 Good evening! Good evening everybody! If you can hear my voice clearly, can you type down what did you eat for dinner? Okay, what did you have for dinner? Put it in the chat. In the meantime, I'm going to inform all my followers and all my audience right now that it is live. So for those who just joined us, please type down again, what did you have for dinner? Alright, and today it's a super, super exciting life. It's a super exciting interview in my opinion because the guest that I am inviting up, right? He himself is very successful in different aspects, right? Different aspects, not just in terms of speaking, not just in terms of sales closing, and he himself is a very, very successful investor. So I'm personally very, very curious of how he able to be good at so many things at one time and at the same time. And yeah, I think there's a lot of secrets and wisdom that he's going to share with us tonight. So for those who are here already, if you can hear my voice clearly, please type down what did you have for dinner? So in the meantime, let me just post it to the rest of the channel so that all of you guys can, more people can join to learn together as well. Alright, hold on, last one. There you go. Okay, so I can see that people are slowly streaming in. Hi Kelvin, good to see you. Alright, some of you already know. Yeah, okay, yes, our guest tonight is actually Max and I will bring him on very, very soon. And I can see John is here. John said, you had one time me. Oh wow, fantastic. I had noodle in the afternoon as well. Alright, so now let me share with you what's so special about this guest, right? Apart from what I introduced just now, he also shared stage with very, very successful people like Richard Branson, and he has so much wisdom that I remember once I had conversation with him, every single time I had conversation with him, I always felt very enlightened. So that's why tonight, I want to invite him out so that a lot of you guys can also learn from him and feel free to ask questions as well so that all of us can also learn from each other. Alright, hi Kelvin. And without further ado, can everybody type MAX, Max in the chat. Okay, hi Max, thanks for coming here. Okay, I'm not that cool and I'm not so wise to enlighten, but yeah, thanks for having me on Chloe. Yeah, being very humble as usual. Oh wow, oh Kelvin actually knows you. No, he said that through a course many years ago. Wow, fantastic. And I'm pretty sure that both of you have grown a lot since then. Now, without any delay, let me just kick the first ball rolling. Now Max, if you don't mind sharing, because a lot of audience probably they don't know much about you. So can you tell us, how can you be good at so many things at one time, like sales, like closing, speaking, investing, is there any secret behind that? Okay, so yeah, because obviously Chloe kind of sent me like a rough list of questions to look through and so how are you good at so many things? To be fair, this question I was initially a bit stunned like so I think we need to kind of clarify so like exactly what do you mean by good? Like do you have like maybe a bit more elaboration and an example of what do you mean by good? Okay, sure. So for those who have attended maybe Max's program like before, last time he actually teach different classes, e-commerce right now he also teaches sales and all this. So I actually attended, he is one of his program and when I attended your program I just felt like wow, you are so good at speaking, like you can do it so naturally and like so confident, so convincing. And at the same time, like right now when you are doing your own business, you are also very good at handling your clients, getting your clients to trust you, getting your clients to actually buy from you as well. And then as an investor, you also have a very very big portfolio. How are you able to do so many things good at it? Thanks a bit for a silly question. Okay, I think I'm clear already. So I think maybe just to give a bit of a background so we can put this in context in terms of like how I just developed the skills to be good at quite a number of things. So I think what you're referring mainly to is I think over the last 1.5 years, one and a half years after kind of leaving my full-time job as a speaker, marketer and trainer. So I kind of like started about I think five to six different side hustles, so side businesses. So mainly it's in the areas of like training other speakers how to speak and present, training certain salespeople on certain skill sets, running my own investing course and also doing some other speaking and consulting work at the site. So that's pretty much I think what I've been doing in terms of multiple side businesses. To be fair, I think by God's blessing, most things have been working out quite smoothly. So I think to answer the question, how do I get good at multiple skill sets? Quite frankly, I think for me, it's really developing two to three core high-value skill sets that I think is quite a value in today's society. When I say today, it's because 10 to 20 years from now, the demand for these skills may change. I won't have a crystal ball, but I would say it includes mainly three things. So the first one is I actually got pretty decent, I wouldn't say very good, but pretty above average at this skill set called copywriting, which is a skill set of a marketing known as how do you write certain words on the page to persuade people to buy things online using words on the pages. That's called copywriting. So I started doing that as a young kid as I started my own online business, selling things online when I was in army. So long story short, I picked up the skill set which helped me a lot to kind of sell stuff online and I think so happened in the last 10, 15 years. The digital age became a lot more popular. So copywriting was the first skill set. And then number two was learning how to actually speak to sell or to present, whether it's a one-on-one one or one-to-many on stage. So I think that communication skill was very, very needed in a society where more and more people go online to actually learn things and they want to have people kind of, they want to feel trusted, they are learning from someone that's credible. So I think the ability to speak, present well and be able to break down your ideas quite succinctly or very, very elaborately is actually important. And then the last but not least, believe it or not, is actually more so about I think investing. So knowing how to use the money that you make from the different high-income skill sets like copywriting and then speaking and presenting to then invest it to then grow it. So that's pretty much I guess the main skill sets. How I got good at that was actually this author. I think years back I read this book that was very life-changing. His name is called Scott Adams. I'm not sure whether you've heard of that for a while. He writes this book called How I Feel and Everything and Still Succeeded. He's a very well-known cartoonist in America. He basically writes a lot of cartoons that talks about office politics and stuff. I think one of the most highly paid cartoonists. And he's wrote a lot of amazing books on like persuasion or like communication. His name is called Scott Adams. And he wrote this book in the book that was called How Do You Feel? How Do You Keep Feeling? How Do You Succeed? He brought up this term called a talent stack. So talent stack basically means that in life or in society, you don't need to become a master at like that one domain. You need to just get good at maybe two to three skills. So for him to give the example of himself is an average cartoonist. He doesn't draw the best. He's also not the funniest because cartoons got to be a bit funny. He's also not the funniest. He's also not the best in understanding business. He's also not the best in writing. But by combining a decent, he likes to say he has a B minus in drawing, a B plus in writing, a A minus in human combining all three. It becomes very, very unique. So I think to kind of answer that question, when after I realized that actually in life, to kind of stand out position yourself to be unique in like that, that position of one to be differentiated, that people cannot compare you to anything else, it's all about building multiple skill sets. So I think for me, the answer is how did I get good at that was really being able to combine multiple skill sets to be able to look unique as like, so I dare say I'm not the most smartest investors as so many investors were smarter than me. I'm not the best marketer. I'm not the most charming presenter you can see. I look like a toad or look like a nerd, right? But by combining these skill sets in terms of humor, marketing, speaking, presenting, investing, I've managed to cover my own niche that I guess makes me look a bit unique and different to the market in terms of positioning. So blending, marketing, selling, presenting and investing is very hard to copy for the average person. So that was I guess what allowed me to kind of get good at so many things. So I didn't really like become a master at everything. Of course I did put in some time to go a bit deep, but being able to stand out to the talent stack by Scott Adams was very life changing for me. So I read that when I was like 24, 35 years old. Yeah, hopefully that answers the question. So if we were just to go inside a little bit deeper, when you talk about combine multiple skill set, right? Like, like, do you always actually try to find principles that are relevant to all the skill sets? At the end of the day, why you're so good at combining all these skills set is because they are, you are good at finding the key principles and then you just double down on the principles. This is a very solid point. So there's, I did a podcast like one year back and but I haven't done any podcast in the last one year for personal reasons because I realised like when I go on podcasts, constantly talking about that $1 billion and stuff kind of started to get into my head. So I wanted to not do podcast for a while. I did one in the last one year. So decided to say yes, first Chloe was really very nice and very sincere. So anyway, I like this topic a lot because in a podcast I did one year back. I think it was Mark. I think definitely you know Mark, right? So ask me kind of a similar question. And I shared my philosophy that was, I think might be very different, but I'll just say it. I think it's very important to go deep into things once you roughly figure out the base fundamentals. But you know, most times if you attend courses, attend a lot of those talks or seminars, the speaker, the trainer, even maybe someone like myself may tell you things like, for example, you know, everything you learn, focus, go in deep, focus on this one thing. Don't get that, we call it like shiny object syndrome. Don't get distracted. But I kind of beg to differ, but first you got to take things into context. I think at the beginning when you're learning any skill, whether it's investing, forex, options, business, marketing, whatever, you have to actually expand the horizon to be able to learn many, many different things first. And most things will not work. But it's through those things that you spot this one element, which is what makes learning a lot easier. And this thing is called patterns. So I realized that for human beings to learn things well, you need to be able to spot patterns or what we call, in the investing world, we also call it pattern recognition. Now the downside is that you can only connect the dots. So it's like connecting the dots. You can only connect the dots if you've gone through enough dots, speaking metaphorically here. And the only way to go through enough dots is to be able to, at the start, broaden the horizon and try many different things first. Which is why for me, I think, let's say pretend today, using the context of your channel or your audience, someone wants to learn investing for the first time. They're brand new. They have no idea what the ETF is, what the stock is, and they just go straight to value investing. They might pick off immediately, but nine times out of ten, I feel that it's a bit harder because they haven't seen the other parts of the jigsaw puzzle. And once they see everything, then the whole thing will make sense. So a very simple metaphor was believe it or not, I didn't start off doing investing. I started off many, many years ago, which not many people know this about me. I actually did a lot of trading. So when I first learned about investing as a young 20-plus-year-old kid, I kind of looked down at investing. I was like, hey, this Warren Buffett guy is so lame. 20% a year, that's too little. Can you imagine me saying that? But it was me as a young kid. I'm like, I love playing poker. So trading naturally kind of attracted me because there's a lot more fast-paced and you can kind of make fast. So I did all the time studying, my support resistance, technical analysis, studying the charts and the candles, things. And then that didn't work. I then tried trading forex. I then tried trading commodities. They didn't work. And it was only after I go through that, then when I come back to very investing, I was like, okay, actually this makes a lot more sense. Right now that I've gone through all that. So then the dots started to connect. So I always feel, and it's the same thing like in my online businesses as well. I started off doing SEO years back. They don't work and then try many different things before I chance upon the way of marketing that I kind of found myself. So I think most times to learn things, to go back to the question about principles. To find the principles, unfortunately, you have to expose yourself to a wider range first. Then only can you see the dots to connect. Wow. So is that by finding that dots to connect the principles help you to learn a skill faster? Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So in your opinion, right, I think just now you already talked about the three most important skillset, which is firstly, copywriting. Second one is how to speak and sell on stage, be it on stage or being one to one. And last but not least is converting all those high income skillset into investing so that you can compound your wealth faster. Right. So in your opinion, right, like do you think any single one of them plays the most important role to become who you are today? Got it. Okay. I think let me clarify a few things just on that. Because some people watching this may be like, oh, Max, but I don't work as a speaker or trainer. Like this is totally applicable. I think I just want to emphasize that. So it's at least clear for the audience. I think you realize if you put a common thread in it, right, if I have to narrow it down, I think it's one way. It's going to be very vague, but I think this is extremely crucial. There's just the ability to communicate your ideas across whether it's true text, which is copywriting. And that applies whether you're selling things online or whether you're trying to write a love letter to someone you like. It's the same. Right. And then people may say, oh, but stick-selling everything is not applicable to you. It's applicable to me as a trainer. But it's the same thing like communicating or presenting your ideas whether it's in a board meeting at work, whatever. Or the ability to get your ideas across to sell yourself in an interview process or in a promotion meeting, whatever, an annual company review. It's the same thing. So to me, it's like ability to know how to communicate through a lot of persuasion, a lot of human psychology. So to kind of go back to the question, is there an underlying that made it work? I think for me, yes. I think for me, the underlying that really made it work in terms of that one thing that I would maybe give a lot more credit to. Can I go a bit more nerdy? Is it okay? Sure, sure, sure. Our audience are very nerdy. And I'm going to go on topics, right? It's actually something that most of you guys may not expect, but it's actually a note-taking system. Sounds super lame. A note-taking system. Okay, okay. Let me just go deeper into that. See, I like, if you're talking because this conversation seems to be learning mastery of skill sets. And there's something I was doing since young that I didn't know I was doing until I recently, one year, but I read this book. The book is called Build Your Second Brain. It's by this guy called Thiago Forte. So the book talks about how can one person have a more organized way of taking notes. And then when I read the book, I realized, okay, crap, I was actually doing that in a more less systematic way. And so what I'm trying to say is that your ability to learn things and apply things is really the main thing that allows you to kind of take what you learn and get results from. It's down to your ability to know how to extract the notes from the courses you attend from the books you read or from the videos you watch. And so to me, the systemized note-taking system that you have then converts over to your ability, that's the book, converts over to your ability to go execute that skill set that you learn. So for me, I share my rough note-taking system. Any book that I read, ever since the Kindle was inventor I had at my Amazon Kindle since I think I was in my early 20s and these days the iPad is the same. I need to be able to extract all the notes out. So I will always highlight everything that I learned. And so I'm going like very nerdy here. Extract all the notes that I read from whether it's an investing book, it's a self-help book, it's a money book, it's a relationship book, it's a psychology book, it doesn't matter, marketing book, I'll extract everything that sends out to me. And then from all the highlights I make, I will go through one more time to highlight the things. So I'm making a summary of my summary of the second day here. I think it covers that in the book. And then last but not least, after that I just store it in an entire Google Doc. So today if you're asking me, I can share with you probably next time but not openly like this. I have a Google Doc of close to 500 different pages of books from business, investing, marketing, whatever you can name it, mainly self-help because I'm a self-help junkie. And so I realized my ability to apply these skill sets because I have it stored somewhere. So if I want to apply the skill set of oh, I require you to drive traffic from a website. Years ago, I read a traffic sequence about Russell Bronson. I can't remember. I don't need to go read the book again. I just need to go find my highlights, which is just like maybe three pages long of notes and find those highlights and then extract that and go apply that and try that. So I feel that every person's ability to execute what you learn and what you read to become decently good at skills a lot faster is down to your note-taking process. I know it sounds like the stupidest idea I've heard but when I read the book of Second Brain, that did it for me because I was like, oh, I've been doing that very, very haphazardly but I had a system and that book just tickled the next level. Sorry for making so much noise. I totally understand where you're coming from. For example, in the morning when I read my books, for example, investing book, I will also extract out paragraphs that speak to me. But I think I should do that one step further, like what you said, combine everything into documents so that I can assess those information much faster. But my question is the book can be so long some of the books can be so thick. How are you able to condense your summary? Is there any certain way that you can condense your summary better so that it becomes an easier way to assess your memory, assess all those knowledge? Sure. Is it a bad idea for me to share my screen I can do a slide? Sure. You do the you click present below and then you click share screen and then I will bring your share screen up. Hopefully this is interesting. Hopefully it doesn't lag also. So I'll just do my best to try. Okay. So just give me a while. Wow. I never expect the conversation to go towards here but I love that. It's like really hands on. How many of you love it? If you love it type me in the chat. Okay. We can see your screen right now. Okay. So you can see, basically I entered this. So you can see this document is I don't know how many pages. This is my investing about 140 pages but it spends more than that. So it's going to break to multiple documents. So you can see, the left side is all the books I've read on investing from 100 baggers, outsiders, which I think all these are books that you know all the way to maybe like psychology of money, nothing but net, Terry Smith's letters, for example, Ben Graham Ben Graham and Buffard has so much wisdom right. So I took this into a separate one and so Intelligent Investor is a whole new animal. So from this I will open up. Okay. So to answer your question, how do I remember things I've read right? So these, everything you see here and so this is security analysis. This is Intelligent Investor. So it allows me to like find it very fast. Security analysis basically everything you see here ignore the highlights first ignore the boldings are things that stood out from me from the book that I'm extracting out from the book. So that's the first layer of summary. And the second layer of summary is after Are you sharing screen? Are you sharing screen? I'm not seeing security analysis though. Well, okay. I think I need to because I changed the tab. Sorry. I need to reshare again. Okay. Okay. Other me. Okay. So let me just share. Yeah. Audience are loving it. Adrian, Benson. Right now. Can you see? Yes. We can see now. Okay. So that's it. Security analysis. Ignore the boldings and highlights and the yellow, green highlights. Everything is just taken from the book security analysis. But that's just the things I extract which like you're asking what if it's too much? How do I condense further? So after I read a book, I normally like to take like two or three days away from the book first because normally after I read a book, do you take a few days away? Your mind becomes fresh again to read it in a new light. And so now I do a summary of my summary. So the second layer is I read through my all my extractions and I both the things that stand out to me. So I give an example. Let's say in this case I keep it simple. I'm bolding like companies with stable earnings is it a forecast and hence favorable? This is for me to remember that actually for forecasting and projecting like DCF or whatever it's important to find companies that are more stable. Just an example. So then I bought this, bought this, bought this and then after the bolding is done, after the bolding is done, I then go back and reread and then what happens I then find the things that's even more important to me and I put it in green. So that is like the most top essence. So which means that whenever I want to refresh a book, the first thing I do is not read the whole thing because it could be a lot of extracts as well as you can see here. I just read the ones in green. So I can just really go down and say I look here. The more volatile the firm's earnings are, the more cautious one should be in estimating future cash flows and the more one back in the past one should go. Okay, so this tell me know that. Okay, if I want to do any DCFs in future Graham and Docs suggest 10 years. So this is like just a concept and I just I just need to find the green highlights and then if the green highlights stood up to me and I realized then I go read the boldings and then if I read the boldings and I'm still into it, I still cannot get my answer then I read the whole thing. So there's multiple layers of filter when I do this and believe it or not I know it's totally crazy right now I'm very nerdy about this but this is really the secret to being good at learning things and applying things right because if you don't have this we all read books and we go oh yeah I'm super inspired but you have nothing to grasp on because you don't have what we call a second brain to hold the information because there's no way we're going to be applied what you're able to read or whether you learn from a DCF or you read like some Michael Mamboustein book and then like oh yeah awesome but reverse DCF I don't know but I can't recall when I need it so that's the ability to learn things Wow okay it's a very vigorous process of learning yeah it is it is it is so yeah I take it quite seriously as we can tell That's good okay I should totally start practicing that as well and in the meantime I think that our audience they are loving it I'm going to practice that as well fantastic now if we move on to the next question we talk about like the ability to communicate your ideas across just now right so are these also something that you build up along the way through like readings through like how do you communicate effectively like if you can condense to one key principle that people can immediately start applying to improve would that be okay the secret is come for my speaking course now I'm just joking wow okay to be honest I I don't have the perfect answer in terms of if I were to narrow down to that one or two things but if you ask me in terms of being able to communicate the ideas across there's actually two main things that I found very helpful over the over the years first things first is same thing it's going to sound right it's actually not the words you say it's to learn how to use in your diaphragm okay really right because I give an example like when you're able to speak from a diaphragm your words just come across a lot stronger so maybe I just give an example right let's say today I want to ask someone to buy something just give a simple example so okay now that I've covered everything I've covered in the in this document and this contract let me help you process your documents as compared to okay now that I've covered everything I've covered in the contract let me just process the documents for you alright so you see like the first one triggers more of we call it up talk in communication so you sound a bit uncertain number two your status is a bit lower versus the prospect or whoever you're talking to to ask for that request your second one feels a bit more like a command so first one is I need to use I suck that acting so they made me do music we call it AV which is audio visual but the only thing I learned from them was to use the diaphragm which somehow helped me as a speaker so when you also use the diaphragm a lot right I don't just imagine this I make a statement like the boy was under the tree versus like the boy was under the tree I can sound a lot more authoritative just by using the diaphragm which makes the words go in better once again is the delivery mechanism that matters so we're going a bit who believe it or not it's actually tonality right so I give a simple example from an investing audience pretend today since you're asking about communication a lot of people think that communication or sales or like just talking to people it's a very open-ended skill which means that I have to listen to what the person says and then afterwards what the person say that I reply because conversation is fluid and I agree to some extent what a lot of people don't know is that actually through your tonality I can subconsciously influence the answers that I want from the other person because I don't do this in a normal setting because it's very hard and it's too manipulative but let's say in a sales context where I need the person to do certain actions to help them realize certain aha moments I give an example let's pretend today pretend today I'm you I'm maybe pitching or promoting my options program and I really believe the options for you can change someone's life but a person cannot see it so asking a simple question like are you happy with your investing returns right now so just this sentence alone I'll do two demonstrations first demonstration is so are you are you happy with your investing returns right now so it makes the person focus on whether they are happy or not happy right now I do a second example so are you happy with your investing returns right now now the person starts thinking instead of the happy you're not happy it's more like what's my return actually right so same same same yeah we can influence the answers I want out of the person which then influences the trajectory of the communication right so yeah I'm going too much on the communication I know this is a fantastic channel wow but really it's monality and number two is the delivery which is to use your diaphragm right so yeah yeah wow thanks so much for the tips and I think like oh wow yeah I think I've been unconsciously practicing it but I think what you said just now make me become more aware and I think it all comes like like communication be it like uh investing as well when we are more aware we are able to improve better as well so my next question is like just now you did talk about like connecting different dots right and I clearly remember that you told me that recently you were reading a book about how to increase luck and how that by doing so many like different dots right connecting different dots actually help to increase luck can you elaborate a little bit more how we can become luckier okay got it so this is a very I think to the audience it will sound like a very generic question what the heck is luck okay so I had a very big aha moment I think I need to give the back context first in just like tense again for the audience so I read two books last year two years back that really changed my perspective on luck versus skill which is the title of today's podcast first book is called Food by Randomness by Nassim Talab Nassim Nicos Talab I think that or the self-help world you would have known him second book is very very underrated but this book really changed my life it's called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned it's by this author called Kenneth Stanley the recurring themes around these books are basically that most things that happen in our lives are due to luck and randomness for most things but so I'm not saying skill is not important I'm not saying that you just stay home and like do nothing what I'm saying is there are a lot of human beings because of our conservative bias hindsight bias our brains tend to fool us we think that everything will achieve whether it's financial wealth financial status achievements in life whatever it's down to our own doing that's the book I just I preach to everyone about it such that I think my friends are so annoyed so I realised after reading these books that most things in our lives are human beings if you really be honest with yourself and you trace it back it's down to you at some chance encounter meeting this mentor meeting this in Chinese that platform to then go try that and that thing somehow worked out right but if you were to rewind time and do like a doctor strange kind of multiple thing and you play 10,000 parallel universes with the same you going to the same place waiting for that same person to show up into that opportunity that person may not be there because in VR reality they may have done it a different way in that alternate universe I'm just giving an example here so essentially I realised that most things in life happen because of luck and then the nerdy me being Max just asked himself okay most things based on luck but I don't accept that I just don't do nothing I sit at home you know wait for the lottery ticket to fly into my window like no right so I asked myself can I be a bit more strategic about luck which then brought me to another book okay so you can see I'm a I'm a big gig but I have this way of reading books and applying what I've read books and this book I think I think I saw you post about it before Chloe it's one of my favourite books as well is by Navarra Vikant and Navarra actually talks about luck he thinks he's one of the first guys that talks about luck very well there's three there's actually three types of luck in this world first type of luck is called blind luck so blind luck means really you walk on the street and then somehow you see a lottery ticket and you win like 8 million dollars from it okay that's blind luck it cannot be cannot be re-created cannot be engineered it's just blind second luck is called luck by hustle so these are people who just go out they attend so much networking events they do so many different things and the amount of dust it stirs up they somehow get lucky because of luck through effort or hustle third luck which is two examples Navarra will give an example today if you're a deep sea diver and you're the only guy on planet earth who can dive deep below the ocean let's say like I don't know how many thousand feet you're the only guy to pretend and today I'm a I'm a gold I'm like this kind of I'm like this person who owns a business and I know this place has gold but I cannot reach it I will definitely find you and I'll split the profits for 50-50 with you and to the outsider they will say hey this diver got lucky but no his reputation and his skill as a deep sea diver and the only one in the world allowed him to get lucky but it looks like luck or blind luck to the audience but it's not it's luck by reputation and another example he gave was buffered so buffered gets deals that the average person like me and you will never ever ever ever get because of his reputation so when I realised that I'm like okay how can I make luck a bit more intentional which he realised that centres itself is very ironic how can I make luck even something like luck I'm also trying to engineer it right so then I realised in the day if we are in right now there's two things I can do to make luck a lot more intentional number one I need to be able to try many many many different things with my time of course the caveat here I need to give is that I'm of course self-employed as well so I have the free time and ability to try many different projects or bets as a full time 9-5 immediately more limited so you have to use your own creativity and resources to go and try to make it happen number two is actually I live in a day and age where I can use social media to multiply my luck which I think Chloe has done very well basically your exposure to online just opens up a lot more doors and opportunities and I'm not going to go into detail we can talk about that in another podcast but my current girlfriend came because of social media I was attending a podcast I talked about my love for Taifan she DMed me about asking how I count calories for Taifan because she said we're working on it as well and that was how we did it off I thought she was cute I asked her out so yeah without going too much in the day because it came from the podcast I saw me on social media on Twitter and that's luck in itself but let's go back to the first part so the first part that I was sharing was more like you need to be able to place multiple bets but many people screw it up because they are like okay Max says or this book says place multiple bets let me just place multiple bets but you have to also have a criteria for the amount of bets or the types of bets that you think so believe it or not I actually have a criteria which I can share screen either as well in terms of what is the criteria to look for whether I want to take this bet or not because think about it for a second we are a bit like VC's venture capitalists of our time using our time like if I'm a normal venture capitalist I have money that money is like almost unlimited because I can keep raising funds from my LPs and my limited partners and I can keep trying many different projects I can invest in the next Airbnb the next strike but for us as normal people there's only 24 hours so with a VC of my time I don't have unlimited funds in that case so you need to be able to take on like so for me I set a goal a simple motor for myself every quarter I must always try two to three new bets using my time, energy or emotion basically put things at risk and at all times I must have at least three to four bets in circulation at all times and this gives me multiple income streams it gives me multiple piece of mine as well and so every time before I take a bet I just give a few questions to ask myself number one this bet that I'm making can I go to market in two to three weeks this is an important one because if I cannot go to market in two to three that's pretend like most people you know they have that idea I love this idea I'm super passionate let me just make make sure this idea I want to make sure this idea takes off at all costs and then you spend six months taking off and really after that you realise you've got mature and okay I don't think this can work but you just lost six months anyone ask yourself from a normal adult life of like maybe 30 years old to 60 years old that's really the main prime years how many six months do you have 60 right using this example you can really take 60 bets but if I go to market in three weeks in each year I can launch maybe like my method about maybe 18 alright maybe 17 17 bets so just being able to shoot more spaghetti's at the wall I'm already able to have luck on my side because I'll have a lot more filled bets but my go to market time is a lot shorter so that's just one criteria another criteria to take off can I reuse it so this allows me to still get lucky and not waste the effort so true story I think I'm going a bit overboard I'll just end with this simple case study early this year I thought of wanting to launch a sales course in sales form I thought most born to learn how to sell one of one but I didn't want to spend three weeks writing the course material only to not have people buy because for all I know I may owe max including your group maybe nobody wants to buy it's all in my head right I don't even want to commit three weeks to spend my time even though it's free because it's just three weeks there's no money involved it's just three weeks to make the course I didn't want to do that so guess what I did I went to find a friend over lunch who just nice this guy was he runs his own small fund he's a small fund manager he's a very good investor just no idea how to sell which for some reason most investors suck at selling not all but most and then he just couldn't raise enough funds from friends and family and I just say hey let's call you Tommy hey Tommy are you open to me teaching you how to raise funds one on one using conversation or consultative selling so on and so forth I teach you one by one just over one full day together and then you pay me a certain fee for me to teach it to you and these secrets and of course he was a friend so he knew I was good at selling so he had some discussions handle some objections and then eventually he said okay max I'll pay you $2,000 full day and $2,000 for one day is not too bad but here's how I'll pay you $2,000 for one full day because these things I do it day in day out so I need to spend one day to create the cost and one day to deliver it to him so two days to make $2,000 which is $1,000 still not too bad not the most exciting but not too bad by myself from this alone I got the content out and he helped me to raise the bet so I got paid to make the content and now the content is out I'm using that to launch my sales post because the content is there already so I'm always thinking about bet sizing with my time criteria before I place any bet can I reuse this if this fails if this doesn't take off so hopefully that answers the question I think the thinking process of criteria is so important and if we lay down to that what is your criteria when it comes to investing in a company now we are on to the investing actual thing believe it or not I actually have two types of portfolios let me just give the background because I realise to be fair I'm still a young investor I wouldn't claim to say that I've invested for like 10, 15 years because first of all I'm only 33 this year or 32 still 32 then I'm 33 soon so the fact is I've only been investing for like maybe like 5 years or so and I do acknowledge I could have got lucky and maybe it's really luck right and so I asked myself in order to not kind of be so fragile I want to have different types of portfolios so I have one portfolio which is a buffered style portfolio which you can big deeper later another portfolio is a bit more of a venture capitalist slash portfolio but I don't invest in private companies it's still all the public market so let me share how it goes so for my buffered style portfolio I picked the types of stocks which is really very buffered like so high focus on return on invested capital a very very big big big focus on companies that do not change companies that brands will still be around and all that kind of stuff like that and then extreme extreme I'm going to swear a bit but anal value anal emphasis on valuation so using like VCF or whatever so that's the buffered style so of companies and then the other type more like basic companies that are your your loss making, sales companies e-commerce companies of the world basically just investing money back to the business so for this venture I call it a venture capitalist bucket because I take smaller bets and because these companies could could be your like crash 80% your upstarts snowflakes, sea limiters of the world and then the other one is more like basically your to be fair I don't invest in stuff like McDonald's just to be clear I don't do it but without going too much into what my portfolio is it's basically things like strong consumer brands things that were like 10-20 years I could still see them being around and using Buffered's emphasis of I only want to invest in companies where the 10-year track record of operating earnings in the last 10 years has proven itself and I don't bother anything about future projections so that's the buffered style so I split my portfolio regarding this because to be fair I still don't know whether I'm proven of investor so I use both so that's the priority I look for for both markets I give a very big overview because if you want to go into the nifty gritty we can go even deeper into the nifty market but that's going to take a while but I think you definitely have already shared some insights into how you invest and our audience can use it as a reference as well but at the end of the day I think your VC style come from your motto right now of placing different bets in life and that's how you also place different bets in VC style kind of company right so if you can summarise in terms of your life motto what would that be I saw this question in your in your questionnaire but to be fair I didn't know how to answer by the way so everything here is unplanned I'm just going off my screws whatever so to answer this question I'll answer in two ways I think do you want the real answer or do you want the nice to hear answer I don't know which one you want your candid answer so the candid answer is my life motto generally I wouldn't say right now since I kind of discovered my passion for teaching and I think you guys can tell through this camera I really like to explain things to others I just get a very big sense of fulfillment it's three words I think it's very morbid I don't really say this often but I want to I want to die a teacher sounds stupid I want to die a teacher I think for me I did think to myself before like it's extremely bloody meaningless if like my gravestone let's pretend I die next week for example my gravestone or whatever here died a guy with X learned in the bank nobody really cares man nobody's going to shop your funeral because of that but I think for me I do envision and it still offers a bit of pride I want people to shrug my funeral with the tense this guy taught me years back how to be a better person or this guy taught me years back how to invest better this guy taught me years back how to speak better I know it sounds so silly but these little skill sets then translate to improve their lives and improve their family's life whatever through the finances that they make so I really love breaking complex ideas down for people I just love the kick when I see somebody's eyes light up with their aha moment or light bulb so I want to die a teacher that's been my life motto I do see myself still constantly teaching training in what topic I don't know right years back it was e-commerce and marketing last year was investing in recently sales and persuasion presentations maybe 10 years from now you'll be gardening and sewing I don't know but I'm just saying I just like to teach and I do have a gift for teaching and I tell myself I don't want to waste that gift from God or whatever power you ask okay for the life motto now now it's actually I think already very clear across this podcast for me it's all about taking bets so every quarter which I was telling Chloe in private that we met like few months back over like drinks right I said every quarter I will set 2 to 3 new bets I want to place with my time so like it can be try this new project try this new venture but I just want to keep placing bets and so my motto is that I think most things in life are based off luck and I want to increase my luck exposure and engineer it a lot more a lot more intentionally if that makes sense okay yeah I think a life motto does change along the way and I think regardless how it changed it always continue as long as we are willing to learn really to reflect it help us to become better and if you can turn back time let's say 10 years ago what advice would you give to your younger self okay this one is quite obvious for me I think let's talk about 2 things number 1 is from a money aspect number 2 is from a non-money aspect so from money aspect it's plain and simple learn how to analyse businesses plain and simple because of the fact that like I mentioned years back Chloe you do know people who know me so the people that know me will know the young max was more of a trader I like action basically so when I really understood actually the real wealth only comes through ownership and equity and ownership and equity can come about from either you are a business owner so you start your own small business at the price and that's equity or if you realise like me you're not the kind that wants to be a founder of a business start the mix you know the mix Tesla or whatever you're not like that kind of empire builder so the next best way is to own equity in public businesses that's the only way that you can get out of the cycle by cycle I mean the red ways or whatever things you want to throw and give it that label so learning how to analyse businesses was very free for me because I did build up a certain level of capital based from my 9 to 5 job as a trainer but like the only way to still get out of that financial liability and be financially free across that first million by 29 is really true investing in equities that are strong and solid so that's from a financial point of view from a non-financial point of view the advice would be don't be afraid to go on social media and talk about your achievements talk about yourself and talk about basically your beliefs and values a lot more it's very hard to tell because most people will think oh Max you're a trainer it comes easy for you actually I can tell you guys know man like I already started posting more about myself on social media about one and a half years back which is when I left my full-time job the people that know me will know even as a trainer because back then I was yeah I could be very loud on the stage in person I'm actually shy I don't like talking to people on social media I was very quiet I will maybe once in a while post a few photos of me speaking but that's all but it's only after I left that I realised crap I need to generate luck and I need an audience so the only way for you to make money with eyeballs is either you pay for traffic which is not practical for a new solopreneur or you get free audience from the platforms whether it's your Twitter, your LinkedIn or your Facebook or IG whatever so don't be afraid to post about yourself and don't be afraid to kind of talk about yourself it may feel still today I feel very like oh my goodness I can't believe I'm talking about myself but I think that thing has really opened up a lot more doors a lot more luck a lot more opportunities for me that it has brought me down it's a lot more upside and so pretty much that's it I think to kind of end off I think it's more on this question I was very inspired when I heard this quote by Alex Homozi which I think we all know is going viral on the internet and he has this video and he has so many videos I forgot which video he said that basically a lot of us we feel about the way people judge us because we think that if we post things online we do certain things people will just roll their eyes and maybe judge us then he made this statement he said none of these people are going to come to your funeral and for some reason that thing really hit me because for me every time before I post things I also have this thought of this person that person that I know what if they roll their eyes everything they may judge me my secondary school friend this friend that friend and then there was just one day after I heard that quote I realised that I really had this image in my mind when I pretend today I post something about myself oh I post my investing results I post my whatever results my top moment achievements I had this image where this person looks at it and then probably just rolls their eyes and then I also played the fact that what if in the next 8 minutes I suddenly die of a heart attack and then for some reason magically it's announced on Facebook Max just said all these people who are judging me they'll probably stop and they'll probably still stop them like oh Max just died they'll probably still pause there for like 5 seconds and like ok then they'll just scroll and then they'll go back to their kids and their lives and when I talk to them I realise none of these people are going to show up to my funeral man so why worry about these judgements and so that gave me a lot more a bit more kind of post things more and talk about yourself and that has opened up a lot more luck and widened the luck surface area yep that's one wow wow and and if people want to follow you and learn more about using this right now you are more consistent in like your social media posting where can they find you okay you can just follow me on Instagram it's a hey Max co H E Y hey M A X K O H my name that's all pretty much that's right let me share screen alright so this is Max I think right after this you should have 1000 followers okay one more okay yeah cool yeah I really post about everything under the sun so please don't expect some guru wisdom investing advice or whatever yeah that's it yeah that's it and then it was like okay look at thinking about this picture it just remind me of how coincident that we didn't meet in Singapore we met in Berkshire at the way that's where we met at Berkshire at the way Warren Buffett brought us together yeah exactly that was really amazing and Max I just want to confirm the book that you mentioned just now about okay hold on let me just unshare this and then hold on the book that you just mentioned just want to confirm is the book that I'm sharing screen just right now are you talking about this book the Elmanac of the Elmanac of Navarra Vikant so yeah I threw out a lot of books that I try and remember what I threw out so Scott Adams which is the cartoonist that taught me how to stack talents that is how I failed at everything and still succeeded I know it's a very long title that book I talked about you a second brain I talked about this book right Navarra Vikant's Elmanac I talked about full by randomness and why greatness cannot be planned so yeah thank you so much for sharing so much of your favorite books it doesn't have to be investing related and in fact as the more I read about great investors they actually read very very diverse like multi disciplinary kind of books so I hope that for investors over here you guys can also you know expand your reading list and then from there start taking notes okay can everybody type end in the chat okay and send for notes I think this is something that I also want to start cultivating for myself because for myself I always put a lot on my social media right and I thought that social media is a place for me to condense my thoughts so right now I need to compile all my condensation of all the thoughts into a Google I think that is very very useful thank you so much and I think how our audience so I also want to ask what's your greatest key takeaway from Max sharing tonight put it in the chair I think Max will love to to know that I think has been very very useful and insightful as well so Max if you have any last advice that you give to our audience what would that be wow with that none I think I've said what I need to say yeah so I sorry to be a spoiler I cannot think of anything on the spot I mean if you ask like specific investing or life advice maybe that's a different story but none I think just learn how to I think the three types of luck is very fundamental to understand so learn how to be a bit more exposed to luck in your own life either through hustle or either through reputation and skill so yeah that's my advice so hustle reputation and skill so double down on the high income skill and then after that hustle that means you need to put yourself up right like talk about social media talk about networking right and then last but not least reputation like build out your reputation so that eventually you will increase your luck as well thank you so much Max and for those who are wondering how to learn about like skill in terms of like how to become better in investing for us we do have our free two-day buffer online school two-day class alright you can actually register via the link below actually every single month we do run a two-day investing course but the next one will be in September alright so for those who have not joined us make sure do join us because I will personally be teaching there so if you want to learn how buffered way of investing that is the place for you to go and somewhere is free right so for those who also want to join me in terms of my telegram alright you can also check it out from here where's my link okay I prepare max link I never prepare my link okay basically just oh there you go okay so you can go to Aligato investor and then you can follow me I will post a lot of insights over there and also remember to follow Max okay he actually posts different kind of insights not just about investing about sometimes about way of life about speaking about sales conversion of everything I follow Max very closely and I always enjoy reading all your insights that you post on your social media so looking forward to your next post thank you so much everybody thank you guys alright I will see you guys next round bye thank you everyone