Singapore's Online Community - Singapore Forums - View Single Post - What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman?

**ramcem** · 28-11-2006, 04:39 PM

Someone said' "interestin i must say.....care to explain more abt passive n portfolio income"

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My reply:

Any idiot who read Robert Kiyosaki's books can tell you that earned income is your salary, portfolio income comes from paper assets such as stocks, unit trusts etc., passive income is income from real estate and from businesses you own.

But it's how the three intercorrelate that produced the complexity of the corporate world.

Rather than just quoting from his books, let me try to explain these concepts using my experience.

To be truly competent in the world of business and investments, you need to be well versed in the three class of assets:

i) Business;
ii) Hard Assets;
iii) Paper Assets

Most of our "qualified" financial planners with big titles like "CFP", "QFP" or "CPF" or whatever they called themselves are only well-versed in only paper assets such as insurance and unit trusts. While they may fool the common uncle and auntie in the streets, they need to be much more qualified to talk to people like me.

i) Business

Building your own business requires you tremendous amount of preparation in terms of education. Notice I used "education" here, not money. Most people have this mentality that all they need start a business is money. Money is important but as I said before, it is the least important of all.

I am also not referring to your NUS or NTU honour degrees. Those certificates merely create visions of security. While they may give you a higher starting salary, their increment goes indirect propertional with age and experience. At some point along the journey, it could even be a liabilty if you happen to lose your job during your peak.

The education I am talking about is "street smart" education. You can either acquire it slowly by learning through your own experience (which can be very costly) or learn from people who had gone through before. But be aware of paying huge fees to attend expensive seminars, most gurus became rich not by their business but by selling tickets to you.

I have created a 10 year plan when I was 19 years old. The plan was to compress what would take a normal man 100 years to achieve in business experience. This bold plan can only be achieved with tremendous leverage and excellerated learnings. I chose MLM as that was the ultimate leverage system in front of me guided by a very good mentor (now a legend in MLM in Singapore). I had no social life for many years.

I started my first business at age 27 after thoroughly preparing myself by studying finance, sales and marketing, psychology, politics and even religion. Though I only achieved about "70" years of experience, the opportunity came on fast and I had to grab it before it's gone. I didn't regret the decision.

I now sit on board of 3 companies within a short year. I began to appreciate the lessons I have learnt better. The powerful advantages of business are found in its tax laws. Also, growth in a business is normally exponential, not linear as in a job. A properly run business is much less risky than a job and the powerful corporate shield acts as a personal fortress against your creditors.

Robert Kiyosaki's strategy is also my strategy. Keep your topmost holding companies private but your bottommost companies public (if possible). Just to reveal a little, Robert Kiyosaki's topmost company in his business empire is called "Pele Corporation". Only those very near him would know about this..

There are too many things to cover in the world of business. So I will just stop here for the moment.

I will cover paper assets and hard assets some other time.. this post might get too long for most.

~Ramcem