Chapter 5 : The Secret

There is a Secret to success in life, it's been proven by many examples of great men in history. The Secret has no names, but it has been recognized by millions of people consciously or unconsciously. Those who used it consciously had achieved great success in life, while those used it unconsciously had also achieved certain degree of success in life.

The Secret is also something that is not directly defined. It shows them how to achieve things in their life, and how to obtain anything of their wishes in life when they discover it. These people who found the Secret became very successful and wealthy in their life. These people names most of them you might had heard a lot through the world media today, some of them are even leaders of people.

So I am guessing now most of you are wandering what does this Secret is really all about?

To explain how I found out about this Secret and what it's about, I need to recommend two books which holds the secret to the definition of this Secret. The first book is "Think and Grow Rich" written by Napolean Hill and the second book is "The Secret" written by Rhonda Byrne. Both books explained about the Secret throughout their contents indirectly as it can't be define, and countless examples was given in the books to how some people use it for the great benefit of themselves and man kind.

Some of the success gurus these days also talks about the Secret, explaining them in their own context but contained the same definition of the Secret indirectly. Success gurus such as Anthony Robbins, Bob Procter, Jack Canfield, T.Harv Eker, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, John Assaraf and others had teach this Secret to millions of people. Celebrities such as Will Smith and Oprah Winfrey also knows about this Secret and shared them countless times through their media.

"Think and Grow Rich" is a book written by Napolean Hill and published in 1937, it was one of the original source of the Secret which has been passed down to our current generation. In the book, Napolean explained how the Secret was originally passed down to him by Andrew Carnagie, one of the richest man in the world at the early 20th century ranked along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John D.Rockeller and J.P.Morgan. (As history was told Andrew Carnegie's story was a legend itself, as how a factory worker who miraculously became the richest steel tycoon of his generation.)

When Napolean first met the steel tycoon, he indirectly implemented his formula into the young Napolean mind and gave him an important assignment of passing down the Secret to people of the world for generations to come. Little does he knows, the Secret had touched and lighted millions of people lives for years to come. Success gurus from the elder generation such as Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar was few of those who understood and practiced the Secret throughout their life, and their lessons on the Secret had influenced the success gurus of our generation such as Anthony Robbins, T.Harv Eker, Jack Canfield and Brian Tracy. The traits of the Secret can also be seen from the works done by these success gurus over the years, as their teachings of the Secret had helped millions of people.

To explained briefly , in the book Napolean Hill talks about the thirteen step formula for people to understand the Secret and master it so they would achieve any goals in their life. The book claims that if a person who had set up a goal in his mind as his Definite of Purpose, accompanying with Burning Desire and Faith he can achieve that goal. It also mentioned that the person needs to Clarify his goal in details and Believe that he already has in possession of that goal in his mind, then he will inevitably achieve it.

The other book "The Secret" written by Rhonda Byrne was a certain similar reincarnation of the formula described in the "Think and Grow Rich" book, but the book's origination was actually from "The Science of Getting Rich" written by Wallace Walters which was published in 1910. The author Rhonda accidentally found out about the Secret from her daughter during her times of trauma. She then interviewed few of the modern day teachers who spoke about ancient wisdom and the ways for people to attract what they desire into their lives.

To give a brief description, "The Secret" is based on the Law of Attraction and claims that positive thinking can create life changing results such as increased wealth, health and happiness. The book describes the Law of Attraction as a natural law that determines the complete order of the universe and of our personal lives through the process of "like attracts like". That says, as we think and feel, a corresponding frequency will be send to the universe that attracts back to us events and circumstances on that same frequency. The book further explained that desirable outcomes such as health, wealth and happiness can be attracted simply by changing one's thoughts and feeling.

Few of the success gurus interviewed in the book such as Bob Proctor and John Assaraf explained about how they achieved their success with the Secret that they learned about, and how they use Visualization as the most powerful process to manifest their desires. One of the best example was how John Assaraf bought his dream house from the Vision Board he created a few years ago, the story amazed a lot of people.

From the two books, I realized that I have found the Secret to achieving my goals in life which are now not impossible. For me to achieve my goal, I would need to condition my mindset and thinking to match the goals I desire, and apply positive energy to attract the right things to help me in achieving those goals. As I started changing my mindset, positive things had started to happen around me and my own personality had change from time to time to align myself for that success to come.

I also shared the Secret to my wife and few of my closest friends, some of them who grasped the Secret  had started applying it to achieve their goals. It has been an exciting journey for me to discover this Secret,  I had set my goals to achieve in this life and started to see some intuitions emerge to aid me in the process. I know and believe that I will achieve these goals, as it's inevitable and a reality to me now since I found the Secret.

Chapter 4 : The Cash Flow Game

I want to share an interesting game which I learned about during my journey of discovering the tree of wealth, this game is called the Cash Flow game. This board game is an educational tool created by Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad), which aims to teach players the concepts of investing by having their money work for them in a risk free setting. It also simultaneously increase their financial literacy and stressing the importance of accountability.

When I first played the Cash Flow game, it gave me a glimpse realization on the reality of my current career life and financial situation. After playing a few times, I finally understood what was missing throughout my whole career at that time and the financial failures I got myself into over the years. The board game is really an amazing education tool and suitable for anyone who wishes to start out on their path to financial freedom. You can get the web version of the Cash Flow game from the Rich Dad website http://www.richdad.com/.

The Cash Flow games quite resemblance the similarities in reality which most of us had experiences throughout our whole life. It always goes like this, everyone will have to go to school from childhood until university or college so we can learn the skills to get a job which pays us stable income to live in the society. Then we will start to owed house loan, school loan, car loan and credit card loan kind of debts to deal with, the debts which we may not able to pay off until the end of our life. This simulation of the Cash Flow games gets the player to realize these nature facts of life, so they can learn and make changes to their life with better financial terms.

There are two type of Cash Flow games in the Rich Dad series, the Cash Flow 101 and Cash Flow 202. The Cash Flow 101 game is mainly for beginner players who just started out playing and wishes to learn about the financial education, where as Cash Flow 202 game is a further upgrades to the original game where the players can learn more about technical investing skills. Basically these two version of games are mostly similar in game play on the Rat Race track while the differences will be on the difficulty of getting to the Fast Track by the challenges presented along the track.

In general brief, the rules for the Cash Flow game is as following:

• A maximum of 6 players can play at one game session and all them will be assigned different profession such as doctor, lawyer, police officer, pilot, teacher, janitor and web designer. Each profession has it's differences in terms of salary income and expenses, as well the starting assets and liabilities.
• Each player will start on the Rat Race track, which is a round board game where they will repeatedly go through by throwing dices in turns. All of them will start with two dices unless they contribute certain cash from their income on the Charity box, they will get to throw three dices for few rounds.
• On the Rat Race track, the players will get chance to step on the boxes which they will need to choose between the Small Deals or Big Deals. Basically Small Deals are deals under $6,000 in cash payment while Big Deals are deals above the $6,000 in cash payment. The players will have to choose wisely accordingly to their financial situation as well affordability.
• For Cash Flow 202, the chance boxes will present Cash Flow deals and Capital Gain deals for the players to choose. Basically Cash Flow deals will get players to invest in passive income type of deals such as rental property while the Capital Gains will let the players invest in certain financial instruments which give capital gains such as stocks and options.
• When the players get to choose certain deals they will have to finance the outstanding payment with bank loans. This will gets them to be familiar with the definition of asset, liability, income and expenses column from the process.
• Along the track, they will also get to land on expenses boxes such as Doodads which required them to pay certain cash from their savings. This could be an education for players to understand about what stuff are categorize as Doodads. For you information, Doodads are stuff that we bought in reality which we really don't need it and waste of money.
• The players objective is to get their Passive Income higher than their Expenses so they can advance to the Fast Track. They also need to closely monitor their Expenses and Cash On Hand so it won't get out of hand, if not they will face Bankruptcy. In Bankruptcy, the players will have to dispose all their assets in order to pay off their outstanding debts. If fail to so, they will force to leave the game prematurely.
• Once the players get to the Fast Track, they will be presented with the easy way of game play where they get to choose investment in multi corporation deals to get cash flow or spend the cash on luxury leisure travel deals. The ultimate goal is for them to get their Daily Cash Flow income higher than their Daily Cash Flow Goal.
• During the Fast Track the players will get to learn how their cash on hand can be taken away easily by Taxes and Law Suits. This quite resemblance the routine in reality where the rich people will always have to find ways to protect their wealth from the clutches of government and lawful events.

The game play are quite fixed, but the strategy every players can be vary according to individuals. It is highly recommended by Robert Kiyosaki for the players to play this game as many times as possible so they can discover different ways to win the game of life. I had played so many times ever since until I realized that there are different strategies which I can apply to win this game, and these are very useful strategies in the real world too.

To share out few of my strategies are as following:

• I will try to buy the first few properties from the Small Deals as early as possible, without worrying the small passive income it provided. Once I sell these properties off in the mid of the game, I can acquired an amount of cash from the capital gains generated from these sales. The cash collected can be quite substantial for me to invest in bigger deals which yield higher passive income, this allows me to get to the Fast Track effectively within little of time.
• My second strategy is to get the maximum bank loan at the early stages as possible, so I will have certain amount of cash on hand to allow me to invest in Small Deals faster without having to go through few round of turns. I can settle the debts off very fast once I sell off these properties, allowing me to acquire Big Deals faster and within shorter amount of time. This strategy is rather riskier and can go bankrupt if I get landed on huge expenses or Doodads.

Both strategies requires me to get Capital Gains in a short amount of time, so I would have substantial cash on hand to invest in Cash Flow deals which will provide the Passive Income I needed to win the game. In reality, the Passive Income is use by the rich people to get financial freedom and never to work for a job ever again. But for a beginner investor just starting out, we are always face with lacking resources such as cash on hand. So what I did was to focus on getting capital gains first to acquire the cash needed for me to invest in bigger and more efficient passive income deals. For and example, a $200,000 capital gains from each property is very good at the beginning of wealth accumulation. But once I have acquired more than $1,000,000 that amount of capital gains will yield lesser efficiency at increasing my wealth. At this stage, Passive Income is more useful to achieve my financial freedom.

Again I wish to stretch out, the Cash Flow game is really a very good financial education tool for anyone who wants to increase their financial literacy and improving their life. I would also highly recommend this board game to anyone who wishes to pursue their tree of wealth as it did for me to learn about wealth creation. For me, I am continuously on the path of learning and improving the technique to acquire wealth.

Chapter 3 : The Art of Property Investment

Another tree of wealth that I had mentioned in my path of wealth creation is Property Investment, which is the most popular investment method around the world for all generations of people. Truth to say, property investment is really the best method to create wealth among all wealth creation tools of all time. People from thousand years ago had already participated in this kind of investment through owning wooden houses and rent out to local peasants for rental income. Generally speaking, 80% of the richest people in the world today created their massive wealth through property investment, like billionaire Li Ka Shing and Donald Trump.

Property investment is a really powerful leveraging tools to create wealth, where you only need a small portion of money to finance the ownership of a property. The rest of the money to purchase that property is finance through borrowing from the bank which is the house mortgage loan. The house mortgage loan tenure usually ranges from 10 years to 30 years depending on the age of the purchaser, some banks can loan up to 40 years depending on certain requirements. Maximum age of loan a person can apply is up to 65 years of age, some banks can extend up to 75 years of age. Example of a scenario:

• Shawn is 25 years of age and he wishes to purchase a property for home staying. He saw a property on the market the other day that he has huge interests to buy. The property is price at $100,000 at market value, and he is require to come up with 10% of the cost to purchase that property which is $10,000. The rest 90% of the cash required will be finance through the house mortgage loan which is around $90,000. In this case he can get up to 10x leveraging.
• Because he is only 25 years old, he can apply for a house loan mortgage up to 40 years. This can greatly reduces his monthly installment payments which can help sustain his financial health. So it's very advisable if an individual can buy property at a younger age due to the years advantage.

Property Investment can generate profits through two ways, which are Capital Gain and Passive Income. In some cases if the property owner can hold the property on a longer time frame while he rent out the property over the period to generate rental income to pay off the mortgage, when he sells off the property he will get the maximum profits from both capital gain and passive income. In general, capital gain and passive income have such definition:

• Capital Gain - Profits generated from the price appreciation of the property through buying at lower price and then selling it at a higher price.
• Passive Income - Cash flow generated when rental income collected from the tenanted property can generate surplus money after deduction of monthly mortgage payments and other maintenance fees.

Property which we can invest our money falls into few categories, such as residential property, commercial property, and land ownership.

• Residential Property - These are property which we buy for home staying or renting it out for passive income, the cost to purchase this property is usually lower than other property types. Residential property can further divide to apartments, condos, landed double storey houses, bungalows, lofts and many others.
• Commercial Property - These are property which people buy for business purposes such as office units, shop lots, hotels resorts and many others. In general, commercial property are more expensive than residential property and some require huge capitals for acquiring such assets.
• Land Ownership - Usually the very rich individuals or capital rich companies will tend to purchase lands for longer holding period, in anticipation to sell it off for capital gains or developments of property projects on the land. Land Ownership doesn't generate passive income so it's a very dangerous investments if an individual doesn't have long period holding power.

In the long run, property price tends to go up in trend because of increasing inflation and money devaluation. That says because the government in the world will continue printing fiat currency, our money value will continue to drop and inflation will continue go up. Example, a property purchases at $100,000 ten years ago will worth more than $200,000 in today's value.

Today I conduct my property investment through the Little or No Money deals I learned from property gurus which is a spectacular strategy to acquire properties, which means I don't need huge amount of start up capital to purchase a property. Most deals I did are either non cash upfront payment after price discounts of purchase price or little upfront cash payments after certain price discounts. These deals are huge advantages because it is low risk and you can save certain taxes from the capital gain taxes imposed by governments. That says, these deals are very hard to find and require huge patience on the searching process. It took more than 100 properties searches on the market until I found two properties which fit my buying criteria.

My plan in the near future would be to own at least five properties which can generate passive income and capital gain. Imagine each of my property income have capital gain of $200,000, that would means I have a million worth of net worth asset under my ownership. Plus the passive income generated from the monthly rental income, I can become a millionaire in a short period of time or at least be financial freedom. Now, wouldn't that be a dream worth pursuing?

Chapter 2 :The Art of Trading

One of the trees of wealth that I have chosen in my path to wealth creation was Investment, which involves buying low and selling high in certain financial products such as stocks and currencies to make money. But to explain it clearly, I was actually pursuing the path of Trading which is a bit different to Investing. People who trades are called Traders, while people who invest are called Investors. In general explanation , I can say that trading and investment are different as in the following aspects:

• Time Frame - A trader would get expose in the market at very much shorter time frame compare to the investor, sometimes between minutes to months where as a investor would stay invested for a long time, maybe for years. 
• Market Direction - A trader makes money in the financial market through three directions which is up, down and sideways. He can short the market when it is going down to make money. An investor can only participate in the up trending market, which is long the market. 
• Leverage - A trader use leverage to margin trade which means using borrow money from the financial institutions to trade. Through leveraging, he can participate in multi-million worth of contracts trading by just providing only a fraction of that capital amount. A investor instead would require to come up the whole capital to invest in that particular financial instrument.

Trading can be done in various categories of financial instruments available such as stocks, futures, commodities, option and currencies. Trading also require two skills to be learn, which in this part have some familiarity with investment. These two skills are the Fundamental Analysis and Technical Analysis a.k.a TA.

• Fundamental analysis is the study of market economies and financial situations which can influence the long term movement of the related financial instrument, examples like a company annual reports and a country interest rates decision over the years.
• Technical Analysis is a skill where one involves the plotting and analyzing graph of the related financial instrument to catch its short term direction to trade. Traders use this method to buy low and sell high as well opposite transaction in certain stocks and currencies to make money.

Trading is a fascinating path to wealth creation which was not really known to most people in the world, it's probably one of the best kept secret to create wealth today. One of reason could be the non exposure to common people today, especially people with no financial education. It's also the most riskiest way to create wealth today, as it's stated 95% of people who trades or invest will loose money to the 5%.

When I was growing up in my small hometown Kuala Terengganu in the sunny beach side of East coast Malaysia many years ago, there wasn't any exposure to such opportunity around. Even when I started working in Kuala Lumpur after graduated from university few years ago, there wasn't people around me who have the exposure too. It wasn't until after three years of working in Singapore, this wonderful world of trading opened itself to me through seminars talk by some of the successful traders. Since then. I attended various free trading seminars all over Singapore and some of invest fairs held from time to time. After a year of continuous studying,. my knowledge of trading have definitely increased tremendously.

I started trading Forex a year ago after attended the only course I paid throughout the whole learning journey, which cost me around SGD 2300. I can say it's a money worth spending because this course teaches me a whole lot about TA in trading. The reason I choose Forex is because it's uses the most TA to trade in this instrument, so I can learn faster about TA skill. With TA, a trader can develop a trading system plan that can suits his style of trading to be successful in this field. Beside learning TA, I also took the initiative to learn about trading psychology and risk management skill as these are important ingredients to be successful in trading, as touted by most of the successful traders in the world.

Basically, there are four important elements to be successful in trading which are :

1. A sound trading business plan - A trading plan that incorporates trade entry and exit in which financial instrument to trade, as well the appropriate time frame to trade.
2. A systematic trading methodology that works - A trading system which use TA to find signals and triggers in the financial instruments to catch the timing for the trade entry and exit as well potential profits and losses.
3. A discipline mindset - A very discipline mindset is require to take the trades when the signals and triggers been provided, as well the determination to see through the process for potential profits and loses.
4. A proper risk management plan - The proper amount of capital to use in trading as well the potential losses which a trader is willing to take to enable himself to continue trading  in the long run.

Some masters had said that trading is like a journey and I couldn't disagree it more. Over the year course, I had read and listen through numerous successful traders talks about how to be successful in the trading business. They all said the same thing, trading involves continuous learning and getting hard experiences through making mistakes overtime while learning to correct it. To state it clearly, Trading is not a Get Rich Quick Scheme thing where there's no effort being done to get that wealth.  A successful trader have to endure the pains and hardship over many years to become a consistent profitable trader who can really make money.

This is not an easy road to walk, but I already knew about it when the decision to take the path was made. I had learned and made few mistakes along the one year period, but I expect to continue making mistakes and learn along the road ahead. Hopefully over the next year years I can truly be one the consistent profitable trader who can claim the wealth prize.

Chapter 1 :The Five Trees of Wealth Creation

Wealth creation in general definition means the building of one's abundance of valuable resources and material possessions. Every individual in the current world society have the drives of desire to have a lot of wealth and live richly to one's maximum potentials. To live a lifestyle of very rich and have no worries to financial burden is the ultimate dream a person could have, denial of such dream is to wreck one's happiness and people around his life circle.

Unfortunately since the turn of 21st century, 2% of the world population has own more than 90% of the world's total wealth while the richest 10% of this wealthy group controls 85% of the total wealth itself. The rest of population are made out of the middle class society and the poor people, squeezing to share the remaining 10% of wealth. According to Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki, this has been made possible thanks to the lack of financial education in our already outdated old education systems. Our current school education just doesn't teach about the subject of money in school, that's why there has been so little rich people in our society. Rich people are rich because of their knowledge in wealth creation, some are passed down through the family generation while some have found the answer through journeys of search. For me, I have no other choices than the later path since I was born to a poor middle class family. There's a saying, it doesn't matter where one comes from as long he knows where he is going, he will succeed.

After many years of searches and endurance of hardship, I have found the five ways of wealth creation proven by all the successful people and rich people in the world. No matter what millionaires or billionaires, wealth inherited or created from nothing, those successful people have achieved their wealth through five ways. I called this five ways the Five Trees of Wealth Creation. They are Business, Investment, Property, Internet and Networking, or in short form B.I.P.I.N. In definition, they are defined as follows:

1. Business - Any form of registered business involving selling and buying of material products or services, it could be a huge corporation or small business depending on the size of capital. This is also the most simplest way of accumulating wealth acknowledge by all every individuals, yet also the most challenging. Business can be passed down from one generation to another in the form of inheritances. Some of the most successful people in this category are like Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Robert Kuok, the Sugar King of Asia.
2. Investment - It's a form of way to putting one's money in the financially traded market instrument such as stocks, futures, commodities, option and currency. This has comes to norm to most common people nowadays especially in the stock market where they invest in company shares to generate wealth through capital gains and dividends. This is the most riskiest way of wealth creation as it's stated 95% of the people invested will loose money to the 5%. Some of the most famous investor or trader in this category are like Warren Buffett, George Soros and Jim Rogers.
3. Property - The most recognizable form of wealth creation known by common people around the world, especially in the residential property. Other properties that can also be acquire comes in the likes of commercial property and any vacant land. Property can generate wealth through Capital Gains which is the appreciation of the asset over and Passive Income which is the rental income collected from rental tenanted property. 80% of the wealthiest people in the world created their wealth through property. Some of the most successful people in this category are like Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad series and Sir Li Ka Shing, the richest property tycoon in Hong Kong.
4. Internet - At the dawn of 20th century, a lot of successful individual have created their wealth through the new established internet platform. Giant companies like Google, Yahoo, Ebay and Amazon are born in this era and still few of the largest internet companies in the world. In the turn of 21st century, Facebook emerges as the new giant of internet companies, with users number approaching the one billion mark very soon. Internet also change the nature of business in the retails industry, such as products and fashion since. The most successful people in this category are like Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and Larry Page, founder of Google.
5. Networking - It's categorized as a form of business technique used by entities such as Insurance, Direct Selling and Direct Marketing where the concept of generating down lines of distributors can add up to the passive income of the top distributor. This is a very powerful wealth creation tool as successful people from this category built their wealth through the treelike networking framework over years, enabling them to retire in financial freedom at the later years. Networking business such as Insurance is also a wealth that can be pass down the generation through inheritance. Few of my friends are in this line of business and I can see it's huge potential.

As I identified the five trees of wealth creation above, most successful people in the world have focus on at least two aspect out of five to generate their massive wealth. Bill Gates built his wealth through Business and Internet, while Warren Buffett created his wealth through Investing and Business. It's advisable anyone who wishes to create wealth must choose their focus on at least two of trees of wealth as their path, and I extremely amplify they should not to just focus on their existing job career only. Job is not an asset and it can't be pass down to your next generation. Beside that, Job is dangerous and not secure in this turbulent times where recession can strike anytime to claim retrenchment.

For my starting part of the the wealth creation journey, I had decided to focus on Investing and Property as my trees of wealth for whole life. If I have achieve success later on in the future, Business is another tree of wealth I wish to create.To accomplish these goals, I have attained valuable knowledge from reading books and attending seminar from all possible resources. It's crucial to understand to create wealth, one must have the knowledge how to create wealth. Beside that, I had started trading Forex for over a year to gain experience of the financial market. The learning curve was tough but fill with fun, as it makes me more confidence to face the unforeseeable future.

Knowledge is a powerful tool, but only if Actions are taken to use the knowledge. However, without knowledge one can't know which direction to focus on, so it's very advisable everyone who wishes to create wealth must equip themselves with wealth creation knowledge.It's also better to start now rather than later as time is our most precious asset, learning now enable us to use it earlier in life to achieve success. These knowledge are also an asset for one to use forever in life, whenever and wherever. Learning and taking action earlier also enable one to make mistakes earlier in life, so they can learn and do it better the next time.

I firmly believe creating wealth is the path to achieve financial freedom, where one's most meaningful in life is achieved. As stated earlier, it doesn't matter where one comes from as long he knows where he's going, he will succeed. I sincerely hopeful my path will reach that destination :)