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Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Unpredictability, 9/11

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Here is a screenshot of my ClickBank transactions. ClickBank is a 3rd party payment processing and affiliate marketing service for online merchants. Customers’ names and details are blurred out for their privacy.

It shows sales from the month of October through December, till the New Year.

As you can see, I got 1 sale on the last day of 2007.

It was a plan of ours (me and my partners) to earn our first US$1,000 cheque from our internet business by the end of June 2007, but you know, as most unfocused goals go, we didn’t achieve our deadline.

We delayed by a whole 6 months.

And that 6 months was filled with massive amounts of learning, a little struggle, but mostly growth and improvement.

Truthfully, I’m glad we delayed the achievement of our 1st milestone goal by 6 months. People outside our circle may not fully realise it, but the experience we went through was incalculable.

Okay, now here’s why I said my (our) New Year’s Resolution is 1% achieved.

Disclaimer: the above is a ‘Photoshopped’ screenshot of my summarised bank statement. It is for my visualisation.

That is our target for the year 2008. Of course, if you want to be particular about it, I actually predict the US dollar will drop to a level that may be almost equal to the Singapore dollar.

Why?

Because in my visualisation, I see S$100,000.00 in my bank account, and since I only do business online in US currency (unless of course the US dollar becomes a Banana currency, then I am forced to do business in perhaps the Euro), a $100,000.00 I earn online matches a $100,000.00 I have in my bank account.

And surely when one has a strong vision, reality is obligated to realise it…

ClickBank, 2007, internet business, visualisation, US dollar, Singapore dollar, US currency, Banana currency, Euro

What is the difference between a person who asks, “Where to go from here?” and expects the answer to come to him and a person who asks the same and expects the answer from herself?

Ultimate freedom brings with it a huge burden of personal responsibility. One can easily get lost without a proper sense of direction. Even then, with a compelling vision of epic grandeur, there are those demonic details to deal with in day to day affairs that seem to hinder any kind of progress towards the realisation of that vision.

I feel I had started what I have started on a false start. But then I thought everyone has to start somewhere. My start had not been the most by-the-book but it was a decent start anyway. I am blessed with a brilliant mind but cursed with procrastination, perfectionism and unconscious progress-hindering deliberation. But I am slowly working on that. Maybe too slowly.

If I can, I will hire people to handle the devilish details of my ideas for me while I generate newer, greater and more revolutionary ideas at the speed of light. But I am not the inheritor of some vast fortune. Apparently, providence sees fit to bestow absurd wealth upon the affluent hedonistic who squander it away while brilliant minds are tortured by their hungry stomachs and potential messiahs amongst third world countries die malnourished. She knows naught about the important historical details of her own homeland let alone the plights and realities of her fellow citizens yet the people of her country go crazy over her antics and throw their hard-earned cash (and lives away) to enrich her. A seeker who has found the simple answer in nature that will end human dependence on fossil fuels and hence the wars that are fought for control of its sources go uncredited, intimidated, eventually murdered by clandestine entities whose sole purpose is profit at all cost - even human lives. This is the way of the world.

But I am not complaining. I am speaking the truth. Do you question it? If no one in the world speaks the truth, how can we ever progress? Yet there are those who abuse their truth-speaking abilities by not acting upon the truths they speak of.

But all this is small. Insignificant. None of this matters. At all. Cosmic rays bombard the planets indiscriminately. The sun burns saint, sinner, hedonist, altruist, tyrant, freedom fighter and the dead alike. Or does it? Nature may be indiscriminate but the tools and technologies of Man seem to serve only the few who have gained leverage over them at the expense of or in oblivion to the dispensable many.

Where is the man who never ceases to ask the important questions? Who seeks the very secrets of the soul and the universe that it perceives? Who champions freedom from all forms of tyranny - tangible or otherwise? Who reforms corrupted characters towards righteousness? Who expects nothing more from life than the love and decent company of family and children? Where is he?

Consumed by consumerism. Swallowed by unnecessary obligations. Ripped apart by bondage to the rice bowl. Fishing to feed his family. Broken by the whips and strangled by the chains of the few.

The oldest tyrant in history still stands. The Pharaoh of Pharaohs. The Enlightened Eye Upon The Pyramid.

This is indeed a unique time in history.

Remove the teenaged or twenty-plus-year-old millionaire or billionaire heirs (i.e. those who inherited their wealth from their rich parents or relatives as opposed to creating it on their own, for the Paris Hilton’s amongst you) from the picture.

But there is no other time that I know of in which there had been many (so-called) ‘average’ teenagers (i.e. not too gifted, smart, blessed or privileged, just young people with a vision or a passion or just a savvy little idea that unexpectedly got big) or those in their early twenties who became self-made millionaires, even self-made billionaires, in such a short span of time due to the leveraged networking power of the internet.

I am sure Miss Ashley Qualls has been extensively covered in the blogosphere. Ashley Qualls is the creator of WhateverLife.com. She started it at the age of 14 (back then I was still tinkering with time-wasting chat programs and tried my hand on some primitive affiliate marketing - this was in 1997) with only $8 borrowed from her mother and now, through determination and focus on her one niche passion, it is an annual 7-figure business.

I don’t survey the demographics of my blog readers, but I know that most of you are reasonably educated enough to not belong to the old-school 19th century puritanical class of people who still believe in “a day’s wages for a hard day’s work”. Granted, maybe most of the people I know still have remnants and traces of limiting attitudes and mindsets that might not be useful if you want to scale your life to levels beyond your imagining (i.e. outdo and over-succeed your parents), but you still have some vague idea that somehow, if you’re lucky enough, or if you’re struck with a good enough idea, you can make it big (but somehow something’s just holding you back, and for now, you just want to continue your day job or your studies or your freelance projects or taking care of your little kids, until ’something happens’).

And I am sure many of you have probably read or at least heard of such books as Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, The Intelligent Investor, Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, et cetera, just to name a few very prominent ones. But let me ask you - what is your follow-up action after reading such books? If you’d picked those books up and read them through only for the entertainment value, then why pick them up in the first place? What is stopping you?

I don’t mean to get preachy. Actually I am writing this as more of a reminder and (hopefully constructive) reprimand towards myself than towards other people I know. In general, I am both sad and excited at the same time - sad because I have yet to see enough ’specimens’ or examples of young people like me who are proactive in wanting to better the condition of their lives considerably; excited because I have lesser ‘competition’ and that if when I succeed, I can turn around and tell all my peers my story and be an inspiration (and more) to them as well.

Truthfully, I am also fortunate that amongst the many peers and acquaintances I know, there are a handful of friends with whom I’ve had the privilege of sharing our life-enhancing ideas (usually to do with a specific business or just some social advancement agenda). It is true what those often-cliched quotes and phrases say, to some extent - that ‘great minds think alike’ or ‘birds of a feather flock together’ - somehow I see a deeper ‘movement’ at work connecting me with such individuals who take the reins of their lives into their own hands and independently determine its course, and I am grateful to that ‘movement’ and of these people. Bless them all.

unique time in history, millionaire, billionaire, self-made millionaires, self-made billionaires, power of the internet, Ashley Qualls, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, The Intelligent Investor, Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

I have a million dollar note in my wallet.

It looks something like the above. I got it from a very generous friend of mine when I attended an internet marketing gathering.

Of course, it’s not real (sorry to spoil the dream for you). It was his business card and on the other side there was his money-making website details.

But I am keeping the million dollar note in my wallet anyway. I plan to keep it for a long time - not too long, but at least until I achieve my goal of passive income.

Now who else wants to see the million dollar note in my wallet?

internet marketing, passive income

As of this time of writing, I am a part-time employee of my local religious institution, working only 18 hours a week. Not close to the ideal 4 hour work week yet, but what I do now has its perks.

Also, if you don’t know me already, I have my internet businesses. But to set the record straight, I don’t ‘do’ websites for others for a fee, I don’t ’spam’ people asking them to buy viagra, join a network marketing company that sells cialis or wire money to my nigerian scam accounts, I don’t earn money solely from blogging (via my Adsense ads or via my popularity like a certain pampered media-sponsored ‘blogger babe’ [what an ugly term to be coined]) and I don’t waste my time clicking on those ‘paid to read’ emails or pay-per-click programs.

This article by internet marketing millionaire Joel Comm explains it well: Explaining what I do.

Excellent.

If you’ve read the 4 hour work week (which is not the first book that inspired me to do what I now do by the way), you’ll start to open your mind to the concepts that I now hold dearly to be truths.

Anyway, as of now, the next time someone asks me what I do for a living, I will not start with, “I have my own internet businesses”, which I usually did that then started to get them thinking of the above-mentioned stereotypes of internet business. I will begin by saying, “I am an Internet Marketer”. Or to reflect what I learned from a certain persuasion guru named Joel Bauer, I’d begin by saying, “Have you ever dreamed of owning a business that makes you so much money even while you sleep or go on vacation, that you thought it too good to be true, but you wished you could just create at will?”.

4 hour work week, internet businesses, buy viagra, network marketing, cialis, nigerian scam, Adsense, internet marketing, Joel Comm, persuasion guru, Joel Bauer

… but teaching a man how to fish helps him.

But what’s even better is to extend micro-loans to women entrepreneurs in developing or underdeveloped countries.

This has been historically and empirically proven to effectively change thousands upon thousands of families’ lives in breaking out of the vicious cycle of poverty and into the virtuous cycle of life-improvement through micro-entrepreneurship and the education of their children. Dr Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for a very good reason.

Watch this video to learn more about Unitus and perhaps you can play a part (a real, effective change-making part, not just sit comfortably in your safe and secure homes and send donations remotely to charitable organisations… although there’s nothing wrong in that, only this is better) in truly, truly, truly effecting positive change in the world.

micro-loans, women entrepreneurs, micro-entrepreneurship, Dr Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank, Nobel Peace Prize, Unitus

I have already thought of the idea of residual philanthropy even before Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen wrote about it in their book, Cracking the Millionaire Code.

I was doing some research about which charities to sponsor as a permanent policy for all my future business endeavours and I was considering Feed the Children.  But somehow, when I did more research into this charity, I had this uneasy feeling and negative vibe about it. Perhaps it was due to some rumours about its poor management and handling of funds that had been flying about online. Perhaps it was also due to the fact that it has some sort of Christian involvement.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christianity and Christians, and I say this beyond societal demand for political correctness. It’s just that I feel uncomfortable supporting a charity or a social movement that is inspired by, based upon or managed largely by religious ideals or groups. Realistically and practically speaking, there tends to be hidden agendas and intentions that will be made manifest in the good works that these charities and movements would do, despite their best and sincerest efforts to remain strictly and secularly professional and dogma-free.

I am also uncomfortable about supporting any charity or social movement that has a nationalistic, political or non-religious ideological agenda.

Basically, any charity or movement that has any agenda at all will not pass my test.

What matters to me is that the movement must realistically, truthfully and honestly serve the best interests of humanity (children, women, men, young, old, able, disabled), with a blindfold against class, status, race, religion, clan, tribe, nationality, colour, sex and other human-taxonomies.

To illustrate my point, my ideal charity or movement would be more than willing to treat wounded Israeli civilians with utmost care and humanity even if said charity or movement were to comprise mostly of Palestinians.

Of course, I am not saying that, for my sake, if you are a Muslim you should stop supporting fund-raisers to build mosques or that if you’re a Buddhist, you should stop supporting free Buddhist clinics or hospitable homes. To you, your beliefs and to me, mine. And to have different religious groups supporting each other’s movements (as long as they serve the common good) once in a while is no harm either, if not in fact, encouraged.

Where I draw the line is when chiefly secular businesses or secular organisations choose to sponsor charities or movements that have religious, nationalistic, political or ideological agendas.

If you are running a strictly commercial entity, consisting of people from various religions and races, then it would be imprudent to partner with a religiously-based or ideologically-based charitable movement. However, in the domain of your personal life, which mosque, church, synagogue, temple or even atheists’ hang-out you want to donate to is entirely your own business (and you should not unlawfully use your company funds to sponsor your personal philanthropic urges).

Slightly Out of Context - Example from History:

At this point I would like to highlight a beautiful example in the history of Islam. Ali Ibn Abi Thalib was probably the first and only Caliph (if not the best one of all) to have handled the Islamic Treasury (collected from the Muslims’ annual tithe and other sources of income) in such a way that the portions from it that were supposed to support the development of the Christian and Jewish communities in the Islamic civilisation at that time were managed with utmost fairness and justice. Not a single iota of their portions were touched or taken to favour Muslim interests over theirs; in fact, when other agents sought to manipulate the Christian and Jewish portions of the Treasury, Ali meted out swift justice against these agents. Even his closest blood relations were not spared from his just dispensation of duties - any ‘favourable’ requests by them to receive additional amounts from the Treasury even on account of poverty are firmly refused by Ali.

residual philanthropy, Mark Victor Hansen, Robert Allen, Cracking the Millionaire Code, Feed the Children, Ali Ibn Abi Thalib

This is a dreamy post, but since I’m not a stranger to articulating my big, wacky dreams, I shall go on ahead and write about it anyway.

One of those things that I will do when I am a multi-billionaire is to buy a piece of land, build a huge office building and basically own it.

This building will have room for about 1,000 offices and it will be totally self-sustaining in terms of energy production and consumption. There is to be no underground power connections whatsoever to any external power source. The building will be a power-independent entity. There will be free wireless internet access (whatever is the latest wireless hyper-broadband technology that will be available) anywhere in the building and around it, within a radius of 1 km.

Here’s the revolutionary deal: I will give any start-up or non-profit organisation office space in my building for free, on several conditions:

1. If it’s a start-up, it must be profitable within 3 months of its first occupying my building. Or else, it has to go and make way for more promising companies with probably better management. Once it becomes profitable after 3 months, it must continue to sustain its growth for another 9 months; by then, on its first anniversary of having occupied the free office space in my building, it has to give 1% of its annual turnover as its ‘rental fees’ to the owner of the building, yours truly.

2. If it’s a non-profit, surely there must still be some funds flowing through to run and sustain the organisation, and the same applies for the non-profit as it does for the start-up company, the only difference being that the non-profit has to be successful in achieving whatever charitable or welfare goals it sets out to achieve within the first 3 month, and continue to be able to sustain its own growth for another 9; until its first anniversary, by which 1% of its annual contributions received from sponsors is paid to the owner of the building.

3. The start-up or non-profit must prove to me its worth in contributing to the good of humankind. It must comprise staff from the widest possible range of social groups. All the egalitarian norms of modern political correctness apply, beyond political correctness itself.

4. The organisations occupying the building must be family-friendly and ecologically-friendly. Each organisation must have a representative that meets with my representative and one another frequently to discuss issues pertaining to the optimal and fair use of the facilities and premises. To ensure unbiased and impartial feedback and response flow, the representatives will be rotated amongst the different organisations, and they must be independent of any attachment to any one of the organisation whatsoever.

5. All the organisations residing in the building must share a common knowledge and information library / database. Granted, there will be certain areas which, for competitive reasons, cannot be shared or revealed by the organisations, but the sharing of useful and relevant knowledge and information between organisations via the mechanisms of the library / database / knowledge-management-systems will be a highly-esteemed practice.