Part 1

You cant connect the dots… so drink coffee

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

The lesson

The most common fear I hear in these questions is that when you quit your job, you lose “security”. The security of a pay cheque, the security of cash flow, the security of providing for your family etc.

Therefore, the real question is this.

Khoa Bui Entrepreneur

Which do you value the most?

Freedom or security?

Being an entrepreneur for the first time will give you lots of freedom. You get the freedom to do whatever you want to do, you have the freedom to take on any projects you want. You have the freedom to work hard or not.

However, you’ll quickly learn that “security” is low because you have to work 10x harder to find clients, close them, get cash flow, provide a quality product and service and repeat.

You’ll find that by being an entrepreneur, you’ll work a lot harder than an employee. Not that I’m putting employees down, but I remember when I was an employee, I remember not having to work so hard at my job and I would still earn income. I would not need to find clients, not need to “hunt” for income and provide anything.

All I had to do was to show up to work on time, do my job and go home. Even when I was sick, I still got paid.

Hence the reason of “security”.

Many people are extremely fearful of this “security” that they have in their jobs which therefore prevent them from becoming an entrepreneur.

However, what’s most scary for me when I was an employee earning high income and eventually resigned to start my own business was that I knew that if I stayed in that job forever, I would be unsatisfied with my life.

Yes, I would earn income, I would live a comfortable life, house, car, provision for family but my soul would die. My soul would die to the fact that my life was unfulfilled because of I never went after my dreams. I worked in a job I hated.

And I also learned that if I hated my job for the next 40 years of my life… then…

I quit my job and went full time into entrepreneurship.

To me, entrepreneurship is all about freedom. If you value freedom more than security, then you’ll become and entrepreneur. If you value security over freedom, you’ll stay employed.

You need to draw a line in the sand and figure out which side you wish to be on. If you value freedom, you’ll do whatever it takes to keep it, even if you’re on such a low income and eating sardines for dinner (something i’ve done in the past)

However if you value security so much, then you’ll hold onto your job forever and give up your dreams.

That’s the choice you need to make before you decide which path you wish to go on.

Freedom or security?

On the plus side of entrepreneurship is that it may take you several years of low income to finally get your security. Or not.

You never know what is going to happen in future.

One thing that helps me stay focused as an entrepreneur is the fact that I only have one life. I make a decision that if I spend my entire life doing great work that I love, then as a result I would love my life, even if I earned little income.

However if I earned a lot of income doing something I hated, then most of my life would be miserable.

The choice is yours.

Good Journey and let me know your thoughts on this article.

Thanks

Khoa Bui

My traffic has declined a bit and my passive income as well. Although it’s a bit disappointing, I’m still going to write since it’s still my passion. However, lately I’ve been focusing on another business venture which is TV.

I’ve managed to pick up another opportunity which is to have my own TV show and lately, instead of blogging, I’ve been making TV shows.

My website is at www.khoabuishow.com

I’ll explain more about that later.

Learn to have an open mind

In this article, I would like to share with you something I’ve learnt over the past few months of being an entrepreneur. I’ve had meetings, discussions and projects with various different people and this lesson came about a few weeks ago.

It’s the fact of having an open mind.

A few months ago, I was asked to attend a meeting to discuss a joint project. This meeting was about creating a newspaper distribution for people waiting at the train station. There are thousands of people waiting at the train station and providing a free newspaper with sponsors is a good idea.

However, I didn’t agree with the idea, mainly the fact is that producing a daily newspaper and printing costs a lot of money. It also takes up a lot of time and energy. It’s also extremely difficult to make it succeed.

I recommended going after the online marketing route. Why not create an online newspaper column that people can read online and they don’t have to purchase anything. Costs will drop dramatically and expenses.

That was my input and that was the end of that meeting. I didn’t agree with the newspaper idea.

A few months later, I had another meeting with a client of mine. We wanted to find different avenues of advertising for his product. So we had a meeting with a lady who had a newspaper advertising opportunity.

So we met up in Starbucks and she explained what she did. She had a business of creating newspapers for train stations! She started the business about a year ago and has been providing newspapers for train stations that caters to over 100,000 people.

I had a look at the newspaper and it was a high quality product. It had big advertisers and she was doing extremely well with it. I would estimate she was making $1,000 per day in simple advertising.

$1,000 per day = $7,000 per week = $28,000 per month.

Then it hit me. I remembered back to that meeting I had with that person who had the idea of launching his own newspaper.

That was a $28,000 per month idea that was never implemented and he didn’t do it.

Of course, I declined on the idea because the fear of money and hard work.

However, this one lady took the idea and make it happen. I’m sure she took a huge financial risk, personal risk and more and finally made it happen.

I learnt that if you must always keep an open mind to ideas and opportunities. By saying the word “no” you could be missing out on a $28,000 per month idea.

The big lesson?

Learn to have an open mind.

Good Journey.

Khoa Bui

DingDong Dantes, he is a famous actor, model and celebrity based in the Philippines. He is also known for his physique, winner of best actor and huge following of female fans. He’s married to Marian Rivera who is also a famous celebrity and actress in the Philippines.

Dingdong Dantes and Khoa Bui

A few days ago, I had the pleasure to meet one of my fitness mentors DingDong Dantes while I was working out in the gym. It’s pretty awesome to train along side the best in the industry and steal their training and work out secrets that created his fame and fortune!

So how does this guy get into great shape whilst excelling in his career life?

Here are the key lessons from DingDong Dantes that enabled him to maintain his health and a successful career.

1. Regular Training

You don’t get fit by doing a perfect workout 1 day out of a month. You get fit and have a great body by training on a regular basis that’s imperfect. You don’t need to do perfect workouts, you just need to train on a consistent basis to achieve the results you want.

2. Get a coach

It goes without saying, you need a coach. By having a coach, they will push you, show you the right techniques and also the right way to train hard. All of the greatest athletes have coaches and DingDong Dantes has one too.

Make sure that when you select your coach, he/she has been through the process and has achieved the results you want. I’ve seen coaches at the gym with big bellies and I wonder why people train with them when they are trying to lose their bellies. Choose your mentors carefully.

3. Weight Training

By combining weights into your workouts, you’ll add more muscle and therefore you burn more body fat. When you’re just working out on the treadmill, that’s just pure cardio and you are burning calories at that moment in time but after the workout, you’re not burning any calories.

That’s what I’ve learnt with building muscle, after your gym session, your muscle acts as a fat burner and you continue to lose weight long after the gym. Build more muscle but you don’t have to become a bouncer.

4. Nutrition

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, you can’t work off a bad diet. A pizza slice has around 300 calories. If you eat 4 slices of pizza, that’s 1,200 calories consumed in 30 minutes. If you’re on the treadmill for 45 minutes, you only burn around 150-300 calories. You must eat clean  in order to burn body fat. The moral of the story is, you can’t work off a bad diet.

5. Compound Exercises

When you’re at the gym, many people take super long breaks after their workouts. They usually go to the water cooler and hang around for 5 minutes. During this time, their heart rate goes down and they stop burning. By doing compound exercises such as a triset (3 workouts without taking a break) and you rest for 60 seconds, you maintain your heart rate, burn your body fat and get a higher intensity workout.

By applying DingDong’s secrets to staying fit and healthy, we should hopefully achieve the same results as him and perhaps fame and fortune too!

Good Journey

Khoa Bui

I was invited by Mys Sandico – CEO of PMCM Events Management (Facebook: PMCM Events Management) where she known as one of the best event management companies in the Philippines.

Yong Ham and Khoa Bui

Yong is originally from Korea and landed in the Philippines due to a holiday in Borocay. He fell in love with the Philippines and is now building up his network and companies here.

I learned from Hans that he built up an impressive company portfolio whereby he had worked with over 1,000 high profile clients over the past 3 years. This takes tremendous hard work, determination and drive to achieve this type of success.

After speaking with Yong, I’ve learnt the following qualities from him and which we can all learn from his entrepreneurial characteristics.

Persistence and determination

Yong built his business by being persistent and by being very determined to get things done. His focus is mainly in sales and marketing, the cornerstone of business success and  he spends most of his time meeting with new vendors, clients and suppliers for his company.

Positive attitude

During his presentation, Han spoke about his story about starting his business and how he grew it. One of his staff members commented that having a positive mental attitude was one of the keys to his success.

This is true because in business, we will always encounter disappointment, obstacles and problems along the way. We cope with this by having a positive and optimistic attitude to get us through, not a negative one.

Build a great team

Yong grew a great team around him. His time is responsible for the marketing, contact of clients, organization of meetings and more. It was great to see his team supporting him during the event and as far as I can tell, they were happy working for him.

It’s also great to know that Yong sends his team to beaches and team building events. I believe as a CEO, you should learn to associate with your team and bond with them. Otherwise, they will end up being less productive at work or leave the company wasting your time and energy.

Open different markets

Yong is currently looking at different markets to expand into. One thing I’ve learnt is that once you find a business model that works, conquer different markets and expand elsewhere whilst maintaining your foundation.

If you would like to know more about Yong and his LexCode company, please visit www.lexcode.com.ph

Good Journey

Khoa Bui

One thing is for certain, it’s great to go out there and achieve success but you must never forget to neglect the existing success you may already have.

Sometimes we may get so busy striving towards a singular goal, whether you achieve it or not, eventually if you stay on this path of constant focus towards success, you will eventually achieve success.

To me, success is just a numbers game and success is really not about money, it’s about the attainment of what you want and not what others want of you. Therefore in order to achieve success, you increase the probability of success.

After spending many years achieving the things that I’ve wanted to, we often build this success habit and tend to easily achieve things.

Chasing Two Rabbits Captures Neither

However, as we become better and better at achieving the things we want, we often neglect the things that bought us there in the first place. The things such as time management, focus, working on a project every single day and more.

Last month, to be honest, I’ve been losing my productivity and lost focus on the projects that were really important to me. I’ve been busy chasing after the things that had much potential to be successful but it took time away from the existing success projects that I had captured in the previous months.

Therefore my existing projects had suffered and no implementation was carried out and as a result, no success came out of them.

Even though every single day of February was completely booked out with meetings, potential business deals and more, upon analysis, not much had been produced. Sure relationships were built but in terms of making a real difference to your life, not really.

Which came to my realization is that for goal achievers, we all tend to become like a rabbit, always chasing and never resting to reap the rewards.

“A man that chases two rabbits, captures neither” – Confucius

My blog efforts has declined in February for I didn’t blog as much as I used to, although I still produced income and my projects that I’ve assigned for 2013 were ignored.

It also reminds me of the fact that life is really built up over a few large rocks and the rest is all sand. Steven Covey reminds us that in life, there are the big things in life (rocks) that make the biggest difference. Family, big opportunity, children, that big client and so forth. However everything else is just sand.

If you were to fill a jar up with sand, there will be no room for the big rocks to fit in. However if you were to put the big rocks in first, you’ll be able to fill up the spaces by pouring in the sand.

In life, we all tend to focus on the sand projects, the little things that make little difference. Eventually there’s no room for the big rocks in our lives.

This year, I’ve managed to build up a lot of new opportunities which have all bought me even more opportunity, which each opportunity, comes more responsibility and more sand.

As entrepreneurs, we are always working away at our businesses, we have meetings, we succeed and we get more success. In the event of achieving more success, we build on it and it can get out of hand.

Success is a double edged sword

We are all used to failing more often than succeeding, therefore when we achieve success, we are inexperienced to handle it.

Be careful as you work towards what you want, you will eventually get there but when you get there, you’re not as experienced in handling it and it can undermine your efforts.

There was once a doctor who was truly successful. He had everything that society had hoped for. He had the money, he had the cars and had the houses. He even had the fit body that women desired. He was a goal achiever and was extremely competitive.

One day, he found out that he had cancer and had only a few months to live. Upon reflection, what he realized was that he couldn’t handle success. Even though earning the money was good and achieving success should be attained, sometimes you don’t know how to handle it.

What he discovered was that in life, it really boils down to relationships with people. Although the cars and houses were nice things to have and if you want them, go for it but he realized that he never once thought of it while he was lying there in hospital.

The ones who were there that loved him, that’s what made him truly happy.

As we go through life, let’s all remember to always go for our dreams and make use of the life that we have, but never forget the people and things that got us there in the first place. For if we were to continually chase many rabbits, we will catch none and lose everything at the end.

Good Journey.

Khoa Bui

This year kicked off to a great start, passive income grew, so did traffic.

In my previous income report in December, I mentioned that my traffic slowed down and so did my passive income. I earned some income through active income consulting projects but my traffic and passive income decreased.

January I noticed there was an increase in traffic, people are returning back to work and starting to work again. Hence I noticed worked related articles started picking up in traffic.

In December 2013, I earned a passive income of $27.86. In January 2013, I earned $30.28, an increase of $2.72.

Passive Income January 2013

This goes to show that the more traffic you have, the more passive income you earn. Keep working away at traffic and your income should increase.

I also earned some active income in January as well through consulting and marketing.

So here’s the quick run down of income:

Passive Income: $30.28

Product Sale: $108.00

Active Income Project: $800.00

Total Income: $938.28

So far, January 2013 has been my best in terms of income growth. Although passive income has declined but slowly increasing, sales continued to increase and so did my active income projects.

Keep you posted for my next income report.

Good Journey

Khoa Bui

After years of research, Malcolm discovered a constant rule that kept appearing in all successful people.

10,000 hours.

It took 10,000 hours of constant practice, trial and error, implementation, work, constant repetition to finally master a craft.

It was discovered that most of the time, it wasn’t talent, it wasn’t that special gift, it was the ones who started earlier in their craft and worked at it at a young age. Tiger Woods started playing golf at the age of 2. Bill Gates started Microsoft at the age of 16. Richard Branson, the rebel billionaire of his Virgin companies started at the age of 15.

Did they all fail?

They sure did. They failed many times. They failed at many projects.

But some projects succeeded and this is how they became so successful over their competitors, it’s because they had already invested over 10,000 hours into their craft.

So if you ever see someone super successful, look at their past and see when they started and how they started. Most likely, you’ll see someone who started at an early age and make a ton of mistakes before their competitors even started.

It has been estimated that people who become millionaires usually fail in their business 3.2 times.

You see, failure and time is the key to success. You must fail your way forward to success. It takes time and dedication towards a goal.

I started building websites at the age of 16. I had no idea what I was doing but I loved doing it. Along the years, I built many websites for myself and for others. I built a web design business and created websites for multimillion dollar corporations.

Along the years, I also discovered how to monetize my websites so that they earn passive income. At first, I made lots of mistakes, my website projects crashed and burned. However, these days, producing income from a website for me is very easy, but only if I setup the right foundation first.

On March 9, I’m organizing a great event that will save you hours of time and money. I’m going to show you how you can generate passive income online. I’m going to show you how you can build an online business and generate cash flow.

Internet Cashflow Mastery

You’ll be leveraging my experience and knowledge over the years in building an online empire.

Check out the link below:

www.cashflow-mastery.com

Khoa Bui

PS. Money is replaceable but time isn’t. Click the link below:

www.cashflow-mastery.com

You see, there’s many different marketing strategies out there that you can deploy at your disposal. You can market your business on Facebook, Google AdWords, Banner Advertising, Joint Ventures and more.

Even though these techniques are still effective in promoting your business, the problem is that you lose control over them. Google can change an algorithm and your business is wiped out. Facebook can change one of their advertising policies and your business could be doomed.

Whatever happens, if you depend on one source of media for lead generation, you’re putting your business at risk. Not only that, if you’re also putting 100% control on another source, you’re also putting your business at risk.

So is there a way in which you can retain 100% control over a source of media that you own?

It’s through email marketing and list building.

When you build an email list through your own activities, you have the ability to communicate with people on a regular basis. You can send them newsletters, you can promote something on your list and you can sell your upcoming products and services.

As you’re using email marketing strategies on your list, you increase your income and make more sales.

However, as you build your online business through list building and email marketing, there are a certain number of email marketing best practices that you should be aware about.

I’ve been online since 2001. I’ve developed products, sold them online and made money through advertising. I’ve also built email lists over the years in different industries. I’ve promoted products through those email lists. I’ve made a ton of mistakes but I’ve also made lots of money as well through email marketing.

Building An Email List

In this section, I’ll share with you some of the lessons I’ve learnt through email marketing and share with you some of the best practices that you can use.

Build A List Every Day

As with any business, you should work on it every single day. Online businesses are built, not created over night. As part of your online business, you should work on building your email list every single day. Whether it’s a blog post, youtube video, joint venture or any sort of list building activity, you should keep on building your list.

Your email list is an asset that nobody can take away from you. Let’s say that you were to strip away everything from your online business, your Google Ranking, your logos, your content, your website, your products and services.

Take away everything and just leave the email list. You’ll still be in business.The email list is the asset.

Look After Your List

Of course, most people just know how to build an email list but don’t really know how to take care of it. Building an email list is only step one. Step two is to look after your email list. Remember everyone on your email list is a real life person. A person who has a job, or business, who likes watching movies, who enjoys having dinner with friends, who likes to read books etc.

Therefore, it’s imperative to build a relationship with your list. You have to continually communicate to your list on a regular basis so they remember you and build trust.

Be Honest

I’m subscribed to several email lists myself and unfortunately, some people who market to their list are dishonest people.

I remember I once subscribed to a person’s blog, I won’t mention his name. He was promoting a product so I had a look at the sales page.

On the sales page contained all of his financial “proof” however there was a picture that he used as proof of his credibility. It was a cheque with the amount written on it. The problem was that the cheque that was displayed on the website was photoshopped!

The amount was created in photoshop and it was a false image. After that, I completely lost trust in this person and unsubscribed from his list. Today this person has gain a bad reputation in the marketplace and is now lost in oblivion.

The moral of the story is, be honest. Even if you are not making that much money, be honest with it and tell people that you’re still on the journey to making more money and people will still appreciate it.

A Final Word On Email Marketing

So there you have it, the top 3 email marketing best practices that you can use for your email marketing campaigns.

As an entrepreneur, building an online business takes time and effort. You’ll always come across challenges and encounter many difficulties.

Never forget that people are people. Look after them, don’t look at them as just an email on your email list. They are living and breathing people with problems that need solving.

Never forget the golden rule.

“You can get everything you want in life, if you can just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

Good Journey.

Khoa Bui