier of entry to the poseurs.

It is a double-edged sword though.
You will find yourself facing your moment of truth.
Glamour aside, is this a business you want to go in.
If not, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort, but quitting right now.

The honeymoon effect can be an effective tool to keep the team motivated.
Successful entrepreneurs are able to constantly renew this honeymoon effect for the team and for themselves.

If what you’re doing is:

• personally meaningful
• congruent with your attitudes, values and orientation
• adds value to the world

each morning you come to engage your project, it’ll be with a sense of purpose and commitment.You can boost your team’s morale by doing the same for them too.

Here’re 3 specific ways to employ the honeymoon effect:

• Focus on the macro, less on the micro: What is your mission? What is your purpose? How will you change the world? Frequently there is a focus on micro level, nitty-gritty tasks. Granted these are tiring, repetitive and need to be done, however viewed in the context of accomplishing the greater good, they are much more palatable.
• Action=Reaction: In a positive, learning environment, hand out kudos, high fives to your team members, encourage them to give them to other team members and to yourself too. As you adopt a ‘pay it forward‘ approach, there will be a goodwill multiplier effect. Whatever you give out, will come back to you multiplied.
• ‘What can we learn from this’ thinking: It’s inevitable to encounter negative experiences in the course of business. Some people feel down after a failure. But what’s more important is how we deal with it. Asking the question “how can we learn from this? What’s our takeaway?’ will help create a solution should the situation repeat itself (it usually does). Brainstorming and creating a solution will help yourself and the organization become bigger, better and stronger!

The Honeymoon effect is essential to all relationship dynamics, whether personal or in a business setting.

Work with it to make it work for you.

Stress might cause your blood pressure to rise, lower the oxygen supply to your brain, kill off more neurons than usual.
Stress CAN shorten your life. In extreme cases, Stress may bring on a heart attack and kill you.
During the recent world cup, some Brazil fans were so stressed their teams lost they had heart attacks.
In fact, some fans died from stress-related heart attacks when their teams lost.

To die because of a sport is especially taxing for the family who will inevitably also be stressed by having to make the funeral arrangements.Is all stress bad?
The psychologists and doctors are in agreement that distress (the ‘bad’ form of stress) is bad for you. On a prolonged basis, distress could bring about health-related conditions and put unnecessary stress on the heart.

As far as possible, it’s best to reduce the amount of unnecessary stress in one’s life.
Practise deep breathing, do creative visualization, anything to destress oneself from the rigors of our stressful lifestyle.

BUT on the other hand, is a stress-free life desirable.
Should we aim to isolate ourselves from any stressors (factors which bring about stress)?

Even if we were to live in a cave in the mountains, it might not necessarily mean a stress-free existence.
For one, there could be bears in the area, disease and illness could be more rampant there and not to mention the stress of not having a doctor around. And no Internet!

There is a silver lining to the stress storm cloud.
Eustress.
Eustress is the ‘good’ form of stress.
Coming from the Greek ‘eu’ meaning good or well, the good form of stress motivates us during moments when we are stressed.
Occasions where we face a massive challenge, yet come out ahead are when eustress manifest itself. Some of these eustress moments could be winning or achieving first place in a competition, finally earning that well-deserved promotion, proposing to the love of your life and having the other person accept your proposal. These are all examples of ‘good’ stress.

Can we create situations of eustress?
Definitely, by having clearly defined goals, and a well-thought out set of strategies to achieve our goals, we might feel some stress, however, it’s likely to be eustress, accompanied by a healthy dose of confidence that we’ll achieve our goals.

After all, a stress-free lifestyle might seem like a nirvana, however, it could turn out to be a bland personal hell.
Pick the challenging route, it might be more stressful, but the saying holds that whatever doesn’t kill us, only makes us stronger.

Embrace stress, you’ll be the better for it.

Marriage could top them all, though Mistress is also eight characters and …

People marry for lots of reasons, and almost every instance ends up in a marriage.
Some marry for money, some marry for fame, some marry because it’s time, while others marry due to parental pressure.
The best reason to marry for me, is to marry for love.

While I was going through marriage counselling, our marriage counsellor told us, it’s not love that sustains the marriage, but the marriage that sustains the love.
I can be quite dense sometimes, especially when it comes to love, relationships and marriage.
I know the concept of marriage intellectually, but I feel that marriage having emotional components, it’s something that my mind cannot fully fathom.

Men and marriage sometimes are like chalk and cheese.
Not because we don’t respect the institution of marriage, but because it may be less ‘task-oriented’ than work.
At work, we know we clock in the 9-to-5 workday (more often it’s a 9-to-9 workday), but with marriage, there are no official marriage rules, there is no martial handbook.

Sure there might be the bible, popular bestsellers like The Rules, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
But what do they really know about the intricacies of marriage?

And for what matter what do I REALLY know about marriage (compared to what I THINK I know about marriage).

Buddhist monk Adjahn Brahmavisimo said “To know and not do is not to know.”

Marriage for me is a long learning journey, being sensitive and knowing that the marriage was the first step in the process.
Marriage is a process where we begin as marital newbies, get used to how each other is REALLY like, as opposed to our pre-martial perception of each other.

When you wake up one day and realize the other person either doesn’t leave the toilet seat down, or leaves the toothpaste uncapped, you will then see their ‘intra-marriage’ persona. Some may run screaming, thinking their soulmate has metamorphosised into some sort of alien creature shortly after the marriage ceremony. Still others may wonder about the mysteries of marriage, whether it’s meant to be, whether they’re destined not to access membership to the married people’s club.

For me, there’s no question about it.
Marriage is a journey of exploration and discovery, it ‘marries’ the best of two people into a combination that’s greater than the sum of the parts.

I committed to the people over at Internet Marketing Singapore’s forums that i’d boost up the content count of the following:

• update this blog regularly, going from 12 posts before to 25 by Saturday.
• InternetMarketingCookbook.com to hit 45 pages of content from 20 now
• BizExcellerator.com to hit 45 pages of content from 20 now.
• BiancaWee.com, my daughter’s blog to go up with 5 pages of content
• WarcraftTanks.com, my new game domain to go up with 5 pages of content and a forum!

At stake? I’m gonna fork out $150 worth of refreshments at the next event on 24th July. If you’re interested in the programme details, drop a comment below and I’ll post the details.
Phew! It’s gonna be a busy week. I guess I better not touch Gunbound anymore this week!

Cheers!

Ok, do it now.

I’ll wait for you.

No, really, you need to do it.

Yes. now.

Ok, if you haven’t done it yet, you can do it later.

But you’re missing out.

Ladies and gentlemen, the number you have is the number of weeks you can expect to live!

No one lives forever, but the problem is that when you’re young, you think you’ll live forever. You feel invincible, you can do another and probably live till 150.

But as you grow older, you put on the pounds, you go through the daily grind of the job (if you’re unemployed), you worry about finding a job (if you’re unemployed), you worry about the next project/contract (if you run your own business), you worry about competitors (if you’re successful). So worry starts to dominate, more and more.

Added to that is the fact that the sands of the hourglass seem to be ticking faster and faster, or maybe it’s just because there doesn’t seem to be that many grains left in the upper chamber.

Regardless of the fact, most of us will live about 78 years. Maybe 90, maybe 120 if we’re lucky.

But beyond just the number, the quantity of time that’s left, there’s the quality as well.

Few people think about the legacy, the mark they left behind when they go. Maybe during the last few weeks, there’ll be a period of reflection, a moment of regret? a moment of satisfaction.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?

Can’t reflection begin much earlier?

Reflection can begin during the prime of our lives (the only thing most teenagers seem to reflect in, is a mirror)

By seeing what we are doing today and more importantly, ensuring that what we’re doing is something we’d be proud of doing, it’ll ensure that our week is well spent.

To do that may mean that we methodically plan our schedule. Business guru Tom Hopkins, asks himself constantly asks himself what the most significant thing he could be doing at that moment in time to keep himself in check.

After all our initial 4,000 weeks isn’t a lot to begin with. And if we look at the amount of time we have left, isn’t it time to take stock and make a change now?

think about it for a moment, is the ‘you’ in your emails, in your web postings, really you?

Or is it another you?

I’ve encountered people who wrote long voluminous postings on the net, who go into IRC and type much faster than me (and trust me i type pretty fast) and they’re like the equivalent of a verbal machine gun, firing off opinions and repartees faster than you can say ‘i told you so’.

And yet, at our real world meet ups, you go there and ask, hey, where’s that girl with the machine gun mouth. and someone points to a meek little girl in the corner. standing all alone. staring at her hands or her mobile phone.

you go up to her, chatting up a conversation.

‘hi, nice to finally meet you in person’

‘hi’

‘hey, what’ve you been up to?’

‘nothing’

‘you were writing about wakeboarding and swallowing lots of sea water. ha ha ha. are you still doing it? it sounds quite intense’

‘nope’

‘oh. ok. how was your day?’

‘okay’

almost every question is met with a monosyllabic answer.

gee. and i’m left wondering if this is the person whose online personality fills up every virtual rooms she ‘walks’ into.

hmm…

sociologists say that introverted individuals find the internet liberating. in there they’re the life of the party. they’re the ‘party girl’ or ‘party boy’ of every group chat. they’re the ones that dominate every online discussion, they must have the last word.

but offline, it’s a whole different story.

perhaps it’s something to do with the impersonality of the internet. where you can be anyone you want to be, to adopt an online persona, take up the moniker, Mistress Kat, or Love Goddess and play up that role. while in real life, they might be Mary the Librarian, or Tom the Gardener.

Online can be liberating, but for some who spend almost every waking hour outside of work being ‘online, all the time’. the intangible internet can be yet another illusory world, providing a respite from the rigours of daily life.

My colleague, Angie, related an incident while she was knocking on doors to solicit properties to sell in one of the HDB (housing development board) estates.

As she was walking around with her partner, an  elderly lady shooed her granddaughter away from the door.

“Hey, if you don’t study, see?” pointing at my colleague, “You will end up having to knock on doors and go begging to people!” she said as she started to close the door.

Angie’s colleague nudged her and said “hey, why don’t you let the lady know you have a college degree?”

Angie looked at her and said ‘never mind, forget it’

It’s strange isn’t it? society’s expectations. Is it an Asian thing? or a societal thing?

Does a high education mean you will necessarily take a white collar position, that you’ll join a corporation and become a suit? Is it ideal for every young boy and girl to aspire to become a doctor, surgeon, dentist, lawyer or banker?

Then who’ll clean our toilets, build our houses,  cook the food?

Society is a mix of all type of people. And social status is not merely reflected by one’s paycheck. If that were so, it’d merely mean that one’s self-esteem and self-worth is inextricably tied to one’s income earning ability.

That’s it, our value to society reflected in a string of numbers, preceded by a $ sign.

Unfortunately, many have bought into this idea, setting up a list of ‘things’ they must own and buy.

Recently, in preparation for my daughter’s arrival, i did a round of house cleaning. i sold and gave away a lot of items i accumilated over the years. That set of Nikon SLR camera equipment which i’d spent about $2,000 i gave away to my church. A whole bunch of books which I’d painstakingly starved during break time at school to save enough to buy those books, i’d also given away. For the items I sold, I barely recouped 10% of what I’d originally paid for them. In short, everything went for close to nothing.

But at the end of the day, I believe a better metric to determine one’s value and contribution during the time on this earth is measured by the relationships one has whether with family or friends.

On the deathbed, it’s rare that anyone says, i wish i bought a bigger car, or i wish i spent more hours in the office. Rather the refrain you often hear is ‘I should’ve spent more time with my family’ ‘I wish I was there when my son was growing up’

It may be too late for those who have passed, but for those who are here now, there is still time.

“What will you do with a million”, I ask.

“First I’ll buy a car, then the entire collection of movies I’ve always want, then take a year-long vacation to Europe, I’ll eat in the finest restaurants,” they said.

“And then?”

“Then I’ll… I’ll….Hmm” and they look confused.

“Ok, I’ll put the rest in the bank”

“Sounds like you need about $100,000. Why not work towards it then?”

“Well, I would like to. But it’s too much work”.

From what I see there’s two issues.

First, if you don’t know why you’re doing something, then you’re not likely to achieve it.

If my friend only needed $100,000, why’d he wish for $1 million?

On that note, why not wish for $10 million or $100 million.

Second, if you’re not committed to achieving something, and you’re not motivated to achieve it, guess what? If a goal/dream/hope true, it’s only because of:

• your direct effort
• luck

Luck, in this case, refers to scenarios like winning the lottery, having a distant relative leave you something from their estate, have something truly miraculous happen that makes your wish come true. You’re looking at odds of one in a million, or one in a billion. Not impossible, but highly, highly unlikely.
On the other hand, direct effort leads directly to the goal. However, between what you’re doing and what you plan to achieve, there’s a monster of a time navigating through obstacles, setbacks and disappointment.

Chances are you’ll be push against the wall, and more than once you’ll want to give up. You’ll also question your sanity in wanting to achieve the goal, you’ll also be asking yourself whether it’s worth the sacrifice in your family time, time you could’ve be watching a rerun, gaming on the net, sleeping or simply doing nothing.

the one reason why some people succeed and others don’t is because the ones who succeed sometimes do because they have no choice. They’re dead broke, out of a job, and making that next sale is the key to putting food on the table. That’s the situation, the “World’s Greatest Salesman’ Joe Girard found himself in many years ago. And in relating the story, this strive towards personal excellence has remained with him.

Another way is to make a commitment to someone whom you can trust to be ruthlessly committed to helping you achieve your goals. Give them all your cash and ask them to hold it for you. If you fail to achieve the tasks for the week, they can then donate the entire amount to charity. Rinse and repeat. See how far you are along within 2 months. I guarantee you’ll see a difference.
If you’re left with no choice but to go up, there’s only one direction you can move in.

in singapore there is a phenomenon where parents do crazy things to get their kids to school, even to the extent of submitting their resumes to the school in hopes of getting picked…to volunteer of all things, to do free stuff to benefit the school.

so you have high power criminal lawyers going down to primary schools to give talks about the law.

I mean, isn’t this an abuse of the schools authority?

here’s the sad part.

i’ve become one of those parents who is willing to do crazy things to get his kid into a good school.

Since my daughter, bianca, was born, i’ve been thinking through various options to get her into a good school.

should i go with my goal to become a high power internet entrepreneur, hopefully dazzle the school’s administration and get her in on celebrity?

should i enroll her in classes, get her on the math olympiad team, beat everyone else in the asia-pacific and get her in that way? or should i, should i….. darn, there are so many options, so little time.

just as i was about to do something silly, my wife tells me she’s called her alma mater and our daughter qualifies for priority entry into Henry Park Primary School (one of the premier grade schools in Singapore).

Now to figure out how to get those letters out of the mailbox before the mailman comes for the pickup..

getting the blog up was quite a nightmare.

couldn’t figure out what to do about the SQL databases.

luckily, i got some help from this page.

I’m planning to update this blog regularly, so stay tuned faithful readers!

Just the other day a user, katchykid put up an interesting post
—
Relook at the rules
Before sex education even begins, the government should perhaps relook at their laws.

In Singapore, the official age to have sex is 16 years old.

The official age to see RA movies is 21 years old.

So someone can actually have sex at 16 years old but cant watch RA movies at 21 years old. Okie now this is the catch, suppose if 2 teens do a tammy, they cant watch themselves after(provided their handphone dont get stolen).

—

Tammy is the infamous Nanyang Polytechnic student who decided to capture a moment (10 minutes worth) of physical intimacy between herself and her male friend (relationship unknown).

While there will continue to be stalwarts in the island republic who will vehemently protest everything they see on TV, radio, movies, the Internet, it’ll be more challenging for the authorities to mediate between controlling ‘undesirable’ content, while attempting to cultivate an arts and media industry (which traditionally thrives on stretching and sometimes breaking boundaries).

Granted, we could go the way of Iranian filmmakers and produce movies with innuendo and analogies, however, I feel the lack the severely repressed environment to create such expression. and let’s face it, most Singaporeans (myself included) are:

• too lazy (because everything else has been spoonfed to us)
• too tired (because we’ve pulled an extra long overtime shift at work, coming home at midnight, instead of 9pm)
• or too indifferent (bochap) because we feel that things will not change regardless of whether any action is taken.

I’ve always believed in one tenet, that is, if nothing is done, nothing will happen. if something is done, something will happen.

The question is whether we have to wait for the teenage posters of the stink forum to grow up and change the world around them, or if we will do it now.