At the celebration dinner with Dr. Tony Tan, First Lady Mary Tan and my wife Sally Khoo

Time has really flown since then and now, I feel I am getting old man! Few months ago, I was flying on Singapore Airlines. As I was admiring the air stewardesses, two came up to me and said, ‘Hey! You are Adam Khoo!’ ‘We attended your camp when we were 15 years old!’ Wah Low! Make me feel like old man. Then, a week ago, I went to Tengah Air Base Medical centre for my FFI medical checkup. The Medic who was going to take blood from me (probably aged 18-19) said,’ Haha! you are Adam Khoo. I attended your programme when I was in Primary 5′. I felt really scared that this kid was going to stick a needle in me. Thank god, I was nice to him last time. Then when I went to see the Medical Officer (the doctor…for you civilians who dun understand), I got bigger shock. He said, ‘Are you Adam Khoo?’ I said, ‘yes?’. He said, ‘ I attended your camp when I was in sec 4 in raffles Institution!’ You inspired me to become a doctor.’ That made me feel even older still. But then, I felt great because I could see how my work over the years have made a difference in his life.

Ever since then, she has been taking A4 paper and writing her own very very very short books (4 pages) with pictures that illustrate her story. Of course, what she writes is not original. Basically, she is plagiarizing ideas from the many children’s books she has read (e.g. Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood etc…). She mixes and meshes the stories together. She may or may not become a writer in the future, but it makes me proud to see her having a passion for something and taking action towards. It is this attitude that I have always wished for my children.

However, what makes me the most proud is not their intellectual development but their character development. They have grown up to be extremely caring, loving, appreciative and polite children. Whatever my wife serves for dinner, they would say, ‘thank you mummy for cooking dinner for us’. They thank her and thank me for fetching them around, buying things for them and cooking for them.

Every few days, they would draw cards for us telling us how much they love us and thanking us for what we do for them. This are some of the cards and paintings they have made for me.

I was very touched when my eldest daughter Kelly drew a card for my maid to thank her and to say ‘I love you’ to her. She had tears in her eyes when my daughter hugged her and gave her the card. This is the card my daughter made for our maid ‘Jagung’.

My two kids have also become very independent and self-disciplined. Whenever they come home from school, they will start to finish their homework automatically without being told. Before dinner, they will help to setup the utensils and the carry the food. After dinner, they will carry their plates back to the kitchen.

However, I must point out that all these attitudes and behaviours did not happen by chance. It is the result of their mother spending countless hours to guide them and shaping their character. I am really lucky to have a wife like her. It is not uncommon nowadays to see children and teens acting in a selfish and ungrateful manner. Some of them take their parents love for granted, even shouting back at them at times. One of my friend’s wife was recently diagnosed with kidney failure. She had to stop work and has been resting at home for the last 3 months. The sad thing is that her teenage children have not volunteered to help their mother at all. Even though the oldest son can drive, he is too busy with his hobbies to fetch his mother for dialysis treatment. The poor old women has to take a bus by herself. They would rather spend the time going out with their friends and even resent the fact that they get less pocket money now that mum can no longer work.

It is not uncommon to see some children and teens acting in a selfish manner and taking the things they have for granted. While we often blame them, my wife believes that their parents have just as much to blame as well. Respectful, grateful and kind children do not come about my accident. It is up the parents to teach them good values and to shape their behaviours from the time they are young- when they are easily moulded. Children may not always listen to what we say, but they will always learn by observing our behaviours. I also believe that our children learn to treat us by observing the way we treat OUR OWN parents. If we shout at our parents, disrespect them and don’t bother to visit them, our children will do the same things to US when we grow old. It is a kind of ‘Karma’ that comes full circle.

” There is no such thing as a bad student. Only bad teacher”- Mr. Miyagi (from the Karate Kid Movie)

Let me share some of the things that my wife has done over the years to mould my children’s character and to teach them the right values.

1) Teaching Respect for Elders
Many mums will serve their children the first piece of cake on their birthday. They believe that this is the way to show their love. We believe that by serving the first piece of cake to the kid, it may be cultivating the wrong values and mindsets. By treating the child like a ‘prince’ or ‘princess’, they will grow up thinking that the world owes them a living and think only of themselves, and not for others.
In our family, we teach our children to serve cake to all the elders first before eating their share.

2) Teaching them Gratitude
Many parents complain that their children are ungrateful. That no matter what they do for their kids, their kids only complain. What my wife and I believe is that we need to teach them to be grateful. We teach our children to thank their teachers, the maids, their grandparents and their parents (us). When I am away working overseas, my wife will tell them how I must work to earn the money to pay for the house, their school fees and their food. Every time I come home, I get a big hug from them. They then say ‘thank you for working for us.’

We also use the Internet as a resource to show them and teach them how the millions of children in poor countries are suffering without food, shelter and a proper family. We then tell them how lucky they are to have a chance to live in Singapore and be able to go to school. THis is why my kids never complain about going to school camp or doing homework.

3) Teaching them Self-Discipline
Whenever my kids come home from school, mum will always ask them to check the homework they have and to finish it as soon as possible without delay. When they make mistakes on tests, she will go through each one with them to make sure they learn from it. After her ‘coaching’, they have now formed the habit of doing it themselves.

If my own mother was like my wife, then I would never have got kicked out of school in primary three and never have become the lazy, unmotivated underachiever that I was in the past. That is why I think my kids are so lucky to have a full time mum. It does make a big difference. Then again, if I was a disciplined, motivated child to begin with, maybe I could not have become such a success story and have written by book ‘I Am Gifted, So Are You!’ So I guess everything happens for a reason.

4) Teaching them Responsibility and Self-Confidence
Although we have maids in my house, my wife tells my children to set the table and help to carry dishes from the kitchen to the dining table. When they are finished, they carry their plates to the sink. If they spill something on the floor, they are the ones to clean it up and not the maids. When we go out, they carry their own water bottles and bags. Our maids do not do it. This may seem to some like cruel child labour, but we believe that it teaches them to be independent and responsible. It also builds in them the self confidence that they can do things themselves. The best part is that they find it fun to do!

If you are a parent of young children yourself, I do hope you find my sharings useful.

I would like to share one of the proudest moment in my life. This year, my older daughter turned 6 and became old enough to attend my Adam Khoo Learning Centre‘s English and Math enrichment program. After helping thousands of other people’s children to improve their grades and develop winning mindsets, it feels good to see my own daughter benefiting from the powerful strategies my team and I have created.

What I am also most proud of is how my daughter has grown into such a confident, expressive, disciplined and intelligent child. All this did not happen by chance, but it is the result of 6 years of nurturing her using all the parenting strategies that my wife and I have learnt.

To be fair, my wife did 95% of all the work and I am responsible for 5%. Ironically, I have been spending most of my time helping other people’s children to excel while my wife has been focusing 100% of her time helping my own children.

I thought I would like to share some of the lessons we have learnt as parents and how we have done our best to bring out the winner in our children.

Nature or Nurture?
There has always been a debate about whether nature or nurture plays a part in determining a person’s character, behaviour and intelligence. As a father of two children, I can tell you from first hand experience that the answer is BOTH.

We are all born with different personalities, behavioural traits and different forms of intelligence. Although my wife and I treated our two children in exactly the same way: sang the same songs, gave the same milk, read the same books, they are really different in the way they think and behave.

My older daughter started out EXACTLY like the way I was when I was young. She is a typical right-brain dominant child with an Introvert/ Intuitor/feeler/perceiver (INFP) personality. So, by nature, she loves music, drawing, playing but is slow in learning language and Math (in fact, she started speaking only at age 2.5…which is really slow).

As an introvert, she was very quiet and shy to talk to other people. As an intuitor, she was always dreaming in a world of her own and would only do something if she FELT like doing it. My wife jokingly said that she got all these genes from me…which is actually true.

Obviously we were worried as it was this personality that caused me to be an underachiever in my life. I failed all the way in Primary school and got expelled at age 9. I only ‘woke up’ and ‘changed my life’ in my teens. Seeing the possible future if she continued the way she was, we were determined to nurture her strengths and help her to re-conditioning her shortcomings.

So, my wife and I used all the success conditioning and accelerated learning techniques that we knew to encourage, stretch, challenge and nurture her. It was definitely not easy but we are really happy that she has transformed into an outgoing, expressive and confident 6-year old, ready for primary 1. In fact, she is now an avid reader and talks non-stop. She is way ahead of her peers in her Math abilities (after alot of training from my wife). In fact, her English and Math abilities are probably at age 8 level!

On the other hand, my younger daughter Samantha, is a typical left-brain child with an extrovert, sensor, thinker, judger personality (ESTJ), the total opposite of her older sister and exactly the same as my wife! She got my wife’s genes. It is amazing to see the difference.

My younger daughter started speaking at age 1 and is naturally fast with numbers (being left-brain dominant). She loves to go up and say hello to strangers and is not shy at all. She will notice my wife’s new hair-do and can recognize directions to her school while my elder daughter will be oblivious to everything. She was naturally wired to excel in school! So, we focused on nurturing her in the areas of music, drama and art.

Being a parent so far has been an AMAZING journey, and these are some important lessons that I would like to share that have helped us raise our kids and I hope it would help you too.

On Discipline….
Some parents think that they when children are still young, you should give in and let them do as they please. They believe that you should only discipline them when they are older.

My wife and I have seen time and again that this does not work. If you do not condition kids to be obedient and disciplined from young, it is very difficult to control them once they grow older. ‘Once you give, very hard to take back’.

We have seen nightmares of kids not listening to their parents and even shouting back with disrespect. We have seen our friend’s kids refusing to eat if the food is not to their linking, spitting out their vegetables and throwing tantrums. All this behaviour is not the kid’s fault, it is because their parents have allowed them to turn out this way.

My wife and I believe that discipline and obedience begins on day 1, age 0. Once they are conditioned to be disciplined, half of all your future worries will be over. So, while we how all our love to them and go crazy in play, when it comes to discipline, there are NO COMPROMISES and ZERO TOLERANCE.

We teach our children to come immediately when we call them. In fact, if they don’t respond or ignore us, they will face the consequences. When we put food on the table, they are not allowed to complain. They have to finish every last grain. If they refuse to eat, they go hungry. They learn that choices have consequences.

If they do not finish their homework, they do not sleep. If they spill something on the floor, they clean it up themselves. Even though we have two maids in the house, my children have to carry their own plates and wash it themselves. This, we found also builds up their independence and self-confidence. They are also taught to say thank you and please to everyone, including my maids. If they don’y say ‘please’, they know they will face the consequences of being ignored.

This may seem harsh, but after 4-5 years, our children are now extremely self-disciplined. We hardly have to scold them or tell them what to do anymore. When we go out with other families, they are amazed that our kids will sit down quietly and finish their meals and behave well, while their own children create havoc.

On Making Learning Fun….
Many gifted children and teenagers are not motivated to study because they have learnt to associate PAIN and BOREDOM to learning. So, while we are strict on discipline, we do our best to make learning really fun…into an adventure camp.

We cultivate their love for English and Math by reading to them everyday and have them read to us. To make it exciting and fun, we read to them while acting out the story with drama! We play music, use facial expressions, funny voices and body language. They love it.

My wife also uses alot of accelerated learning techniques and whole-brain learning strategies to help them remember tough words really fast and spell accurately. To get them to love math, we play Math games and puzzles. We also, get them to order the food when we go to restaurants and to count the money for payment and the change as well. They see the real value in Math and build the confidence to use it as well.

On Building the Right Habits…
We realize that having the right habits play a crucial part in determining a person’s success in life. Some people have the habit of lazing around, others have the habit of watching TV or playing computer games.

Successful people have the habit of reading and feeding their minds.
At the same time, most habits start from young. So, we were determine to help our children cultivate winning habits at a young age.

One of the things I believe is that we are the ultimate role models of our children. They may not follow what we say, but they will always tend to follow what they see us do. So, my wife and I hardly ever watch TV. We are always sharing ideas and debating about current affairs and will always be reading books and newspapers when we are free.

Sure enough, our children have modeled us and are practicing this habit. Whenever they are bored, they don’t reach for the TV or any kind of computer game (which we don’t allow anyway). Instead, they will read a book, perform dance/drama or draw.

In fact, our kids always love to create and put up drama or dance performances for my wife and I. We don’t ask them to or even rehearse it for them. They do it out of their own spontaneity! Here’s a really cute performance I filmed recently.

On Building the Winning Mindset…
Some people are born with a strong character and outgoing personality.
I was NOT like that when I was young and my older daughter was also like me. She was very shy reserved and was afraid to take on anything that seemed to difficult.

Whenever she ‘tried’ something and failed, she would cry and not want to do it again. She was afraid to ride on the bicycle when we removed the training wheels. When we finally convinced her to learn how to ride a bike, she fell, cried and did not want to do it again.

We knew that for her to grow up and become successful, she had to learn to have confidence to take on challenges. She had to learn how to fail and get up again. We had to build within her the ‘never give up mentality’. So my wife and I would never allow her to run away from her fears. We would never allow her to give up.

Whenever she cried and avoided the challenge, we would use NLP (neuro-linguistic Programming) techniques to teach her how to calm down, visualize herself succeeding and find the confidence to go again. Of course, this took alot of time and encouragement.

Again, all that conditioning paid off. Today, she is alot more daring to take on challenges and would never say ‘I cannot’ when she falls the first time. She has learned to develop the resilience to take on bigger and bigger challenges. We are really proud of her.

Of course at age 6 and 5, our children’s are still at the beginning stages of their life’s journey and they are so much more lessons to be learnt and mountains to climb. Our job as parents are far from over. Anything can happen from now. However, we are happy that so far, we have steered them in the right direction.

It was the time when the journalists came to my house to interview my father and I did I really begin to remember how much he has done for me. I began to realize that without my father, I would not be where I am today. He has shaped my beliefs, values and attitudes not just in business but also in the way I raise my own children today.

It was not easy for my father to raise me. I was a highly rebellious, lazy, blur and underachieving child in my earlier years. At the age of 13, my parents divorced and my mother migrated to Australia where she re-married. At that time, it was not easy for my father to bring me up as a single parent. He worked really hard to build up his business and would spend whatever time he had left with me.

In fact, when he started dating again, he made sure that he brought me along on all his dates. Even though many of his girlfriends (there were some Japanese and Ang Moh ones too) weren’t too please that I came along with him on dates and even on their romantic holidays, my dad insisted that I be there and would never dump me at home. Once he met a woman who he really liked but ended the relationship because she did not like the fact that he spent more time with me on weekends than with her. I was always my father’s first priority.

Many people who know my Dad to be a very successful businessman and accomplished industry leader often ask me if he was the responsible for helping me become a millionaire and industry leader. The answer is yes, but not in the way that many people may think.

( My father founded and managed one of the top advertising agencies in Singapore and was also the President of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents. He was also the chairman of Lasalle/SIA and a director on many listed companies and statutory boards like Sentosa Development Corporation, Primary Industries, Orchid Country Club etc…)

By seeing my father as a successful industry leader and self-made millionaire himself, I believe it shaped my beliefs that being successful was indeed possible. It was a standard he set and one that I should definitely match and even exceed one day. By growing up in a Bungalow (with a swimming pool) and being exposed to the tremendous wealth around me, it unconsciously helped me develop the attitude and mindset of a millionaire and business leader.

At the same time, the greatest gift my father gave me was the opportunity to develop my fighting spirit, self-reliance and entrepreneurship abilities. No. He never told me to start a business. In fact, he was against the idea and wanted me to take up the SAF scholarship I was offered and to go for a career in politics of civil service. No. He never gave me any business advice or lent me one-cent to start my own business. No. He never taught me about investing at all.

In fact, he did something most single parents would find very difficult to do. He purposely gave me very little money and insisted that anything I wanted to buy outside of books and food, I would have to buy myself. He kept telling me that I should not expect to inherit anything as he intended to give it all away to charity.

Most parents (especially single parents), out of guilt, give their children everything they want and more if they can afford it. They give them money, games, toys, handphones and even supplementary credit cards. My dad believed that the best way to kill a child’s hunger and motivation for success is to give them what they want. My dad had seen many of his rich friends give their children cars, money, credit cards…only to see them all squander it all away and become bums as adults.

My dad did the tough thing. He held back and refused to give me what I wanted even if it meant that making me unhappy in the short term. as a result of my father’s ‘stinginess’ (he gave me $2 a day in pocket money when my friends got $3-4 in primary school). I also got one of the lowest allowance in Secondary school and JC.

As a result, in order to get money to buy games and toys, I started working during my school holidays from the age of 14. I have worked as a waiter, salesman selling corporate stationery door to door, DJ, emcee, music technician, etc… The need for money also motivated me to start my own mobile disco business at age 15 and a training business at age 17.

It was all this part time work and entrepreneurial pursuits I did during my school holidays that really gave me the life skills that many of my other friends did not have. I learnt how to sell, how to speak in public, how to manage my own money, how to save and invest etc… It also gave me the hunger and drive to make my own money to get what I wanted.

Although my dad did not give me a single cent for any of my business ventures or give me any direct advice about business, I learnt a lot through observing how he dealt with people, how he networked and how he lead his own staff.

My dad believes in treating everyone with respect and creates a warm and family atmosphere in his company, where everyone (including the receptionist calls him by his first name…never Mr. Khoo). I now deal with people and empower people in the exact same way and I found that is one of the the success factors that have contributed to me building a team of highly motivated and empowered high-calibre individuals who work for me today.

His dedication and devotion as a father has also inspired me to be the very best father I can be to my own children, ensuring that I too do not spoil them but inspire them and instill in them the fighting spirit to make their own mark in the world. I have also recently become a member of the Father’s Action Network (FAN) committee, a workgroup of the National Family Council that aims to promote active fatherhood in Singapore. So, thank you Dad for shaping me into becoming who I am today.

For all those of you who are reading this post, I hope that you too will remember the impact that your own father has made in your life and to take this opportunity to appreciate him on this special occasion. Give your dad a call, buy him a gift, write him a note of appreciation and make this his most memorable father’s day ever!

They said, “I bet they’ll never make it”
But just look at us holding on
We’re still together still going strong

These are the lyrics from ‘Still the One’, one of my favourite love songs from Shania Twain. This week, I was really happy to sing those exact same words to my wife. Why? The 8 of May 2010 marked a really important milestone in my life. It was the 10th year anniversary of our marriage and we celebrated it by taking a romantic getaway to Bali. Time really flies indeed. Ten years ago, on the 8th of May 2000, we got married after going out together for 6 years. I was 24 and she was **censored**. Now, ten years later, we have two wonderful children and are as happy and in love as ever.

The reason that I am really proud in reaching this milestone is because I know that staying happily married after 10 years is not easy at all. Nowadays, a happy marriage is the exception rather than the norm. We all know that less than 10% of businesses that start make it past the 10-year mark. Marriage isn’t all that different. From my informal observations and surveys of the thousands of people that come for my seminars, I have found that less than 20% of people stay happily married after the first five years.

So many friends I know, including my own parents and my wife’s parents, have ended their marriage in divorce. And many of those who decided to stay together have lost the love and passion somewhere along the way. I can name many who are married but are miserable. They are just staying married because they feel obligated, staying for the sake of their children or because they are too fearful or shameful to make a change.

After being married for the first decade, I now know that a successful marriage DOES NOT happen by chance. Many people have the illusion that as long as they find Mr./Mrs Right who they love, everything will be plain sailing, the birds will be singing everyday their love will automatically last the test of time. Sorry to say, it does not happen that way.

No matter whom you marry, the road to marriage is fraught with challenges and problems. There are going to be disagreements and fights over children, money, in-laws, holidays, parenting teenagers methods life choices etc- Unless you use the right communication strategies and management skills of your thoughts and emotions in the right way, these inevitable events will destroy any relationship.

At the same time, love, like any human emotion does not last unless you make the effort and spend the time to cherish, appreciate, pamper, delight, surprise, entertain and serve each other every single day. You cannot marry someone and expect to be still happily in love after 10 years without working on your relationship on a consistent basis.

I have observed that the main reason why most relationships fail is because couples take each other’s love for granted and never worked on building and nurturing their relationship once they got married. Whatever you don’t nurture consistently will slowly and surely die. And when things go wrong, they find someone to blame, especially each other. Many of my friends who end up in divorce tell me that it is because they married the wrong person, because their mother-in-law broke the marriage up, because of money problems or because the children killed the intimacy in their relationship.

The reason my marriage has successfully made it for 10 years is not because we were perfect for each other and that we are lucky enough to have no problems.

In fact, we are as different as night and day. She is a vegetarian and I love to eat meat, She loves shopping and I hate it (I think it’s a damn waste of time). She wants to watch Chinese movies and I want to watch English ones. I love massages and she hates anyone touching her body. I wanted to live in a Bungalow and she wanted to live in an apartment-you get the message.

So, what the heck do we like about each other? I don’t know about her, but what I love about her is that she has a really kind heart. She won’t even harm an ant (literally!) She goes out of her way to help strangers and is extremely honest with her thoughts and feelings. She doesn’t play games and goes straight to the point. She’s the kind of person who I know will stick with me through thick and thin. If I ever lose everything I have, she will be standing there by me. She is also an amazing mother to my children. That’s what I love about her! So despite our inherent differences, our love for each other has driven us to always find a way to make it work.

At the same time, we have gone through our fair share of huge challenges and emotional ups and downs. We have disagreed over everything and almost anything you can think of. There were times when we felt like killing each other and calling it quits. They have been some very low and even near breaking points in our marriage. However, what allowed us to bounce back and strengthen our love was the fact that we chose to put in 100% effort to make it work and to apply the right communication leadership strategies that we read from hundreds of books on relationships, NLP, psychology etc-

Here are five lessons I have learnt throughout my 10-year journey that I would like to share with you. It has helped me on my journey of marriage and I hope it would do the same for you.

Lesson #1: Love Your Partner The Way They Want To Be Loved
We have all heard the phrase ‘Treat others the way YOU want to be treated’. I discovered that this advice does not work in a relationship. Instead, we need to treat others the way THEY want to be treated.

We all have different love languages. Some people feel loved when they are physically touched (hugged, kissed, touched etc..). However, some people do not feel deeply loved through physical touch. They may like it, but they don’t feel deeply loved by it. Instead, they feel loved only when they hear the words ‘I love you’. For others, they only feel loved when you do things for them or when you spend time with them.

When I first got married, I expressed my love primarily through physical touch and by saying how much I loved her. These were my two love languages. Unfortunately, I neglected spending time shopping with her (since I was always working) and spending the time just talking. This made her feel really un-loved as ‘quality time’ was her primary love language. Imagine my frustration when I gave her hugs and expressed my love through words and she did not return the affection. It was only after reading the book ‘The Five Love Languages’ that I began to change the way I expressed my love-in-.her language. As I started to spend time with her doing what she loved did she feel totally loved and the sparks began to fly again. The lesson I learnt? If you want your partner to show you love, first make him/her feel loved by expressing love in THEIR language.

Lesson #2: Remember the Compliments, Forget the Insults
In any relationship, there will be times when you get into a heated disagreement and start saying nasty things to each other- ‘ I hate you’, ‘get lost’, ‘you’re so stupid!’, ‘what’s the hell is wrong with you’, ‘are you mad?!’ etc- There will of course also be times when you say the sweetest things to each other.

If you are the kind of person that remembers all the bad stuff like an elephant and keeps replaying those hurtful images in your head and keeps those lousy feelings at the back of your heart, then your relationship may not last too long. Every time you get into an argument, you will tend to recall and bring up the past, reinforcing and intensifying all those lousy feelings all over again. Pretty soon, looking at your partners face will trigger all those bad feelings. This is known as ‘anchoring’ in NLP.

I have learnt that no matter what painful things you may have done to each other, you have to learn to let go. Learn to forget and forgive. Disassociate emotionally from it. A effective study techniques I learnt in NLP (known as the scramble) has really helped me to do this. Know that when our loved one is in a bad state of mind, they will say things that they do not mean. Don’t take it personally. They are not a bad person, but merely in a bad state of mind. Instead, remember the great moments and the loving words they say and keep playing these great feelings in your mind until it gets fully associated to your partner. Every time you see them, you will feel amazing. This love conditioning is what makes love in a marriage grow over time.

Lesson #3: Choose to Be Happy
Many of us make up mental rules in our head of when we should/should not be happy. Many of these rules involve our partner having to do something that meets certain expectations we have.

Here are some examples.
When he/she buys me something-then I will feel happy
When he/she hugs me-then I will feel happy
When he/she does xxxx-then I will feel happy
When he/she says xxxx-then I will feel happy

Here’s the problem. People do not always act/say or behave the way we expect. When they don’t, we get angry or upset. If you are constantly in a lousy mood, your partner will not enjoy being around you, as you will make them feel lousy as well. No one enjoys being around a grouchy depressed person. That is a sure way to kill the relationship. Take charge of your emotions and choose to be happy!
Even if you partner does not act in the way you expect, focus on what you love about the person and put yourself into a positive happy state of mind.

People love people who make them feel good about themselves. What my wife loves about me is that I constantly choose to be in a happy and positive state. Whenever she is around me, no matter how bad she feels, she feels my happiness and that makes her feel good as well. Constantly think of how you can light up your partner’s life.

Lesson #4: Win Arguments By Avoiding It
The next lesson I have learned is that you can never win an argument with your partner. Even if you argue and prove that you are right, you have ‘lost’ the bond and the love… the very thing that is the most precious to you. You would have made your partner lose and feel bad. That should never be the intention in a relationship.

Whenever my views clash with my wife (which is pretty often) and we feel an argument coming on, we avoid it by focusing on what is the outcome we really want. We focus on our ‘good intentions’ and what we have in common. This way, we never bother about who is right or wrong. Instead, we focus on compromising to get what we both want.

Lesson #5: Act Like It’s The Last Day on Earth

What I find kills most relationships is when partners start to take each other for granted. We stop doing special things for each other. We stop saying, ‘thank you’. We stop writing love notes and surprising each other with it. We stop telling the person how much they mean to us.

I don’t know about you but I have come to realize that life is really very very short. In the last two months, I have experienced the death of two friends who are not that much older than me. Like the blink of an eye, 10 years have come and gone and the next 10 will equally zoom past as fast. Through these experiences, I have come to realize that our time together is so limited, so why waste it being unhappy or arguing over petty things?

This has always reminded me to live each day as if it were my last. To treat my wife as if it was the last day we had together. So even though we have been together for 16 years, we don’t take the time we have together for granted. We still make each other feel very special with ‘love notes’, ‘surprise gifts’ and the playfulness of a young couple.

So, whether you are married or in a steady relationship, I hope what I have shared can be of value to you and I wish that your relationship journey will be as happy and enriching as mine.

I would like to wish one and all a very successful, fulfilling and happy 2009!

Another whole year has passed like the blink of an eye and another new year begins. It is that time of the year where I do a very important ritual-exercise and I would like to share it with you and encourage you to do the same

I believe that at the beginning of a new year, it is important to audit the year that has just passed. Time to reflect and write down all the key accomplishments you have made, the important lessons you have learned and improvements you have made to yourself. I’ve always loved to listen to the old christmas song ‘So, this is Christmas- by John lennon’ where the lyrics go ‘So this is christmas, now what have you done? Another year over, a new one’s just begun…’

Ever since I was 15, I have been keeping a SUCCESS JOURNAL, where I write down all my achievements and insights for every year that has passed in my life. My philosophy is that if life is worth living, it is worth recording. This allows me to look back at my life for the last 19 years, year by year to see how I have grown and what I have achieved so far. Success is a process of continuously moving towards the goals you have set for in your life. So, if you do not keep a record of how you are progressing each year, then how do you measure your success?

At the same time, keeping this success journal is a way how to motivate myself myself to keep going further. That’s right! Yours truly Adam Khoo also gets demoralized once in a while, so I need to motivate myself by reading all my past achievements and read all the letters of appreciation that people have sent to me.

I invite you to do the same thing! I invite you to share in this BLOG (through ‘comments’), what you have learned, achieved, improved in for 2008! Maybe I can start the ball rolling by sharing what is in my own 2008 Success Journal. In 2008, I am proud to have done the following:
1) Wrote ‘Nurturing the Winner & Genius in Your Child’ that hit #5 of the National Best-Seller’s list
2) Conferred the NUS Business School Eminent Alumni Award
3) Successfully Launched the First Millionaire Business Academy(MBA) Programme
4) Wrote the book ‘Secrets of Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses’
5) Wrote the book ‘Profit from the Panic’ where all royalties will be donated to charity
6) Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group Sales Revenue Hits Over $20 million & Employees surpass 100 people DESPITE the financial crisis!
7) Received the Toastmasters International Communications & 21st Century (leadership) Award
Officially Opened one of the largest training offices and venues in Jakarta
9) Successfully ran the first ‘I Am Gifted’ program for students in Hong Kong
10) Successfully ran the first ‘ I Am Gifted’ program for students in Bangkok
11) Featured in Young Parents magazine, Executive Magazine and the New Paper
12) My group of companies trained in total over 55,000 students, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs and working professionals in 6 countries
13) Brought my family to Korea for a great holiday
14) Put on 10 kg so I look just right (I was too skinny before)
15) Brought my children to the zoo 6 times, swimming every month, science centre > 3x, playground countless times. Helped teach my kids how to read, count, add & subtract (my wife did most of the work though)
16) Read 65 new books (including ‘Snowball’-Warren Buffett’s autobiography which is damn thick)
17) Came up with a perfect plan on Effective Study Techniques for my upcoming Outdoor Camp in Singapore and Indonesia

The next step, is to set specific, measurable goals with deadlines attached to them for the New Year. I am not talking about New Years Resolutions, but GOALS! Let me tell you why New Years Resolutions never seem to work. First, they are too vague, general and non-committal. For example a resolution like, ‘be a better person’ will not work. To make it a powerful goal, t could be stated like, ‘Do one good deed a week for a stranger’, ‘ pay sincere compliments to the people around me’ or ‘stop complaining and criticizing’.

The other reason resolutions do not work is because people only write them down and look at them once. The next time they look at it (if they ever do) is one year later! In the meantime, they get so distracted and sidetracked by all the day to day demands of life that their resolutions are always shelved aside! For goals to work, you must
1) Write them down on a big piece of poster
2) Stick it up all over your home, work area, computer desktop
3 Make a public commitment by putting it up on your BLOG, facebook or telling your friends about it
4) Reading it out aloud EVERY MORNING when you wake up
5) Reflect upon them EVERY NIGHT before you sleep
You have to develop this as a HABIT just as you would brushing your teeth or bathing everyday (I hope you brush your teeth ; ) )

THIS is what it takes to ever achieve the goals you have set. So again, I invite you to share your goals in my blog. I will start the ball rolling my committing and declaring MY GOALS. So, if I don’t achieve them by end 2009, you can write in and laugh at me! (that will be MY motivation). Here are my 2009 Goals:
1) Launch new book ‘Secrets of Successful Teens’ by April 2009
2) Launch new book ‘ Secrets of Learning Geniuses’ by Sept 2009
3) Launch second edition of ‘Secrets of Self Made Millionaires’ by March 2009
4) Launch second edition of ‘Secrets of Millionaire Investors’ by March 2009
5) Invest in 3 more rental properties to take advantage of the crisis by Dec 2009
6) Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group to reach out to and train more than 70,000 in 7 countries (about 40% increase over 2008) by Dec 2009
7) Start the third ‘Adam Khoo Learning Centre‘ in Holiday Program Singapore June 2009
Launch the ‘I Am Gifted’ program in Amsterdam, Holland by Oct 2009
9) Bring my family on a great vacation Aug 2009
10) Read 65 new books on self-improvement
11) Spend as much time as I can teaching my children how to improve their reading, writing, Math and 21st century skills a d build up their self-confidence
12) Write ‘Secrets of REal Estate Millionaires’ by teaming up with the top real estate investors in Singapore

So, those are my goals for 2009! I hope I have inspired and challenged you to do the same!

You may have realized that I have not been blogging my philosophies for the last two months. Well, the reason is because I have been spending the last 60 days intensively writing my 8th book ‘Secrets of Building Million-Dollar Businesses’! Yes!!!! It is Completed!!! I would say that among all my other books, this is the one I am most passionate and proud if. It reveals all my insights and learnings on how to build successful businesses. It draws the lessons I have learnt from the time I started my first mobile disco business at 15 years old to the $30 million group of businesses I own today.

So, why am I so passionate about this particular book? Well, So, why did I write this book? Well, in the last ten years, I have seen so many of my friends start businesses with full of hope and dreams, only to see them crash and burn. And these were intelligent, hardworking and passionate individuals, many of them with business degrees.

So, why did they fail? Well, simply because intelligence, passion and hard work is simply NOT ENOUGH to build a successful business. I have found that to become a successful entrepreneur, you have to possess a specific set of mindsets and skill sets. Unfortunately, these mindsets and skill sets are something you can never learn in school or even in university.

You may have heard that less than 10% of businesses ever succeed. I am telling your from experience that it is NOT because these 10% were smarter or luckier than the rest. It is just because they did business THE RIGHT WAY. Well, in this book, I am going to show you the right way…step by step on exactly how you can build a multi-million dollar business starting from scratch.

Now that my manuscript is done, there is still a whole lot of work to be done before you will see it on the bookshelves. Here is the process of getting my manuscript into print…

1) Send for editing (my mum is doing this for me)
2) Get my illustrator (Aik Cher) to draw some cartoons and illustrations for the book
3) Send to a designer to design the cover and layout
4) Get an ISBN number from MITA (ministry of information and the arts)
5) Work with my distributors and the bookstores to get it launched
6) Get my publishing division to organize a book launch, author signing and get lots of publicity in the newspapers and magazines

The whole process is going to take at least 2 months+. In the meantime, I will tease you with extracts from my chapters and show you the book covers, layouts and pictures as they come out.

P.S. Those of you who are graduates of my programme will get the opportunity to buy this book at a super duper discount that you can never get at the bookshops by pre-ordering the book ad getting the very first collector’s item print

Just want to share a recent proud moment in my life. I was extremely honored and humbled to receive the Eminent Alumni Award from NUS Business School last week.

I still find it hard to believe that I could have been selected as one of the most successful business leaders among a class of thousands of elite students who have passed through the doors of NUS Business School in the last few decades.

Adam Khoo receiving the award from Mr. Lee Yi Shyan, Minister for Trade and Industry

What amazes me the most about receiving this award was the fact that two decades ago, nobody ever believed that I would qualify for a tertiary education (not even myself), let alone the National University of Singapore.

As a student in my teens, I was a slow learner and an underachiever. Fights in school had gotten me expelled in Primary four. I did so badly for my PSLE that I was rejected from all six secondary schools that I had applied for. Back then in Ping Yi Secondary School (a neighborhood school in Chai Chee), I was told by my friends that I would be lucky to qualify for a polytechnic and that going to university was an unrealistic dream.

Then at the end of secondary one, something happened that would change and define my life forever. After attending a motivational camp for teenagers Malaysia program program for teens, I learnt about the power of positive thinking and began to discover accelerated learning techniques that would allow me to learn five times faster than before.

Empowered and inspired, I leant to dream big. I set the audacious goals of becoming one of the top students in Singapore and making my first million by the age of 26. That was the time when I set the goal of going into NUS Business School, where I would get the best business education I needed to pursue my entrepreneurial dream!

While I started by first business at the age of 15 (a mobile disco business I founded in secondary three) and a training business at the age of 21, NUS Business School helped to give me the essential knowledge, skills and opportunities that gave me the competitive edge in building Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group to become one of Singapore’s largest education and training company.

Indeed, dreams do come true. However, I have learnt that you have to first start by believing in yourself and daring to dream big. If a once hopeless underachiever like myself can rise to become a top student and among the top business leaders, then anyone can! All of us have the phenomenal potential to design our own destiny. I am very proud to say that NUS Business School has played a significant role in helping me to design mine!