8/19/2015: Easy Money / A Good Person is Hard to Find
5:15am – 7:06am
I’m debating on which title I should use for this one. I read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in my
EPCC English class and I found some similarities between her fictional story
and mine. :) The title is kind of off but it will make
sense if you keep reading. It’s supposed
to be a catch. :p
As mentioned in my previous blogs, I feel like I have the
writer’s curse, which is, whenever I feel like writing or whenever I feel
something inspirational or I have something to write about, I have to write to
it. Well, I don’t have to. I could write it on a piece of paper for
future blogs but the passion, the energy, may die off if I delay for too
long. And if I ignore the urge or
passion to write, then I tend to forget or lack the passion of what I want to
write.
I went to my financial business’ webinar today. Every Tuesday at 10am is a webinar and it’s
supposed to be special because the master trainer, Xuan Nguyen, which I learned
a lot from, my financial mentor, will speak during that time. I came at 11am because I know from past
experience that the actual webinar starts at 11am. 10am is mostly a sharing time where they
share on video various WFG (World Financial Group) sites and they share how
they are doing. It’s nice but it’s not a
necessity. At the webinar, I reviewed my
reasons for going into the financial industry:
1) To make money for myself so I can, in sequential order,
make a living, save money, and have fun.
[Although I’m planning to just shorten it to “To make money for myself”
and I feel the clause “have fun” is kind of controversial because it is for fleshly
reasons.]
2) To help people
better manage their money. [When I
am selling is also an investment product and it is, imo, and I also have the
same policy, much better than putting your money in a bank, 401k, etc.]
3) To contribute and
build God’s Kingdom. (The ones in
bold are those I feel are my main reasons.
The manual wants us to have ten reasons)
[A portion of my proceeds and profits I get from this business will be for
God. I can serve God and His people
financially.]
4) To better myself
and to reach my full potential.
[This business is not just a business but it is a great learning and
life growing opportunity.]
5) I am my own boss, this career is independent. [No one tells me what to do, it’s on my own
time, can be part or full time]
6) To advert or reduce the coming retirement crisis in
America. [From the book, but it’s
something I realized. Many people are
not preparing for their future.]
7) To give people a
hope and a future. [I feel many
people are struggling financial or they somehow just can’t save up any
money. This product can help people save
money and save in the right place. This
is also one of my reasons I went into teaching.
I probably should have created ten reasons for becoming a teacher and
just maybe I’ll stay in teaching. :p Taken from Jeremiah 29:11]
8) To help people in this area so they can help others. [The emphasis for this reason is more on if
they decide to join the team and recruit/sale to others. The people that join has an opportunity to
help others in this area as well.]
9) To fight against the injustices in the banking, credit
card, and other industry. [Maybe I’m a
little biased but this is my economic orientation, that the rich takes
advantage of the poor. Why then would
banks offer their customers such low interest rates. Why such high interest rates on credit cards? I know the usual “economic” reasons but I
feel the root cause of it is human greed.]
10) To apply the
concepts I have learned here to evangelizing for God’s Kingdom. [I stopped at number nine and I felt I can’t
think of any other reasons. Then this
though inspired me. I can use what I
learned and my experience in a different but also similar area. I will share more on this later in today’s
blog]
So today, I felt relatively excited. I want to talk to people. Well, not quite. I kind of forced myself to want to talk to
people about this because I set quotas for myself. Quotas are not mandatory for my company but I
choose so because it helps motivate me.
It’s like of like setting a deadline to do something. Then I procrastinate which gives me
additional energy to do the task.
However, as I guessed, from my experience, evangelizing and
selling/offering a product is easy to say, hard to do or easy on paper but hard
to do in practice. My action plan for
today is to evangelize and sell my product/recruit 50/50, starting with God
first. I planned to offer them a eternal
future and then for the next person, their current future. I went to Costco, which is nearby from the
WFG office building. I don’t have the
membership so I can’t go in. I walked
around the entrance and the parking lot.
The first two I asked “Excuse me, do you have a minute?” refused to even
talk to me. In fact, it seems when I
walk towards them they act super cold.
For the third person, I saw him loading his van with the goods he
brought from Costco. I asked the same
thing and he told me yeah he has a minute.
I’m so happy he gave me a chance.
I tried to start causal by saying he brought a lot and that it is worth
going to Costco if you buy a lot. Then,
I went straight to the point, “I would like to invite you to my Ignite Movement
church,” because it’s not just a church, it’s a movement. :)
Then, I tried to share my testimony but he then appeared disinterested
midway through. My testimony is not the
typical “Before I knew God I was like this….
And after I met God, I was like this…” format. I was raised in a Christian home. Instead, my testimony is more like: I was
raised in a Christian family but I rarely experienced God intimately. There were times when I did, times of
revival. But I love worship songs and I
love singing God’s songs. Then in high
school, I left God in favor of reason and science but during my senior year, I
believed Him again thanks to Evidence for God from Science, a Christian website
which convinced me of the existence of God.
But I never really “knew” God and have an intimate relationship with him
until I joined the Army. And I joined
the Army because I was addicted to computer games, pornography, I would hide my
grades from my dad until one day he found out.
I was practically kicked out of my house and forced to join enlist in
the military. But, look at me. I am totally unprepared and the worse candidate
for the Army. I didn’t work out. I was not in the football team. I don’t have experience in life. I’m afraid to even drive or buy stuff. I just spend all day and most of the night
locked in my room playing computer games.
I was so ate up in the military it’s not even funny. So then, I had nowhere to turn to but God,
the only One I know who can help me. And
by trusting in Him, he gave me supernatural grace and strength. I would have died in the Army without God and
I failed all my PT tests except the ones that count. As you can see, my story is very complicated
and I couldn’t really retell my story because I was part nervous and part I
didn’t know what to say for my testimony because it is too complicated. I didn’t know where to start. And I’m still changing thanks to God and I
can still share how after the Army, my relationship with God slowly died. Sure there was revival but it was not until I
went to Ignite that I started to become alive again, etc etc. So because my testimony was too complicated,
I felt it didn’t make sense to him and it was probably mumbo jumbo. So I tried cutting it short by saying the key
points, that God helped me so much in the Army and I know what he is real. He told me he’ll check the church website out
and think about it. It was then when I
saw his kid and probably his wife at the driver’s seat. I paused.
I wanted to ask if we can pray but I felt it’s going to be awkward so I
just thanked him for listening to me and his time and went off. One spoken to.
For me, as soon as I have a “success,” which is not really a
success in a traditional sense. I define
“success” when I was walking around as people who is willing to just listen to
me. Getting people to just listen in the
cold market is difficult overall. I
learned today that, in the cold market, 1) People don’t want to talk to you, 2)
It doesn’t matter if you think you have something that is good for them. Most, if not all of the people, prefer
themselves to activate the process, not vice versa, like the classic fish hook
vs fish net approach where one, they come to you because of your “bait” or two,
you come to them, the “net” approach. I
can emphasize with them because if some random dude would to approach me, nine
times out of ten, in the past, I would say “no thank you.” If people don’t trust you, as it so happens
with strangers, which most people don’t even give them a chance, there is no
evangelizing or business.
I have an idea to counter this. I can make flyers. By making flyers, people don’t have to see me
and I can reach a lot of people at one time.
And, I feel people spend more time looking at a flyer (that I made) than
if they spend talking to me.
I have not been very active in my financial business partly
because I am afraid of recruiting people.
For one, I don’t really have a “warm” market. A warm market is people who are close to
you. I’m by myself here; My family are
not with me. And the close friends that
I do have, I want to wait until I’m really prepared. I find in life that I don’t have unlimited
chances, in fact, many people just give you one shot at something. I want to “practice” first in the cold
market. As a side note on friends, I
find making friends is very difficult in this world. I can’t just walk up to someone can say, “I would
like to be your friend.” No, friendships
develop through relationships, though a medium.
If I don’t pay for college to go to school, if I don’t go to church,
then how can I make friends? Friendships
come through interacting with people and sometimes, an excuse to go to college
or to pay to go to an event would be to make friends. How else will people have a shared need or
interact? I could walk around the street
giving people free stuff but that probably won’t make any friends. I could volunteer but I would rather work
because I get paid. Ok, so moving
on. Sorry, just many times, life is not
fair. The second reason why I don’t want
to recruit is because I don’t’ want to set people up for failure. Selling an idea to people, which
unfortunately, since you thought of it first, is very difficult. “You are not getting what I mean” someone
recently told me, “It’s not being social, you have to be super social.” I don’t want
people to join thinking it’s so wonderful only to have them become
disillusioned. Although if they seem
passionate even though they understand the difficulty, then it’s worth a try. And, I don’t want to hurt my existing
relationships in my “warm” and “lukewarm markets.” So, I am going to continue this “business”
part-time. I will continue to learn
more. Many of the things they teach me
can be used in evangelism and in my life overall. The concepts are multi-purpose. And this is a good life experience.
For this business, in a way, I know what to do, but I don’t
know how to do it. Xuan Nguyen said emotions bring people in but
logic maintains the commitment. He said:
When you sell to people, sell them the responsibility of
taking care of their family and the possibly of building wealth for their
family’s future. At the same time, back
it up with facts, figures, and track records.
Otherwise, they may make a decision to buy but will cancel when they
think it over!
This is kind of like the approach I am taught to take with
evangelism. We have to tell with
passion, genuinely, of what God can do for their lives but we back it up with
logic, i.e. our testimony and, if possible, supernatural revelation about that
person from God. The latter is something
I am struggling in using. I don’t want
to say something only to find out that the other person says it’s false. When I told this to my spiritual mentor, she
told me sometimes, the people we evangelize deny it or are lying because it is
true. I hope that is the case. She also told me that’s why we say it in the
form of a question like “Is your family struggling financially?”
I write my blogs, the more lengthy ones, by creating an
outline first so I won’t forget any thoughts but something it causes my writing
to be too mechanical and I may repeat myself.
Sorry about that.
But to end this early morning blog, and I need to sleep
because I’m helping someone organize their classroom, actually I want to write
about that first. When people ask for
help, I see it as an opportunity. I win
and they win. I get to help people,
interact with others, and learn about life while they get their tasks
done. I was thinking, and perhaps I read
somewhere, that if I don’t know my purpose or if I can’t or it’s too late to
achieve my purpose, then the next best thing is to help someone accomplish
theirs. The worse is to be selfish and
live only for pleasure. I have talent in
computers but I always decided and resisted going into that field. I tell myself that the main reason why I went
into computers and technology is due to games.
While that is true, it can also be used for good. I probably should have majored in computer science
or information technology instead of social work. I feel it’s too late for me to go back
now. I need to find a part-time or
full-time job in addition to my part-time financial job to make a living and to
save money for the future. I can still
help with the media team and with technology-related issues but I won’t be able
to reach my full potential. The pastor
says when we are in perplexities, where there is no way out, we seek God. I was in perplexities when I joined the Army
and while in it and that’s the reason why I seek God. And now, I feel I’m in a perplexity again,
with my future and indecision. But, the
only way out, the only sure and true and best way out is to have a relationship
with God. But when times are good, I
need to seek God as well. That is a
perplexity in the spirit. :)
