Money Matters

Three gentlemens were all brought to the same emergency room and all of them died before they arrived. Just as one of the nurses was about to put the toe tag on the American, he stirred and opened his eyes. The doctors and nurses Astonished and asked him what happened.

"Well," said the American, "I remember the crash, and then there was a beautiful light, and then the Canadian and the Scot and I were standing at the gates of heaven. St. Peter approached us and said that we were all to young to die. So, with the donation of $50, we could return to earth. So of course I pulled out my wallet and gave him the $50, and the next thing I knew I was back here."

"That's amazing!" said one of the doctors, "But what happened to the other two?"

"Last I saw them," replied the American, "the Scot was haggling over the price and the Canadian was waiting for the government to pay his."

Growth Investing vs Value Investing

Before getting any deeper on stock investing, you must realize that there are styles of stock investing - growth investing and value investing.

Value Investing
Value investing is the strategy of selecting stocks that trade for less than what they are really worth. Value investors keep looking for stocks that are under priced but have excellent financial record. This information can be obtained by looking at the financial statements (balance sheet, income statement). Value investors typically take into consideration attributes like low price to earnings ratio (P/E), price to book ratio (P/B), price to sales ratio (P/S) and high dividend yields. In short, value is defined based on low valuations (low price ratios and high dividend yields) and slow growth (low growth rates for earnings, sales, book value, and cash flow).

Growth Investing
Growth investing works exactly opposite to that of value investing. Growth investors focus on stocks with faster growth potential. Growth investing is the strategy of selecting stocks that show signs of faster growth. Growth investors keep looking for stocks that will grow faster compared to its industry or the overall market. Growth investors focus on stocks trading at high P/E, P/B and P/S ratio and do not care much about dividend yields. In short, growth is defined based on fast growth (high growth rates for earnings, sales, book value, and cash flow) and high valuations (high price ratios and low dividend yields).

Value versus Growth
Value investors generally plan to hold the stock for a longer duration, since they believe over a period the stock will come out with flying colors. Value investors are generally patient investors. Warren Buffet is well known for value investing. On the other hand, growth investors believe that soon the company will grow rapidly and so will its stock price. Growth investors are generally in for short time frame compared to value investors. George Soros is well known for growth investing. In general, value stocks tend to hold up better during stock market downturns.

A guide to achieve whatever you want in life

THERE WAS ONCE A MAN WHO WAS LOST. He came across an old man and asked him for directions. The old man asked him if he knew where he currently was. He replied that he did not know. The old man asked him again if he knew where he wanted to go. The lost man again replied that he did not know. The old man said, "If you don't know where you currently are and if you don't know where you want to go, it does not really matter which direction you take. 'Anywhere' will do because you will never get 'anywhere', whichever way you take."

To achieve what we want in life for example financial success and happiness, it is essential that we know where we are now and where we want to go. If our career is going nowhere, the results we have been wishing for never happens or the opportunities we hope for never seem to come knocking, chances are we don't have clear, defined goals.

Goal-setting is not just dreaming or wishing. Dreaming and wishing are fine. They are expressions of desires so many of us have. But to achieve what we want in life, we need a sense of purpose. We need to set goals. "It is impossible to advance properly in life without goals.

Here is a four-step guidelines to achieving what we want in life:
1. Self Evaluation: To Know Where Are We Now?
2. Goals Setting: To Know Where Do We Want To Go?
3. Planning: To Know How Do We Get There?
4. Action: Do It Now!

There are 2 more activities that can help us to move faster towards achieving our goals. It's like putting a 'turbocharger' in our vehicle as we journey to success.

Below are the 2 activities that speeding up our journey:
5. To Know Why We Want That Goal
6. Visualise Our Achievement

Life is a game with few players and many spectators. Those who watch are the hordes who wander through life with no dreams, no goals and no plans even for tomorrow. Do not pity them. They made their choice when they made no choice."

The most powerful businessperson - Steve Jobs

Fortune Magazine recently came out with a list of 25 most powerful people in business. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the man behind the popular iPod, is named the world's most powerful businessman.

What inspire me about Steve Jobs is his millionaire mindset of turning crushing failure into resounding success story. Steve co-founded Apple at the age of 21 in 1976. Within 4 years, the company was listed on the stock exchange and Steve was worth US$217 million at the age of 25.

As Apple continued its phenomenal growth, it was decided that professional mangement had to be hired to run the huge organisation. So in 1983, Steve hired John Scully to be the CEO. However, within two years, the CEO and directors at Apple could not get along with Steve Jobs and stripped him of all his duties, forcing him to resign from the company. To make the things worse, Apple sued Steve for neglecting his duties.

While those in the business world wrote him off, Steve who possessed the millionaire mindset, took it as a huge learning experience and took the proactive action of starting a new and better company called NeXT computers. He believed that he could develop a range of hardware and software that would be better than Apple at that time.

Did he succeed? Unfortunately, NeXT's hardware division became a huge failure. Undaunted, he again took the feedback and went on to found Pixar Animation Studio, which became a huge success in creating the first breakthrough fully digitally animated move 'Toy Story'.

In the meaning time, Apple Computer was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1995 after suffering from internal mismanagment and lack of new product innovation. The company was making losses of $800 million to $1 billion a year and its share price dropped from a high of $18 to $3.80. Believing that he could save Apple, Steve Jobs agreed to return as CEO for a nominal pay of $1. When Steve took over, he fired all the unproductive executives and spearheaded the launch of revolutionary products like iMac, iPod and iTunes. The revolutionary operating system he developed at NeXT was then evolved into the highly popular Mac OS X. As a result of these successful products, Apple turned its $1 billion loss into $1.3 billion in profits by 2005. Its share price also rose from $3.80 to a high of $75!

Looking back, Steve realized that if he never got fired from Apple, he would never have founded NeXT and Pixar Animation. If not for Pixar, he would never have become a pioneer in digital animation and if not for NeXT software he developed, Apple would never have the Mac OS X operating system that has made Apple a huge success today. It is for this reason that many millionaires believe that 'everything happens for a reason' and that 'adversity is often opportunity in disguise' provided you learn from your experiences and continue to take consistent action!

Following is the list of Fortune 'Power 25':

1. Steve Jobs, CEO and Chairman, Apple


2. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corp


3. Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs


4. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Google


5. Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway


6. Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO, Exxon Mobil


7. Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft


8. Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO, General Electric


9. Katsuaki Watanabe, President, Toyota


10. A.G. Lafley, Chairman and CEO, Procter & Gamble


11. John Chambers, Chairman and CEO


12. Li Ka-shing, Chairman, Cheung Kong Holdings/Hutchison Whampoa


13. Lee Scott, CEO, Wal-Mart


14. Lakshmi Mittal, steel magnate


15. Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase


16. Mark Hurd, Chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard


17. James McNerney, Chairman and CEO, Boeing


18. Marius Kloppers, CEO, BHP Billiton


19. Steve Schwarzman, CEO, Blackstone


20. Carlos Slim, Chairman, TelMex and Carso Foundation


21. Steve Feinberg, CEO, Cerberus


22. Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo


23. Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group


24. Bob Iger, CEO, Walt Disney


25. Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO, LVMH

11 Malaysian companies that made over RM1 billion

Followings are the only 11 companies that listed on Bursa Malaysia achieve a profit of over RM1 billion for their latest fiscal year and you might want to consider their stocks.

1. Malayan Banking Bhd (stock-code 1155) - RM3.25billion
2. MISC Bhd (stock-code 3816) - RM2.89billion
3. Telekom Malaysia Bhd (stock-code 4863) - RM2.3o billion
4. Genting Bhd (stock-code 3182) - RM2.24billion
5. Tenaga Nasional Bhd (stock-code 5347) - RM2.16billion
6. YTL Corporation Bhd (stock-code 4677) - RM1.85billion
7. Public Bank Bhd (stock-code 1295) - RM1.79billion
8. IOI Corporation Bhd (stock-code 1961) - RM1.65billion
9. Bumiputra-Commerce Holdings Bhd (stock-code 1023) - RM1.61billion
10. Sime Darby Bhd (stock-code 4197) - RM1.60billion
11. Plus Expressways Bhd (stock-code 5052) - RM1.10billion

Always remember to buy on weakness and sell on strength!

MAHSING Group (stock-code 8583)

Profile of Mahsing
Mah Sing is an established developer with strong cash balances, low gearing, solid management and good track record. Mahsing is one of very few property stocks which survived the 1997-1998 Asia Econony Recession. Currently, Mahsing has 14 projects spread across the Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Baru. Recently, Mahsing has been awarded 'Best Development Malaysia' Award at the 13th International Property Award 2007 in association with CNBC in London for its Damansara Legenda project in Petaling Jaya.

Opportunity
According to a source, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait investors are eyeing a strategic stake in Mahsing to complete part of the Middle East - Southeast Asia property value chain. Based on closing price at 1.71 on 12 Nov 2007, Mah Sing has been trading at 9 times and 7 times for financial year 2008 and 2009 respectively. Mahsing is also reported to be trading at a deep 40 per cent discount to its revised net asset value of RM2.86 as estimated by Macquarie Research. CIMB (target price of RM3.00), Aseambankers (target price of RM3.00), Deutsche Bank (target price of RM3.02) and SJ Securities (target price of RM3.15) have all placed a buy on Mah Sing stock. Besides, the company which has declared 40 percent of its net profit will be given back to shareholders in terms of dividends for financial year 2007. The group's market capitalisation has doubled to over RM1billion to date from RM511 million as at end 2006.

Active Income Vs Passive Income

Active Income is when you work, you get paid. You don't work, you don't get paid. Basically, you only get paid for the personal effort that you invest and your payment is one time.

For exampe, you may work 40 hours in a week and you will be paid by your employer for exactly 40 hours. Another words, you are trading your time for dollars. This is often referred to as sweat-equity. If you want to earn only active income, you can simply just get a job. But, having a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) will never provide you the time freedom and lifestyle you are searching for.

Passive Income (also referred to as residual or recurring income) is when you work once, but continue to get paid over and over again. In other words, you do the actual work one time, but you are paid repeatedly for that work. The income continues to be generated after the initial effort has been expended.

For example, let's say you work in January and you produce a certain level of results. With passive income, you will be paid on those results in February, March and every month thereafter. This is the continual payment for work that was completed in the past. With passive income, you can make money even while you sleep. Do you know that it is also possible to make money even though you are no longer alive? Recently, Forbes.com reported that Elvis Presley is the top-earning dead celebrities with US$49 million in year 2007. In the second place came Beatle John Lennon with US$44 million. This concept is incredibly powerful!

Where is your largest source of income currently coming from? If it’s active income, what happens if you lose your job? How long can you survive? Most people think that losing their job only happens to someone else. What about if you become ill and can no longer work? Who looks after you then? You must assume that any source of income could dry up at any moment. Instead, you should start working towards creating multiple source of passive income for yourself and your family. When is the best time to create passive income? The answer is while you still have the ability to earn active income because having passive incomes helps protect you against the potential impact if you lose your job.

How much must you live on?

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07
Favorite foods: fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring, fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding


United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week: $341.98
Favorite foods: spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken


Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City
Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25
Favorite foods: sashimi, fruit, cake, potato chips


Italy: The Manzo family of Sicily
Food expenditure for one week: 214.36 Euros or $260.11
Favorite foods: fish, pasta with ragu, hot dogs, frozen fish sticks

Great Britain: The Bainton family of Cllingbourne Ducis
Food expenditure for one week: 155.54 British Pounds or $253.15
Favorite foods: avocado, mayonnaise sandwich, prawn cocktail, chocolate fudge cake with cream


Kuwait: The Al Haggan family of Kuwait City
Food expenditure for one week: 63.63 dinar or $221.45
Family recipe: Chicken biryani with basmati rice


Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca
Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09
Favorite foods: pizza, crab, pasta, chicken


China: The Dong family of Beijing

Food expenditure for one week: 1,233.76 Yuan or $155.06
Favorite foods: fried shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce


Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-JeziornaFood expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27
Family recipe: Pig's knuckles with carrots, celery and parsnips


Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Family recipe: Okra and mutton


Mongolia: The Batsuuri family of Ulaanbaatar Food expenditure for one week: 41,985.85 togrogs or $40.02
Family recipe: Mutton dumplings


Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo Food expenditure for one week: $31.55
Family recipe: Potato soup with cabbage


Bhutan: The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03
Family recipe: Mushroom, cheese and pork


Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

Goh Tong defied the odds in building Genting resort

Lim Goh Tong, who built the Genting Highland casino resort from scratch in a place that no one would have dared to venture more than 40 years ago, arrived in the Malaya in 1937 from China after a 10-day voyage with only RM2 in his pocket but persevered to become one of the richest men in the world.

Born on Feb 28 in 1918 in the Anxi district in Fujian Province, he worked as a carpenter with his uncle upon his arrival in Malaya, sold sundries and started a scrap-metal business.

He saved up enough money and set up Kien Huat Construction in 1950, which remains his flagship private entity. One of his major breakthroughs was as a subcontractor for the Old Klang Road development project in Kuala Lumpur. He later worked on a RM300,000 project to develop a drainage system from the Kuala Lumpur city centre to Pantai.

His competence paved the way for Kien Huat Construction to become a government-licensed contractor, which resulted in him obtaining a string of contracts. Among the major projects undertaken by Kien Huat were Penang's Air Itam Dam, Kelantan's Kemubu Irrigation Scheme and the Cameron Highlands Hydro Electric Power Project. It was while working on the dam in Cameron Highlands in 1964 that he saw the possibility of developing a hill resort nearer to Kuala Lumpur.

His vision for developing Genting Highlands hinged on building a road to the resort site 1800m above sea level. He began work in 1965. Well-known for his hands-on approach, he was worker, project manager and engineer for the project.

In 1968, he founded Genting Bhd, which was granted the only casino licence by the Federal government. Lim completed the road and opened the casino in 1971.

He has tranformed the hill-top gaming and entertainment complex into the powerhouse of his multi-billion-dollar empire. His leadership also propelled Genting to emerge as a blue chip on the stock market, diversifying into plantations, paper, oil and gas and power.

In the late 1990s, his children gradually took over the operations of the Genting group due to his poor health. Lim Goh Tong, who is one of the world's richest men, died yesterday at 11.20am on Wednesday, 23 October 2007, at the aged of 89.

Richard Branson's million-dollar mindset

While on vacation at Beef Island (part of the Virgin islands), Richard Branson and his wife were trying to catch a flight back to Puerto Rico, but the local Puerto Rican was cancelled. There were no other flights out that day. As a result, the airport was full of stranded passengers. Instead of seeing it as a problem, Richard Branson's millionaire got him to see it as a challenging opportunity and took a very different set of actions.

Richard Branson made a few calls to aircraft charter companies and managed to charter a private plane to Puerto Rico for $2000. Knowing that there were many stranded passengers who needed to catch a flight out badly, he divided the price by the number of seats, borrowed a blackboard and wrote 'Virgin Airways $39 single flight to Puerto Rico'. Within an hour, with the blackboard in his hand, he had sold every single seat! As they landed at Puerto Rico, one passenger said to Richard: "Virgin Airways isn't too bad. Smarten up the service a little and you could be in business."

This is how Virgin Airways was started by Richard Branson. Today, Virgin Airways is a global budget airline and one of the most profitable in the world. The amazing thing about Richard Branson was that he did not use any of his money to solve his problem. He used his millionaire mindset to turn a problem into an opportunity which made him a billionaire today.

CASHFLOW 101

Many small business owners fail due to the lack of capital, real-life experience and basic accounting skills. Many investors think investing is risky simply because they cannot read financial statements. If you want to improve your business and investing skills, i strongly encourage you to play CASHFLOW 101.


CASHFLOW 101 is an educational board game that is created by Robert Kiyosaki, the author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". Through this game, you can learn how to take control of my personal finances, build a business through proper cash flow management and invest with greater confidence in real estate and other businesses.




I like to play this game with my family and friends. Each time we play, we learn different lessons. The major benefit that I got from this game is that it expose me to the fundamentals of accounting, investing and finance. As a result, it increase my confidence in investing in the stock market and more open to business opportunity. Personally, i feel that CASHFLOW 101 is more than just a board game because this game can reflect the player's personalities and the way the player handles money, and more importantly it helps to change the way the player think about money on the inside.

How Most People Lose Money in the Stock Market?

It's quite common to hear people talking about how much money they lost in the stock market. But have you ever think how majority lose their money? The answer is they just lack of financial intelligence! We have to know that when we buy a stock, we are actually buying a share, an ownership of an ongoing business. Instead, most people treat stocks like lottery tickets, buying and and selling based on predictions of whether the price will go up or down in the short term. They treat stock exchange like a casino. Without financial intelligence, how do these people make decision on buying and selling stocks? The answer is based on greed and fear.

Scenarios when people buying a stock out of greed:

• Everyone is buying the stock
• They receive a hot tip from a friend
• The stock is rated 'strong buy' by stockbrokers
• They see the stock price rising and other people making money.
• During economic booms or bull market where majority of stock prices are shooting up

Consequences when people buying a stock out of greed:

• Buying stock at a price that beyond its true intrinsic value
• Experience the stock price dropping the moment they buy it

Scenarios when people selling a stock out of fear:

• Everyone is selling the stock
• The stock is rated strong sell by stockbrokers
• They see the stock failing which triggers a fear of more loses
• During war or recession when pay is cut and jobs are lost

Consequences when people buying a stock on previous scenarios:

• Selling stock at a price that below its true intrinsic value
• Experience the stock price shooting up the moment they sell it

Is Investing in Stock Market Highly Risky?

Is it true that investing in stock market is highly risky? The answer is 'Yes' if you don't know what you are doing. The answer is 'No' if you know what you are doing. The risk is very much depends on your level of financial competence and thorough understanding in stock market activity. Likewise, if you have never gone for any driving lessons and have no idea how to read the road signs and don't know what is safe driving, then there is a high chance that could get yourself in accident. On the other hand, if you know how to read road signs and practice safe driving safely, then driving is a low risk activitiy for you.

Therefore, investing is like driving. If you have no idea how to read buying/selling signal, have no clue as to where and how to read financial reports that will impact the stock markets, have very little financial and accounting knowledge to value the worth of the company's shares that you are buying and need to depend a lot on blind luck, then your hard earned money will most likely get burned. To me, these people are not investor but gamblers.

In fact, high risk not necessary leads to high return. High risk can lead to low return or lose too. If you know what you are doing in stock market or with high financial intelligent, you can achieve extremely high return with very low risk!

The greatest investor, Warren Buffett

From a very young age, Warren Buffett had a very big and clear dream of becoming the world's greatest investor. Born during the time when his father was close to bankruptcy, Warren Buffett learn about the value of money and the importance of being financially secured at an early age.

Even before his teens, Warren Buffett knew that he wanted to be rich. As early as elementary school and later on in high school, he would tell his classmates that he wanted to become a millionaire before the age of 35. Inspired by his dream, he started researching on the secrets of wealth creation.

Through his readings, he found and memorized a book called "A Thousand Ways to Make $1,000". At the age of six, he started buying coke bottles at 25-cents per six-pack and selling them at 5-cents a bottle, giving him a 16% gross profit. At the age of 13, he got a job delivering newspapers and through innovative marketing and distribution strategies, he served five hunderd customers a day.

At the age of 11, he took all his savings and started investing in the stock market. Hist first investment was three shares in a company called "City Service". While most kids at his age were reading comic books, Warren spent his time reading company annual reports. By the age of 14, he invested in pinball machines which he installed in restaurants all over his town. He was earning US$175 a week, as much as the average 25-year old was earning in 1944.

Warren later mastered the art of investing by modelling two of the world's greatest investors during his time, Benjamin Graham (the father of Value Investing) and Philip Fisher (the father of Growth Investing). By combining the ideas of both geniuses and further refining them, Warren Buffet has become the most powerful investor in the world and also the second richest man in the world with net worth US$52 billions (just US$4 billion behind Bill Gates). What I am amazed by this man is that he made his fortune purely through investing in stocks!

He is also well known for his rules of investing. His Rule #1 in investing is "Never Lose Money". His Rule #2 is "Don't Forget Rule #1".

What's Wealth?

Nowadays, more and more people are working towards creating wealth. But, what wealth really is? Is it a person's wealth is measured by how much he earns, by cars he drives, by house he lives in? Is it the more $$ you have, the wealthier you are? After reading some financial books, I learnt that wealth actually is measured in time.

In Robert Kiyosaki's book (Cashflow Quadrant), wealth is defined as "The number of days you can survive, without physically working and still maintain your standard of living". For example, if your monthly expenses are $1000 a month, and if you have $3000 in savings, your wealth is approximately 3 months or 90 days. Therefore, wealth is measured in time, not dollars.
In other words, the longer you can go on living your life without working another day, the wealthier you actually are.

Let's look at an example extracted from Adam Khoo's book (Secret of Self-Made Millionaires). Steve is a director in a multi-national company and earns a $20,000 monthly salary. He lives a lavish lifestyles that results in personal and household expenses a month of $18,000. He hasn't really saved much over the years as he has spend any surplus upgrading his house and car. His liquid assets are just under $18,000. Besides his full time job, he has no other sources of inocme. What is Steve's level of wealth? Well, if he stops working today, his $18,000 will last him for just a month. So his wealth is one month's salary. As you can see, wealth is defined by time, not by the absolute amount of dollars.

On the other hand, Susan, a marketing manager in a retail store earns a monthly salary of $5,000 but she is much wealthier than Steve. How is this so? Let's see.

Over the last 20 years, Susan has diligently saved 20% of her income and invested in the right stocks and mutual funds that have given her returns of 15% per year. As a result, Susan's liquid assets have grown to $1.32 million over 20 years. In addtion, she has spent her free time building up a home-based business that sells unique collectibles over the Internet. Her small business earns her an additional income of $1,300 a month. She may not drive a fancy car or wear a Cartier watch, but let's see what her wealth is.

If Susan were to stop working today, she would still retain the $1,300 monthly passive income that her home-based business earns her. Since her monthly expenses is $4000 a month (80% of her income), she would have a net outflow of $2,700 a month. With her $1.32 million in accumulated savings, she would be able to survive for 40 years.

If Susan were to put her $1.32 million into a risk-free fixed deposit account earning interest of 4%, it would bring her an additional interest of $52,800 per annum. This means another source of income that takes in $4,400 a month. So you can see how Susan can very comfortably go on forever without working another day in her life!

How to create your first blog with Blogger?

I have been asked by friends several times about how to create a blog with Blogger. I hope the 10-steps instruction below will give beginners a good start.

1. Go to the Blogger website (http://www.blogger.com/).


2. On the Blogger page, enter your Gmail’s Username and Password. Then click SIGN IN button. You will be directed to Dashboard page if your sign in is successful.


3. On the Dashboard page, click Create a Blog and you will be directed to Name your blog page.


4. On the Name your blog page, enter a Blog Title.


5. On the same page, enter a Blog Address (URL) and then click Check Availability to check if the blog address is available for use. If the blog address is not available, please rename your Blog address (URL) and click Check Availability again until you get it. Once the blog address is available, please write down or remember the blog address (URL).


6. For the Word Verification entry, please fill in with the characters that you see in the picture on your screen. Then, Click CONTINUE button to proceed to Choose a template page.


7. On the Choose a template page, choose a template for your blog. Then, click CONTINUE button to proceed to You are done page.


8. On You are done page, click START POSTING button.


9. Congratulations! You can start writing now. Happy blogging! Please remember to click PUBLISH POST button when you finish your blog.


10. Now, you can view your blog with your defined blog address.

Tony Robbins at the TED Conference

I found a 20-minute video clip of Tony Robbins. This is an incredible talk by Tony Robbins at the TED Conference. I am really impressed! If I can be motivated, I believe so can you!

What is "Rule of 72"?

Have you heard of "Rule of 72"?

The "rule of 72" is a simplified way to help you to estimate how long it will take for your money/investment to double with a given annual rate of interest. For example, if you expect to earn 4% interest rate on your money, it will take 18 years to double your money. How to get this? Just divide 72 by 4, you would get 18 years.

The "rule of 72" can also help you to figure out how much interest rate required to double your money/investement in a certain number of years. For example, if you want your investment to double in 10 years, you need to earn 7.2%. How to get this? Simply divide 72 by 10, you would get 7.2%.

The king's chessboard

This story book is about a king that wanted to reward his wise man for solving a problem for his king. When the man refused to accept a reward for his service to the king, the king insisted. Thus, the man simply asked for a grain of rice on the first day, 2 grains on the second day and so on for each of the 64 squares on a king's chessboard. For example: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16..... The king agreed immediately without much thinking.

For the first half of the request, the king was laughing at how trivial the reward was. However, situation get out of control later due to the power of compounding. The growth in the number of rice grains accelerated, slowly at first but went off the charts. On the 64th square of chessboard, there was really mind boggling as the number of rice grains became 2^(n-1) = 2^(64-1) = 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

Can you imagine if the wise man asked for 1 cent on the first day and doubled it on the following day until the 64th day?

Now, can you see how powerful the compounding is? No wonder it is regarded as "The 8th Wonder of the World". Since it is so powerful, we must make full use of this principle with our money.

Winners Never Quit!

At one time, Sylvester Stallone was one of the highest paid actor who demanding a fee of US$20 million or more per movie. Do you think he was lucky? Was he naturally talented actor? Was he at the right place at the right time? The answer is hardly! He was someone who seemed to have all the odds stacked up against him.

His family was so poor until his mother had to give birth to him on the doorsteps of a school. A traumatic forceps delivery caused his facial nerve to be severed, leaving him paralyzed on the lower left side of his face. As a result, he had to live the rest of his life with slurred speech, droopy eye and lazy sneer. Not only that, he also had to deal with those who always taunted him because of his face feature and his name "Sylvester' which associated with the Looney Tunes cat. Despite all these limitations, he still dreamed of becoming an actor and inspiring millions of people through his movies.

He then started looking for job as an actor and going for many auditions. With his limitation at his face feature and slurred speech, he was rejected for more than 1000 times. His wife even told him to give up his "stupid dream" and get a real job. At that point of time, he was so broke until he was forced to sell his dog for $50 because he could not afford to feed his dog and needed the money to survive.

Two weeks later, he went to watch a boxing match between the world heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali and Chuck Wepner, an underdog that everyone thought would be defeated within three rounds. What no one expected was Wepner's determination and tenacity, he lasted the total of 15 rounds with Ali, just refusing to go down. Sylvester Stallone was so inspired by what he saw and he got the inspiration for the film - "Rocky". Instead of continued searching for an acting job, he started writing profusely for 20 straight hours without sleep until he finished the manuscript for 'Rocky'. He was so excited by the script because in his mind he knew that this was going to be the movie that would change his life and his fortune.

He began attempting to sell his script, on the condition that he himself must be the main actor but everyone rejected it. He didn't give up and he kept going. Eventually, he got an offer for $125,000 for his script but did not want him as the actor. Due to this, he walked away from the offer because his dream was to be an actor, not a writer.

The offer price rose to $250,000 and eventually to $325,000, as long as he would not star in the movie. But he still refused.

"Are you insane?", they asked him.
"No, I am Rocky", he responded.

Eventually, they reluctantly agreed, on the condition that the movie was made on a shoe string budget of less than a million dollars and he would only get US$35,000 plus a percentage of profits for the writing and acting. He agreed immediately.

Guess what! Things turned out well for Sylvester Stallone. After he got the money, the first thing he did was to search for the man who bought his dog. He offered the man US$125 and then US$500 for the dog. The man still refused. He ultimately paid $15,000 plus a part in the movie to get his dog back.

The moral of the story is winners never quit and quitters never win.

The 4-minute mile story

For thousands of years, people believed that it was impossible for a man to run a mile in less than four minutes. Many made this generalisation and formed this belief because anybody who attempted had failed. Doctors had also reinforced this belief by showing evidence from their study of the human body that it was physically impossible to achieve this feat.

However, in 1954, a man called Sir Roger Bannister refused to accept this belief and started to form a new belief that it was possible. After lots of training mentally and physically, he became the first man to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. What's more interesting is that within one year after his breaking record, 37 others runners also made it and in the following year, another 300 did the same. Why? Thanks to Sir Roger Bannister because his achievement had destroyed people's limiting beliefs that it was impossible.

The moral of the story is you must install a new belief to overcome a limiting belief.

What's a Blog?

What's a blog? I won't be surpirse many still asking this question.

A "Blog" stands for weBLOG. In layman's terms, a blog is an easy-to-use website, where you can quickly publish your thoughts, share articles that you finds interesting and broadcast news to the world. There are about 120,000 new blogs being published everyday.

You don't need computer programming experiences to start a blog. Designing a blog is just point-and-click and is as simple as composing an email. The fatest and easiest way to learn blogging is to start blogging at Blogger now. It's totally FREE but you must have Google's Gmail account!