KC HUT

International Networking Week 2009 – Part 2

The following are more photos from the event last week, International Networking Week 2009 In Singapore.

More photos will be uploaded to the new BNI Harvest Chapter website soon!

Passion will tell it all
I would also like to use this chance to mention a few business contacts to you as they left a very good impression for me. I believe you have came across people who are very passionate when they are talking about what they do and you really enjoy talking to them because they know their stuff and just couldn’t wait to tell you more! The first person is Rafee Alias from Talent House Studio.

More than just event planning
I spoke to Rafee and came to know that he has great vision about developing the business for Talent House Studio. He sees a gap in the current market and is working to manage and help to find a common ground for the scattered talents.

Rafee is the man who you must talk to if you are looking for some special performance for your events or programs =)

Swim like a fish
I never thought that there is so much to know about swimming until I spoke to Siew Kwan, the Managing Director of FishLike Aquatic School. Siew Kwan is highly passionate about teaching people to swim like a fish! Their Total Immersion program will transform and beautify your swimming to achieve fluid strokes.

Check out his site for more information.

Other passionate business associates I have talked to:

1) Sin Kok Wai from thePufferFish - Photography
2) Ezen Ho from Eroma - Beauty, Wellness Services
3) Ng Chong Ching from ManualCircle – Manual Physiotherapist
4) Richardo Chua from Adrenalin Events – Event Planning

To sum it up, your passion in your field will easily influence someone and to get him / her to remember you

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International Networking Week 2009 in Singapore

It is my pleasure to attend the International Networking Week yesterday at Quality Hotel and I feel I must talk about this event to share with you =)

I attended this yearly event as a member of the BNI Harvest Chapter. You can find out more BNI over at the official site. Basically, BNI is a structured networking group for business owners to come together and refer businesses to one another (word-of-mouth is the key here).

This year, we have hundreds of business owners and visitors joining us for this grand event! I wish that I have more time to get to know and connect with all of them!

Richardo (right) from Adrenalin Events Pte Ltd sharing with some of our members, Michael (left) and Bernard (center).

A young man who I really need to tell you more
Jonny is the youngest member in our Chapter but the way he carries himself does not reflect his young age. I am amazed by this young man the first time I visited the Chapter and talk to him for a while and realize he has this ‘nice’ factor. He is one of the few people I know who have this natural and welcoming personality that makes you want to talk to him especially when you first meet up with him =)

Jonny is a sales professional from the Academy Video Productions who offers services like corporate videos, wedding videos, photography, video editing, video conversion and many others! Refer to their site for more information and contact Jonny (9389-8498) if you or your friends are looking for any related services!

There will be another blog post on International Networking Week soon. Check back in a few days!

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Positioning Your Blog For Huge Profit!

Rand from SEOmoz blogged about Blog Positioning last week and I think that I must really share this with you especially if you are thinking or just started out blogging.

Rand illustrates three types of positioning in general. Watch the following video and I’m sure it will make you think twice and refine the blog that you are starting.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Positioning Your Blog from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Lesson I’ve learnt

I have been too busy talking about myself for the past few months and only get to realize this when I was watching Rand’s sharing.. It is time for me to show some concern to my fellow blogging partners and business associates!

I will be talking more on Internet Business monetization techniques and perhaps some coverage on several networking sessions that I have went so that you can also link up with my business associates if you have something valuable to offer to them

More exciting stuff coming up!

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New Sponsor For KC Hut – Template Kingdom

I would like to thank Template Kingdom for becoming one of our Main Sponsors for KC Hut

If you have not been to Template Kingdom for your website templates resource needs, you are definitely missing out a real goldmine! You will understand what I mean after you read this post. Allow me to touch on the features of this excellent template provider.

Strong Membership Base

With a strong community of more than 8,000 members joining up with Template Kingdom, it attracts tons of eyeballs every month especially from Affiliates. It is free to join up as their members to download freebies for your site and receive updates and latest template news from them.

The majority of the website metrics like Google PageRank (PR4) and Alexa rankings (56K) are showing that Template Kingdom is definitely one of the biggest companies in the area of website design and templates.

A Wide Range of Templates

Template Kingdom offers a very wide range of templates such as Joomla, WordPress, CSS and others. You rarely find a company that offers all these templates together nowadays.. As you may know that I am a fan of Joomla and Joomla templates, I find that Template Kingdom does offers high quality of templates and I particularly like the following Joomla templates, Feather Creat:

Stay In Trend – Latest Templates

Most template sites make a mistake by not answering to the needs of the visitors. They overlook the power of trend. Template Kingdom always fill in this gap by introducing templates that are in the trend and/or upcoming season. For example, the flowers theme template was released for marketers to catch the Valentine’s Day sales.

Free Templates for Everyone!

I would also like to applause the generosity of Template Kingdom by making some of the high quality templates available for free. You can view all the Free website templates here. The following is one of the free templates that I like =)

Powerful Affiliate System

Providing value to customers is one thing. Helping the customers providing value is even better than that! Template Kingdom has this powerful affiliate system that if you can refer someone to register in their website, you will receive lifetime commission from their purchases! Most affiliate system work by allowing only people who follow through your affiliate link. However, Template Kingdom adds more value to the Affiliates by tagging your id with all the affiliates who signed up during registration and pass on the commission whenever purchases happen.

You can sign up as an affiliate for Template Kingdom here and earn 20% lifetime commission from people who you recommend

Do let me know how you feel about Template Kingdom once you have visited their website

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Secrets To Dominate Your Niche – Book Review

Written by Thomas Fernandez and Sant Qiu, this is one book that I should not have judged by its cover..

I remember the first time I saw this book is in Times bookstore and I am turn off by its cover design (I normally stay away books with money notes printed on it.. its just me, don’t take it personal..) I flip through the books at that time and decided it was just another hype..

I saw this book recently in a library when I was looking for some business start ups stuff and I decided to borrow this book as one the the first few pages have captured my attention + soul. The scenarios illustrated by Thomas and Sant are so close (& personal) to me that I feel that they are talking to me face to face! Allow me to go through some of the main parts of this magnificent book.

Setting The Stage
The first part of the book is for New Entrepreneurs or Entrepreneurs (to-be). One of the advices that they gave is pretty common sense to most people but it is now that I realize I’m in this trap as well. You have to over- budget your start-up capital.

Over-budget does not mean 20% or 30%, it should be somewhere near 100%. You may think I am kidding but if you are a big-picture person like me, you must bear this advice in mind. It is all the ’small things’ that you previously didn’t see will give you the headache when you keep looking things in a big picture on your Entrepreneurship journey. Either you have someone to take care of the details or you over,over and over-budget your start up capital.

Along with this tip, there are also many other useful advices by Thomas and Sant that you can find especially in preparing your mental self.

Differentiation

The core of this book is about differentiation. Thomas focuses a lot on how you can differentiate from your competitors. This has always been my model in Internet Business Consultancy as well.

Thomas talks about various differentiation types like Leader, Specialist, Pricing (you may be surprised when you read this), Design and Polarity Positioning. I feel that these techniques are very relevant to any kind of businesses nowadays.

Gaining Trust & Overcome Resistance

The later part of the book illustrates how you can gain trust quickly with your prospects and overcoming resistance from your target market. The keywords are testimonials and guarantee. Again, you may feel that it is common sense to have testimonials and guarantees but it is entirely another thing when you are doing it. For example, there are a lot of testimonials in all types of sales page but are they all receiving great results? This applies to guarantees as well, you may be surprised at how many variation of guarantees you can provide for your customers after you read this book!

My thoughts after reading Secrets To Dominate Your Niche

To me, this is a great book and I am able to read between the lines especially when they are talking about traps most people fall into for business start ups. To someone, this may just be another book on the shelf especially if they are just reading it.

I would not recommend this book a year ago when I have yet to start up my business but today as I am writing this as a small business start up owner, I highly recommend you (for people who is starting their own businesses) to not only read, but write down the main start up advices and read them aloud everyday until you start your business.

Thanks for writing this great book, Thomas and Sant!

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