School For Entrepreneurs

Hi everybody! It's been a month since I started attending the School For Entrepreneurs Camp. For those who do not know the cost of this camp, it's $2400. However, I can help you get it at $1200 if you wish to join this camp. (It's no advertising gimmick btw, I don't earn any commission and if you go for the preview they will tell you it's $2400) Well, maybe some people will think I'm crazy to pay so much for the camp. To tell you the truth, I don't feel too painful in forking out this amount because I have saved $1200 for not going to the Taiwan trip with Chee hui and gang. (Actually, in this case I suppose it benefitted both me and Chee hui and gang)

I remember my last entry mentioned about making Chemslime at Boys Town. Well, I did and succeeded only after 4 tries which took me an entire hour. Boyang came along with me and we really had fun making the chemslime with Xavier. : ) I guess it was quite a memorable night for me.

For those interested in knowing more about the School For Entrepreneurs, you should really attend the preview conducted by Dr Dennis Wee next time. And for those who do not know who Dennis is, he is a Secondary Two dropout who became a self-made millionaire by setting up his own real estate company. He's also the favourite student of Rich Dad Poor Dad's author Robert Kiyosaki. Anyway, my instructors have asked me not to reveal the camp's activites so I will only tell you what they have said during the preview and what I have learnt from this camp.

To start it off on the first day, I walked on bits and fragments of genuine broken glass barefooted while I broke a wooden arrow using the soft bottom of my neck at the same time. (Btw, they will also tell you about this activity during the preview) I know the glass is genuine because they picked up one of the fragments and sliced an A4 paper easily without effort. I suppose there will be two extreme views to this scenario; one will think it's all fake because others have walked over it safely while the other will start to fear after witnessing the event. Anyway just to assuage the latter, I did not get cut after walking over the pieces of broken glass, although it really did hurt a lot. I'm not bluffing you. Breaking the piece of wooden arrow with the soft bottom of my neck didn't hurt that much, but it certainly made me breathless and for me it also increased my sense of panic. Besides doing stunts during the camp, the other important part of the camp was coming up with a business proposal, a TV ad and a sales expo which were judged on the last day.

During the camp, I learnt more about my personality traits and how I could maximise my strengths to help others. Well, I belong more to the conscientious and careful group and I also aspire to be a steady and efficient worker. Therefore, I may not be a very good leader because I do not have a very loud voice and I may also appear boring and monotonous to some who find me unattractive. However, I often take time to think of new solutions to tackle a problem and I also believe more in proving my intention with action rather than words.

The main business lesson I've learnt from this camp is how to be different from the rest, and how to be attractive to the rest. To those who love to marginalise people and stick with the crowds, let me tell you something. It takes courage to stand out from the rest to defend your ideals and beliefs, and it also takes courage to succeed. The one who laughs last laughs best! : ) We did some crazy things during the camp and my team's business presentation and business proposal won over all the judges because we were uniquely exciting in our ideas and in our presentation. Our business idea was an Asian fast food restaurant concept that aims to be the next hip and cool place for youths. In the first place, we chose this idea because fast food and convenience has become the needs (not wants) of the 21st century and Asian fast food is first of a kind in Singapore and most probably all over the world. We did quite some research on the success formulas for a fast food restaurant and even came up with a plan to win. In fact, the judges liked my team's ideas so much that our total investments came up to $5.4 million which was almost double that of the second best team. Some judges were also very keen on knowing whether we wanted to continue with our business idea and even wanted to know our leader's contacts... haha. However, we lost out during the sales expo where around two hundred people came with fake money to purchase our products, which were kueh pati and nuggets fresh from the oven. Although we were the fastest team to sell out our products, we did not earn much because we priced our products too low. I guess that was because initally some customers who were friends with my leader complained that our products were too expensive, hence we buckered under pressure and lowered our price. However, many customers in fact really liked our products and were willing to pay any price just to get our products even though we have already sold out. Nevertheless, I suppose it's a good lesson for me in the future.

Personally, I feel that the most fufilling thing I've learnt from this camp is to live happily and generously. In fact, they made us see clearly through activities and games that a true rich mind thinks generously. Although some companies seek to compete aggressively on price wars which hurt the entire industry while some others use unscrupulous methods to get rid of competitors, Dennis Wee's company seeks to develop its own unique strengths which attracted many customers and it even forges warm and honest ties with its competitors. In fact, your competitors may one day even become your collaborators. There are some competitors which value the trust between them so much that they even recommend each other's services to their customers when they couldn't handle so many customer orders.

Well, the TV ad is at the bottom of this blog page. Although we thought it was good initially, we realised later that we failed to create much excitement and desire for customers to buy our food because we did not present savoury food in our ad and we also did not promote our branding very well on the packaging. Anyway because there may be infringements on certain copyright issues, I will remove this video in 1 week time. I would really appreciate it if anyone can give me comments. Also, I encourage my friends to join this camp too... especially if you seek to be a better person. : )