The Singaporean Dream is alive and well!

There I said it! Yes, the dream that anyone, regardless of race, language or religion has the possibility of achieving happiness, prosperity and success in Singapore, based on our democratic and meritocratic society is still very much alive.

Yes, I know the global economic outlook is uncertain and a lot of experts are predicting even more turmoil next year. I also know that living standard and costs of living have gone up, making it harder for the average people.

But those don’t change the fact that in Singapore there are abundant of opportunities and if you want to, you can have the equal opportunity to achieve success in a short period of time while still enjoying the journey.

Success And Blame Are Inversely Related Forces

Before I go into the details of how you can build your own million dollar business from scratch, I’d just like to share a little about having the right mindset. This part is probably the most critical part of this article. So pay attention.

Leading to the watershed General Election in Singapore there were so many people posting negative views in the social media about how hard their lives were and how the government has made it difficult to make a living. They complained that it was harder just to get by and make ends meet. They whined that there was no point to earn more income if majority of it will be spent on their higher living expenses. Et cetera. (By the way, I’m not referring to the political messages that the opposition or the incumbent parties were promoting as both have their own agendas. I’m referring to what people in the ground and mostly in the social media world were saying.)

Enough is enough! Frankly, when I read about those comments I got peeved.

Why? Because they were playing the lay blame game. They blame the government, they blame the environment, they blame their companies… they blame everything and everyone else, except themselves.

The great thing about blaming others is: it’s never their fault. And the worse thing about blaming others is: because they think it’s not their fault, they think they are not in control of the situation and they’ll not do anything about it to change or improve things. They’ll just wait around hoping for things to change. They essentially trap themselves in their own made up limitations.

Stop complaining and whining. The more you do that, the more you trap yourself. It’s called negative self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Ghandi

Interestingly, during the same time when those people were complaining about how hard things were, I see so many other people getting wealthier and more prosperous. They got wealthier because they worked towards that and focused on that instead of focusing on negativity. They take full responsibility for their own lives and their own successes.

So, let me repeat again, the Singaporean Dream, or what I call SGD is very much alive! But it’s only available to those who are willing to work for it and grab opportunities that are presented to them. Not to those whiners and complainers who are waiting to be spoon fed with a handout.

You can’t focus on what’s wrong and keep on blaming others and expect to become successful. Success and blame are inversely related forces.

There is a powerful saying:

“Energy flows where attention goes.”

It means that what you focus on is where your energy will be. So if you choose to focus on the problems and what others have done wrong, you will only see negative things in your life. And what a sad and stressful life that will be.

In contrast, if you focus on what works and what is going smoothly, then you will see that things are going great.

You can take it one step further. What I’ve found useful, and what I taught my students in my courses is to focus on these questions: “What are the opportunities here?” and “How can I profit from this?”

No matter what happens, by asking those questions you can focus on how you can turn things to benefit you.

For example, one of the complains of the people during the election period was that Singapore was accepting too many foreign talents who ended up competing for jobs with Singaporeans. Most people naturally focus on the problem of having more competition, making it harder to make a living.

But if you just stop for a moment, and ask what are the opportunities here and how can you profit from those, you can probably come up with a few great ideas.

For example, just from the top of my head: those foreign talents who are flocking to Singapore probably have unique needs that I can cater to. Maybe I can open a food outlet offering their own home country cuisines (and charge a slight premium because they won’t find it anywhere else in Singapore). Or I can open a language school for them to learn the local language to give them the edge in their workplace. Or I can set up something for their entertainment, investment or other living needs that are specifically for them. As you can see, there are a lot of possibilities.

The key here is to see them as your potential consumers instead of your competitors. When you do that, you’d be excited that there are so many of them coming here, wouldn’t you?

Ok enough about the mindset stuff. Let’s get into the strategies part.

Building Your Million Dollar Business

I’ve been involved in building a few million dollar businesses. And in fact, last year I became a partner in a new business and we brought in over a million dollar sales in our first year. And the great thing was we did that working on the new business part time, as we were still running our own individual businesses and we still want to have quality time with our own families. I invested zero initial capital.

Following are a few key points to look out for when you want to start your own wildly successful business.

1. Find Demand

Go into a business that has a strong demand for it. If there is no clear demand, then you must be able to create it. Creating a demand can be much harder and takes more effort. So I prefer to look for natural, existing demands.

For my new business there was a strong natural demand in the marketplace. In fact, that was one of the key elements that I look for before I decided to get involved in the business. As a Profit Strategist I got approached quite a bit by people asking me to get involved in their businesses. One of the top factors that I always look for before moving on is to see whether there is demand and how strong the demand is for the business. The stronger the demand, the more interested I tend to be.

Here’s why: When you have a strong demand, you have a much higher probability of success. With a huge demand, the potential of achieving your million dollar sales is very high. Also, when you have strong demand, your risks are lower. You can afford to make mistakes and fumble things and you can probably still survive. But when there is very little demand, one mistake can wipe you out.

Warning! You must be very conscious and critical about this. Most people fall in love with their own ideas without checking with reality. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs and those who were starting who had “faulty” business plans because they feel in love with their own ideas.

For example, I’ve had people told me they wanted to build a business that would revolutionise the green furniture industry. It sounds really exciting, especially now that the green thing is in. But upon a closer look at their idea, there was no natural demand for their products and services. In fact, they would be fighting an uphill battle against entrenched competitors. That was a strong warning sign.

As a start, don’t try to break new and unfamiliar ground, unless you have the initial capital to burn to support your experimentation. Leave the R&D work to the big companies who have the budget to do that. I know it’s totally different from what the business books and what the innovation gurus are promoting, but this is what works in real life. Not in theory. In theory land you can do anything, including attract wealth without doing anything. My approach is more pragmatic which tend to yield more specific results.

2. Make Your Offering Unique By Adding Value

After you know that you have strong demand from the marketplace, the next step is to figure out how to send a flood of those demands to your business. You can do this by making your offering unique.

If you’re offering the same old things that other competitors have been offering, you might do some business due to the large demand. But you won’t do well. This is one of the biggest reasons why most businesses are just surviving and barely above water every month.

If you want to build a million dollar business, which is what we are talking about here, then you must differentiate yourself from the rest of the competitors. My co-author, Thomas Fernandez and I have written a lot on this topic in our bestselling books “Secrets To Dominate Your Niche” and “Niche Dominators: Success Secrets Exposed” which are available in the bookstores.

The key to differentiating your offering is to find out what are the things that your market value highly and appreciate. Then find ways to add value to them by giving them those things.

For example, my co-author, Thomas Fernandez is the CEO and Chairman of PestBusters. They are the #1 pest management company serving the high sensitive industries such as hospitality, healthcare and F&B. They pest manage 95 per cent of the high end hotels in Orchard road area. And their fees are about 5 – 6 times higher than their competitors.

They manage to do that because they offer a very valuable and powerful value to their clients: they offer a guarantee. You see, high sensitive industries such as high end hotels can’t afford to have pest running around. They hold wedding banquets, VIP events, etc, and they can’t take chances as one pest can cause them to lose a substantial amount of money from lawsuits or complains, not to mention ruin their reputation and brand. By giving their clients a strong guarantee, PestBusters is essentially giving them assurance and peace of mind, which they value very highly.

Another great example is my new business. In the market there are already many other competitors doing something similar to what we are offering. However, all of them are low costs and produce little results. We know that what our market is craving for is to see immediate and measureable results. So we painstakingly designed our offering with that in mind. And it worked great!

Not only our customers appreciate what we offer, they were willing to pay a premium for that. This is because they see immediate and measureable results, which are something they highly value. In the span of one year, we have increased our fees a few times, almost doubling our fees when we started. Our fees are also about 3 – 6 times higher than others. And yet, our market continues to flock to our business and we continue to grow.

So in your business, make sure you add value to your customers by giving them what they value highly.

3. Track And Measure

Pay attention to the little details. In any business to grow, you must know what your profit centres are and what your expenses are. Once your business is running, it naturally becomes a system. Your job is to make sure that it is a money-making system instead of a money-losing system.

It may sound simple but I’ve seen so many business owners who are losing money every single month and yet they stubbornly refuse to change the way they do things, or close down the business. They continue to hang on the hope that next month will be different without doing anything. They are deluding themselves.

I got to know an otah supplier who rented a place that was too big and too costly for his business. He had overcommitted. But he just refused to let go of the place as he would have lost his initial capital and rental deposit. Instead he chose to continue to lose money every single month hoping things will change. Sometimes cutting losses early is the smart thing to do.

When you pay attention to your numbers you will know whether your business is growing or declining. And when you see that sales are declining you will know what areas are causing the problems so you can fix it fast or come up with something new.

At the same time, by tracking and measuring your business carefully, you will also know what are your bestselling products or services. When you identify a bestseller, the next thing you can do is to offer more similar or complimentary products and services. When you do that I guarantee that you’ll see a sales bump in your business.

This is because when your customers are happy with your bestseller, they will naturally assume that your complimentary offering will be as great. A big percentage of them will want to buy your additional offerings.

This is what we did in our business as well. We started offering only one product. When that was stable and running systematically, we added two more offerings. And we found that a high number of people actually bought all three of our offerings. If we didn’t offer the two additional offerings we would have left a lot of money on the table.

So keep your eyes on the ball. Track and measure your business. The numbers will tell you a lot about how your business is doing and what you need to do next to bring it to the next level.

Epilogue

As I mentioned in my last post, this is my last blog post. It has been great blogging for “Eye On Business” for the past one and a half year. I appreciate the opportunity by channelnewsasia.com to blog here and add value to your readers.

When I was first approached to do this, frankly I wasn’t sure how long I would do this as it can be quite a commitment, especially since I was posting once every two weeks.

However, it became somewhat like a new habit and I enjoyed writing the posts, even though a lot of times I had to write it past midnight and in several cases early in the dawn due to my busy schedule. But I never missed a blog post. So kudos to the channelnewsasia.com team as well for tolerating my late submissions. (Even this post is submitted very late!)

Since I started blogging for “Eye On Business”, the channelnewsasia.com team has also changed. I’d like to thank all of them who were involved before and currently.

Of course I’d to thank you, the readers, without which this experience would be much less fun and probably won’t last as long. I was told that some of my posts have the highest views and readership which is great. I appreciate your support and your readership. I hope that you’ve also enjoyed and benefited from my posts as well.

Things are getting hectic and I’m getting busier growing my businesses. In fact, my wife has also just started a new retail bakery specialising in cookies and brownies at Joo Chiat road called My Lovebites that we will be launching on December 3. That means that I’m involved in running a few businesses so I foresee that I will have less time to blog here where I have a deadline and commitment to keep.

I will instead continue to blog on my personal blog at www.santqiu.com where there is more flexibility on schedule and freedom of speech and choice of words. I will also focus more on business and marketing related articles and reveal more business secrets there. 

It will probably appeal more to business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers and salespeople and maybe lesser to casual readers… although, it can be very interesting to read about the business and marketing perspective on various things. Just look at Freakonomics. They look at things from a statistic and economic point of view and came up with some very interesting and entertaining stuffs. So join me at my personal blog if you’re interested.

One thing that has been a bummer to me about blogging here is that there is no interaction with you the reader. It’s somewhat a one-sided affair, even though I do get comments on my Facebook page. So I hope to have a lot more interactions with you on my own blog.

One last thing… I know this last article is a little ‘heavy’ as I wanted to give you really great content and something that you can use. But if you like it, and since it’s my last post here, do me a favour and ‘like’ it or share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media will you? It’d be great to end on a high and have one of the highest views for this article as well. I appreciate it :)

Wishing you a great year end, a wonderful Christmas and a very prosperous next year!

To your profits,

Sant Qiu