Lesson # 1: You don’t need money to create money.

Clearly the statement that says ‘you need money to create money’ is a lie! We guys started out with nothing but guts to do this, and we’re pretty sure you can, too! (If you have the guts, that is.) So the only thing that will hold you back from becoming wealthy is YOU. Your ‘limiting belief’ that you need money to setup a business is merely an excuse (Don’t argue with me on this because you really need a capital to start up a business but the thing is, the first step will not cost you anything at all, like what we did!) So let go of that idea and you’d be amazed what you can do without it…

Lesson # 2: Face your fears.

Back at Tim’s desk we noticed Robin didn’t make that much. He got to 3 pesos with almost three hours of work and we asked him why he didn’t make as much as the others. He told us he was ’shy’. Which brings us to a conclusion that being shy is not in anyway going to produce wealth. But that’s pretty self-explanatory. What we need to know is the ‘how-to’ of getting passed that stage. What could have been floating in your head that would make you feel embarrassed of what you are doing? How can you conquer shyness and just go through with what you have to do? The reason will vary depending on the person but it all boils down to this: FEAR. It might be fear of what they might think, fear of rejection, fear of being different, fear going below your social status, and all sorts of fear that you might think of. But fear in itself is just a future feeling.

Imagine you are afraid of heights. That fear causes you to move away from high places. But what if you are already on the edge of the building? Your fear will change, now you’re not afraid of heights anymore but you are afraid of falling. But what if you are falling already? Your fear will change again, and now you are not afraid of falling but you are afraid of the pain it would cause when you hit the ground. But what if you are already experiencing pain? Your fear will change again, this time you are not afraid of feeling pain anymore but you are now afraid of dying.

So fear in itself is a future feeling brought about by our thoughts of the future. And how do you pass through fear? Just go on with it and charge it head on. By the time you conquer it you’ll be afraid of something else but you have still conquered your fear.

Lesson # 3: Use the power of network.

When Ken and I were both are the same level, we were thinking Robin will be left out because of his shyness. But up to this writing, he jumped ahead of us. Why? How in the world did he passed us that quickly in one day? The answer:Network. The more people you know, the more chances you can connect to somebody with whom you can do business with. You see, there are so many opportunities out there waiting to be tapped if you could only find the right channel.

Lesson # 4: Always keep your eyes open for opportunities

One of the very hard thing to master when making your first million is the process of creating ideas. The more you think about it, the less likely you are to get it. Creative ideas tend to come in when you are relaxed, meaning your mind isn’t in much stress or pressure, so that your conscious mind tends to connect deeper with your subconscious. With this in mind I tried to walk around my neighborhood and see what opportunities are there that i’m taking for granted. If the point i’m making here is true, then I should see several opportunities lying around there waiting to be discovered. And true enough, 15 minutes later i was rushing to my notebook jotting down every opportunity i saw. I was amazed of why I never have thought of those, passing that street day by day, year after year. My eyes should’ve been so much preoccupied not to see them. I’m not saying all you have seen would work out but now, at least, you have several ideas you can work on and take action.

Lesson # 5: Trust sells better than your product

The product I am selling as of this writing is ad space in this blog site. Confident on my success in selling it to people I know, I tried selling it to people I haven’t met. But there was a dramatic change on my success rate, 0%! How can this be? People on my phonebook said yes almost instantly while these people talking to me in flesh hesitated. Thinking about what went wrong, I realized that the difference between the people in my phonebook and the people I met for the first time is “Trust”. When money is involved, trust is the only real contract that binds the two parties. Yes, papers protect you from each other but that doesn’t keep you from pissing each other off, and when you get to that point, papers would surely settle the matter but the damage brought to the relationship outweighs the benefits. And people will do business with you on this basis first and foremost. If trust is not present, no paper or good intention can seal a contract.

Lesson # 5: Two heads are always better than one

There will come a point when you’ll get stuck in the creative process, and you could squeeze your brains out and still, nothing will come out… And this is because, you only have a limited set of knowledge to work with, YOUR knowledge. Remember mixing watercolor when you are still a kid? Think of one set of knowledge as one color, like yellow. You can do so much with it, you could vary the lightness and darkness, you can change its saturation giving you a million of combinations, but at the end of the day, it’s still… yellow. So when you run out of ideas, it only means that you have exhausted the set of combinations your set of knowledge could produce. So how do you come up with more ideas? Talk to somebody about it, share it (by the way, this is how brainstorm works), and you or the people you are talking to would suddenly have a spark, an idea that would come out based on the series of combinations made from YOUR set of knowledge and THEIR set of knowledge. And the possibilities from there are endless!

Lesson # 6: The process of getting rich requires risks

While talking to Buboy, one of our featured millionaires, I was taken aback by his tolerance to risks. Committing to a 5M-peso worth distributorship contract is not a joke, especially when only have PHP 150,000… Thinking if a risk this big is stupid (pardon my words) I analyzed how he came up with such a decision. It turns out he was employed by Tork (the manufacturer offering him distributorship) and had setup several businesses years before he was offered a contract… So it wasn’t just a risk, it was a calculated risk. Years of experience and experimenting gave him an intuition that somehow, however low his funds were at that time and however big the project was, something told him that it can be done. And of course, employment with the manufacturer gave him an edge. But he admits that he didn’t “actually” knew how it would turn out, he just knew it will. Knowing your industry is an important part in taking risks and making your first million.

Lesson # 7: Cut savings on top of your income and never ever touch it

There came a time, and I’m sure you did, made loads of money and at one point you told yourself, “hmm, I wonder what I’m going to with so much left… I know! I’m going to start a savings fund!” Then two weeks later, you went out with your friends and you told yourself , “Thank God, I have savings, come on guys, the drinks are on me!” The next day, your savings are gone and you are wondering, “what the hell happened?!?” Well, some might argue that they don’t spend that way but they still inevitably lose the savings… Well, now I know the answer and experience taught me that. It’s because people tend to save on the spare change or on what’s left and if they do they use it anyway… So I tried doing it the other way around, I saved 10% of my income from any source (including gifts) and touch it only on one condition, if I could increase its value when I get it back. It’s pretty small right now but it’s growing consistently, which is more important.

The good thing about this practice is you never have to worry about money again. Thinking you have some sort of fall back no matter what and however small gives you that feeling of self-confidence which in turn increases your productivity and creativity exposing you to more opportunities. It’s really hard to be creative when you are thinking about the bills you have to pay and the mouths you have to feed. It kinda eats a lot of RAM in your head and you can’t think clearly.

Whenever you go out for your groceries, you never have to think if you still have money left or not when you get back, or when your kid asks for something while strolling in a mall, you can spend everything in your pocket (but don’t interpret this stupidly) and still you won’t be worried because you know that you are just spending 90% of what you earned and the other 10% is kept safe from your greedy hands.

Lesson # 8: Continuous improvement

Talking with Kuya Chito gave me an insight on how his business grew, he never stopped improving! Thinking that he did not finish his studies, he always keeps up to date with the latest trends and from there he comes up with ideas bit by bit and improves his product even better. For him, quality is of utmost importance. So whenever he has the chance and resources to develop his product, he will. Money invested on it comes back to him more than double because customers will pay more for the value you add. And the good thing about this concept is that you never really get to a point where you say “that’s enough”, there will always be room for improvements.

Lesson # 9: Humility before greatness

Finally, after interviewing several millionaires, I got my first ever “common denominator” of them… They are ALL humble. It seems a bit spiritual but it really is the case. Nobody is too high to approach, they may even be below me in terms of being down to earth. But imagine these people, who has made great achievements are still humble enough to shake hands with you and talk to you despite their busy schedule. But let’s try to come up with a very logical (and not spiritual) explanation of why it works.

When somebody is humble, he

is Approachable – of course this means more business opportunity because people will not hesitate to do business with you.
is Well-received – people you deal with tend to love you more because you offer not just your services/products but good relationship as well.
has More connections – if you have good relationships, the connection spreads like wild fire. you’ll be referred to everybody and the potential to do business is very high due to its volume.

So being humble really is something that should work, and I’m about to try it myself and see how far it can go in terms of getting me into my first million pesos.

Lesson # 10: You have to find your niche

This thing is common to all millionaires. They have a very specialized skill within a specific field. It’s hard to come up with several streams of (active) income because of this. You see, when you don’t specialize, your services/products tend to be less efficient or poor in quality. This is because you spread all your efforts to different areas that you put less value to each of it. So rather than thinking of many other streams of income, why not try to think of a more efficient way to do what you do now and increase either its value or volume of clients and customers.

So how to find it? Try the following links:

Finding your niche by Tim Bennett
the link above is easier and you’ll get results in minutes

How to discover your life’s purpose in about 20 minutes by Steve Pavlina
this one however has a very simple procedure, but the process will take a while and has a deeper approach

Lesson # 11: Give first in order to receive

OK, OK, it sounds a bit like lines from the bible but nothing comes close to the truth than that… And I’m telling you this (and even testifying) from experience. Many people ask, ‘where do i start in making money?’, ‘where do I go? nobody seems to want my product/services’… Well, I have a very good suggestion for you: GIVE IT FOR FREE! I know this sounds stupid but the thing is, it has to start somewhere and if you have no idea where, this is it!

When people give, blessings get back… A logical explanation of how this works is that people don’t want to take risks (just as you are, if you are not willing to give). And by risk I mean they don’t want to spend on something they don’t actually know or trust (like your product or services) so in order to take away that risk, FREE TRIAL was born, FREE TASTE, FREE ETC. And when they get to know you, the risks go away. They suddenly know that you have an actual value for them, that you could actually be trusted, and then… business deals come in!

I actually gained more from this, as the number of people I help grew, these people actually referred me to other people who might be interested in my services. And I tell you, recommendation goes a long way. I had a project with a tight deadline and the client doesn’t have time to check out my work, so they were just trusting a friend who recommended that I could do the job fast and good enough (and they weren’t disappointed and were actually looking forward to do business with me in other projects.)

But don’t expect that everything you give will come back in cash. Sometimes they’ll offer connections, help if you need it and other things that you might actually need in order to succeed.

Lesson # 13: Build a team

Now this is a big discovery for me. After helping so many people, I finally burned out… I wasn’t getting much sleep, I work on Sundays (well, when you set out to be a millionaire, there’s no such thing as a weekend), I didn’t have time to see my daughter (except when she was already asleep), I didn’t have time for myself, time for other clients, time for other ideas, and it seemed like every second of my whole month was booked (it’s not that bad being that busy, it’s actually good, but there must be a better way.)

And I texted my mentor, what am I doing wrong? If I need to be a millionaire, I should do more than what I do now but it seemed a bit too much and I can feel it really hard! He said: “You don’t do it alone [stup!d], you list down all the things you need help with and build a team.”

I really love learning the hard way… After learning this, a whole new world came up! If a team will be at my back to support me, I’ll have time to sleep, time for more clients, time for my daughter and wife, time for more ideas, and still earn money! Actually a huge sum if you see what I’m seeing.

Don’t be too greedy to spread the wealth, it’s in spreading it that makes it grow. You will eventually need someone to help you out to make your job more efficient.

Lesson # 14: Create a system

This is one of the lessons that all aspiring entrepreneurs have to remember: Business is all about the SYSTEM!

I can make better burgers than McDonald’s or Jolibee. But why is it that Croc is rich and I am broke? It’s because Croc can deliver it fast, anywhere, and anytime. Now that’s a system that makes their burger sell! Business means system. The more I look at it, the more I can see how much market needs to be served (I’ll beat you, Croc!). Of course your product still counts, but it wouldn’t reach its full potential unless you have a system that will support it.

If this is so, can you be an entrepreneur without a product? Well, that’s what I’m about to find out…

Lesson #15: Start a company

This has been the hardest so far for me. Although I’m making quite more than enough doing things on my own, clients are starting to ask, ‘where is your office?’, ‘do you have staff to do this?’, ‘how many are you in the team?’, and these are the people I do not personally know, they are the real clients. It’s hard to explain to them that you don’t need an office to make business, you don’t need a bunch of staff to do the work (well, sometimes you will), and you can use a cellphone to call me (that’s what you can use because I don’t have a land line). Over and over I lose clients because I can’t answer this question straight so I decided to give it a go. But where are my resources? I don’t have any at the moment, but creativity will make a way.

Soon enough I have a team willing to raise a fund to procure office equipment like desktops, laptop, tables, etc. And I have a friend who is willing to share his office space for free! (for now…) But hey, now I have something to start with, all I have to do is push it forward, in a month or two, it’ll be a complete office, a registered company name, a pool of clients, and salaries to go around with.

It’s not easy, just putting the pieces together makes me want to give up, but luckily I managed to make it work… Here it is ladies and gentlemen, WEBBER! We are a team of three highly motivated individuals, giving web development services for small and medium businesses. Started early this August, the team will be having four websites up this September and we are so excited about the coming months!

Lesson #16 You cannot do everything

After being optimistic about the way things are turning out, I was stunned to realize that it was actually not. I have promises that are not being met, schedules that are not followed and tons of work load i don’t even have an idea where to start! So I told myself, “hermie, if you do not stop what you are doing right now, you are going nowhere!” And right there I realized, I was over committed to things which aren’t important to me. Things that didn’t fulfill my dreams, things that aren’t really ‘my thing’. And so my resolution was to cut back or at least stop accumulating commitments. As they say, ‘if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!’

After I have done this, focus was my next goal. If I was to finish things that I have started, I have to concentrate on doing one thing at a time (or at least one every moment). And all of a sudden, money started flowing in again and more opportunities are starting to emerge, this time with better chances of accomplishing it and making money out of it.

After I learned this lesson for myself, I realized the ‘power of NO’. Saying ‘no’ doesn’t mean you are a failure, it only means that you are giving space to things that are more important to you, you are saying ‘yes’ to things that matters to you the most.

Moreover, focusing on one direction at a time moves you foward but limits your chances of finding the right direction, on the other hand, spreading your focus on several directions moves you slower but increases the chances on finding the right direction. So it is a balance between focus and having enough options. You cannot do everything, but you can do a significant number of things to move you forward to the direction you want…