Month: January 2022

Ever had a hard time choosing from a few different options?

Such as choosing what to eat, what projects to do, what jobs to take…the list goes on. It’s called paradox of choice, where we find it hard when there’s too many options, and here’s what I do to get around it.

Sometimes my brain freezes when i’m called to make a choice, could be

• choosing the main course from 12 options in the menu
• deciding what movie to watch for the night
• making the choice on what to do for the weekend

Basically, if i’m presented with 3 or more options, my brain either shuts down temporarily (or longer lol) or i cant seem to decide. I looked it up, and found that it’s called Paradox of Choice, which says that

where there are too many options, we cant make a choice that seems to satisfy us

Enough was enough, and I researched how to overcome this problem, and to me, the simplest was to simplify the selection process to binary eg YES / NO.

Example, if I had to choose between 3 dishes, A, B and C, so I’ll use questions such as

1. Do I like this?
2. Do I want this now?
3. Any other YES / NO questions

Anything that scores the highest number of yeses gets selected. If it’s a tie between 2, then I’ll throw a coin (heads vs tails).

That’s it.

So simple, ah my dang brain.

A number of friends and families ask me, and often they may have this idea that “i’m gonna quit my job now, fire my boss and start my business tomorrow – go big or go home right?

Right??

No, let’s talk about this.

I dont recommend rushing things and going full entrepreneurship at least at the beginning, because it does take time to take traction and build sustainable revenue. Dont get me wrong, I LOVE entrepreneurship (I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2008), but we can do things in a more calculated staged manner.

Let’s explore the next 3 points to find out if you’re ready to pull the plug:

Your reasons to start a business is strong and convicting.

The reason I say this is because business isn’t always smooth sailing – there will be difficult clients and seasons, and your convictions are what will keep you going. Find out why and who is it for.

Maybe you actually like your job and you actually want a pay increment, speak to your boss and ask how to get that increment. Ask and find out the exact steps you need to get to the increment and promotion you want, and invest the extra income for dividends.

If you want more passive income, you can save more (and negotiate a higher salary) and invest into stable dividend stocks for cashflow.

Do you have enough savings for 6-12 months of expenses?

Especially so when you have dependents / commitments such as kids or mortgages / rent etc – having life expenses sorted out so you can focus on business and entrepreneurship will give you the ability to focus and enjoy the journey.

Most of the time, if you’re waaaaay low on money, you could start to become very desperate and make less-than-ideal business decisions.

Squeeze down all your unnecessary expenses you can to give your business more chance to succeed.

Consider freelance on the side (start a side hustle) first

On weekends and after office hours, and once your side hustle is making at least 50% of your day job, then you can choose to quit then or keep both (ehehe)

So when should you quit your job?

Depends on your savings, if you can do side hustle or if you’re the sort to need to throw yourself headfirst into business.

Listen more in the video.

Getting your first client who wants to try and pay for your services is a super big thing because it proves that someone is willing to pay for your service and it takes you one step closer to your business dreams

Most of the time, what scares people on doing this is because its so new: getting a new client is one thing, getting them to pay you is another.

In these cases as I share, I’m gonna assume you already know what you’re doing eg I’m a hand therapist and I’m licensed and experienced, I dont need to be supervised.

If you’re picking up something entirely new, it will make sense for you to go for courses, certificates, internship and hands-on job training first to build up skill and experience if you hadnt.

If you just got your cert and are totally new, you may consider working for someone or a company first for a while to get some experience, for free as an unpaid intern for a short time if you need to because experience really really matters to produce good outcomes.

It’s a 3-step process for me:

Step #1 Craft & Package

What are the basic service packages you want to offer?

2 or 3 packages at most.

Have an idea about what type of clients you want to work with. For me, my example is in physical therapy, specificly patients who has pain and injury to their physical body. So when i communicate, it’s very clear, i’m speaking to clients who has back pain, neck pain, hand pain etc

If you’re a massage therapist you may be offering 30, 60 or 90 minute sessions.

etc etc

Its important to get as clear as possible about this and what you’re planning on including so that you’re not customizing things for every client:

1. saves you and them time AND
2. it’s muuuuuch easier for them to make a buying decision when it’s clear what you solve for them

Clear and well communicated packages make you look more professional too

Step #2: Softlaunch Offer – Get Appropriate Beta Testers

Once you’ve got your packages ready, next, you got to make an offer, and a gentle way to ease yourself into sales is by doing soft launches.

You can also call it getting beta testers who will get a special price before you launch it to the full public and full price.

For example

1. if you’re a web designer and you’re new, you can consider providing 3-5 free websites and hosting is extra X dollars a month; or
2. if you’re a massage therapist you can offer a trial 30-minute session for purely new clients who had never experienced your massage before etc.

How to position this is to

• set a fix number of beta testers you want (not more than 5)
• set a fix price (discount forever or free for X amount of time)
• make the offer

An example is to make an offer like this on your social media channels, messaging systems like WhatsApp, saying

I’m going to work with 3-5 people at this price point before I put the price up to the full price, and I would love for you to be one of them

What will happen is

1. you will get some (or lots of) rejections or ignores
2. some inquiries which turn to nothing
3. some inquiries that will take your offer
4. some inquiries that will miss your soft launch offer and become full private paying clients

Step #3: Ask For Referrals

All businesses need new clients on an ongoing basis, so don’t stop at beta testing once and done.

Continue to refine your sales process, and one of the simpler approaches to increase your client base is to ask for referrals from your existing clients. They’re already getting serviced by you, so I ask them directly to consider referring someone they know who will benefit from my services.

It can be a simple text, email or chat:

Do you know someone who may benefit from my services? Please refer them and I will do my utmost to take good care of them.

Chances are if they’re happy with your services, 10%+ of the time, they will refer their friends, colleagues and family to you.

Once you get your first client, it’d be a big confidence boost, and then you can go on to get your second, third, fifth, tenth, hundredth client and on and on. Remember, you got business dreams, you want to make a full time income and to make that happen, you have to start with the first person.

Whew, 2021 sure flew on by just like that – so quick.

COVID has definitely made a lot of things different, and though I stilllllllll dislike the mask (cos of the humidity in Singapore), but i noticed that i fall sick much lesser ever since ive been wearing mask outdoor.

Reviewing Back in 2021 and Hope for 2022

2021 was interesting, with much changes in my businesses, investments, relationships and practices.

Phoenix Rehab

For my core business, which is phoenixrehabgroup.com, we went GST-registered after hitting SGD $1M in annual turnover in 2021, and we embraced the transition for this fairly well.

We’re also growing the business (this year aiming to grow >50%) with more delegation, hiring and automation in place, and it remains to be my core business. Much to do and more in store (sorry cant talk so much about this business in detail because of investors / shareholders / etc)

nigelchua.com

nigelchua.com (this site) also had some interesting changes: I hired a mentor to guide me to grow it.

We started off with hand injuries and hand therapy stuff, but because I dont really practice as a clinician anymore, i dont resonate with that topic, and instead, i pivoted to write and share more about what that makes me happy:

• entrepreneurship & small business
• cashflow
• leadership
• growth

Learning to share the videos on reddit itself has so many lessons too, and learning to deal with clowns and troll redditors has it ups and downs, but overall, i am happy to continue learning and applying.

One of the benefits that makes me happy is also the videos that i leave behind in the case when i pass on (earlier or later than thought), there is an option for my kids and descendants to access to me somewhat, for the future.

Another Side Project

I have another side project which i’d been putting aside for some time now, but it’s up our alley of physiotherapy, hand therapy as well as health and physio equipment and products.

I will be relooking at my time, energy and ability to project manage my core business and two side ones if i decide to do it =p

Health

There was a number of health scares this year, with regards to me.

• I had an incident of bad reaction to gruyere cheese and i got hospitalized for that (eyes swollen and some difficulty breathing.
• Then there was the case of organ issues which had to be checked too – all cleared
• I stopped all my supplements because of the uncertainties =(

Good news is that my organs are very very healthy! Hehe!

I started going back to the gym in 2021, averaging 2X per week in lifting, and goal for 2022 is to continue hitting the gym at least 2X per week, and adding one more session of cardio a week to improve my cardio-pulmonary stamina and endurance.

Perhaps pickup health supplements again too =)

Investments

2021 was an interesting year investing-wise namely:

• Walton land-banking, which we invested since early 2010-ish, finally we got some of the projects that have been bought out commercially, and from 2.3 projects, we’re ahead at least 30% ROI-wise
• Testing out a wealth management company with a nominal amount, to see how they and the invested amounts go. If they’re good, i will be sinking more funds here. The goal for this is for me to be hands-off with wealth management once i launch our family fund which needs to be self-perpetuate
• Liquidated portion (took profits) of some cryptocurrency portfolio into a staked portfolio, generating a healthy double digit for me which is nice for DCA (dollar cost averaging) and paying for some lifestyle (it isn’t enough to retire on)

Goal for 2022:

• solidify the vehicle for the self-perpetuating trust fund and how the fund will be managed
• explore insurance to expand the amount upon death
• launching the fund
• sell our HDB and purchase our forever home (still looking out)
• accumulate more BTC and ETH: HODL forever!

Relationships

I will carve out more time to spend with people and relationships, my kids, spouse, family, close friends and God. 2021 i didnt spend as much time with God as i would like.