Opportunities In Commodity

A trip to Indonesia gave me an insight of the agriculture in Indonesia. Commodity prices have been rising steadily in many parts of the world. I believe many Singaporeans felt the same way. An acquaintance with Dr Ta had led me to this opportunity. I look forward to more of such opportunities in the near future.

At the location... few hectares of land had been ploughed in preparing for the plantation
The vehicle which we relied on to reach our destination

Land had been ploughed twice by tractor

A small pond at the location, where the mountain water was gathered
A coffee bush with berries on it
A view on coffee plantation
This grinding machine is used extract the coffee beans from the berries... it's manually powered by handBerries and beans3rd from left: Dr Ta and Kompani Tarigan (Karo village head and assistant to Dr Ta)Jerok trees can be found abundantly... the fruits are widely known as Mandarin oranges. In Singapore, Mandarin oranges are imported from China and Taiwan.Small coffee bushes (4 months old) waiting to be planted at the siteTogether with Dr Ta's assistants

The Law of Income

If you're in a job or self-employed and you personally have to perform the service, such as providing plumbing service, there is a definite ceiling on your income. Let's face it, there are only so many tasks a plumber can handle in a day. This is a limitation to your income. Never have a ceiling on your income.

The reason most people are broke or not earning adequately is that they don't deliver a lot of value in the eyes of the current marketplace. The important element here is deliver.
The Law of Income: You will be paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver according to the marketplace.

Many people have good ideas, good intentions, even produce good products or services, but either their value is not considered very valuable in today's marketplace, or they just don't deliver enough of it.

Marketing gurus have written volumes on what constitutes value for clients. They can be summarized into one sentence: The client perceives value when the benefit received is believed to be worth more than the money spent.
If you don't deliver a lot, you don't get paid a lot. So what determines your value in the marketplace?

Here are 4 income factors that determine almost the penny how much you will earn:
Demand + Supply + Quality + Quantity = $$$

Demand for your value means how much the marketplace wants it. You must offer a hot product or service which is in high demand.

The supply of your value reflects how much the marketplace already has of your product or service, how much readily available it is elsewhere.When supply is limited, value increases. In real estate, ocean-front property is rare and extremely limited, therefore it is higher in value than property inland. To up your value in business, you must provide something few others have, or do something in a way that no one else does.

A hot product may not be a good product. The quality of your value means how good your products and services are - and just as important - how good you are at your business. The higher the quality, in relation to the price; the higher the value.Here's a motto in business to follow. Do it well or don't do it at all. Make it great or don't make it at all.

The quantity of your value is how much of your product or service you deliver. This is the greatest challenge most people face. You may have an excellent product or service and you may even deliver it to the marketplace, but not in enough quantity.
If you want to get paid the best, be the best!

Millionaire Mind Intensive - Wealth Conditioning Support Program (07 Jan 2008)

Serene gave a real testimonial on the result of using visualization... The result? She closed plenty of sales in a day!

Our group is making great progress since the start. The journey is not so lonely when you have a bunch of MMI graduates supporting each other for success. At this stage, besides reviewing what we've learned from MMI, the group is active in discussing and building passive business income and passive investment income. In our next session (14 Jan, 7pm), two members will be sharing case studies on newsletter business and high foreign deposit earning.

How To Stay Passive In Business & Still Earns More

There's a saying in the corporate world: "Don't make yourself irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted."

As an entrepreneur, this is still true in its own way. Let's think of "being promoted" as earning more and working less. You can raise your prices, but until you can remove yourself from being directly involved in doing the work that generates the income, there's always going to be a limit to how much you can earn, and it can only increase very slowly.

Passive income, on the other hand, is income that does not require your direct involvement. Some kinds of passive income you may be familiar with include owning rental property, royalties on an invention or creative work, and network marketing. If you want to earn more, work less, and have a decent retirement, you're going to have to start creating income streams that do not require your direct involvement. Whether you're just starting your business, or you've been running it a while, the sooner you start thinking about how you are going to shift your business model to create more passive income, the sooner you can achieve personal and financial freedom.

Let's look at two basic types of passive income, and a third type of income that, while technically not passive, is a key strategy for earning more and working less.

Residual Income ~ A kind of revenue that occurs over time from work done one time. Some examples include:

>An insurance agent who gets commission every year when a customer renews his policy

>A network marketing or direct sales rep's income from her direct customers when they reorder product every month

>An aerobics instructor who produces a video and sells it at the gyms where she teaches

>A marketing consultant who creates a workbook and sells it in e-book format on the Internet

>A photographer who makes his photos available through a stock photography clearinghouse and gets paid a royalty whenever someone buys one of his images

>A restaurant or retail owner who has grown to the point of hiring a trustworthy manager

As you can see, there are many different ways to generate residual income across a wide variety of businesses. It may be recurring income from the same customers, or the sales of a product to new customers. It may require no personal involvement whatsoever, such as an e-book sold on a web site, or it may require some personal interaction, such as the insurance agent calling the customer to remind them about their renewal and ask them if they want to change any of their coverage. Often, it's something that you can delegate to an assistant.Note that this is different from merely recurring income. Recurring income may still require your involvement to earn the income, e.g., a coach or consultant on a monthly retainer, or a caterer who delivers lunch every Monday to the local school board. While this "active recurring income" offers welcome stability, it also tends to tie you down, and you still have limits on your earning capacity based on your own personal production capacity.

Leveraged income ~ A kind of revenue that leverages the work of other people to create income for you. Some examples of leveraged income include:

>An e-book author selling her e-book through affiliates who promote the product

>A network marketer who builds a downline and receives commissions on the sales made by people in his downline

>A general contractor who makes a profit margin on the work done by sub-contractors

>Franchising your business model to other entrepreneurs (the ultimate leveraged income)

Again, there are many different models in many different businesses. The key is that you are making money off of other people's labor, rather than primarily your own. Note that leveraged income may or may not also be residual income. When you combine them, that's even better.

Active Leveraged Income

This is a term I use to describe income that requires your direct participation, but that you can make more money by having more people involved. This generally involves a one-time event, such as:
>A seminar or class

>A conference or convention

>Concerts and dance recitals

>Raves and other parties

Although these require your direct participation, your earning potential is much higher than if someone were just paying you a direct hourly rate. Fill a room with 1,000 people paying $50 each and you can cover your facility cost, promotional cost, and staffing fees and still have a nice chunk of change left over.

Pain & Pleasure As Motivators

If you have ever tried to quit money splurging, smoking, drinking or to change some major behavior that you have habitually done for many years, you will know how powerful our habits are. The word habit is spelled as H-A-B-I-T. If you erase the 'H', you will still have abit of the habit. Removing the 'A', will left you bit of the habit. Now you see the picture?

Habit is deeply rooted emotions. When our subconscious mind must choose between deeply rooted emotions and logic, emotions will almost always win. Human habits are a tough nut to crack, but like any tasty nut in a hard shell, it is very rewarding to break through the barrier holding you back.

An effective way to reach inside and create new empowering habits or behaviors is to learn why we do what we do, and how much better it would be if we didn't do it!. We simply do not change long held beliefs or behaviors unless we are somehow shocked by how bad our behavior is or we are motivated to change by seeing the benefits or rewards for our new actions.

To make our own personal changes we have to get very clear about what is negative (pain) about the habit and what benefits (pleasures) we will gain by changing. List as many pain and pleasures as possible.By understanding pain and pleasure as motivators, you can act now to change your bad habits. It's one thing to know what to do, but another to do what you know. There are 2 types of habits: Doing and Not Doing.We have to continually reinforce both the pain (creating intense pain if we DON'T change) and the pleasure (creating intense pleasure if we DO change).

The more ways of emphasizing the good and bad associated with the behavior we want to change, the more likely we will continue with the new positive habit. Pain and pleasure are powerful driving forces when we learn to focus them and use them properly.

Millionaire Mind Intensive - Wealth Conditioning Support Program (03 Jan 2008)

Kenny facilitating the session... He did a great job! MMI graduates listen attentively Samuel giving his share of idea to reduce our expenses... less expenses means we can put more $ into savings and investmentThe group was actively engaged in this brainstorming session

Michael briefing the group

It was an eventful evening for all the members. Ideas kept flowing in.