Earl Nightingale

Earl Nightingale (March 12, 1921 – March 25, 1989) was an American motivational speaker and author, known as the "Dean of Personal Development." He was the voice in the early 1950s of Sky King, the hero of a radio adventure series, and was a WGN radio show host from 1950 to 1956.Author of the Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has called “…One of the great motivational books of all time“.


Early Years

When Nightingale was seventeen he joined the United States Marines. He was on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor and was one of twelve surviving Marines on board that day. Before being mustered, Nightingale was an instructor at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

After the war Nightingale began work in the radio industry, which eventually led to work as a motivational speaker. In 1956 he produced a spoken word record, The Strangest Secret, which sold over a million copies, making it the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status . Then in 1960, he cofounded the Nightingale-Conant corporation with Lloyd Conant.

Nightingale’s radio program, Our Changing World, became the most highly syndicated radio program ever, and was heard across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, the Bahamas, 23 countries overseas, as well as the Armed Forces Network.

In 1985, Nightingale was inducted into The Association of National Broadcasters, Radio Hall of Fame.

During his lifetime, Nightingale wrote and recorded over 7,000 radio programs, 250 audio programs as well as television programs and videos.

In the mid-eighties, Nightingale wrote his first book, Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery for which he received the Napoleon Hill Gold Medal for Literary Excellency.

Just prior to his passing in 1989, Nightingale created a new format for a book that included his text, his illustrations, and incorporated space for a private journal. He called it The Winner’s Notebook.

After his retirement and before his death, Nightingale and his wife, Diana formed Keys Publishing.




 
Author's Note

The first time I listened to his recording of "The Strangest Secret," I was inspired by his ideas that it leads me to search for more of his work. His recording entitled "Lead the Field," enumerates some of the attributes of the successful people.

His famous line was "You become what you think about."

Adam Khoo

Adam Khoo Yean Ann (born April 8, 1974) is a Singaporean entrepreneur, best-selling author and peak performance trainer. A self-made millionaire by the age of 26, he is one of the youngest millionaires in Singapore, and owns and runs several businesses in education, training, event management and advertising, all with a combined annual turnover of S$30 million.

Khoo is the Executive Chairman and Chief Master Trainer of Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group Pte Ltd and Director of seven other private companies. Khoo is also a director of the Singapore Health Promotion Board (HPB). He was a member of the Singapore Chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (formerly Young Entrepreneurs' Organization or YEO), whose membership is only available to business owners below 50 years of age, who run businesses with minimum annual turnover of US$1 million. Khoo was also conferred the NUS Business School Eminent Business Alumni Award 2008 for being one of Singapore's most successful and prominent business leaders.

Books Authored

Adam Khoo is the best-selling author of ten books including I Am Gifted, So Are You! His second and third books are How to Multiply Your Child’s Intelligence and Clueless in Starting a Business.

Khoo's fourth book was Master Your Mind, Design Your Destiny. His fifth and sixth books were Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires and Secrets of Millionaire Investors. His seventh book was Nurturing the Winner & Genius in Your Child, and his eight book, Secrets of Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses was launched in October 2008. His ninth book was titled Profit from the Panic.

Background and education

Childhood

Khoo was expelled from St Stephen’s Primary School at the age of eight for misbehavior, partly due to poor academic results. His parents hunted for a primary school willing to accept him and finally found Ngee Ann Primary School. Due to his poor results at the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), he did not qualify to enter any of the six secondary schools his parents had chosen. Eventually he went to a government school Ping Yi Secondary, where he passed only five out of eight subjects and finished 156th out of 160 Secondary 1 Express Stream students.

Khoo's parents and teachers described him back then as capable but lazy, indifferent and addicted to television. He described himself as being totally uninterested in learning (he was frustrated as he felt he could not learn), extremely unmotivated, physically weak and mentally lethargic. His stepsister was an A-student in the Gifted Education Programme at Raffles Girls’ Secondary while cousins from his close-knit extended family were from the best schools in Singapore. He had very poor social skills, did not enjoy reading anything but comics and was addicted to arcade games and moronic TV programs. He tried to join the Scout Movement, but was thrown out six months later for not passing the basic qualifying test, the ‘Scout Standard’, as he did not bother to try.

Turning point in education

In 1987, when Khoo was 13, his parents enrolled their “under-achiever” son for a five-day residential program at Ladyhill Hotel called Super-Teen Camp. The man responsible for spotting Khoo’s “gifted talent” in Super-Teen was Dr. Ernest Wong, Founder, Principal Consultant and Master Teacher of Ernesco, the Centre for Motivational Language Learning based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (the Super-Teen Camp is now under Learning Mastery Pte. Ltd.) Dr. Wong's teaching tools incorporated and adapted an American-developed learning technology called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), as well as Whole-Brain Learning. This was the beginning of Adam Khoo’s interest and journey in mastering motivational techniques, which formed the foundation of many of his best-selling books and seminars.

Within three months of the program, Khoo climbed to among the top 18 in his secondary school. He went on to rank among the top 10 in Ping Yi Secondary within a year, topped his school in the GCE ‘O’ Level examinations with the lowest scoring aggregate, and was the first in Ping Yi Secondary to qualify for the then-top junior college in Singapore, Victoria Junior College. At Victoria Junior College, he was President of the Economics Society and scored three ‘As’ for his GCE ‘A’ Level examinations. He entered the Business Administration faculty at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and continued his notable academic achievements by making it to the Dean's List every year since his first year, ranked among the top 1 percent of academic achievers and became a pioneer in the university’s Talent Development Programme (TDP), the tertiary equivalent of the Gifted Education Programme for secondary schools. He holds an honors degree in Business Administration from NUS.

Millionaire in the making

At age 15, Khoo was devouring books on “how to make money” like Donald Trump’s business books and Warren Buffett’s books on investment techniques. While still in secondary school, he formed a mobile disco company with his friends, using his grandmother’s house to re-create a disco and charged teenagers who attended a fee. He even took over the job of the deejay that he hired, after studying him. At 16, he began investing most of his time and money to read and undergo training sessions in NLP in the United States. At 17, he became a freelance motivational trainer by visiting schools in Singapore, making the bold proposition of turning the worst students around for no charge in the beginning. Eventually, he started charging S$25 per student for half a day’s training.

After completing National Service in the Republic of Singapore Air Force at age 21, Khoo went into partnership with three NUS friends and registered an event management company, Creatsoul Entertainment. The company organized hops, jams and other entertainment activities for clients like individuals, companies and organizations at NUS and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). This was later re-registered as Event Gurus Pte Ltd, an event management company. Today Event Gurus runs major events like The New Paper Big Walk and the President’s Charity Challenge’s Project.

At 23, Khoo obtained his license in NLP in Seattle, Washington. At 24, he became a trainer at SuperTeen, conducting courses for organizations like the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP), Nanyang Girls' High School and the Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) in Jakarta. At 25, Khoo was coaching top insurance agents and marketing managers twice his age on how to boost sales. At this time, his father, Vince Khoo, who owned advertising agency Adcom, bought out all partners and offered the younger Khoo the opportunity to run it. Within three months, he turned it around from making losses in 1998–1999 to clinching a pitching rate of 80 percent with the first monthly profit, and went on to increase margins by 30%. Their clients have included AIA, Dumex, Mobil (lost during the Exxon merger), Phillip Wain slimming centers, Sobe Fresh Soya Milk, Tabasco, Heinz, Sinsin, Night Safari, Singapore and MobileOne (M1).

At 26, Khoo earned his first million, from giving motivational training at schools and companies (the most lucrative, earning him up to S$1000 an hour), his entertainment company and shrewd investments in equities, unit trusts and property.

Portfolio

Investments
Khoo’s first taste of investing came from his grandfather, who would give him Lunar New Year red packets with Malaysian share lots like Genting, Kuantan Flour Mill and HICOM. Inspired by Warren Buffett’s book Buffettology, he started dabbling in shares in the army.

A conservative and long-term investor, Khoo goes for investments with very low risk and high returns, favoring cash-rich companies with low debts and the potential to consistently increase their earnings. He prefers investing in stocks and options, using a variety of investing strategies including momentum and value investing.

Property

Khoo's portfolio consists of property that he rents out, private businesses, Singapore stocks, US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), generating an average return of over 20 percent per annum. In 1998, he bought a 1,300 sq ft condominium in East Coast for S$480,000 and rented it out for about S$3,000. He sold it for S$650,000 in 2004. In early 2008, he bought a 900 sq ft condo at Robertson Quay for S$1.3 million, renting it out at S$4,000.

Businesses

Khoo does not believe in taking on consumer debt and prefers starting businesses with zero capital, paying freelance fees or stocks in the beginning until profit is generated.

Authors Note


Khoo has always been my favorite author in the field of personal development and Stock Market Investing. His regular newsletter is one of the few newsletters that I actually read on my emails. His articles and a lot of other stuff from renowned authors made me take drastic actions on my finances. On one of his book, "Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires," Khoo was able to dig deep into the subconscious and determine what stops a person from getting out of his comfort zone. I had some samples of his audio-book and is really looking forward to actually listen to them.

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn (September 25, 1930 - December 5, 2009) was an American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. His work has been influential in launching or furthering the careers of many others in the personal development industry, including Anthony Robbins, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield.

Early life

Rohn was born in Yakima, Washington.

Career

By age 25, he was in a personal rut familiar to many middle-class families who were in debt, unable to see a way that would lead to his personal ambitions.

Around this time, he was introduced to John Earl Shoaff, an entrepreneur who impressed Rohn with his wealth, business accomplishments, charisma and life philosophy. Rohn joined Shoaff's direct sales organization, and began a process of personal development that culminated in his becoming a millionaire by age 31. Unfortunately, Shoaff, who had challenged Rohn to reach for this goal, died one year before Rohn achieved it.

In the years that followed, Rohn discovered a demand from people outside his industry to hear his rags to riches stories, and the personal development philosophy that he felt had led to his accomplishments. Rohn has been presenting his seminars for more than 40 years.

He has addressed over 6,000 audiences and 4 million people worldwide. He was the recipient of the 1985 National Speakers Association CPAE Award. He is also the author of 17 different books, audio and video programs.

Quotes

Jim Rohn was considered a "Business Philosopher". He did not claim to teach novel truths, only fundamentals - and as he was fond of saying: "There are no new fundamentals. Truth is not new, it's old. You've got to be a little suspicious of the guy who says, 'come over here, I want to show you my manufactured antiques!' No, you can't manufacture antiques."

Whoever rendered service to many put himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy."

"Success is not something you pursue. Success is something you become"

"Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don't go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won't laugh at you."

"Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it."

"Don't wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better."

"The most important question to ask in a job is not what am I getting but what am I becoming."

"Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune"

Death

Jim Rohn died of pulmonary fibrosis after an 18-month battle on December 5, 2009 in West Hills, California.

Jim Rohn's "Five Major Pieces To the Life Puzzle"

    * Philosophy - how you think
    * Attitude - how you feel
    * Action - what you do
    * Results - measure often to see if you are making progress
    * Lifestyle - the kind of life you can make for yourself out of the first four pieces

Authors Note

It is interesting to note how I came about the works of the late Mr. Jim Rohn. I was reading an article by Adam Khoo and he mentioned about the people who have somehow influenced him. I search about Jim Rohn and all his works and I came across his audiobook entitled "The Day that Turns Your Life Around." I like his talks, the way he inserts humor on his talks and his constant reference to the Bible. Almost always he refers to it as according to an ancient author.

One of the best quote I got from his audiobook is:.
"The same wind blows on us all. The difference in arrival is not the blowing of the wind, but the set of the sail."