There is a saying by motivational speaker Zig Ziglar that goes “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

For most of my 20-year career (most of it spent online, thought the same principles of relationship building and business building apply as much to virtual business as much as brick-and-mortar ones), I’ve focused on a couple of values:

• Say what you do when you teach, but more importantly do what you say.
• Understand the expectations of your students/customers, then go beyond it.
• Always aim to be better.

A mentor, who owned about 20 lifestyle brand stores in Singapore, explained the concept of value this way: “I watch how my employees work. Some will work at parity. You pay them $2,000 and they’ll put in $2,000 of effort.

“Most will put in half the effort of what you’re paying them. They’re the underperformers.

“I look out for those who work as if they’re being paid twice what I’m paying them. These are the ones who become the store managers and executives at the head office.”

Some of you may know that I’ve been in “retirement” mode for the past 8 years or so, about the time my older daughter was born.

I had built up my Internet business which was generating passive income, leaving me to spend time with my older daughter, and later my younger daughter when she was born.

Online marketing gave me the opportunity to have the ultimate liberty – the freedom over my own time and the freedom to work from my home or at the recreation room at my apartment. (I’m not really keen on drinking coffee at Starbucks all day…besides I’ve had better java elsewhere).

So whether it was managing affiliates in Asia or in the US, I’m fortunate to have had the flexibility to create my own consulting gigs and build my business around my lifestyle.

I still don’t subscribe to the idea of building and running a business in an hour a day or doing a 4-hour workweek. If you’re driven and passionate about what you do, you will probably end up doing more than an 8- or 10-hour workday. You just have the freedom to take a 2-week vacation after a long project.

Since turning 41 last month, I’ve been in the mode of working on projects which keep me engaged and are also projects that I can see myself doing a year, 2 years, 10 years from now.

Tip: If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing now, even if you hire employees later, it won’t make it anymore enjoyable. It can be quite painful. So tread carefully.

Earlier this year, I wanted to launch one of my “backburner” projects – the lifehacking books which would eventually become the Mindware Recode and the other books that Tamar Weinberg and I have written.

It’s time to bring it to the next phase.

I’m starting a training program which will focus on 2 areas:

• Life Hacks: Strategies and stuff you can use to enhance the quality of your life – your health, your relationships, your personal productivity.
• Biz Hacks: Whether you’re a business owner, a solopreneur or an employee, you can take some of the techniques I’ll be sharing to help improve your effectiveness in the business world.

If you want to think of it this way, it’s taking the system and techniques that I’ve written about in the Mindware Recode and using it to “recode” yourself to become better, fast and achieve more!

Interested?

Here is the thing.
I am aware of product launch strategies, having big-bang launches, working with joint venture partners, having them mail to their 100,000-strong mailing lists.

Think of this as the anti-product launch.

I plan to work with small numbers, I plan to have an application process, I will be reviewing each person, possibly doing a further interview/discussion over email or Skype. This is to make sure that I can help you.

I’ll be focusing on sharing the systems I have developed which tend to be more “slow burn”. It will take some time to build it, it will take some effort, you won’t make a million bucks overnight. I think that stuff only works with lottery tickets.

What I want to do is find 5 people who would be a good fit for the group and kick the project off that way. If I can’t help you, I’ll let you know and I’ll make a recommendation if there’s a book or other resource that might help you.

As of 2.49pm, Monday, 13 Oct, I have shortlisted 3, so I have slots for another 2. This is not a scarcity ploy, I want to work with a small group with whom I can help make a difference. There will be no miracle “oh, we’ve opened up x slots”. It will be just the 5 slots.

Maintaining a good reputation and delivering quality have and will continue to be important for me, so this will be where the bulk of my time will be spent. I focus on specific, actionable strategies, so if you’re a believer in making dreamboards, then doing nothing to make it come true, this won’t be for you.

I’m structuring the program so that you can participate whether you’re in Asia, Europe or North America. I’ll also be organizing monthly online meetups via voice conference, Google Hangouts or some of the new services I’ve been testing out.

If you’re interested, you can fill in this survey.

I read all responses (just like I did for the Mindware Recode survey) and reply.

If I feel you’re a good match, I’ll ping you with info about the program.
It’s an ongoing program, you are welcome to stay as long as you like and leave when you want.

You are welcome to message me with any questions or post in the comments below.

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Questions:
-> What are you working on now?

My main areas of focus are:
I’m writing ebooks which I publish on the Amazon Kindle platform, which tend to be in the humor or fiction genre.
I’m planning to write more often at WhoIsAndrewWee.com and build up the list and focus more on email marketing.
I’m building up affiliate campaigns (usually more cost-per-sale offers which have a much higher payout than cost-per-action (CPA) offers)

-> How does the training program work? How much does it cost? Is there a money-back guarantee?

It will work like a monthly membership, there’s a monthly fee.

The first 5 will get an attractive price and will be “grandfathered” so your membership fee will be locked in, unless you quit.

There will be a “no-questions-asked” money-back guarantee. Maintaining a community is important to me and selecting the members via a screening/interview process will help ensure the community remains high quality. I’ve also run my own membership sites before, so I’ve got a pretty good handle on moderating the community.

-> Is this a money making thing? Can’t you help me for free?

Yes, it’s a profit-driven venture. I have to feed my family too. I’ve always focused on making a business viable, else it becomes a charity. I’ll show you how I build my businesses, so you can replicate the same techniques in your own business. The main factors in how successful you will be tend to rely on how consistent and focused you are on doing what you’re supposed to do. (You’ll get what you’re supposed to get).

The “help me for free, I’ll give you half my profit” request comes up quite often, especially at entrepreneur start-up events. I’ve also spend time giving someone career advice for 1-2 hours for free. What I’ve found is that people value something based on how much they paid for it. Specifically, if you’ve personally invested in something, you’re more likely to take action. You can read up the analogy about the farmer eating eggs and bacon, then telling his son that the chicken is invested in breakfast, but the pig is committed… I’ve done free stuff, the experience has not turned out to be positive. If anything, think about how much you should be investing in yourself.

–

Here is the survey link.

And if you have questions, drop me a mail via my contact form.

If so, stop reading this and head elsewhere.

If not, read on.

The following steps will help if you want to be successful in business and/or your personal life:

• Having goals
• Having a way to reach those goals
• Reaching those goals

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? I guess most of us know what we need to do. But we don’t do it. The execution is a different thing.

I’ve worked out some steps that help me get what I need to get done about 95% of the time (I’m human after all).

Let me break them down.

Having goals: There are hundreds, if not thousands of books, covering how to define a goal and check that it’s something meaningful, specific and achievable.

So, sure, it’s worth dreaming that you want to have a million dollars in the bank, even if you’re $50,000 in debt now. You’re entitled.

But even if you have that big goal, you probably don’t have the steps to reach it.

So while every other motivational “guru” tells you to “dream big” and “manifest your destiny”, I feel that a lot of it is rubbish.

Sure, some of it may work, if you keep thinking about a whole bunch of stuff every day, a proportion of it is sure to come true because of sheer luck. But most of it won’t. If you do nothing, you get nothing. No amount of happy thoughts can change that.

If you’re dreaming big, thinking big but not grinding big to make it a reality, all those dreams will turn out to be an impossible mountain to climb. Can anyone blame you for getting demotivated? If dreaming about your goals made them reality, maybe you should go around marketing yourself as a genie and making people’s dreams come true.

If you’re in the real world, it takes more effort to make big dreams into reality. Let’s start with setting goals.

What works for me is to have a big macro goal – say to grow my business to $10 million a year and leave $500,000 for each of my two kids in a trust fund by December 31, 2019 – and look at it constantly. That’s my end goal or destination goal.

It also helps to have multiple smaller milestone goals – stuff I can achieve in this month (End August), by the end of the quarter (End September), by the end of the year (December) and within a year (December 2015).

I have this stuff in a Google Doc so I can refer to it from whichever computer I’m working on and I can also access it on my phone. Looking at it, keeping your eye on the end zone is what can drive you to get stuff done. To be contantly moving forward. It may mean the difference between getting some work done during my downtime while waiting to pick the kids from school. Having no goals may mean I goof off instead.

Which leads to the next point.

Having a way to reach those goals: Just dreaming about something, posting Facebook or Twitter updates about it doesn’t mean that you will get it done.

If wishing or dreaming about something made it come true, we’d all be happy, wealthy and contented. But, that’s simply not true.

So once you have a goal, the next step is to work out concrete steps to make it a reality.

When I was more active as an affiliate, I had spreadsheets where I listed the payout per offer, the number of leads I needed to generate, the amount I had budgeted for traffic. This gave me a rough idea how much income an offer could potentially generate before I spent the first cent.

Since the offer payout data is already available on the affiliate network, the traffic cost is listed on the ad network’s self-serve or insertion order, the only moving variables are how much you’re willing to pay for traffic and the number of leads you’re shooting for. With the formulas worked into Google Doc spreadsheet cells, you can adjust variables till you find a model that works for you. If needed, having multiple instances of your formulas allow you to test the viability and scalability of a high payout, low volume finance offer versus the returns of a low payout, high volume download offer. It’s not rocket science, but merely a matter of doing your homework before you get started.

The next step once you have a roadmap is getting down to working out the specific steps to getting what you want to achieve.

I had a daily task list of three goal-oriented tasks I needed to get done by the end of the day to make sure I made progress. Getting the three things done gave me a concrete way to measure the progress I’m making and a rough idea how close or far I am from my goal. I still use the same system in my consulting work and in my own projects now.

Ok, I get that some of you may hate structure, finding it restrictive and may instead choose to do whatever is the most urgent at that point in time, so it might be getting customers, or working on the product or service more, or doing research, or reading.While this may work for a while and seem as productive as a stuctured approach, in the long run, you may lose sight of your goal (or no goal, cos you don’t have one…) I’ve been there and done that.

What works for me now is spending 6-8 hours a day working on your core goal and having a flexible 1-2 hours to take care of unexpected stuff. Try it and see if it works for you.

If you have a defined goal for what you’re going to do during that 2 hours in Starbucks and you get it done, you’ll have a greater sense of achievement and be more motivated to get the next thing done.

One tenet about motivation is if you set yourself a series of small goals and get them done, you’ll have a concrete way of measuring your progress and know that you are moving somewhere. In gaming/gammification times, you’re unlocking “achievements”, even though you haven’t levelled up yet (achieved your core goal).

Keeping yourself accountable is also a big part of making sure you’re on the right track and moving on the right path. That’s one of the reasons why I have challenges like the Kindle writing challenge (still ongoing) where I put $6,000 on the line.

They say that the thought of losing $1 is a much stronger motivated than the thought of making $1, ie: the fear of losing something far outweighs the thought of gaining something. So this is one of the drivers I use to get my goals completed. I hear that a lot of people are trying to overcome procrastination, have difficulty focusing on important stuff. If you have a game plan in place, you’re putting skin in the game and putting in a pain point (ie: financial pain) to make sure stuff gets done, then you will mysteriously see unproductive time spent on Facebook, YouTube and maybe TMZ/RadarOnline melt away.

Reaching your goals:  So you have defined what you want, you know what you need to do, but how do you get it done?

Getting motivated to get something done is a major stumbling block for many. Do you know?

On an rational and intellectual level we know what’s good for us (passing on the hot fudge sundae, getting an hour’s worth of exercise every day, putting a consistent 2 hours each day into writing the book), but we are swayed on an emotional level – procrastinating the task will help us avoid pain, pushing it till tomorrow means we can go to bed earlier, spend time on a fun project, etc.

All that stuff will set up an unhealthy pattern, a habit which will sabotage your core goal.

But it’s not completely your fault. These patterns could have developed because you had a job where you did 6 hours of work each day then had 2 hours to mess around on other stuff. While that works while you are a salaried employee, it doesn’t work as well when you’re working on your own project or working on bringing your business to the next level.

That’s one of the reasons why I wrote my “Mindware Recode” guide. It’s a combination of strategies I’ve developed over the years from the time I started my consultancy in 2003, testing and refining various strategies along the way.

Like it or not, your “inner game” (what goes on in your head and how you feel about something) affects your behavior. Your actions affect the results you get. If you think about it (pun intended), your thoughts affect your actions which affects your outcome. If you keep focusing on the worst possible outcome, testing a whole bunch of campaigns and getting zero leads, it has a higher chance of turning into a self-fulling prophesy.

So what I do in my book is to show you why you are acting the way you are and how you can make some changes to get better results. Whether you are new at something or already experienced, I bet you’re experiencing blockages which you haven’t been able to resolve.

The project came about because I noticed a trend in the types of questions I was getting about how to build a business and check that you’re on the right track.

Being able to overcome challenges  and remove blockages (whether real or psychological) is something everyone has to deal with.

If I can help you get to the next level, be sure to check out my Mindware Recode guide.

PS: I want you to be 100% satisfied. My book comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. If  you don’t like it, drop me a note and I’ll refund your full purchase price within 24 hours.