Secrets To Dominate Your Niche Launches In Philippines On 10th July!

Here’s an update on the previous post regarding the book’s Philippine’s launch. As mentioned, it will be held in Fully Booked’s biggest store that is located in the business district area. According to Nikko, the guy who made this all happen, the Bonifacio High Street branch where the Secrets To Dominate Your Niche launch will be held on 10th July, is a 5-storey building!

As Thomas will be going to Manila for a business trip during that time, he will be doing the launch at Fully Booked where he will share domination strategies and also network with the people. The book launch will take place after office hours from 6:00pm to 7:15pm and will be faciliated and emcee-ed by none other than Nikko Lim!

In fact, Nikko has also made sure that Thomas will be kept busy with interviews with the press and meetings with key business leaders in the Filipino entrepreneur community. But we will keep you updated on that later.

For now, check out some of the tarpaulins (as the banners/standees are called in the Philippines) that have been placed around the Fully Booked outlets all around Manila.

 

We are extremely excited about this book launch for several reasons:

1) Secrets To Dominate Your Niche is debuting in the Philippines market because of the hard work and dedication of a reader of the book–Nikko. He came to Singapore for a conference and bought the book. He thought the book would be really beneficial for the entrepreneurs in Philippines so he approached the bookstores to carry it there.

2) The launch of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche is happening on 10th July, about 2 1/2 months after the book was launched in Singapore! And for “unknowned” authors, this is really a coup as the bookstores that will be carrying our book are two of the biggest bookstores in the Philippines.

3) Thomas will be there personally to launch the book and network with a whole new group of prospective readers.

We will continue to do more marketing for the book in the Philippines, with the help of our Niche Dominator Nikko. So if you would like to see how this next saga unfolds, do visit this blog every now and then for the latest updates!

Dominator Found In Philippines

I have been communicating with a reader from the Philippines for a while now. His name is Nikko and he actually wrote in to the authors to tell them how he enjoyed the book. You can read Nikko’s review here. In his review, he actually said that if we wanted to launch the book there, he would definitely help us.

Well, you know, as what the authors have talked about in the first two chapters of the book: “It’s easy to say, ‘Yes, I commit to do whatever it takes to achieve the results I want.’” And so it is easy to dismiss some stranger’s help as lip service… but then again, most people would probably have never met someone like Nikko before in their life. When I started communicating with Nikko after the authors personally replied to his email, he immediately went into high gear.

He spoke to key people from entrepreneurial organisations in the Philippines and managed to get us a confirmed book review in Entrepreneur Magazine for its future issue. Then he also sought out the purchasing people in the major bookstores in Philippines to talk to them about bringing the book there. And one of the most amazing parts? He had to lend them his one precious copy for their review and passed it around to the different people as that was the only copy he had!

So armed with only one book, loads of enthusiasm and truckloads of self-initiative, Nikko managed to get two of Philippines major bookstores to order our books! Come July, Fully Booked and National Bookstore will be carrying Secrets To Dominate Your Niche on their bookshelves. But I’ll share more about the book launch in Philippines in another post because this one is a tribute to Nikko.

Back to Nikko then… not only did he manage to get the bookstores to order the books, but he also garnered interviews with the press to cover the launch of the book there, set up meeting with key business people to promote the book, sent out countless emails to his friends to invite them for the launch, and he even managed to find time to get banners printed and delivered to the book launch venue! Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that he is a FULLTIME young working adult (he’s only 23!)!

Just one example of how he keep impressing us (the authors and myself). Earlier, Fully Booked (whom Nikko approached to hold a book launch) wasn’t able to commit to doing a launch as they weren’t sure when the books would arrive. But Nikko asked me whether I had any promotional materials and asked if I could send him some of them. I emailed our banner designs to him. In my email, I asked why he wanted the banner designs and what he was planning to do with them. He replied, “Just in case Fully Booked agrees to do the book launch.”

One day after I emailed him the banner designs, he told me that Fully Booked agreed to do the book launch. Within that two days of their confirmation, he had already made the appropriate changes to banner design, got them printed and delivered to the different outlets for display! NOTE: Banner on the left below is the original one we use in Singapore and banner on the right is the one Nikko had revised.

And I don’t know how Nikko did it but Fully Booked, where we will be having the launch, also put up a very nice write up about Secrets To Dominate Your Niche on their website’s EVENTS page.

There are so many things that I would like to share about what this one amazing reader from Philippines have achieved within such a short period of time. But I think that this one phrase sums it up nicely. So Nikko, we (the authors and myself) would really like to thank you for making this Philippines debut possible.

“You are a true blue NICHE DOMINATOR!”

Mini-Secrets To Dominate Your Niche-Workshop

A lot of people have been asking the authors about conducting seminars or doing talks to share more on what they wrote in Secrets To Dominate Your Niche. So when one of Sant’s business friend, Valerie Lim of Gateway21, approached him to do a talk for Project Senso, the authors thought it was an opportune time to start their speaking circuit.

But first, here’s some background about Project Senso that I culled from their website:

June 2003, Project:Senso began as a simple idea of bringing Singaporean players of the CashFlow game together. However with popular demand, Project:Senso has substantially evolved to become an online entrepreneurial and financial community in Singapore with a reach spanning Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada and Germany. With visions to contribute towards social enterprise in Singapore, Project:Senso aim to be the leading platform for entrepreneurs all over Asia Pacific.

Sant met with the board members of Project Senso about two years ago and they are really a bunch of dedicated and committed entrepreneurs. You will know what I mean when you meet them, which I had the chance to at the talk that they organised for the authors. That was also the first time that the authors got to experience a new cafe concept at 55 Market Street called Geek Terminal, where the talk was held. But more about the cafe later.

 

As Project Senso organises talks for their members and aspiring entrepreneurs once a month, Sant and Thomas were slated to do a talk for the month of June. It was titled the Secrets To Dominate Your Niche Mini Workshop and I think that Emily from Project Senso did a really great job of describing the event. So I’ll just take the easy way out and let you read more about what the authors shared on her blog post for Project Senso Read more about the Mini Workshop! Just one clarification though, this was a workshop and NOT the book launch of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche as we had held the book launch on 22 April at Thumper. (If you have not read about the exciting events leading up the book launch and checked out the photos of the launch at Thumper, you are missing out some branding strategies!)

 

And now, about the venue for this Mini Workshop. It was held at Geek Terminal, which a really cool place. It is just directly across the street from Golden Shoe carpark. According to Michael Wee, the Events Manager (and a fantastic host to boot), one their differentiating factors is that they have the only barista-operated coffee-making machine in town. While other coffee-making machine are machine operated, this one requires a skilled and trained barista to operate it for a truly freshly brewed cuppa. Michael really took very good care of us and ensured that the entire workshop ran very smoothly. We had great food, great drinks and great networking opportunities after the authors finished their talk. So thank you Michael for a great experience.

Talk For ‘The Entrepreneur In You’

Thomas was invited to be a keynote speaker for an event organised for the Indian community, where the Guest-of-Honour was Minister of Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Held at the Republic Polytechnic on 8th June, the event was a whole day event that drew crowds of over 4000 people. The event, called ‘The Entrepreneur In You’ was organised by the Chairman of the People’s Association Indian Activity Executive Committees Co-ordinating Council, Mr P.Thirunavukarasu.

Thomas, Minister of Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Sant

Even though Thomas had only just gotten back from a heavy travelling schedule that include visits to the US, Malaysia and Thailand, he was at the event a few hours before he was due to give his talk. He wanted to get an idea of the event and the crowd so that he could better tailor his talk for them. I think that is the obsessive passion that the authors talk about in Chapter 2 of the book. After all, not everyone would take time out on a SUNDAY afternoon to share their business experiences with aspiring entrepreneurs. (Yes, 8th June was a Sunday.)

I guess it is like what the authors say in the book about entrepreneurs having an obsessive passion for what they do. They explain that obsessive passion means “having a compulsive, uncontrollable enthusiasm about what you do.” Even as Thomas also shared about this during his talk, we also heard the same thing from Mr P.Thirunavukarasu when we got a chance to chat with him after the talk. (I didn’t manage to take a photo of the authors chatting with him). He told us about how this event started out as a suggestion and then it grew bigger and bigger as more people got involved. However, as the people invovled were all contributing their help on a voluntary basis, there were some challenges along the way.

Judging by the huge turnout and happy crowd who got to listen to talks by various experts and enjoy various products and services by the participating stalls, I think the organiser’s hard work paid off.

The First Exclusive Workshop On Secrets To Dominate Your Niche

Project:Senso, a non-profit organization that provides a platform for youths, aspiring entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs to get sound knowledge related to business and financial skills, has invited us to do a workshop based on Secrets To Dominate Your Niche.

The workshop will be on 14 June, Saturday. For more details you can Click HERE. We are doing the workshop for FREE (although there is a minimal registration fee by Project:Senso to cover their costs of organising the workshop)

We will cover topics like how to create your niche, increase your price while getting more clients at the same time, several specific differentiating strategies, etc. We are also excited to share some powerful strategies that we didn’t get to cover in the book.

If you want to learn how to improve your profits or are interested in entrepreneurship, business and marketing strategies, you should check this out. This is our first public workshop based on the core ideas contained in our book. And we are looking forward to share with you our profit boosting strategies then.

Here’s the link to Find Out More Now. We guarantee that your time investment in joining us at the workshop will be massively rewarded.

See you then.

Walking The Talk

I have written previously about the efforts that went into the making and marketing of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche. For instance, I shared about how we made special bags to pack the books that were sent out to the media people and creating a whole of collaterals that carried the ‘brand’ of the book. However, one of the most important things that we did was to send out the soft copy of the book to prominent business leaders, international and local, asking for their reviews. Trust me, this may sound easy but there is a method to doing this effectively and succcessfully. You can find it in Chapter 14 of the book!

In this chapter called The Fastest Ways To Establishing Instantaneous Trust, the authors talk about why building trust fast is critical to enjoying a long-term, profitable relationship with your target market. And they also reveal their own secrets to how they do that, accompanied with personal samples of letters and step-by-step instructions on how to effectively use these strategies in your own business. One of the strategies they recommended in this chapter is to collect powerful testimonials from your clients.

As great believers in the power of a testimonial, the authors themselves sent out quite a few emails requesting for reviews for the book. Following their own ‘advice’ that they shared in this chapter, they included reviews that were written by some of the first few reviewers in their email request. So that helped the latter reviewers some point of reference when they wrote their own reviews. As such, we managed to get all these great reviews for the book.

Quite many of the reviewers mentioned to us that it was rather difficult to read the entire 300 plus pages on a computer monitor and we truly understand and appreciate that they still did it. So we would really like to extend our deepest gratitude once again to those who took the time to read the book and review it for us! 

When the book was printed, the authors took the time to meet up with the reviewers and personally thank them and passed them a copy of the book. As some of them were really busy, we did not manage to meet with all of the reviewers. But we had a good time chatting with those whom we managed to sit down for a chat with. One of them is Mr V. Maheantharan, Director of School Business, Singapore Polytechnic.

Thomas, Mr Mahean, Sant in Mahean’s office at Singapore Polytechnic

Mr Mahean was telling us about how he was bent over his computer monitor scrolling through the pages of the book when he came upon Chapter 14: The Fastest Ways To Establishing Instantaneous Trust. He laughingly told us that as he was reading through that chapter, he was thinking in his head, “Are they (the authors) pulling a fast one?” That’s because he realised that the authors were doing the exact same steps that they had been sharing in that chapter when they requested for his review.

I found Mr Mahean’s comment really interesing because it proved two things: 1) The authors really practice what they preach and 2) The steps and strategies detailed in the book are really easy to follow, practical and gets you results!We were glad that Mr Mahean noticed it right away because it meant that we were doing everything that was detailed in the book. And that’s why if you read the chapter and follow the steps inside, you too would be able to get great testimonials and reviews for your products/service/company/personal reference. 

Anyway, that meeting with Mr Mehean and his sharing with us on that topic and other matters really stayed in my mind. If you think that getting a good review or testimonial is no biggie, think again, because Thomas also shares in Chapter 14 that this was how he clinched his first contract with a 5-star client.

If you would like to know about more, check out page 210 in the book! 

FREE Copies + FREE Seminar on Secrets To Dominate Your Niche

Since the launch of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche on 22 April, the bookstores have sold out the book several times! Most of the bookstores had (severely) underestimated the huge demand for the book. And even when they restocked, they sold out in a couple of days. Luckily, the major stores have caught up with the demand and started ordering big numbers to match it.

In the past 2 weeks we’ve moved nearly 1,500 copies from the bookstores island wide! For unknown local authors, that’s amazing numbers.

And just yesterday the book made it to #3 National Bestseller, according to The Sunday Times, only below big releases: Robert Kiyosaki’s new book and Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture. We are very happy and grateful for the support that everyone has given us.

We Are Giving Away FREE Copies + FREE Seminar Tickets!

To thank you, we’ve created an opportunity for you (in Singapore) to get a copy of the book AND attend a 2-hour talk + networking session with us for FREE.

At the event, we will be sharing differentiating strategies on how you can dominate your niche as well as our marketing strategies that we used to drive our book to a National Bestseller within just 12 days of its launch! There will also be a Q&A session where you can tap our brains and get tips and tactics you can use for your business and career. The ticket fee for this event is $30. But the value for it is priceless!!!

Here’s how you can be one of the lucky winners:

1) Buy the book Secrets To Dominate Your Niche from any of the following book stores from NOW till Saturday 31st May: Borders, Kinokuniya, Times, MPH, Popular and PageOne at VivoCity.

2) Take a photo of yourself posing with the book (remember to show us your million-dollar smile!)

3) Email a copy of your book purchase receipt AND your photo, together with your contact details to dominate[at]maneuvermarketing.com

Your names will go into a lucky draw and the names of the winners will be announced on Mon, 2nd June here. Winners will be notified by email.

THE PRIZES:

• 3 lucky winners will get the FULL amount they paid for the book reimbursed AND a FREE seat to the talk by the authors worth $30 each. The event will be happening on Sat, 14th June, at Geek Terminal, from 1:30pm to 4:30pm.
• 7 additional lucky winners will get the a FREE seat to the talk by the authors worth $30 each.

(Remember to bring your copies along if you want us to autograph them for you.)

So hurry and get your copy of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche today (before Saturday 31st May)! And who knows, you could find yourself getting a FREE book and be one of the first few to meet the authors up close and personal and find out their secrets on how to dominate your niche.

STDYN Books DOMINATE Singapore’s Bookstores!

It has been less than 2 weeks since Secrets To Dominate Your Niche hit the bookstores and we were hearing strange things from our friends and even strangers. Apparently, they couldn’t find our books in the bookstores! The even more strange thing? When they went up to the bookstores’ information counter to ask about the book, the sales person actually knew about the book, right down to the authors’ name. So what was happening?

As it turned out, the bookstores were quite prepared for the demand for the book and had not ordered large quantities of the book. So they pretty much ran out of stock… really quickly. And we know that how? Because whenever someone told us that they managed to find our book in a particular outlet, we would immediately inform people who were waiting to buy the book. Only to find that sometimes they got there too late!

But thanks to the support of our distributors and all the bookstores in Singapore, the problem was quickly rectified. The bookstores really stocked up on the book and gave us really prominent shelf space in their outlets, something that we are extremely thankful to them for.

The photos below were taken in Borders, Times and Kinokuniya.

Check Out More Launch Party Photos Here

This post may be a long-awaited one because I only just figured out how to link the photos to the Flickr account. Since a photo is worth a thousand words, I’ll let the launch party photos for the Secrets To Dominate Your Niche book speak for itself.

Happy surfing through the photos of the Pre-launch preparations, Party Guests and Party Mood on the Flickr site at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26577774@N04/sets/

Secrets Revealed On 938LIVE

Just two days after the book launch and the authors were kept busy with another event… going on national radio! 938LIVE invited them to The Living Room programme to share about the book and their personal business experiences.

 

The hosts of the show, Esther Ng and Stanley Leong, had prepared a long list of questions to ask the authors throughout the 45-minute long programme. The authors shared about why they decided to write a book together (because they shared similar business philosophies), the difference of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche compared with other business books (it is easy-to-read and provides practical strategies that you can immediately use in your business) and other really interesting stuff.

Thomas shared his personal networking strategies by opening with a joke about how people usually go about it the wrong by making themselves a pest instead of a welcome guest at parties and business events. He quipped, “When you are a pest, that’s when they hire me to get rid of you!” Then he explained that when you network, you need to be sincere about getting to know the person and not think about trying to get his business. He also mentioned several examples of how he networks successfully i.e. writing down details about the person on the business card, keeping in touch by sending special occasion cards, etc.

Esther and Stanley also quizzed Sant about his unique and unusual title on his business card, Profit Strategist. They commented that with a title like that, they were sure everyone wanted to be his friend! “Well, that’s exactly the kind of reaction I wanted from my target audience”, Sant told them. He said that when he first started out, people didn’t really have a good perception of a marketing consultant. So he thought of a title where he could differentiate himself from the rest, while at the same time, create an immediate impact on his target market in the area that they were most interested in–making profits!

And all too soon, 45 minutes passed and the hosts and the authors carried on their conversation outside the studio for quite a while. The authors also presented the hosts with autographed copies of the books and we had fun taking some keepsake photos as well. Thank you Stanley and Esther for your wonderful hospitality and graciousness during our visit to your Living Room!