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Articles written by Ben.
57 articles
In this impromptu interview, Anders Eklund and Nate Chai share several tips on how to optimise your product or service using examples from an engineered based product. Should you have a slow internet connection or cannot hear the interview, Anders Eklund’s tips are summarised below the video. However, if you can, we recommend you watch
+ Ben Chai shares the essential processes you need to know in order to reach the dreams that you’ve chosen for yourself Dreams are the life blood of our hopes. Dreams are what keeps them going when life gets tough. However, why is it that so many people’s dreams are taken with them to their graves?
In this impromptu interview, Veronica Sosa shares the key points of her insights into branding via social media given at the Swedish Wealth Institute. For those with bad connections, we’ve written up a brief excerpt of our chat in note form below the video. However, when you have time and a stronger internet connection, listen
+ Ben Chai runs down 7 customer service scenarios that will test your customer service power! Can you find the solution to all of them? Every professional business person is aware that in every area of business and entertainment, customer service is king. The more customer-oriented the business, the greater the repeat custom, the greater the
+ Ben Chai reveals seven ways that mortgage brokers screw up your property deals Part of everyone’s property journey is for a broker to screw up their Below Market Valuation (BMV) deals. Like selecting a good solicitor, or builder, it is important you choose and find an experienced broker or your BMV deal may be in
Have you ever had a reality check on any aspect of your life? It’s a bit like being dumped in a freezing water on a cold day. After our previous five workbook articles (links below) on how to achieve your goals, we now want to give you a goal reality check for your life journey just to ensure
I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with serial entrepreneur and success coach Laura Timm. In this interview, we talk about her childhood and how she overcome social and cultural boundaries to reach her potential and achieve her dreams. As always, we’ve written a summary of the video below, but it’s always worthwhile to check
In this interview with property expert, Alex Williams, Alex shares how he got into property, and the type of innovation and creativity he needed to turn his early disasters into successes. Alex builds on the lessons from the previous stories he shared with us on essential property mindsets and strange but true tenant stories. For those
In this interview, Nate Chai Skypes with John Mark Wilderspin about mindset and human side of financial freedom. The human side of financial freedom includes the mindset that John needed to become financially free. John also shares his insights on how wealth has affected him and his social circle, and how he is using his wealth
“Can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” was purportedly said by US president Truman to the moaners in his team. The phrase essentially means if you can’t cope and don’t want something bad enough – get out and stop bothering and distracting the people who do want it. Success and achievement often comes
The world is filled with goal quitters who did not understand what a realistic goal timescale is. Often I meet people who tell me they are going to make a million pounds/dollars in a specific time scale. As a result of their un-realistic goal timescale, the goal quitters often over extend themselves financially and timewise.
This is our fourth workshop article on goal setting. In this article, we are going to take your previous work and transform your goal into a specific goal with a specific beginning and a specific end. As a result of this workshop article, you will then have the ability to create a road-map to any
Hi everyone, how are you doing so far with organising your goals? In part three of our essential article workbook on the essential guide to goal setting, we are going to show you how to take your big dream and chunk it down into smaller ones. Let’s do a quick recap. In part one of
In this interview, John Mark shares how and why his mindset evolved beyond Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad strategies. As John learned more about property investing, and how to crunch the numbers to check a deal’s worth, he found that there are certain risks that the Rich Dad Poor Dad mindset did not totally cater for. In
Hi everyone, since our first workbook article – the essential guide to goal setting part 1, you should now have written at least 100 things you would like to achieve in your life. Perhaps you have even divided them into the six types of goals – intellectual, spiritual, emotional, physical, relationship and financial. To live
One important aspect of living a full and successful life is understanding, setting, enjoying, and working with goals. On the surface, goal setting is one of the most easiest concepts to understand, yet so few people set goals and even less act on the goals they’ve set. Let’s be honest about goal setting. The reality
In this impromptu video blog, I chat to Chris Ludwig on the seeds of his success. Prior to this video blog, I had never met Chris before or knew how amazing he is. Chris was standing next to me in a long queue and we just got chatting. Five minutes into our chat, I just
Bad credit can be a killer when it comes to acquiring property. In part two of our interview with Dean Welch, property investors Marcela Hede, Naomi Marquis, and Francine Marquis, grill Dean further into how to obtain property funding even when the banks are unwilling to lend you money for your projects. For those with
In part one of ‘Toxic Personality and the Inverse Bamboo Syndrome‘, we shared a story illustrating the long term impact of being with toxic friends. In part two, we share how the story of the Chinese bamboo tree has lessons for us on the imperceptible impact of toxic friends on our psyche and how this toxic
In this interview, we spent time with American accidental millionaire property investor and realtor, Dean Welch. Dean has written a booked called the accidental millionaire which should be out on Amazon in the next few months. Just to make things a little different, we had a property investor panel consisting of Marcela Hede, Naomi Marquis, and Naomi’s
Toxic Personality and the Inverse Bamboo Syndrome I love the Bamboo Story. To me, the Chinese bamboo story is one of the most powerful stories about faith, patience, hope, trust, and dreams coming true. If you have never heard it then please do – you will be inspired. Today, however, I want to share about how
In this video blog, I sat down with my good friend Alex Williams, a seasoned property developer, builder, and investor to share some of the odd responsibilities you take on as a landlord. We thought we would share these tenant stories to illustrate how being a professional landlord comes with huge responsibility. Often, newbies to the
So here I am sitting in my prison clothes, fingers on the keyboard, posting selfies. To be honest it was a bit of a crazy week. It was a crazy week because every day I was posting questions and making remarks about my up and coming time in prison on all my social media outlets
Have you ever wondered what is it that causes some people to be successful and other people to constantly have dramas, problems and business deals that go wrong? You are doing everything correctly yet things are going wrong. Why is it? What is going wrong? There I was at a birthday party enjoying the company
At the JT Foxx 2015 reunion, I got to meet and talk to so many fantastic people. One interesting couple I spent a little time with was Karen and Weelam Awyoung, a married couple and multimillionaires. Karen and Weelam shared how they managed to achieve success despite both having full-time jobs and a child to
What is the summary of the Chinese Bamboo Story? The Chinese Bamboo Story illustrates the importance of patience and persistence. A farmer nurtures bamboo for five years without visible growth. Then, in the fifth year, it shoots up rapidly. The lesson is that success often requires consistent effort and faith in the process, even when results
A while back I was in overload mode walking around like a weird zombie (or is that my usual state?). During my Zombie-like state, I met Canadian property investor and realtor, John Mark Wilderspin. John is unique. He has so much information on how he became successful in property that he was like a fast
We write a lot about how and why you should have big dreams. Indeed, one of the most important concepts I coach people on is how to think big. Unless we force ourselves to set huge goals, we will consistently perform at the highest level of mediocrity. But today we’re not talking about dreaming big.
One aspect of being successful that we emphasise at Five Years To Financial Freedom is to follow your passion. Laura Timm’s dream was to come to the UK and make it big. First in a job, then as an entrepreneur running her own businesses. You can imagine the types of challenges Laura had to face in just beginning
I am particularly pleased to share this interview with property developer, builder, and successful HMO (houses of multiple occupancy) property investor, Alex Williams. I first met Alex in Swansea. At the time I was looking for a builder to help me with a particularly challenging property purchased in an auction. Over time, it turned out that
Small is beautiful I love small. Small is fantastic. There are two types of fantastic small. Starting small Looking after the small things. In this article, I want to focus on starting small because so many people ignore the basic concept of small. As a result of ignoring the small things, many people experience unnecessary
Okay, so I’ve just got off a plane from Spain – had two hours sleep and was dragged on pain of death by my good friend Frazer Grant to a UK JTFoxx event. Thinking about it, most of 2015 I was living on two to four hours sleep a day. Anyway, I have no clue how I
At Five Years To Financial Freedom, we have a lot of queries on how to make money fast and how to make large sums of money. However, we believe this should be the last question that people should ask us. Financial freedom is not just about finance, it is also about freedom. Just think how much
Hey readers! Thanks for all the private messages and Likes you’ve given us for parts one and two of our interview with Swedish property entrepreneur, and all-round hard worker, Daniel Wood. Many of you may not know this but Daniel Wood was not a university graduate. He was just a very hard working family guy who hopes
Overcoming finance and property team challenges Thank you all so much for all the great feedback we’ve already had from part one of this two part video. Due to the limited time of these short videos, we only had time to discuss Daniel’s phenomenal success climb. Part three is a non-video interview with Daniel which is
It’s funny how in a large environment certain people synchronise and vibe with each other. Daniel Wood and I first met at the JT Foxx family event in Orlando, and somehow connected in spite of my walking around in a sleepy daze. We subsequently met at a Tigrent (Legacy Education) property education course on how to
Ah paperwork! Why is it that such a vital part of running a business results in so much time-consuming busy work?! When I first started in the property game 20 years ago I had no idea how to properly manage my receipts, bank accounts, and insurance forms. I lost so much time going through stacks of
At five years to financial freedom, we like to publish articles and stories to inspire you, our fab readers (by the way thank you for all the love you’ve given us in the first two weeks of 2016). One authentic person I was privileged to meet (interview coming soon) at the JTFoxx family reunion was
I like it but I don’t like it “I don’t like it and I don’t like it. But I want to like it. When I get education I like it. But every time I like it, I don’t like it. So when I like it, I like it, but I don’t like it. And when
An interesting chap called Mike (not his true name) came to visit today. We discussed many aspects of life and business and who knows we may one day be business partners. As a reminder – before becoming a business partner with anyone, we want to have a healthy scepticism and so try to ascertain how
Property investing is not for everyone. The amount of time it takes to set up and (initially) maintain the investment is massive. On top of all that is the fact that you are somewhat responsible for someone’s living conditions… and then there’s the issue of capital. Perhaps you can’t invest in your local area because
Last night I was walking along a crowded railway platform. Walking behind me was a lady who kept swinging her bag into my legs. I said, “there is no rush” but she kept banging her case on my legs and she kept on. I eventually let her get by and she walked a few metres in
At the JTFoxx reunion event 2015, we had several great talks from Damien Elston CEO of the JTFoxx empire, but one stood out to me in particular. Damien Elston’s thoughts on fear. One important aspect of business Damien felt was essential to move ahead in business is the matter of fear. I had never really thought
I just got an unexpected call, and am still reflecting back on the experience. Through years of difficult living conditions, family struggles, and racism something inside me changed and now I can never give up! Even when all seems hopeless I can’t stop looking for ways to achieve my goals, because I know that even if I
Every business I know has suffered when an ego got involved. Every single one. No exception. Either the business has gone under or the business has suffered a massive financial blow because of egos. In addition, when egos get involved, betrayals and other underhand behaviours surface. Behaviours such as a partner setting up another business
One incredible nugget that can be found in property education is to “find your property investment area”. This useful nugget is essential to be an effective investor. However over the course of my journey I’ve found some investors seem to be paralysed by their inability to find their perfect property investment area. They say things like: “I haven’t
A short rant from me this week on the use and abuse of affirmations. If you have not yet come across the psychology of affirmations, then very simply, it is any positive or negative statement that you make over and over. Here are some examples: I am useless at chores I’m very clever I’m not
The title cerebral palsy, paralysed, blind and successful reminds me of the song Pinball Wizard. The catchy line in Pinball Wizard is that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball. “Pinball” in the context of this article is personal and financial success. In many of our articles, we share formulas, steps to
One wealthy lady, Dr. Niki Shuhada had this to say about the steps she took to reach her own success. From her business coaching experience, Dr Shuhada has found that these steps are actually essential habits that one should adopt to become successful. This is a quick blog from the JTFoxx family reunion currently being held in Orlando.
Life can be monotonous. One reason I believe so firmly in helping you guys seek financial freedom is so your lives can be more VIBRANT. However for some, financial freedom isn’t what they need, what they really want is change. We’d like to buy better things, do more interesting projects, and have exciting adventures. The
In the long distant past, in a location far far away, the following conversation occurred Attendee: “I’ve taken twelve different property courses. Which company do you think is the best one?” Me: “What do you mean?” Attendee: “Well I really like the speakers at XYZ company as I think they are quite polished.” Me: “Uhhh
Before we start today, I want you to imagine of one of the following: Your big dream. A big project to accomplish. Building a large empire. Making a wave on the world. Doing anything significantly large. Do you imagine doing it yourself? I doubt it, you’re going to need a great team. You will need a great co-founder(s), you will need great business partners,
+ Ben Chai runs down the seven deadly sins that every property investor makes, and how you can avoid making them yourself. Over my two and a half decades of property investing, I’ve seen a lot of mistakes property investors including myself have made in deals. Here are seven of the most common mistakes and how
“The gift of betrayal” part two is a supplement to part 1 so don’t read further until you’ve read The Gift of Betrayal Part I. “.. We live in a world of hypocrisy, where people greet you with a smile whilst holding a knife in your back, where people hide their true intentions to “survive,” and this life
Hello busy busy readers, I don’t have much time to write today and I’m currently chasing my publisher to publish part II of the Gift of Betrayal. However I did produce the picture below. How often have you asked someone how they are and had the response “busy“? Perhaps you’ve been guilty of it yourself. Certainly I
“The gift of betrayal” seems almost like an oxymoron. Our alternative article title “betrayers, liars and cheaters are your best friends” seemed equally hard to swallow. So to start, I thought I’d share my perspective and why I wanted to write about the gift of betrayal. The gift of betrayal in poetry The Gift of Betrayal was triggered by a
Dream Gamers Many of my close friends refuse to play any board game with me. You see I love and grew up on board games – teach me any board game and I will probably be beating you after about the third game. I remember teaching some tech stuff to twelve guys from Santander. We had