Most people will interpret having multiple sources of income as having more than one job. This is not how it should be interpreted. Having multiple sources of income simply point to having another source which can also generate income at the same time as you are working in your profession. It can also mean that while you are sleeping, you are still generating income without having to work on it. It might sound unrealistic to some of you but this is how many of the millionaires are made of. So it boiled down to how to make this money work for you.

There are various paths towards this financial freedom but one common way which is taught in many books on topics such as wealth and rich is to cultivate the right thoughts and mindset. Of course many people will claim they dreamt of becoming rich and asked if this is supposed to be the right thoughts. It is absolutely good to have this dream but you need to take action to realize it. Dreams without any action will contribute to nothing.

The rich will usually carry out what they dreamt of but the poor usually will dream and don’t do anything. The poor usually have many great ideas on how to become rich but they are just too lazy to put it into action or too timid to think of consequences leading to failures. The rich will explore and seldom have doubts. The poor will suspect and refuse to take anything which is perceived as not clear to them. As a result they can only admire the works of the rich even though they claim they have thought of the same thing before.

Anyway, the subject I would like to emphasize here is that if you have dreams, please take action or else it can never be realized. There are usually a lot of difficulties leading to the path of success and it greatly depends on your determination in this process. Success will taste sweeter with persistence and determination, with sweat and blood lost along the way.

I am quite hesitant initially to talk about this topic but decided to share with you what I have learnt over some of the public talks and books which I read up on this topic. I hope I can make it as interesting as I can.

I registered for one public talk from KC See which is talking about his Money Mastery Program. One of the highlights of the talk is the question to the audience about “How many days can you survive if you were to quit your job the next day?” I have not thought of this question in my whole life before and took some time to figure out how long I can survive, taking into the considerations of my liabilities and responsibilities.

I realized that it did not take long before all my resources will be drained out if I stop working the next day. This is the expected answer from the speaker. Obviously the ideal answer would be infinity which will imply that you are already achieving financial freedom. But most of the working class people are not in this category regardless of how high their salary are.

Financially free does not necessary imply that you are a millionaire although millionaires are perceived to be exceptionally rich and wealthy. But their millions could be splurge away if not properly managed. The true financial free people are those who can made money worked for you instead of you working for money. This is a popular statement used by Robert Kiyosaki in his book on “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. Robert Kiyosaki and KC See shared the same preaching. In order to achieve this financial freedom, you have got to have multiple sources of income. It is definitely not sufficient to rely on your monthly salary to obtain financially free one day.

I began to think of health more seriously as some of my relatives and close ones suddenly suffered from cancer. They don’t smoke or drink extensively. I can tell you I was really very surprise when I realized they are suffering from cancer. But there are just too many live examples when people who don’t smoke or drink still suffer from cancer or some other heart related diseases.

There are also many cases of people who smoke and drink but still remain healthy with no diseases attacking them. Honestly I have no answers to all these so-called myths. There are just too many kinds of diseases and illnesses around to be aware of. What I can do is to make sure I will remain healthy and do not wish to take the chance of risking my life if there are ways to prevent it.

At that point of time, I honestly did not think much about making use of the MLM activities to help to create wealth.

Maybe this might appear as a serious topic to some of you. But have you ever wonder which should be in your priority? I am not surprise if there are more people who will prefer health to wealth than wealth to health. I recalled that I attended one MLM marketing talk few years ago, but not by Elken. The speaker was very convincing. He spoke about how he used to suffer from near kidney failures and how well the supplements help him to recover after that. And he recovered to become a wealthy person through this MLM organization.

At that time, I wasn’t very keen to get into this kind of MLM activities even though I am quite convince that those products work well.

Maybe I was reluctant to break away from my comfortable life at that time.

Maybe I never thought that I would suffer the same disease as him one day.

Maybe I though he was just unlucky to be down with this kind of disease.

Maybe I just thought that I was healthy at that time and will be healthy all the time if I can take care of myself well.

There are no less than 5 excuses which I can think of at that time to dismiss MLM products and activities. So I ended up as another passenger in those talks which still failed to move me to take action.

When my cousin first brought me to attend a NDT conference organized by the Elken, I had mixed feeling after coming out of the meeting. I was quite satisfied with the product introductions but had some questions on their ways of delivering MLM system to the audiences. I am not questioning that it will not work. In fact it worked so well for them but I am quite certain that it will not work with the pool of people I know. I even told my cousin that I have a feeling that the vast majority of audiences are quite lowly educated and would be using the techniques and teaching by these leaders to promote and market their products.

With no disrespect to this Elken community, I felt these techniques and teaching will never work well for the more educated people. At that point of time, I didn’t bother to pursue further on what I think will work better for the more educated people. But knowing my circle of friends well, I knew I would probably be banging my head onto the wall if I were to use the methods taught by them to make sales.

But nevertheless I still tried but in a more cautious manner because I didn’t want to give them the impression that I was acting like a sales person. Again, with no disrespect to sales people, I have to admit that I wasn’t proud to get involved in direct sales. As expected, I didn’t manage to do that well with my friends. In fact my mum did better than me to get my aunties and uncles to try out these supplements.

My up-line cousin helped to talk to some of my relatives and managed to clinch some sales under my account. I was quite amazed with his eloquence speech on selling and wish if I could have half of his skills, I could easily have closed these sales by myself. But anyway, these are some of the things which you can wish and hope but can’t rely heavily on. And after a while without seeing any progress made on this business, I began to show less enthusiasm and focus more on other things.

But I am still getting some monthly extra income from some sales or discount which I bought the supplements for my family daily intake.

I got to know about Elken (my first network marketing company) through my 2 much younger cousins from Malaysia. I started from eating their supplements as my mum purchased in a family size package.

Initially I didn’t have the habit of popping a few tablets of this health supplements every morning and as time goes by, I conveniently forgot to take them and gradually I ended up not taking them. After realizing that I haven’t been taking them as I see the bottle of supplements still quite full and heavy, I started to take them again, also with my mum reminding me to take if she herself remembers. I didn’t realized that there are suppose to be some effects acting on me.

I took a few type supplements at one time including a kind of reverse oasis (R.O) water which I install in my house 2 years ago. It immediately changed my perception of drinking water. Upon discovering that this water filter machine works like our Singapore NeWater, I begin to drink water like drinking orange juice. It tastes better than our tap or boiled water at home.

Anyway, I did not meant to promote this filter in this column, just to share with you about the experience of drinking water. I still remember at that time, I haven’t exercise for quite some time and dragged myself to jog at Bedok Reservoir one day.

The whole track is 4.2km long and usually I will stop running after 2.4km because I will be dead tired by then. But I was surprise that I could finish the whole track without stopping to walk to the ending point. I felt quite energetic even after that. Now I can consistently jog non-stop for at least 2.4km. I don’t like to jog longer than 4.2km if possible so I have not tested out my limits.

Anyway these supplements are not steroid if someone should be curious about what they are. They are just nutrients supplements which can help to balance your daily intake of food. I can only relate this story to you because fortunately I do not own any major diseases to boast about how good these products are on those diseases.

But I did come across some real cases where these products really help to cure or prevent certain diseases from attacking them. After this discovery, I began to show more confidence in these health supplements and will make it an effort to take them daily.

1. Too comfortable to upgrade themselves further.

2. Generally this category of people is less risky. They are not willing to move forward to try out something new.

3. This category falls under the type of “Everyone wants to go to Heaven but no one wants to die”. An excerpt from Robert Kiyosaki in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to describe those people who just want the better of both worlds but not willing to be at the losing end.

4. Too proud to involve in direct sales, thinks that direct sales requires making a nuisance of themselves to sell products to others. A door-to-door sales person’s job is perceived as low-class in the eyes of these middle class people.

5. Confidence will be easily damaged if being turn down or so-called “cold calling” treatment by prospects once or twice. Too fragile to accept rejection.

6. Too afraid of making mistakes and wasting time to do something not proven by the rest of the people. Ironically, these people have the time and ideas but refused to take action.

7. Middle Class communities are people who ask questions to make them more confused and afraid instead of asking questions towards making something more constructive and successful.

8. Did not consider health as a potential hazard in the near future. As long as they are healthy now, they do not think they will fall very ill even in future.

9. Waiting for people to provide them with an easy way out to make money and an affordable means to remain healthy.

10. Willing to spend any amount of money to keep them look pretty but not willing to fork out a single cent to keep themselves healthy.

Back to the topic on analyzing the middle class’s behavior, I do not read books on psychology or have attended any psychiatrists’ talks to come out with this analysis. What I simply did is to observe how people react upon being asked on the topic of health products and MLM and making extra income.

I received mixed responses ranging from skepticism to various levels of enthusiasm. Some showed good enthusiasm at first and gradually faded away and even tried to avoid the topic. Others show no interest level and claim they are quite comfortable with their current life-style and show no sign of wanting a change. Some are skeptical enough to claim if MLM products are good, why didn’t everyone used them. Some also claim that they are not interested to be rich.

Sad to say, I used to behave in exactly the same manner and that is the reason why I didn’t want to persist to convince people to accept my intentions. I used to be more skeptical than some others and dismissed MLM products as nonsense. I have previously taken some health supplements from another MLM company but did not continue after some time. It didn’t mean they are not good products, they just lack a person to follow up on whether I would like to try out other products or telling me how good those products are. That was their mistakes, not mine.

Those are good products which really help to improve a person’s health but it did not have their deserved recognitions for the public. And it didn’t mean they are bad products. They were just lacking a group or team to extensively promote for them in a manner which MLM should work. Maybe I wouldn’t have participate in their products at that time too as I was quite comfortable with my life to make drastic changes to my daily routine. I have to admit that. The next post shows some of the analysis made on busy middle class’s behavior.

Marketing and psychology are closely related. If psychology is the “systematic study of human behavior,” then marketing is the “systematic study of human behavior in the marketplace.”

To those who know me by person, I am not exactly a marketing person. I am a full-time engineer. But it didn’t take a marketing genius to discover what the above sentences mean. If you have ever tried to promote a product but were getting a luke-warm response from your target customers, probably you will start to realize that it is necessary to read their minds in order to be more successful. I experience this true fact after realizing the difficulty of attempting to sell a good product to some friends but was not receiving good responses. This has set me to think of analyzing the complexity of the human behavior. I am choosing the busy middle class in this case for a simple reason that I am surrounded by these people in my daily encounters. I work, eat and hang around with them almost every day in my life. I am also a typical busy middle class person and behave and think like any of them.

As mentioned earlier, what really triggers me to start to analyze about human’s behavior was the failures I met while doing something outside my routine professions. I am not exactly a good speaker and of course I can’t claim to be a great sale person. You might be silently thinking that this would definitely be inevitable to fail when a bad speaker tried to do a sale person’s job. I used to think this way too until I feel I can’t let it go on like this forever. Unless I pick up some courses on “how to speak convincing” to improve my level of communication and sales confidence, or else I need to find out other ways in order to make up for this inefficiency in convincing speech. As my current profession as an engineer does not require me to speak well in order to win a business or do well in my job, I do not see the need to improve myself in this manner. I am grateful in some way with my current job which does not take up too much of my time and energy. As a result, it opens up another opportunity for me to be involved in another learning environment. I have to clarify that I am still doing well in my current job. I do not have to explain but I see the need to clarify with people who know me personally and might have doubts on how I can manage to do both things at the same time. If you can afford to spend less hours on TV programs and cut down on maybe one or two hours of sleep a day for a certain period of time, I am sure you will find time outside your normal working hours to do things which you like. I enjoy sharing experience with people through writing. I will probably get tongue tight if I were to ask to speak to a group of people at one time, relating my personal experiences to them.

The reason why I starting this blog is to share with people who do not know me personally is that it really excites me to learn that online learning is becoming so real and so easy to access. Learning network marketing online has become a reality. My mentors are Robert Kiyosaki, Anthony Robbins, Mike Dillard and Daegan Smith. I have read some of their books which help to improve myself in my daily encounters with people I met. “Rich dad, Poor dad” is the book which really changed my perspective of life.

To those who are content with their current life, there are ways to improve your life further. In short, it is simply too easy to become rich and get out of the middle class. I sincerely do not wish anyone to miss out on this chance to upgrade yourselves to upper class.

Some time last year while having lunch with my girlfriend (now my wife), I found out some thing interesting. I have a special liking for a delicacy call turtle soup which is not very popular in Singapore and not many places selling this soup. Not to mention, not all places sell nice and delicious turtle soup. My wife claims that she never like turtle soup until I discover the reasons during the lunch.

As usual I make an order of the turtle soup for myself and my wife ordered some other dishes for herself. I told her how delicious the soup tastes and encourage her to give it a try. She reluctantly agreed to try but commented that the soup tastes delicious after tasting it. Then I asked her to try out the meat and this time she didn’t resist, and after trying out, she discovered that it actually tastes delicious too. I asked her why in the first place she doesn’t like turtle soup and then she told me the reasons. The truth is she has NEVER tasted the turtle soup at all! Then I asked why she claims that she didn’t like turtle soup. She told me that the look of it doesn’t seem appealing to make her want to try out. That’s the reason until now, she has never tasted something so delicious but always got the impression that it will taste horrible because the look doesn’t appear tempting for anyone to try out.

What I am trying to bring up here is the impression that most people have on network marketing. Many people have never got into network marketing before but have so many bad comments about it. They can question all about the negative impact these system has. Even when people explain how these opportunities can change their life, they will simply dispute it as can’t be true. They argued as if they have so much experience in it and that if this is indeed so great, then why isn’t everyone doing that and change their life. Their minds are simply too enclosed and they can’t think logically. Without any disrespect, these people are nothing but ignorance. They just can’t tell these difference and always think that if majority people don’t do that, it means that those systems will never work. They always think that they are experts when they do not know a single thing about network marketing at all! They are just letting their so-called expertise getting the better of them and will never open up themselves.

You can’t force them to think likewise. What you can do is to give them time to switch their mindset. They need to be aware of someone they know and are successful in this business in order to confirm their belief that network marketing or MLM system does work. Until you can bring such a person in front of them and show how much you have earn from network marketing or MLM, else, the rationale thing you can do at that moment is to leave them alone.

I was able to relate it so well because I was that ignorance person before. I was only able to open up myself to network marketing after seeing some real examples in my cousins. Else I would still have been skeptical about it. So do not have to be disheartened to meet anti-network marketers. They are always around, and seriously they can get the nerves out of you if you do not know how to handle them.