A lot has been said about this. Some say by asking the right questions, the answer will become very clear to you, as you are becoming more aware of what the issue really is. One example is the FIVE-WHY’s method. In this method, you keep on asking yourself on the real issue five times and usually when you get to do this five times, you will usually get to the bottom of the problem. This is one of the many problem-solving methods used by management consulting firm, MCKINSEY & CO.

Sometimes asking the right question is not meant to find the rootcause of a problem but rather to make you focused to get the right results and the right action. Just take a look at the following examples:

Upon waking up early

Weak:  Can I fall back asleep again?  Should I go back to bed?

Strong:  What would be the best way to start my day?  How can I energize myself?  Where can I find something inspirational or motivational to read right now?

When contemplating exercise (and feeling unmotivated)

Weak:  Is it too hot/cold to exercise?  Can I skip it for today?  What difference will it make if I just skip a day?  Don’t I deserve a day off?

Strong:  Won’t it feel great hitting the showers afterwards?  What should I listen to while I workout?  Won’t it be wonderful to achieve my fitness goals?  How can I make this session more fun?

When considering a dietary improvement

Weak:  What foods am I going to have to give up?  How am I going to deal with the deprivation?  Am I going to have to eat like this forever?

Strong:  What foods that I like will I get to eat more of?  What new foods can I experiment with?  Won’t it be great when I reach my goal weight?  Won’t it be wonderful to finally master this area of my life once and for all?  Once I succeed at this, who else can I help?

Strong questions are empowering and can provide greatest mileage in your life.

 

 

Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits™ are a simple set of rules for life - inter-related and synergistic, and yet each one powerful and worthy of adopting and following in its own right. Here’s a quick summary of what is being taught by Stephen Covey.
HABIT 1: Be Proactive
Fosters courage to take risks and accept new challenges to achieve goals.

HABIT 2:  Begin with the End in Mind
Brings projects to completion and unites teams and organisations under a shared mission, vision and purpose.

HABIT 3:  Put First Things First
Promotes getting the most important things done first and encourages direct effectiveness.

HABIT 4: Think Win-Win
Encourages conflict resolution and help individuals seek mutual benefit, increasing group momentum.

HABIT 5:  Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Helps people understand problems, resulting in targeted solutions; and promotes better communication leading to successful problem solving.

HABIT 6:  Synergise
Ensures greater ‘buy-in’ from members and leverages the diversity of individuals to increase levels of success..

HABIT 7:  Sharpen the Saw
Take time out from production to build production capacity through personal renewal of the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Maintain a balance among these dimensions.

Acai Berry has been an instant favourite amongst health-freaks in the United States ever since it appeared on Oprah Winfrey show. What is so great about Acai Berry? Acai has been claimed to be the greatest all natural antioxidant and weight loss generator our planet has likely EVER seen! Acai (pronounced Ah-sah-ee) is a palm which grows in the Amazonian Rainforest of Northern Brazil. It bears a kernel (also known as “Acai Fruit” or “The Acai Berry”). Acai is also jam-packed with significant phytonutrients, proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and beneficial good fatty acids (omegas 3, 6, and 9). Here is your chance to get your hands on these items for free. Acai Berry drinks and Wrinkle Reducer.

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What if you tell yourself the following, “I want to have USD 1 million dollars in 2 years time”. When your friends hear this, they will probably laugh at you for saying it considering you are currently only earning a meagre USD60,000 a year. Making a statement like this may seem unrealistic for some who currently even struggle to even make that salary or may have been underperforming in the office to the extent of putting his job on the line. This is the magic of thinking big!

By thinking big it helps you to look at things in a different way, do things differently. Your statement of making USD 1 million in 2 years is basically a goal that challenges you to breakout of comfort zone, go beyond your limits. According to Tony Robbins, “If you want to make it big, you have to push yourself beyond your limits. You’ve got to pump yourself up and get yourself into a hyper mental state”.

You may start thinking, what shall I do to achieve that kind of income? What business should I be in? Whatever it is, plans or steps to achieve that goal have to be made. You can’t simply say that and continue with your normal routine and expect things to happen. This is not how you get the universe to help you under The Law of Attraction! If you want to move mountain, decide how you want to do it, think very hard. Believe in yourself. Otherwise who else. Of course there will be challenges. Whenever the stumbling blocks come, don’t let them ever to distract you. Keep your focus. Focus on solutions, not the impossible! That’s how we got people on the moon and we make steel fly! It’ because people know how to think big and follow their vision with actions.

Bill Zanker, the owner of Learning Annex has learned the magic of thinking big from the father of thinking big, DONALD TRUMP.  Back then Bill was running a small company that barely makes USD5.5 million in revenue. He was thinking of getting Donald Trump to give a talk at one of seminars organised by his company. He started off by offering Donald Trump USD10,000 as a compensation. But with this little amount, he found himself immediately rejected by Donald’s secretary. Even when he raised the stake to USD 100,000. Realising how much he wanted Donald to speak at his event, he started to do the unthinkable. He offered DONALD TRUMP a cool USD 1 million dollars.This is where his life took a different turn. Later his seminar has become big enough to attract large number of people to enable him to pay Donald Trump many times over.

“If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”  This is what Donald Trump has been famously quoted for.

Trump considers his ability to think in larger than life terms one of his greatest strengths and a major reason for his significant success. “Most people think small because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning,” he says. “And that gives people like me a great advantage.” Trump is not afraid to go after what he wants, nor is he afraid of the consequences of his decisions. There are two good books that you can read which really ignites my passion to think big in anything that I do. One of them is TRUMP - THINKING BIG, MAKE IT HAPPEN IN BUSINESS AND LIFE written by Donald Trump and Bill Zanker!

Donald Trump at one of Learning Annex’s expos.

Think Big!!! Watch this video clip carefully..

The other one is old time classic, The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz …

One of people who started from a miserable life to rich and fulfiling life is ADAM KHOO.

Go ahead and change your life now..then come back to this blog and tell me what have you achieved in your life!

I have been looking around for free information on the internet about deal sourcing in Mergers and Acquisition (M&A). In the office and at home. Surprisingly, the information is indeed scarce. Most of the websites are business/consultants websites that focus on selling their service instead of giving a good information on how to do deal sourcing in M&A. Indeed this is very frustrating for me. I need to have a good text before I can produce a paper on it. I ended up reading a book called M&A - From Planning to Integration by John Borghese. It’s quite interesting and straight forward book. In short I can summarise what I learn below:

Deal sourcing can be done in the following ways:

1. Through your network of contacts which may include investment bankers, people in the industry, close colleagues as well as those people working at the forefront i.e. sales.
2. broadscanning research of the relevant journals.
3. Opportunitic by playing by the ear.

To get access to the best deals require to be able to be close to the best opportunity that you want to target. This means you need to develop a good relationship/rapport with the potential target from the very beginning. It’s worth having a shopping list based on your strategic objectives. From this list you should wing out to your victim. Be nice and let them see what benefits you can bring to the company. Till then….

Subscribe to my feed for more guide on M&A..Stop paying top dollars for training companies

It has been 11 days into the New Year. Are we on track to achieve whatever we set ourselves at the beginning of the year? Have we carried out the plans which will lead us towards our goals? or do we have a plan at all? Some of us may be slipping but some are really into it in full gear, tracking every single thing that they do. I was also a guilty party during my growing up years. My teacher used to teach me to draw up a list, but she never asked me to look it up again, during the year. I guess she might not have known about Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield or  even Napoleon Hill. If I had read these materials during my teen years, I could only imagine myself to be multiple times better now. But there is no point crying over the past. What we have is the future. The future to make it better!

Tina at ThinkSimpleNow.com has a nice list of why New Year’s Resolution goes down the drain even before the January ends.

Here are some common reasons why resolutions are not effective:

• We look at our list only once a year.
• We do not review the goals throughout the year.
• We don’t know why we want to achieve the goal.
• Not enough passion or reasons to motivate us into action.
• The goal is not specific. Too vague.
• The goal seems too large and overwhelming, so we never start it. –>> Unrealistic
• We don’t actually want it. –>> it’s not important
• We do not come up with a plan to make it a reality. –>>think it’s going to happen automatically!

The best way to tackle all these is by asking yourself:

1. What is it that you want to be at the end of the year?
2. Why you want them? How important are they to you?

If something that you want is brand new BMW, why you want it may be because your old car no longer serves your status, or you just want to feel how it is to be rich. Either way, make sure the feeling of getting a BMW permeates through your skin to the extent of you feeling it in your bone. Go to the nearest BMW store and get inside the car. Smell the car. Replay this feeling over and over again during the day over the year until you get to lay your hands on one. If your goal is to become a successful millionaire, plan yourself so you could attend a seminar or social event organised by a millionaire. Feel the aura and charisma. If you can’t, visit high end shopping centres, get into a Hugo Boss shop and start trying on their clothes. Feel what’s like to feel rich. Repeat the mental image over and over again.

Once you have enough empowering feeling about having a car, sit down and plan out what you can do to be able to buy the car. Make a list. Strike out those that have anything to do with you winning a lucky draw contest! Don’t depend on something that relies on a game of chance. Look at the list that can provide you the extra income that you need. What is the major thing you should do to increase your income dramatically? Is it a business idea? How can you implement it tomorrow? Whatever it is make it as detailed as possible. If it is a business idea, make sure it is something that give you hefty margin per product or services. If small margin, you need have the volume to achieve the same bottomline, which means you need a big sales team. Whatever it is just focus on 2 ideas. Don’t go overboard by wanting to execute 5 ideas at the same time. It’s law of diminishing returns.

Next target those people that you need to network with to be successful! Be around successful people or at least someone better than you. Choose someone who is better than you so that you can learn something new! They may be someone new. Avoid friends that can get you stuck in the old routine. If you are always around them, wouldn’t it make it you to push yourself harder just to be like them?

Overwhelming goals

Of course you can’t expect to buy a USD750 house if your salary is only USD75,000 a year. But if this is a case, have the goal as a long term one. But start thinking what is the dramatic changes that you need to make it happen. History has shown that someone can become a millionaire in just 2 years starting from zero. All you need is a good innovative ideas. Read about the biography of young millionaires etc you will know what I mean.

The fact of the matter is this, success leaves clue. One of the great things about living in today’s world of abundance and opportunity is that almost everything you want to do has already been done by someone else. Someone has already done it and left clues in the form of books, manuals, audios and video programs. Go and find them?

All the best and good luck..

Good news to Robert Kiyosaki’s fans, Robert Kiyosaki, his wife Kim Kiyosaki and a team of Rich Dad’s advisors will be coming to Malaysia and Singapore in May 2009.  According to Kiyosaki, “the main reason people struggle financially is because they have spent years in school but learned nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work for money but never learn to have money work for them”. The real question is, does school really prepare our children for the real world? Does college education promises greatest chance for success in life? I don’t think so. To be financially independent you need to know the rules of money. This is what is being taught by Robert and Kim Kiyosaki in his Rich Dad and Poor Dad franchise.

Robert learns about money from his two dads. One dad was highly educated and intelligent; he had a Ph.D. and had completed four years of undergraduate work in less than two years. He then went to Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University to do his advanced studies, all on full, financial scholarships. His other dad never finished the eighth grade. However, both men were successful in their careers, working hard all their lives. Both earned substantial incomes.

 

Yet one dad struggled financially all his life and the other dad would become one of the richest men in Hawaii. One died leaving tens of millions of dollars to his family, charities, and his church. The other left a legacy of unpaid bills. Both men were strong, charismatic, and influential. Having two dads as advisors offered Robert Kiyosaki the perspective of contrasting points of view: one of a rich man and one of a poor man. This is how he came up with his first best seller - Rich Dad and Poor Dad!

Here’s what you will get by attending this seminar/workshop:

 

• Build a personalized financial and CASHFLOW plan
• Discover your Mission, Passion and Purpose
• Create an individual strategy to become secure, comfortable, and rich
• Map out where you want to go and what you’ll need to do to get there
• Personalize an investment plan to help you into the “B” and “I” quadrants
• Set your plan in motion—so that becoming rich is an automatic process

To register and book your place, kindly go to http://www.srpl.net/rk09/

PREDICTION CAME THROUGH BY ROBERT KIYOSAKI

LESSONS FROM RICH DAD AND POOR DAD

Savers Are Losers

Good Debt vs Bad Debt

How To Predict The Future

Cashflow Game 202

Cashflow Quadrant

Assets vs Liabilities

Check out our store for Robert Kiyosaki’s amazing products.

2008 is drawing to a close and it’s that time of the year where I set my goals and reprioritise my planned activities. 2009 promises a better future and it’s definitely a year that will bring more happiness to me. 2008 has been great and I am carrying the momentum to next year with the scale that is many times bigger that what I have now. There are FIVE main targets that I have set myself to achieve for 2009:

1. To have a monthly income in excess of USD 20,000 per month. Hope this will kick in by June 2009. This is through 2 main sources of money generating business i.e. internet marketing (affiliate programme, pay-per-lead-programme, seminar/workshop, blogging, syokkahwin.com) & property investment. This is done through:
   • increasing network of contacts
   • increasing publicity/branding
   • exploring many other ways of traffic generation
   • setting up a proper team for Syokkahwin.com
   • conducting a money - making seminar/workshop for 25 people.
2. To purchase a condominium in the exclusive area of Mont Kiara or Sri Hartamas in Kuala Lumpur as part of my passive income diversification plan.
3. To accelerate the sale of my published book ” Rahsia Selebriti Berkahwin Pada Bajet RM25,000” through various methods of promotions including widespread advertising not only sell the book but promote and enhance my name/brand as the authority in the wedding business in Malaysia.
4. To lose weight by 10 kg.
5. To be a caring father to my son who will be born in April 2009.

THE PLEASURE OF REACHING THE FINISHING LINE IS VERY FULFILLING & LIBERATING

Don’t let past disappointments and mistakes keep you from growing and being all that you can be. Instead of making a bunch of new years resolutions that you know are just good intentions and will be dropped in just a few weeks, find your purpose and your vision.Vision that gets you excited and driven.

If you already had a vision do not congratulate yourself just yet. Ask yourself, whether what you are currently working on will lead you towards achieving that vision. If yes, congrats, if not you have lot of work to do my friend! To become a millionaire, you have to think, and work like the millionaires.

All the best and good luck~

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw.

“Turn every failure into feedback”

“Know what I want & Why I Want It!” - To have solid empowering drive!

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

” Your results are a reflection of the effort you put in “  - Well I am not sure about this one. Just put this one up for comments. Sometime it’s not so much the efforts that you put in but how effective it was of the methods or strategies that you used to accomplish it. Work smart is the key.

To achieve success, one needs to have the following qualities:

1. Be 100% responsible for your life - stop blaming others!
2. Be clear of what you want and why you want it! Set your goals, have a vision board etc.
3. Believe in yourself. If it’s not yo, who else? Don’t let others who do not belief in you get you sidetracked.
4. Become an inverse paranoid. Instead of believing the world was plotting to do you any harm, believe that that everyone around you is plotting to do you good. Take event as a blessing in disguise.

“HOW CAN I CHANGE MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER?”

BLACKBERRY STORM is the latest gadget released by the guys at Random In Motion (RIM). Storm is set to credibly challenge the touchscreen prowess of iphone. In fact it has been branded Apple’s iphone killer. The wide 468×360 pixel screen has got me excited and the sharp camera capture has made it all worthwhile. Blackberry Storm has GPS like the iPhone 3G but it’s got a version that’s precise enough to work with Verizon’s VZ Navigator turn-by-turn direction service. The Storm runs on a removable battery, with 6 hours of talk time stamina. It also comes with 1 gigabyte of onboard storage and a microSD slot that supports up to 16 GB. It has dual microphone technology to hear the ambient sound around you so it can improve your hearing and talking ability in loud areas.

Here is a chance for you to test and get the much talked about BLACKBERRY STORM absolutely free.