Page 242 - merged.pdf

CHAPTER 8 MASTERING YOUR MONEY

out your strategies and make improvements before your
business (and challenges) gets too big and costly to manage.

When I first started Adam Khoo Learning technologies group,
I used my home as an office and hired only one staff. I
began by just offering training workshops to schools. In this
way, there was no need for placing advertisements (selling
was done directly to the schools) or to rent expensive venues
to conduct my courses, since workshops were all done in
the school’s premises. So, with just $8,000, I was able to start
my business operations and generate revenue and profits
that came in slow but steadily. Once it was proven that my
business model was working, I then had the confidence to
expand my operations.

I then slowly saved and used the cash generated to hire more
staff, rent my own office and training venue and place
advertisements in the newspapers. By using only the profits
generated from the business to reinvest in the business, I grew
the business organically, got partners in and, within 6 years,
we had managed to turnover $20 million annually. To run
our business today, we incur almost $400,000 of fixed monthly
costs and we require $1.2 million in assets and cash to finance
the daily operations.

So, it is indeed possible to start small and build your company
into a multi-million dollar market leader. Big startup investments
don’t always equate to big long-term success. In fact, Creative
Technologies (revenue US$1 billion) was started by Sim
Wong Hoo for only $6,000 and Hewlett Packard (revenue
US$104 billion) began with an initial investment of $538.
Sony International was also started by Akio Morita for less
than $5,000.

SECRETS OF BUILDING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESSES 233