(Specially extracted from my upcoming book: Secrets of Millionaire Entrepreneurs)

Why is it that 80% of companies that are able to survive the first five years of business will usually fail in the next five? Shouldn’t they know what to do after being in business for the first five years?

The reason is because markets and economies are changing so fast that what works in business today will not work in three to five years. If you have the mindset of constantly doing things the same way and maintaining the status quo, you will soon be out of business.

Successful entrepreneurs are engaged in constant and never-ending improvement. They are always finding ways to innovate and improve their business operations, marketing, products and services. They know that if their business is not improving and growing, it is dying. Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) once remarked that the key to succeed in business is to innovate and make yourself obsolete. If you don’t make yourself obsolete, your competitors will make you obsolete.

This is why the moment a software like Windows is released, Microsoft is already working on the next version and upgrades like Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Vista and so on. Bill Gates knows that the moment they stop innovation, another company will create an even better software and take over their customers.

This is exactly what has happened to companies that did not change fast enough. Back in the 1990s, the top selling mobile phone was Motorola. Motorola produced the best-designed and technologically advanced phones. Everyone, including me bought a Motorola phone. So, where is Motorola today? Last I heard, their mobile phone business has been losing so much money that Motorola is thinking of shutting down the whole mobile phone business altogether. What happened? Well, Nokia and Sony Ericsson happened to innovate even better designed and more user friendly handsets that captured all of their market shares and profits.

Do you know which is the first search engine on the Internet? Is it Google? Yahoo? MSN? The answer is none of them. The world’s first search engine is Alta Vista. Many of you may never have heard of this brand simply because it has it is an obscure site that very people go to. Needless to say, the company that was once a market pioneer and leader is now a business failure. Again, what happened was that the founders had the mindset that their search engine was good enough and there was no need to change what was working.

This left the door wide open for Yahoo! to come in and take away that leadership position. Then what happened next? Well, Yahoo! was too slow to extend their service range and innovate their advertising services such that Google (one of the newest Internet search engines) came along and took away 70% of the market share, leaving the remaining 30% to be fought over by the other search sites. In today’s ever-changing marketplace, a company that is the market leader today could be bankrupt five years later, if they stop innovated and finding new ways of doing things.

Instead of seeing this fact as a threat, see it as a fantastic opportunity. This means that your new company could take over the leadership position of the largest competitor today and even put them out of business! The key is to find a way to serve their customers even better then they can!

So, let me emphasize again that unless you keep innovating and changing the way you do business, you will be out of business soon enough. I can tell you that if I did not grow my business to enter new regional markets like Indonesia, China, Thailand, India and Malaysia, I will be bankrupt today! My company’s monthly overheads are about $500,000 and Singapore only accounts for 50% of my sales and profits. If I did not constantly focus on creating new programs (i.e. the Wealth Academy and Internet Marketing Academy series), writing new books (two a year) and changing my marketing and distribution strategy every day (i.e. entering the Singapore schools market), I wouldn’t still be the market leader in personal development training in Asia. Another competitor would have caught up and blasted me away to oblivion.

Today, it is impossible to maintain your position in the market by doing the same thing. The reason is because customer’s expectations change constantly, competitors improve constantly, employees work habits change constantly and so forth. So if you keep doing business the same way, you are actually going down, as everything around you is improving.

A few posts ago, I talked about the power of love that one mum had for her daughter. Knowing that she only had a few months to live (after being diagnosed with breast cancer), Erin Kramp made hours of video footage of motherly advice and wisdom that her daughter could listen to when she was old enough (her daughter Peyton was only two at the time). She even prepared 20+ years of birthday and Christmas presents in advance that her daughter could receive years after she was gone.

In this post, I would like to share the story of an extraordinary love that a father has for his son. It is the story of Dick Hoyt and his son Rick. 66-year old Dick climbs mountains, runs to the ends of the earths and swims across oceans to give his son Rick, a better life.

When Rick was born, he suffered from Cerebral Palsy (as a result of the umbilical cord being caught around his neck at birth). Doctors told Dick that his son would never be able to walk or talk and that it would be best to forget about him and leave him in an institution. He would be nothing more than a vegetable for life.
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This morning I read a very sad tale in the newspapers about a maid who was not paid by her Singaporean employer for six years! She was not allowed to go out or call back home so much so that her relatives thought that she had gone missing. Thankfully that B*tch employer was charged in court and the maid was paid $20K in back pay. When asked why she did not report her plight, the maid simply said that she was afraid of her employer and that she believed that not being paid WAS JUST HER FATE.

FATE
I believe this notion of FATE is what keeps many people from changing their lives for the better and turning their fortunes around. By saying FATE, it removes all sense of control, power and responsibility from yourself as it is not your fault but just meant to be. When you believe in fate, it means that you have absolutely no control over the outcomes in your life. It is just meant to be. If you are fated to be rich, then no matter how lazy you are and whatever you do, you will end up rich. If you are fated to be poor, then you are damned, no matter what you do. No matter how how hard you work, it will all be taken away This is why some people remain in abusive relationships, remain poor, remain depressed etc…

DESTINY
I don’t know about you, but I believe in DESTINY,which is entirely different. I believe that God loves all of his creations (this is true in almost any religion) and created every individual with unique gifts, talents and interests to make a huge contribution to the world. I believe within all of us lies a power to be great, its just that many people never make full use of their amazing potential. Some people are destined to be great singers, some people destined to be great communicators, some people destined to be great inventors…all of us are destined to be great in something.

The difference between destiny and fate is Read more »

Dear Readers,

I would like to share with you an email that I received from one of my participants, Jason who attended my ‘I Am Gifted, So Are You!’ Program for Teens. Some people have the misconception that personal development and life transformational workshops only provide people with inspiration and motivation in the short term.

In actual fact, the strategies and ideas you can learn from my seminars and workshops will last you for a lifetime. Like I always say, when you invest in a good stock or property, you can expect returns of 10%-20%, where there is always a risk of loss. However, the most important asset you must first invest in is YOURSELF. If your name is John Smith, then you must invest in JOHN SMITH PRIVATE UNLIMITED. When you invest in your own INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, the returns are not 10%, 20% must more than 500% and the returns and dividends last you for a lifetime.

One of the reasons I have become so much more successful than my peers is that over the years, I have invested more money in myself every year (books, seminars etc…) than I invest in stocks. The reason why so man people fail to grow in life is because they invest more money upgrading their handphones, TVs and club memberships than on themselves? How much do you invest in yourself every year?

Here’s the email from Jason who attended my program back in 2004 (4 years ago):
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I ask this question a lot to the people who come to my seminars or simply to anyone who stops me to ask about how they can really succeed in life. You see, a lot of people say that they want to succeed financially in life, but you know what? They’re really just kidding themselves.

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They’re just blowing hot air!
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What this people really mean is that you WOULD LIKE to succeed, they WISH to succeed, or to they HOPE to succeed.

This means that success for them is not a must at all! If success comes to their doorstep - great!. But if not, they’ll still just carry on with their mediocre lives.

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How do I know this for sure?
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This Post is specially dedicated to Dr. William Tan, a dear friend of mine who I have tremendous respect and admiration for. I am also extremely proud to say that William is an associate trainer together with Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group.

On 19th December 2007, Dr. William achieved another world record by becoming the fastest person in the world to complete 7 marathons across 7 continents in 27 days. His amazing race took him to Antarctica, Chile, Egypt, Thailand, Japan, Kenya, Italy, England, New Zealand, and USA between November and December 2007.

A few months earlier on 6th April 2007, Dr. William became the first person in the world to accomplish a marathon in the North Pole in 21 hours and 10 mins despite overwhelming obstacles and extreme conditions of ­-25 deg C. The most amazing thing is that he accomplished this feat in a wheelchair.
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Dear readers. I really want to say a big thank you to all the heartfelt messages and comments you have left in my previous blog posts. It really means alot! I really want to share something that inspired me as a parent recently. If you are not a parent yet, I am sure it will touch you as a son or a daughter as well.

Recently, I happened to be watching a DVD entitled ‘Oprah’s 20th Anniversary Collection’ and one particular couple Oprah interviewed really taught me the meaning of true love.

Oprah interviewed Erin Kramp and her husband Doug (in their mid 30s). So, what was so special about their lives?

They were a vivacious, charismatic, adventurous couple. She was a fast-thinking venture capitalist who advised Doug on business deals. Two years after their only daughter, Peyton, was born, Erin discovered a lump in her breast — a malignant cancer diagnosed as fatal. The doctors told her that she had only a few years to live.
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Recently, I received a call from Channel News Asia asking me to do an interview for a show on ‘Dealing with Failure in Singapore’. They asked me questions like, ‘ How do you deal with failure?’ etc… Then the last question they asked shocked me quite a bit. The questions was…..

Adam Khoo is a person that many people love to HATE…What are your comments about this?

So, I asked them why they would ask such a question. They said that from their research, they have found that there are people out there who hate people like me who have become rich and successful at a young age. Such that they would take every opportunity to criticize and tear us down. Sure enough, if you read some FORUMs, you would definitely find a handful of people sliming me…and even people like Anthony Robbins, Robert Kiosaki, Hillary Clinton etc…

They would say stuff like, ‘Adam is just another con man’, ‘ Adam is just a luck bast***’, ‘ Adam is an arrogant assho**’, ‘ Adam’ just interested in making your money, and not helping anyone’ etc… The funny thing is that all these comments come from people who have NEVER READ MY BOOKS, NEVER ATTENDED MY SEMINARS and don’t EVEN KNOW WHO I AM. Although it used to hurt me to read such comments in the past, I don’t really care about it now. This is because it is the people who have ATTENDED MY PROGRAMS and READ MY BOOKS who have given me all the love,encouragement and support, much more than what these critics can write.
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A very happy new year to all of you who have been reading my blog since it went online more than a year ago! Thank you for all your wonderful emails and comments. It makes me really happy to have this unique privilege to make a difference in the lives of so many people all around the world.

I am really sorry that I have not been posting as much as I should. I just finished my usual ‘End of the Year’ tour where I trained about 950 students in the ‘I Am Gifted, So Are You’ and Superkids programs in Singapore, Malaysia, Jakarta and Surabaya (Indonesia). At the same, time, I trained about 430 teachers in my ‘Transformational Teaching’ workshop, not to mention another 230 in my Wealth Academy program. I have been on the stage for about 74 days in a row, so I just managed to catch my breath to start blogging again.

For those of you who are wondering when my latest book ‘ Nurturing the Winner & Genius in Your Child’ is going to be launched (I set the initial date as Nov 2007), It will hit bookshelves in the second week of Jan 2008. I actually finished writing the book in Nov 07, it’s just that the designing, proof reading and editing as taken longer than budgeted.

At the beginning of the year, it is the time to declare our specific goals that we must commit to achieve. So, I am going to start the ball rolling and declare my goals for 2008…
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Let me ask you this simple question:

“What is the best investment you could EVER make in your life?”

Is it… Gold? Stocks? Real estate? Business ventures? Commodities? The list could go on and on, but here’s the #1 investment you could ever make that will reap you unlimited wealth and success again, and again, and again.
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