It really has been a really long time since I last blogged! I guess what happened is that I have been really busy with Project Radius, SGPad.com and the many family holidays (Christmas and Chinese New Year are pretty important events for my family) that I just didn’t make time to write.

Or journal. And that’s bad because with all the things that I’m doing lately, I’ve realized that a key practice for optimum performance is to be extremely mindful of who you are as a person, your personal (and business) strategy and how you can improve to get closer to your dreams. I guess it is not so easy to see into the horizon when you’re in survival mode, only focused at the immediate tasks before you, but as a leader, I believe it’s important to have a balance of the two and be able to take calm breaks to stand silently and gaze – not only into the endless potential of the future, but also into the richness of our pasts.

My two babies – Project Radius and SGPad

Over the past two months I have been working hard on two projects – Project Radius and SGPad.

1. Project Radius

Project Radius!

Project Radius is a social opportunity engine that aims to help people achieve their highest potential through introducing them to people with the skills and resources that can help make their dreams come true. As young entrepreneurs, we are inexperienced and have to work with very limited resources. Project Radius aims to overcome that by giving you X-Ray opportunity vision to immediately find the people around you whom you can do great work with. We’re building this system as we realize that in actuality, all the resources we need are present all around us – it could be a family friend, a friend, or a friend of a friend –  but we just didn’t realize it soon enough! We’re also trying to overcome the need for using business cards anymore – just “star” a friend you just met and you have your contacts all saved!

The app itself!

I’m just blessed to have a talented team working on building the system, giving me the time and energy to pursue funding from the government (and business case competitions), talk to event organizers whom would like implementing our system at their events, as well as fine tuning our profit model.

We’re looking to initially implement Project Radius at social and business events/functions, so if you know any event organizers whom would love to have a virtual host introducing your guests to each other in a way that maximizes the speed in which they achieve their personal and business goals, do let me know kevin@kevinc.net immediately!

2. SGPad

The Ultimate Travelers Companion

SGPad is a new service in Singapore that focuses on providing quick iPad rental to tourists and businesses in Singapore. Being geeks who love technology, we always thought that it would be really awesome to have 3G so we could have Google Maps in foreign lands so we would never get lost again. Hence, we developed SGPad to serve the tourist market.

Benefits of SGPad

Since our launch, we have also had quite a number of requests from businesses who want to implement iPads in their work – be it to collect data for a survey, to enhance the learning experience for students on a learning trail or just to spice up an event – and are also trying to develop further capabilities to service this sector.

Feel free to contact me personally if any of you have any iPad rental related needs!

A third project

Being so busy over the past two months, it feels so good to just stop and reflect on what I’ve done so far. Going ahead with 2012 (my most challenging year yet so far – in a good way!) I know I need to build good solid life habits again:

1. to wake up early

2. to do my exercise routine

3. to get to work and be focused at it (minus Facebook and Youtube breaks)

4. to focus on the most important tasks at hand

5. to continue being the best friend I can to the awesome people around me

And to do so, I really need to be accountable for my actions this time – failure is not a problem.

So here’s the idea:

I’m assembling a group of people and what we’ll do is that we will plan a call to each other every day to check on each other every day to see how we’re doing up on the things we promised each other to do. We will all keep a log of our own tasks and routines and check each day to provide encouragement, support and inspiration to each other. Hopefully through helping each other we would learn more about ourselves and be able to push each other to achieve greater heights.

Email (or SMS) me immediately if you’re interested in forming this group! Time for serious personal change in this most challenging year yet! The more challenging the situation, the more we have to grow to overcome it!

Parting notes

Feels so good to write again, and I really want to be held accountable to writing (and journaling) on a regular basis. My personal development habit discipline muscles have become fat and flabby over months of neglect and I will focus to getting them all fit again! Focus on just business alone ain’t enough – it’s all about balance, and I’m going to get that balance back!

He somehow really understood what made a great product, a great purpose and had the laser focus to really see that his team managed to push the boundaries on innovation to create products that literally changed the world. And he did that because despite all the flak he got for being an extremely difficult person to work with he managed to really inject emotion, feeling and the humanities into high technology – making the high tech finally accessible to the lay person.

Steve Jobs: My Mentor

My respect for his journey has only heightened after reading his biography by Walter Issacson. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not because the book kept lauding how godly his intuition was, but rather that it showed you a clear picture of the man behind the company, flaws, hurts, quirks, insecurities and more.

There’s just so much to learn from the man – not just his genius, but also from his failures and mistakes.

The book was wonderful – it brought me through the story of the personal computer from the eyes of it’s main protagonists – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and entranced, I spent an entire meditative Sunday afternoon finishing the book.

"You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead." - Steve to Bill at the end of the interview.

After reading the book I found myself watching clip after clip of Steve on YouTube, and here I really want to share with you some of the greatest clips ever for all of you to enjoy. Trust me, you’ll learn something amazing from every single one of them.

The Video Clips

1. Steve talking about the Think Different campaign:

Marketing’s about values

Here Steve talks about how he believes that in this age of information overload and clutter how a brand really needs to have a laser focus on the core values that mean to them, and have the integrity to stick to them.

2. Steve and the Macintosh in 1983 & 1984:

Showmanship can really, really count

Steve was a one-of-a-kind leader that put together great advertising, great positioning and great oratorical skills to really appeal to his customers down at their rawest, most emotional layer.

Just watch how he does so by quoting Bob Dylan, producing an amazing, timely ad, and introducing a revolutionary device with the flair of a master showman.

When you can get that deep, you’ve got more than half the battle won.

3. Steve and NEXT:

Leaders have to the the holder of a team’s vision

One of Apple’s greatest strengths is their ability to focus. Too many big companies get caught up with thinking that they have the resources to do tons of things and they often end up overestimating themselves and spreading themselves too thin. Great companies keep real close to their vision and pursue it with a laser sharp focus. It’s a leader’s responsibility to be the holder of the team’s vison and make sure that the team keeps its eyes on the prize!

4. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (answering questions from the audience):

What advice do they have for young entrepreneurs?

Steve’s advice:
Do what you love because starting a company is so hard that any rational person will give up
Put great emphasis on attracting great talent and refining your intuition about people as even the smartest man in the world can’t build a great company on his own.

(I would highly recommend that you guys watch the interview in its entirety because it’s just so good! It’s just quite long though! Watch part 1 here!)

***

I truly feel so blessed to have the great opportunity to learn all these great lessons from someone who has already made a big ding in our universe. Now it’s truly our turn to change the world.

Business Model Generation

It’s really amazing to note that I’m probably going through business articles and books at a quicker rate than I was when I was still in business school!

As i’m working on a technology-related startup, articles on technology and business all look so relevant to me and I really have a good time everyday reading up on all the wonderful material I have around me! It also pays to be surrounded with awesome friends who share what they learn in the business world with me as well!

So I’ll just get down to sharing the two most important lessons I’ve learnt over the past few weeks, shall I?

The two lessons are:

1. A startup’s main focus in the early stages is product-market fit, not scaling.

2. In today’s cluttered world, focusing on radical (not your typical run-of-the-mill) differentiation is a necessity.

Today, let’s spend a little bit of time talking about product-market fit (we’ll talk about radical differentiation some other day)!

Product-Market Fit

As someone who has great dreams of creating a world-changing, profitable startup, I can understand the urge to want to grow your startup up big real fast through securing venture capital, hiring a large sales team and broadcasting it to every single person you possibly can as quick as humanly possible.

Sounds like just the thing to do with that bright idea you just had right? Just scale it up as big as possible in the shortest possible time frame?

Well, that’s completely true if… the many, many assumptions you made about reality in your business plan were all accurate. And the odds are that you probably have a couple of glaring mistakes in the model somewhere.

And just how do startups work on getting those assumptions right? Not by just looking at research papers and reports, mind you, but mainly through real-world-experimentation. Yup, that’s what you gotta do – prototype and start experimenting with your idea as soon as possible as the market’s the only true judge of your business plan! Doing anything else – planning for an IPO, purchasing large amounts of machinery and all are all going to be for naught if the model isn’t validated by the only thing that should ever validate (or invalidate) a business plan – the market itself.

If you have an idea, just get out there and test it as cheaply and as quickly as possible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t get caught up with over-thinking, over-analysis and fear. Just go and do. That’s some pretty good advice that I really need to take myself.

Keepin’ those fingers crossed.

Reflecting and imagining.

But why do I need it? Luckily over the course of the past two weeks, I applied for the Founder Institute, a start-up accelerator, and I was presented with the following essay question to answer:

“Write 2-4 paragraphs on why you want to be an entrepreneur”

After quite a fair bit of deep thought and introspection, here is my response:

Answering this question took a good deal of soul searching, but thankfully everything came together when I went to the very core of things and looked at my core values – lifelong learning, freedom and making a social impact.

Getting real about entrepreneurship now that I have graduated from university has turned out to be a trying and difficult process – but one thing that always seems to put a smile on my face is the fact that I go to bed every night having the pleasure of learning something completely new. It also amazes me how I always seem to see how the business and management literature that I’ve always enjoyed reading seems to become so much more relevant now that I’m trying to set up my own business.

Secondly, my family is extremely important to me and I want to have the freedom to be there for them when they need me – just like how my business owner dad was around for me when I was growing up. When I was growing up, I was extremely blessed to have my business owner dad always being around – he took me out for breakfast, he sent me to tuition and was always there to support me, much unlike other dads who always seemed to be too busy. I want to do the same for my children and wife in the future. That’s why despite how difficult it gets, I know that I want to start the journey right now, before it gets too late.

Finally, I have also learnt that entrepreneurs are a crucial component of creating lasting social change. Everyone wants to make an impact and my personal vision is to bring my two passions together – connecting people, as well as technology – and to fundamentally change the quality of interpersonal connection people have with one another in this fast-paced, often impersonal world.

I want to live an awesome, inspiring life, and I take a long term view at success. Ultimately, the more you stretch yourself, the more you learn, and the sooner you get where you want to go. Right now the answer seems to be entrepreneurship for me – the trials, tribulations and learning that comes along with it would definitely help me become a better student of life.

Oh well haven’t blogged in a month, but at least I had a great month filled with solid learning experiences! So… where do I start?

Been having tea with tons of people as well!

Getting the product-market fit right

Guess I’ll start with the current state of my startup. Right now, we’re still working on the concept and trying to get product-market fit right, in that we’re still meeting and talking to the primary target audience of our product (salespeople), and gathering feedback from them to refine our concept.

But real life ain’t business school where assumptions and clear logic are enough. Assumptions have to be tested against the market and my partner and I are currently trying to get our startup’s first product – a mobile assistant that aims to improve on the way salespeople interact with their clients – prototyped.

As my partner and I are not (yet) hardcore iOS developers, we’ve been spending the last week or so talking to iOS developers, working on our project briefs as well as thinking of ways to raise development capital for our little project over here. I think that out of the many meetings we went for, we did come across some gems and we really hope to have chosen a quality partner by the end of the week.

Looking for capital

Secondly, my partner and I are also looking into the many government funds for funding for our project. We strongly believe in our company vision to help transform the world into a much friendlier, kinder and considerate place with our products and have been talking to people all over on how our startup can secure some seed money.

We’ve probably got enough to start production of a prototype or two by ourselves, but some government support will really help! Do let us know if any of you readers out there have connections to managers of government funds! We would love to talk to meet them!

Growing the team

Geniuses required!

Finally, after some discussion, my partner and I have also decided to start looking for talent based in KL. We’re currently looking to fill in the following two positions:

General requirements:

- Based in the Klang Valley

- Able to speak English fluently

- Self-motivated and able to work independently

- A good team player and with a proactive attitude

- Minimum diploma and above

1. iOS Developer

- needs to be proficient in Objective-C and able to work independently

- must have a strong interest in design thinking and UI design

2. Web Developer

- must be comfortable with design back-end systems and working with databases

- Required skill(s): HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Web Design, CSS

Interested applicants please email us at quirkapp@gmail.com with your resume, expected salary and recent photograph. We will get back to you as soon as possible. Would also really appreciate it if you spread the word to friends of yours who have just graduated and want real hands on experience on how working with a startup is like!

***

Guess that pretty neatly sums up what I’ve been working on lately! Will write about some of the many things that I’ve learnt real soon!

Happiness: So true.

Quite a bit of what I learnt stems from this Lifehacker article which features an amazing TED talk by Shawn Achor which argues that happiness could very well be a competitive advantage that top performers have mastered that helps them achieve great success in life, and that striving for material success to “achieve” happiness is but a futile pursuit.

I really thought about it, and looking beyond the statistics and experiments Shawn brings up in his talk, it really does make sense to me. Happiness does help you become a more resilient person in life. No matter who you are or where you’re from, you’re bound to encounter obstacles in life. Having a happy, positive state of mind would definitely help provide the mental resilience to overcome life’s obstacles in my humble opinion.

The great thing about Shawn’s talk is that he also talked about how we can easily train our minds to be happier, more positive and able to see the best in situations. According to Shawn, a happy disposition is pretty similar to a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets; the more you practice mental habits related to happiness and gratitude, the happier you become.

Here’s Shawn’s practices for a happier, more fulfilled life:

1. 3 Gratitudes: Every day, list down three things that you are grateful and thankful for. Reminding yourself of the many, many beautiful things in our lives helps us remember not to take them for granted and to cherish them greater.
2. Journal: Everyday, journal and write down one positive experience you had during the day. You may have had a bad day, but every day definitely has a bright side to it. If you can see the sliver lining in a horrible, horrible day, you will also be able to do so when you face life’s toughest challenges.
3. Exercise: Exercise releases endorphins which generally make you more relaxed and happy. Getting some light exercise in the mornings really helps me jump start my day!
4. Meditate: There’s just so much going on in our modern world – so many emails, so much information – that it’s just good to shut it all out and really focus.
5. Random acts of kindness: What goes around comes around. It’s a great feeling to brighten up someone’s day, so just go out there and put a smile on someone’s face! It’ll put a smile on yours as well!

I could really relate to this sage advice as my own mom is also wont of reminding me that happiness is all a state of mind. You can have the world and still be bitter, unhappy and unfulfilled.

Even though my girlfriend already describes me as being an “annoyingly happy” person, I still want to help my friends and family around me become happier! I’ve already made discussing the 3 gratitudes and journaling an activity I do with my girlfriend before we retire for the day and it has already helped make our days happier. Hope that the advice here helps you become happier! Please let me know if you find that it helps!

Have  a great, happy week everyone!

The questionnaires we had to process!

I think that it’s just super amazing how we actually made some pretty good friends and mentors though conducting a survey. I guess it all comes down to being humble and showing a keen interest to learn.

Looking back at the whole exercise, I guess my team and I are just really blessed to have such awesome people around us, helping us every step of the way. A big shout out goes to all of you awesome people that helped me out in any way, be it passing me a number, introducing me to some friends, or even passing our survey along. Special thanks goes out to Pamela and Melissa who actually took us out to meet insurance agents they knew, which in turn introduced us to a whole lot more awesome people!

And the great thing was that I wasn’t just meeting great insurance agents – my awesome friends and family never fail to support me, continuously introducing me to new and interesting mentors who each have powerful lessons to teach me. One of the key perks of being employed is having the opportunity to work and learn the trade from a good boss. Not having a boss, I’m just so blessed to be surrounded by mentors from different fields who readily and generously share the wealth of their experiences with me. Thank you so much.

Through all this, I have really learnt two main things

1. If you are interested in starting a business… just go start! Find some way to begin and just go do it. Start small if you have to! Persistence, focus and the alignment of your venture with your deepest values will cause magical things to happen helping you learn so much faster along the way! There is just no substitute for just starting! Saying that you need experience or capital is just making another excuse for yourself! I’ve started small, with just tons of interviews, surveys, brainstorming sessions and consultations with mentors – and I feel that I probably learnt so much more than I would if I took up a typical marketing position at a typical marketing firm.

2. And that true success in life probably isn’t just measured in dollars and cents – the number of lives whom you’ve touched are really important too! In this whole process of trying to get EasyGreet started, I’ve realized that what motivates me in business is really the people. I love interacting and connecting with people, and businesses are what drives value – and potentially human happiness if done correctly – up if done correctly. For more thoughts on happiness and about the meaning of success, do check this extremely meaningful article out.

***

Guess that’s it for this week! Hope that my partners and I will have more to share in the days to come! Count your blessings when you can! (We’re sure blessed with our secret hideout as well!)

Our secret hideout!

That’s why when the going gets tough, you really need to keep your eyes on the prize, refocus yourself on the real reason for your labour, and keep on moving forward.

Validating Assumptions: Introducing EasyGreet

My team and I have made a whole world of assumptions when developing our killer service. We plan to enter the mobile customer management sector and create a smartphone application which aims to perform two main tasks:

1. Easy entry and storage of customer preferences  

and with those preferences at the system’s disposal,

2. Be able to mass customize and automatically send cards, gifts and vouchers to your customers with zero extra hassle

What it's all about!

With my system, sales people can just tell the system how they want to treat certain clients – some may want to buy them gifts on their birthday, some may want to just drop a card during an anniversary – and the system will deal with the rest. No additional shopping around frantically every month for gifts and rushing to a post box to get cards mailed out for you salesmen out there!

I pitched the idea to some insurance agents and some entrepreneurs, solicited opinions, feedback and advice from mentors everywhere and with all this information, my associates and I brainstormed, discussed, and developed the idea to what it is today.

Then it was time to run a wider survey to look at what the average insurance agent thought about our product. It was then that we realized that for most of the time, developing ideas would be the relatively easy part, and that execution would be what separates the men from the boys.

Dealing with a 9/50 response rate

My team and I spent hours deliberating on the questions, refining them, and creating a questionnaire that we hoped would give us insight into the true needs of insurance agents around us. Once completed, we just sent it out to the world, thinking that friends would happily pass the survey around to their friends or acquaintances who were agents, and that we would achieve our goal of hitting 50 responses from insurance agents in just a couple of days.

Tons of emails and a 3 days later, we were still stuck with just 9 responses. A whole new challenge presented itself before us. But we knew that whatever it took, we would deal with this tiny (in the large scheme of things) little obstacle and emerge even stronger as a team.

My team and I quickly convened online and we decided that whatever happens, we’re going to give it our very best shot to complete our survey by Friday, so that we can get onto the prototype developing phase as soon as possible. The business world moves fast, and we really can’t use any more delays. That established, we quickly threw around ideas on how to solve the problem. Ideas were whizzing throughout cyberspace; our voices were loud with excitement.

I was pretty agitated by this problem and ended up going to bed slightly grumpy about not having everything settled neatly and cleanly just yet. I was irritable, feeling stressed just thinking of solutions to this problem of mine, and tired after a whole day’s work. I went to bed.

When the going gets tough…

The next morning, I found a note waiting for me when I opened my laptop.

It was a charming little note from my girlfriend which said:

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step… so keep taking steady steps, at a continuous pace. As long as you’re clear and focused, don’t procrastinate and persist, I know you’ll succeed!”

It was a timely reminder that whenever problems arise, the important thing is to reorient yourself with why you are doing what you are doing to begin with.

And you know what? If your reason for working is good enough, all your frustration caused by these obstacles along the way would seem trivial at most.

And when I read that note all the reasons I’m taking the road not taken immediately coalesced in my head.

I’m not taking on extra risk just to become filthy rich myself, but rather because I deeply believe in possessing financial freedom – the freedom to be there for my family and friends when they need me most; to spend time with them when it really counts; and to be able to afford to share extraordinary life experiences with them.

I love connecting with people and believe in the product wholeheartedly – in fact, I would be my product’s biggest customer – I would love it if it could help me keep in close contact with the many good friends I have, despite how busy it gets sometimes.

The thousand mile journey towards success may be long, it may be challenging, but when you know deep down that ultimately it’s a labour of love, it all becomes worth it.

Now I’m going to go collect those surveys with continued vigor! All the best in seeking what you truly desire in life!

 ***

P.S. I’m still looking for more responses! If you are a financial planner, private banker, or sell insurance in any way, please do complete my survey here at the following URL: https://survey.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5tgnuv1scUdsejy

Thanks so much for your help!

Where my startup concept is concerned, I’ve done up rough prototypes and am doing my best to push out beyond the ideation phase and to securing more help to make my idea a reality.

They say that a man is the sum of his closest friends he keeps – and if I want to make my startup dreams come to fruition, I know I need to build a close, strong network of likeminded people who can support each other to succeed. Many books have talked about creating what they call a “Master Mind” – a group that harmoniously acts together to achieve higher purposes.

Master Mind Groups!

What is a Master Mind?

The concept of a Mastermind group was probably first mentioned in Napoleon Hill’s  seminal work, “Think Rich and Grow Rich”. In it, Napoleon Hill describes such a group as:

“The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.”

Master Mind groups have been formed for a wide variety of purposes – from goals as small as improvement in public speaking and fitness, to as large as building the largest corporations in the world.

And you know what? I’m set on creating a powerful Master Mind that can help me achieve my  business goals.

What makes a successful Master Mind?

In the book, Hill provides some guidelines on what makes a successful Master Mind group:

1. To have members with a diverse skill set

A group of members with a diverse and complementary skill set definitely helps improve the effectiveness of the group as such a group can leverage on the varied experiences of the different members and together, solve problems in ways that one person cannot alone.

2. To have members that are committed and competent at what they do

A member to your group would only drag the others down if they are not committed and competent at what they do. Hill advises not to choose someone to join the group just because he’s your friend, do so because a person can truly contribute.

3. That members can work with a spirit of harmony with the others

Now Hill stresses this point as one that is extremely important as it would only do the Master Mind group harm to have someone who’s always pulling the others down, disrupting discussions and generally bringing in negativity in the group when we really should be aiming for a complete meeting of the minds, without any reservations. Should the team members all be in harmony with each other, brainstorming will be even more natural and ideas would flow much faster, making the solving of key problems happen much faster.

4. That every member possesses a clear positive benefit from the alliance

This world is one that is full of abundance and I always believe that there is more than enough awesome in this world to be passed around to all! Make sure you reward your Master Mind group fairly, and they will take care of you! If the Master Mind group does not reward them financially, emotionally and growth-wise, it’s just a matter of time that competent members start leaving. Reward you group well.

So how do I start my own Master Mind?

After going through the material both from Think Rick And Grow Rich as well as other sources online, I realized that it’s really not difficult to set up your own Master Mind group that will serve a key support function in your ventures! Just find a few key members whom can contribute, can harmoniously with each other, and which can benefit from working with each other.

Once you got that settled, do set up a clear schedule to meet up, probably once every two weeks to solve common problems and to keep each other accountable to agreed upon tasks that you have set during the previous meetings.

I’ve already created a small Master Mind group that is already patiently nurturing the seed of my latest business venture, but am still looking for a few more key partners to this alliance, so do ask me about Master Mind groups should you meet me in person!

Master Mind for Entrepreneurs in Singapore!

I’m also on the look out for creating a Master Mind group in Singapore for budding entrepreneurs – so that we can all support and help each other reach greater heights – so also do let me know if you’re interested! I intend to start up a committed group real soon so let me know asap in the comments section below or via email at kevin@kevinc.net. I’ll probably want to meet up with you and see if you can jell with the rest of the group!

Alright, enough about this wonderful new concept for now! Hope to hear from you fellow aspiring entrepreneurs out there! May we all help each other reach greater heights!

To make up for the lack of Monday’s post, here’s a short, inspirational personal history of a really respectable man that I hope all of us can learn something from. It’s especially dedicated to those of you out there who like me, have faced setbacks and as a result, felt demotivated and defeated in life before.

The Abe Himself

Abraham Lincoln Timeline

1831 – He failed in business.

1832 – He was defeated for the state legislature.

1833 – He failed again in business.

1835 – His sweetheart died.

1836 – He suffered from a severe mental breakdown.

1838 – He was elected to Congress (but lost the 1848 re-election).

1855 – He was defeated for the Senate.

1856 – He was defeated for the Vice-Presidency.

1858 – He was defeated again for the Senate.

1860 – He was elected as the sixteenth President of the United States of America.

Life can be hard, but how you interpret it is totally up to you. I’m choosing to look at temporary failure and defeat as a learning opportunity that will better myself… after all, failure is only temporary, given that you keep pressing on!

More on a powerful strategy to help keep you achieve your goals – Master Mind groups – coming soon!