Featured Multimillionaire Entrepreneur #1: Goh Kai Kui, CEO of Goh Joo Hin

The 1st of the 10 featured multimillionaire entrepreneurs in our upcoming book, Niche Dominators: Success Secrets Exposed, is Goh Kai Kui, COE of Goh Joo Hin, a $110 million company that owns the well known brands like New Moon, Mili and many others.

He started from young, right from the bottom, and worked his way up the family business. When he finally took over the management, he introduced a series of innovations in his company and brought it up to the next level. Under his leadership, he turned Goh Joo Hin from a mere commodity trader into a global distribution and marketing company supplying 28 other countries including the Middle East, China, United Kingdom and Russia.

Goh Kai Kui, was awarded the Top Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2003 and also led his company on its winning streak, garnering prestigious business awards such as Enterprise 50, Singapore Prestige Brand Award–Heritage Brand Award Winner, Singapore Packaging Star Award, Superbrands and many more.

As a matter of fact, AC Nielsen reported that their flagship product, New Moon Abalone, is the #1 Best Selling Abalone brand in Singapore for the past 11 consecutive years.

He was happy to share his personal business strategies and experiences to contribute to back and benefit other entrepreneurs and business owners.

In our book he reveals how he elevate his company into an over $100 million business. He also talks about the importance of branding. A lot of people talks about branding without any real substantiation. Most of the time, they talk about branding in theory because it is such a huge and complex concept. But Kai Kui shares about branding from real experience with real results to prove it.

He explains the reason why branding is so important is because people have only split seconds to decide on which brand to buy. You don’t have time to explain your product’s features and benefits in front of your consumers. He further reveals some of his branding techniques.

He personally witnessed the huge impact branding can have. Normally a branding exercise will yield you result in one year or one and a half year. But in one of his early experimentations on branding exercise, he saw an immediate (as in within days) jump in sales. He shares the details of how he did it: the situation, the strategy he used (quite ingenious!) and why it worked. He also shares why differentiating is critical in achieving success.

In fact, he discloses a very rare insight on how he entered a new niche with very established and entrenched competitors. Many people told him that he was crazy to go into that niche. The competitors have been around for a very long time and are dominant in the market.

But he carefully analysed the opportunity and saw a gap that he could fill. (By the way, in another part of the book we share specific strategies on how to spot and evaluate opportunities) Based on the insight he got, he and his team came up with a very shrewd strategy to penetrate the market. It was a very bold but also very brilliant strategy. And within just a short period of time they managed to get a sizeable market share.

The niche? The Essence of Chicken (a health supplement product popular in Asia) market.

Frankly, that case study alone is extremely valuable and worth the cost of a full-blown seminar. But on top of that he shares more things such as why numbers are critical in business and how he uses numbers to run his business and many other powerful strategies and success secrets.

We definitely have learned a lot from Goh Kai Kui. The time we spent with him during the interviews to extract his story and strategies had been very rewarding. He is really rich with experiences and insights. And you’ll be happy to know we’ve captured a whole lot of that in the book. Personally, we think that anyone who read it will benefit tremendously from his open sharing.

Let us know what you think and leave your comments below.

Next: Another successful entrepreneur that is creating waves in the beauty industry.

How To Make Money With No Money

It takes money to make money…
Making money with no money is cheating…
The rich gets richer only because they have money/capital to spend…

Excuse my French but what a load of bull crap!

That’s exactly the kind of mindsets or beliefs that are holding a lot of people back from actually making much more money than what they are doing right now.

So is it really possible to Make Money With No Money? Can you really make, not only money, but lots of money, starting with nothing? Absolutely! And it’s much easier and happening more common than you think. And you’re about to discover the secrets of how to do it.

Most people have the impression that there are some kind of secretive, stealth or sly methods that only the elite or the rich knows. Well, they are right… or actually half right. There are “secrets” that help those people to be able to make money with no money. BUT they are open secrets that are available to anyone who is really interested to know them. They are literally in plain sight. However, the biggest secret of all: You have to be willing to take action and do it.

Before I explain further, let me share with you a story:

An investor died and left 17 highly valuable gold bars to his three sons. In his will, the investor stated that his oldest son should get 1/2, his middle son should get 1/3, and his youngest son should get 1/9 of all the gold bars. But the sons didn’t want to cut up any of the gold bars as they were more valuable at the current sizes. They spent a long time trying to figure out how to divide the gold bars according to their father’s wishes in vain. So finally, they offered a reward of $1 million for anyone who can help them divide the gold bars.

An entrepreneur heard the news, went to visit a friend and came to them. He gave them a solution that divided the gold bars according to their father’s will, without cutting any of them. Do you know how did he do it?

The entrepreneur went to visit a wealthy friend who owned similar gold bars and borrowed one for a 10% of the reward money. He then met the sons and told them that he would like to lend them the borrowed gold bar to make a total of 18 gold bars. So the oldest son received 1/2 of 18 which is 9 gold bars, the middle son got 1/3 of 18 which is 6 gold bars, and the youngest son got 1/9 of 18 which is 2 gold bars. Since 9+6+2 = 17, the gold bars were divided according to the father’s will. The entrepreneur end up with the borrowed gold bar.

The sons were happy with the solution and rewarded him the $1 million as promised. The entrepreneur returned the gold bar to his friend and gave him 10% of the reward, which is $100,000. So the entrepreneur walked away with a profit of $900,000. He just made money with no money.

Of course it was just a story. But it underscores the critical core principle of how you can make money with no money - you have to add value to others. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. As I said, it’s an open secret. The entrepreneur added value to the sons and he added value to his friend who lent him the gold bar.

So as long as you stick to this principle of adding value to others, you can make money even if you start with nothing. Don’t believe the myth about learning some special sly technique to “trick” others to get money for nothing that is promoted by some people.

Actually this “secret” of adding value to others is so commonly known that almost everyone is already doing it. Anyone who is working for a salary is already making money with no money isn’t it? They didn’t put up any of their own money, yet they received money for providing a service.

Ok, but you’re looking for a way to make MORE money FASTER, right? I hear you. Well, the core principle stays the same - add value to others. But there are several sub-principles that build on the core principle that will accelerate things. Following are just 2 of them.

Sub-principle #1: The higher the value is perceived, the higher the payout.
If the value is high, the higher the price will be, which also usually means that there will be lesser people who can afford it. Luxury products and services belong to this category.

Sub-principle #2: The more people can benefit from the value, the more the payout.
Most mass market product and services belong to this category.

However, the 2 categories are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to offer a high value product or service that will benefit the mass market. When you offer that, you will make money hand over fist because it will come flooding your way. An example of a product in this category is life-preserving medicine. It has very high value as it helps people stay alive. At the same time, the masses can benefit from it. That’s why pharmaceutical companies are usually very successful.

This is how a lot of successful entrepreneurs started. They think about the value that they can offer to a group of people and then they take action to make it happen. As you might notice, having money is NOT the critical ingredient in this. What is critical is having the idea or the plan - identifying a value-add product or service for a specific group of people.

When you have that, you can easily approach others who has the resources you need strike up a deal, just like the entrepreneur in the story did with his wealthy friend.

In our upcoming book Niche Dominators: Success Secrets Exposed, I shared a couple more specific examples on how you can make money with no money. Also, some of the entrepreneurs we featured also started with no money.

If you have some experience on how you made money starting with no money, just an idea or a plan, share with us here.

Next: I will share the profiles of the highly successful entrepreneurs we are featuring.

Can You Dominate Your Niche… Even If You’re A Latecomer?

Who was the first to create online bookstore?
Who was the first to create the automobile (car)?
Who was the first fast food chain?

If you answer: Amazon, Ford and McDonald’s… you’re WRONG!

In the new book I’ll expose the “first mover advantage” myth… In reality, a lot of first movers/pioneers end up losing their market. The advantage doesn’t lie with being the first. In fact, being the first has some great disadvantages!

Let me give you a couple more obvious examples:

Who is the biggest search engine on the Internet? Ans: Google obviously.
Were they the first mover in the search engine? Nope!

Who is the biggest software company in the world? Ans: Microsoft.
Did they pioneer their software? Nope! In fact, they have pioneered none.

What does this mean? Well, it means GREAT news for you if you’re a latecomer or if you’re just entering a niche. If you know what to do and how to do it, you can start late and become a niche dominator.

One of the key to become a dominator in you niche is to have better marketing strategies. Almost all of the dominant brands in any niche have superior marketing. This also applies outside of business. Just think of Obama. His campaign has much better marketing, a clearer message (part of a marketing strategy) and he won.

Another key to dominate your niche is to be different. Taking Obama as an example again, he did so many things differently. He is black. He reached out to the masses for donations instead of focusing on just a few which was the traditional way. He reached out to the younger generation which was largely ignored. His campaign used the social media effectively which other politicians didn’t, etc.

And if you think he is a pioneer, being the first black man to run for president, nope he is not.

Do you remember the class joker in your school? If you do, chances are because s/he was different from the rest of your classmate. People tend to remember people or things or brands that are different.

So, the question is: Are you different from your competitors? Are you marketing yourself/your brand better? If you’re not, it’ll be hard to dominate your niche.

More to come soon…

By the way, do you know the answers to the first 3 questions? Who were the first online bookstore, automobile, fast food chain?

Risen From The Depth Of Poverty, Driven To Success

There is the general misconception that successful entrepreneurs/business people are those who come from money. Maybe their families are wealthy, they inherited large sums of money or maybe even got their capital from striking the lottery. In any case, they are lucky!

However, the fact is, a lot of entrepreneurs started out from less than middle-income and poor backgrounds.

Majority of the featured successful entrepreneurs in our book also started out poor. Interestingly, it is exactly because they started out being poor, it becomes a strong motivation for them to want to succeed. They were unhappy with their situation and was driven to do something about it. Instead of moping around, complaining about their poor lives, they made the decision to take concrete steps towards the lives that they want - a life of success.

Poverty becomes their push factor. And they are more hungry than the average people, that’s why they succeed.

On the other hand, there are also people who come from well-to-do background that succeed as entrepreneurs. What’s interesting is that, they are equally driven to achieve success. But a lot of times, their driving force is not based on wanting to achieve better lifestyle or get more money. Their personal goals are pull factors that make them equally driven to achieve their dreams.

So the bottom line is, whether you come from a poor or well-to-do background, what matters is that you must have a strong motivation to drive you to move forward and achieve your goals.

The specific reasons can be as varied as “making more money”, “creating better lifestyle for family”, “making a difference in the world”, “proving to others I can do it”, “to have fun”, “I want to be no. 1″, etc. It doesn’t matter. Just make sure that the reasons are big and strong enough to drive you and you’re passionate enough about them. The more strong reasons you have, the higher chances you’re going to achieve your goals.

So if you are not where you want to be yet, this maybe a good place to start. Seriously think and come up with at least 3 strong reasons that you are passionate about, that will drive to move forward towards your goal.

Another interesting point…

Literally all of the successful entrepreneurs started young! They all started in their teens or early 20s. We all know that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google founders), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) and many other very successful entrepreneurs started very young.

So if you’re still young, youth is your advantage. Make use of it!

And if you’re more mature, you’re wise enough to know that it’s never too late to start… right now. There are also many examples successful entrepreneurs who started very late in their lives. Colonel Harland Sanders who started KFC is one very well-known example.

More importantly, age is not a critical factor to success. The most critical factor is having a strong enough reason to achieve it.

What Questions To Ask Successful Entrepreneurs?

From the start we knew who are the Niche Dominators we wanted to feature in the book. But like everything else in business and in life, sometimes we don’t get everything we want. That’s why it’s always good to have a back up plan.

We couldn’t get a few of them because of various reasons such as schedule conflicts. Fortunately, we anticipated that and wrote down a list of more than 10 (the number we wanted) top entrepreneurs and we are very happy with the featured entrepreneurs we have.

Once we confirmed the entrepreneurs, their availability for us to basically spend time with them and grill them on their success strategies, their willingness to share and answer our questions openly, etc… the next part is to prepare really good questions to ask them.

Since I was given the time to spend hours with them, I wanted to squeeze all the time I have to uncover as much as possible from them. I didn’t want to ask lame questions that lead to boring answers.

I want to find out about their mindset, their thought patterns, their behaviour, how they handle certain scenarios, etc.

I also got a bunch of great questions from fans of “Secrets To Dominate Your Niche” and other entrepreneurs as well. At the end I came up with pages and pages of questions that literally shocked some of the entrepreneurs.

Just to give you an idea of the questions they have to answer:

- How did you start out? How much capital did you start with?
- What critical challenges did you face, how did you overcome them? What strategies did you use?
- How do you differentiate yourself? How do you stay ahead of competitors? How do you deal with copycats?
- How did you build your brands? What strategic choices did you make?
- How did you create a big jump in your sales? What are the critical conditions that support that?
- How did you grow your team? How do you retain them? How do you ensure they won’t become your competitors? How to continue to motivate them?
- What continues to drive you? What’s your ultimate goal/your biggest dream you want to achieve?

And this continues pages after pages… it was intense and admittedly it can be draining for both sides. I even ask “ridiculous questions” like:

“If you’re starting from scratch again, with nothing, no money, no contacts, no business. You only have your experience and accumulated wisdom. How would you do it?”

The question is inspired by stories of successful businesspeople who lost everything and got it all back and more in a short period of time. This will also be very relevant to those who are thinking of starting up their own business.

As you can imagine, I got some very interesting answers. What’s more important, I think, is that I got to see and learn how they think. Personally, I think this is much more important as it shows me how they will react in certain scenarios. And obviously, they are where they are because of the way they think and act. So that is very valuable.

And the great thing is, I captured those things and included them in the upcoming book so you too will get to learn from them.

Niche Dominators - The Beginning

In late June 2009, we decided to write the sequel to our bestselling book, Secrets To Dominate Your Niche. Once the decision was made, we started to lay out our plan and time line.

We wanted to write a book with even more practical strategies and tactics that readers can apply immediately in their businesses. With the current economy, this is even more relevant than before.

We don’t see the point of giving generic “advice” such as “be different”, but not tell you “HOW” to be different specifically. Frankly, a lot of books are doing just that; giving you generic and vague tips. You might feel good and inspired after reading them but when you go back to your business… sitting in your office, you might wonder “what can I apply in my business?” Sadly, not many can derive real applications from those vague tips.

In contrast, we want to give you real, specific and actionable applications. Things that you can do immediately to create a radical positive impact in your business. We do this by not only giving you the guiding principles of the strategies but also lots of specific examples on how the strategies are applied in real life. We are even giving you a step-by-step action plan. This way you can practically “copy and paste” the techniques into your specific context.

On top of that, we also wanted to give you even more powerful case studies. The feedback we got from our previous book shows that the readers love the case studies as they get to see how successful companies are applying the strategies in their businesses. This also helps them to see how they can apply the strategies in their own context.

We thought, “Why not take it one step further?”

So we decided to seek out niche dominators in various industries and get them to reveal their success secrets. Frankly, it wasn’t easy.

But to cut the story short, we managed to get 10 top millionaire entrepreneurs who are happy to give back to society and share their most prized money-making secrets.

These are highly successful, award-winning, market-leading, top-notch entrepreneurs.

In July we started the process of interviewing them.

We spent hours and hours with them uncovering their success strategies. We wanted to ensure that we get the real truth of how they achieved their success and not just nice, media-friendly sound bites they usually throw at the media journalists.

It was really hard work and exhausting!

We grilled, cajoled and ask tough questions point blank to get real, raw, undiluted answers. Some of them got uncomfortable, some got irritated, some were amused and others were impressed with our persistence. At the end, all of them gave us great lessons.

So on top of our practical strategies, we also present to you 10 power-packed case studies. We also distill specific learning and application from these featured case studies for your benefit.

With all these in the book, it’s going to be hard not to benefit from it

So look out for our book:

Niche Dominators: SUCCESS SECRETS EXPOSED

Niche Domination Secrets 3

Niche Domination Secrets 2

Here’s part 2 of the Niche Domination Secrets. This contains 7 more secrets to help you differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Niche Domination Secrets 1

With the economy sliding into a bad recession, the marketplace becoming even more competitive and many businesses struggling to survive and suffering, the strategies we shared in our book have become even more critical for business owners who wants to survive and thrive.

So I thought, this is an excellent time to share more strategies and tactics on how you can get the edge over your competitors. I’ve created a series of audios to cover 21 Niche Domination Secrets that I will be posting in 3 posts, starting with this one. Each audio will contain 7 tips on how you can out-perform your competitors.

Parts of this audio series were actually aired by 938Live in their segment Positive Business Minutes before. I was supposed to get a copy of the recording. Unfortunately, I’ve not received the recording even after I sent a few emails to them. But that turned out to be a great thing for you.

You see, Positive Business Minutes has a very restrictive time limit of about 1 minute, so I must keep my tips short and sharp. But since  I’m rerecording this, I can reworked the materials and added even more details to the content.

So, enjoy the audio:

Secrets To Dominate Your Niche Going Places!

“Secrets To Dominate Your Niche” is touching more people than we could have ever imagined!

So far we’ve had people from Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, US, Australia, Japan who are getting copies of our book and giving us great feedback! We are extremely happy with the continuous positive response that we have been receiving. Here’s a couple of the latest ones we have received:

“Secrets to Dominate Your Niche” may very well be the best ASEAN business book for enterprise who would like to reinforce their competitive advantage as a differentiator amidst the competition. It captures a lifetime brand building winning formulas and puts them in a somple, practical context for any entrepreneur.” - Edwin C. Mapanao, Philippines

“Dear Thomas, it is my honor to have your book “SECRETS TO DOMINATE YOUR NICHE”.

I take much time to read this book twice.( coz of my poor English, hehe:)
I benefited from this book. Your smile on the photo of this book is very kind. That is very kind of u to share your valuable business experience and wisdom of your life through this book.

It will be a good navigator to a wide reader.

The dream of entrepreneurial and success are hidden in each of our hearts, but that needs wisdom and courage. You are the winner, coz u success. I wish u more brilliant in your business. This book will be my good friend in my future business life. Thanks again.” - Cathy Ma, CHINA

Thank you for all your support… continue to spread the word… and continue to DOMINATE your niche!