As my first BLOG posting of the year, I would like to wish all my past participants, supporters and readers of this BLOG a very happy and successful new year. Thank you so much for constantly visiting this BLOG and posting all the wonderful comments and emails over the last 6 months. I will do my very best to continue to make this BLOG inspiring, educational and enriching in the coming year.

The last two months have been extremely intense, exhausting and yet extremely fulfilling. I started the first of my holidays camps for teens (I Am Gifted, So Are You!) and kids (Superkids) in early Novemeber and ended the year training 1,450 students over 14 camps across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It felt great to see so many young children and teens developing the confidence, self-belief and motivation to create a new start in their lives. The toughest part of my year-end training tour was during the last week, where I came down with really bad flu in Jakarta. I guess all the non-stop speaking, continuous late nights, bottles of coke and fried food really started taking its toll. During the last two camps, I was battling a high fever, blocked ears and a running/bleeding nose while giving my usual high energy training sessions. Never the less I pulled through and used the much needed Holiday Program Indonesia to sleep it off and recover! Anyway, I am glad to say I am STILL ALIVE and ready to conquer 2007!

I would like to share some interesting insights in my life over the past two months….

1) MY SECOND DAUGHTER HAS SUCCESSFULLY LEARNT TO WALK AT 13 MONTHS
Hurray! I am so proud of Samantha Khoo for learning how to walk…although still looking like a really cute druken penguin. As I observed her first attempts to walk (about 3 weeks ago) to the day she successful made it unaided (30 Dec 2006), I realized that all babies have in-built in them the utlimate success formula which I wrote about in my books. For those of you who are not familiar, all successful people follow what I call the ULTIMATE SUCCESS FORMULA. The first step in the formula is to set a GOAL. The second step is to have a STRATEGY. The third step is to TAKE ACTION. When you take ACTION and reach your GOAL, you have achieved SUCCESS. However, when you TAKE ACTION and you don’t reach your goal, you have not FAILED (like most people think). Instead, you get a LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Successful people never give up when they don’t reach their goal. Instead, they LEARN FROM THEIR EXPERIENCE, change their STRATEGY again and again UNTIL THEY SUCCEED. They DO WHATEVER IT TAKES!

The reason why almost every baby in the whole world eventually learns to walk is because babies naturally use the ULTIMATE SUCCESS FORMULA. When they take action and fall, they never give up. They never quit. They never say to themselves ‘ I am a failure!’ ‘ I will never walk’, ‘ I think I will crawl for the rest of my life!’ Though the baby may cry, they will pick themselves up and constanly keep taking action and changing their strategy UNTIL they walk! That’s exactly what baby Samatha did. After falling on her butt the first few times, she changed her strategy. She began using her two arms to balance and she got up and took action again. No one taught her. She just figured it out for herself. When she still fell, she changed her strategy again. This time, she would hold on to her small baby chair and push it around (using it like a walking aid). I thought that was pretty ingenious for a 12 month old baby. By pushing her chair and walking around she slowly learnt to strengthen her walking legs. Then one day, she pushed the chair away and started walking unaided!

I believed this is how ALL OF US learnt to walk when we were babies. You see, as babies, walking is a MUST to us. At that age, we know nothing about ‘giving excuses’, ‘blaming’ or ‘quitting’. We don’t feel embarrassed and faer failure. We just do whatever it takes and persist UNTIL we walk. Unfortunately as many people grow up into adults, they forget this powerful formula they once used to learn to walk. As many people grow up, they start giving excuses, fearing failure and qutting. Maybe its time we observe the never say die attitude of a baby.

2) FINISHED FIVE CHAPTERS (out of nine) OF ‘SECRETS OF MILLIOANIRE INVESTORS’
I am also proud to say that I have finished writing five chapters out of a total of nine chapters from my upcoming book ‘Secrets of Millionaire Investors’ that I taked about a few posts ago. The chapters I have finished are…

Chapter 3: The Idiot’s Way of Making Guaranteed Returns
Chapter 4: Value Investing: Warren Buffet’s Secret Recipe for Wealth
Chapter 6: The Power of Options Trading
Chapter 7: using Call Options to Reduce Risks & Boost Returns
Chapter 8: How to Make Money in Any Direction

If you notice, I am not writing my book in the sequence of the chapters. In fact, after writing 5 previous other books, it is one of the greatest breakthroughs I have discoovered about book writing. When I wrote my first three books, I wrote the chapters in sequence (i.e. chapter 1, chapter 2 etc…). The trouble was that once I got writers block for a certain chapter and the ideas did not come, I would be stuck at that chapter for weeks and even months. Its like going for an exam and getting stuck at one question. Then, when I wrote my fourth book (master Your mind, design your destiny), I decided to write whatever I felt like writing at that point of time. If I was inspired by ideas about chapter 7, then I would write chapter 7 first. Whenever I got stuck with ideas on a chapter, I would skip it and go to another chapter. Once I adopted this new strategy, the time needed to write a book dropped from 4 months to just one month! So, for those of you writing your first book, you may want to keep this in mind.

3) AUTOMATED CLEARANCE AT CHANGI AIRPORT IMMIGRATION
The third interesting insight I would like to share would be about my experience at the immigration counter at Changi Airport. If you have been travelling, you may have noticed that on the extreme right side of the immigration counters, there is an AUTOMATED CLEARANCE counter. This means that instead of handing your passports to an officer (a humna being) who scans/chops your passport, the AUTOMATE CLEARANCE counter allows you to just insert your passport into a scanner and later scans your thumbprint for identification. What amazed me was that on one day, I saw that the queue on all the counters (even the one for Singaporeans/permanent residents) were very long but there was no one that approached the automated clearance counter. There was a sign infront of the counter that says ‘AUTOMATED CLEARANCE’ and I did see some people in the long queues staring at the AUTOMATED CLEARANCE counter but NO ONE dared to go over. When I went over and scanned my passport and happily walked through the gate in less than 3 minutes, there was still no one who followed me! Was it that no one dared to give it a shot for fear that it would not work (since it was a pretty new feature?). Are people just so afraid of getting out of their comfort zone to explore a new possibility even though they are suffering in a long queue? I just wonder if it is a reflection of how some Singaporeans live their life?

WHAT’S UP AHEAD FOR 2007?
As one year comes to an end and another new year begins, I think it is very important for all of us to do an exercise which I would like to share with you. I actually do this exercise at the beginning of every year without fail. First, write down all the accomplishments & achievements you have made in the past year and allow yourself to feel really good about it.

Secondly, write down all your learning experiences and start to really reflect on how you can learn from the mistakes of the last year and what changes you must make in your thoughts, your behaviour and your life! Remember, if we keep doing the same things the same way, we will keep getting the same result.

Thirdly, write down ways of how you can improve every single aspect of your life (even though you may already be doing well already). Ask yourself, ‘ In what ways can I be better this year than I was last year?’ I believe that we need to have the attitude of CONSTANT AND NEVER ENDING IMPROVEMENT. We have to keep growing and becoming better. The day we stop growing is the day we start sliding back. I am now reviewing all my training materials and presentation styles and finding ways of how I can be even better in 2007. I believe that if the way I speak in 2007 is the same way I have been speaking in 2006, then I am doing myself and all my participants a great disservice. Every seminar I give must be better than the one before. So expect my PATTERNS OF EXCELLENCE, WEALTH ACADEMY and all my SUPERKIDS and Holiday Program Malaysia to be better than IT EVER WAS.

Finally, write down specific goals and deadlines you will achieve for the coming year ahead. Don’t be like most people and put aside these goals, only to look back at it one year later. Goal setting never works this way. Instead, once you have written down your goals, read it to at least 20 people you know (this is the power of commitment), post it on your BLOG if you do have one and stick it up as a poster where it will be in your mind every single moment! So, here are some of the things that you can expect from me in 2007…

1) LAUNCH OF ‘SECRETS OF MILLIONAIRE INVESTORS’
My newest work should be out in June 2007, so look out for it! The investing strategies will blow your mind away!

2) ENTERING NEW MARKETES (PHILIPPINES, MELBOURNE & DUBAI)
After entering China (Su Zhou) & Jakarta in 2006 and expanding our market share in Singapore & Malaysia, I aim aiming to open up shop in the Phillipines, Melbourne and Dubai in 2007!

3) WEALTH ACADEMY 2007
Investment Strategist & professional investor Conrad Alvin Lim will be joining me as co-trainer for the next upcoming Wealth Academy in 27-30 April 2007. It will be another awesome money-making experience at the Singapore Expo. Happy to say that seats are already 20% full!

4) PATTERNS OF EXCELLENCE 2007
The next Patterns of Exellence will be coming up on the 8-11 of February 2007. This is an event you do not want to miss if you have not already attended. Already, 60% of the seats have been filled as a result of overbooking in 2006

May 2007 Be as Awesome for You as I Believe it Will be for Me!

Adam Khoo Signing Out