Ask Melvin Ng

It all started with a decision…the decision to purchase Mike Filsaime’s I5 Gold Coaching Program. When we found out that the package came with tickets to the World Internet Main Event (WIME), we somehow decided to do something about it and a vision was created. When a vision is put into motion, results follows. And that’s what happened when we launched out very first firesale, SendUsTo.US

There  we are, the 3 Musketeers at the WIME wearing a t-shirt with our firesale domain printed on it. Are we gurus in the making? I don’t consider myself so. I think the term’s overrated anyway. We’re just like you, ordinary people who dare to dream, and we took action.

We were pretty ‘famous’ there because people recognized the firesale domain, and came up to us to greet us. And a few of them even helped fund our trip by purchasing the package. I sincerely thank all of you who made it possible, our dear customers, awesome affiliates, and my 2 other wonderful partners.

And here’s Harris Fellman, our Top Affiliate for our firesale!

And not forgetting the wonderful Mulac family! Greg and Stephanie, with their 2 wonderful daughters, Marina and Morgan. Check out their site at 90 Percent Attitude

Who could resist the 2 cute beauties, and I was going to declare Morgan as my own…NOT! I wish I could

Here we are interviewing Marina and Stephanie on their Mommy’s Birthday Firesale Now, that’s what I call starting ‘em young!

Here’s Kristi Sayles from Talk With Experts. She was giving us a hard time interrogating us on our firesale. Nah, she’s an awesome person who manage to make us feel so at ease during the interview. In fact, I knew her son, Jason Mangrum before I knew her, so it was filled with some sort of familiarity when we first met.

Mike Ambrosio from aka Mr OverDeliver. You can sense Mike’s warmth and sincerity from a mile. I mean, this guy has no airs at all despite his reputation of a marketing guru. On the day after the seminar, we manage to meet up with him and just chat about anything and everything except IM. We were just chilling out and having a great time.

We couldn’t help hijacking John Reese himself for a photo shoot Oh man, he looks so cool and relaxed despite just launching Blog Rush. There were so many people trying to get a piece of him…and were we lucky to snatch a photo.

Here’s Jeff Wellman from Lay Off Your Boss. No, he’s NOT Keith Wellman’s father. Rather, Keith Wellman’s his son. Confused? Nevermind. It was a joke he shared because he was soooooo tired of being known as Keith’s dad. So, the next time you meet Jeff, tell him "Hey Jeff, Keith’s your son, right?"

Very funny and friendly guy and definitely very approachable.

The Adwords guy, Simon Leung. He was very soft spoken and friendly. In fact, he was one of the speakers whom I would have bought from had he been from Malaysia, or somewhere nearer especially since he’s specifically focussing on Adwords, which I’m involved in already.

Dr Claude Windenberger  is a specialist in the area of self improvement and mind matters. It was certainly enlightening to meet him and learn about his area of specialty.

One for the album with Bob Jenkins.

The 3 of us with Michael Cheney from Adsense Videos

With Odinn Sorensen from Denmark. I can still remember when I first started out in my online business, one of the first person I networked with was from Denmark too, so meeting Odinn had a sense of deja vu for me.

Tom Hua, one of the founders of the World Internet Summit. He was one of the early adopters of viral marketing back in the days when the term viral marketing was not the buzz word. He’s certainly a man of vision!

Along the way in WIME, I manage to meet quite a few other fellow marketers but didn’t manage to have a photo taken with them. That doesn’t mean that I don’t remember them

Yes, there was Alex Jeffreys from Easy Profit Auctions, Dave Russ (who’s a partner with Scott Scales) at Light Mind Software, Toki Tover of Affiliate List Magic, Tim Brocklehurst of My Viral Spiral, Sarah Villeneuve from Coastal Contacts and a few others. If we have crossed path, and I omitted, my apologies. Do send me an email to keep in touch. Or if you have any photos that I can publish, do let me know as well.

And finally, one for the record, the 3 Malaysian Musketeers (Gobala Krishnan and Vince Tan). Work on your dreams and they will come true.

I’m in San Francisco now and will be flying off to Taiwan in a few hours time. I’ve had an awesome time in SF and do expect some photos soon on my trip.

But before that…you need to read this…

If there’s anyone who walks the talk, Michael Green is one of them.

When I first got to know him a couple of years ago, I already knew that he was someone whom I should listen to. And that’s exactly what I did. The knowledge that I learnt from him has been priceless. Have to credit him for part of my success…

So when he told me about his 20/20 challenge, I have every confidence that he will be able to pull it off, and it’s one heck of an offer.

I mean, 20K in 20 days? How many gurus would have the guts to throw in such a challenge. Check it out now and you’ll know what I mean…
20/20 Challenge

I can honestly say this, I have bought some of his products and they are definitely top notch.

If you’re up to this challenge, then you should seriously consider it.
20/20 Challenge

It was the first day and expectations were high. But then, we suffered from pretty bad jet lag still and haven’t been able to fully tune our body clock to it yet. Anyway, we manage to meet some pretty awesome people.

Here’s Matt from Switzerland, who’s a professional tennis player. He’s one friendly guy and we immediately hit it off!

Vince Tan and I were hanging around the bar area during the networking session when we saw this mohawk guy coming at us and we were thinking who the heck….

And he introduced himself as Jason James. What???!!!

And we were looking for him all these while but that was the last person we expected him to be…LOL. Yeah, he’s cool. Here’s Jason James, me, Daniel Kelly and Jack Sinclair.

Oh yeah baby…that’s the 3 Malaysian Musketeers with Harris Fellman, the man behind the launch of SiteStealer.

Oh ain’t she cute!!!! That’s Marina Mulac of the Greg and Stephanie Mulac family. She’s only 6 years old but she’s definitely not acting her age. She just launched a firesale together with her sister Morgan, who’s 4 so that they could raise the funds to buy their mummy a present!

Check out their firesale here!

Ah…our I5 Gold mentors, Mike Filsaime and Tom Beal. Without them, we wouldn’t be here in San Francisco. Many thanks to your guys for giving us the guidance and vision to forge ahead.

That’s the sweet and attractive Michelle who’s part of the Mike Filsaime’s team.

There you go with the 2 Adwords specialists, Nikhil Parekh and Mike Rhodes. They know their stuff!

There’s Al Atienza, or better known as Big Al. He’s one warm and friendly guy.

Robert Puddy on call here. The mind behind Launch Formula Marketing and a long time respected fellow warrior.

The genius behind The Affiliate Community, Steve Renner!

I’ll definitely be posting more stuff for Day 2. It’s just getting better as on Day 2, we had 2 interviews, one was us being interviewed, and another one was us interviewing someone else.

Look out for my next post!

Hmm…Actually we didn’t intend to check in on September 11, but somehow we screwed up amd got the arrival date mixed up. But it was too late to change it when we realised it.

So we couldn’t check in to the Marriott yet and had to settle for a hotel which a booked through the Internet and mid you it’s not cheap either because it costs us slightly over $100 inclusive of tax, and with that amount in RM, you could get a darn nice room in KL. But here’s what we got instead…

And our crappedup room…

We all agreed it was one of the worst crapped up room we’ve ever stayed. Luckily it was only for one night. After a short rest, it was time to grab a bite and roam the streets…and off we went in to this diner which had the sort of retro classic feel to it.

While waiting for our food…we were starving!

And after dinner we went for a stroll sorveying the area for a shopping spree the next day…

Street musicians entertaining us, and oh boy, they are good with their jazzy music. They even had a ‘marketing manager’ selling the CDs.

And now for the showdown…

After getting all tired, and cold (the weather is considered pretty cold for us and to add to the strong wind, it took some getting use to), we decided to head back and was checking out the map when someone approached us and tried to sell us a map and pointed us to the right direction…and guess what, we bought it. And guess what, the map was free and we paid $4 for it!

Lessons learnt…

- identify targetted and desperate buyers (we were definitely targetted and desperate.)
- provide great info (he provided us with some advice)

- use some emotional triggers (he told us there were some shootings just where we were heading, not sure if it’s true or not)

- and ask for the sale (if you don’t ask, you ain’t gonna get it)

So, it doesn’t matter if it’s free info or not, but if you find the right buyers, and offer to them the convenience, people will pay for it!

Our spirits were high when we boarded the flight for the first leg of the journey to Taiwan.

When we touched down in Taiwan for the transit…

Start of our nightmare as we prepared for the second leg of the flight which will be around 12 hours. To add to the misery, there was no in-flight entertainment and air turbulance was pretty bad. In fact, I barely managed 2 hours of sleep on the plane and suffered throughout. Really bad experience.

At last…things look brighter now as the San Francisco skyline looms nearer and I can breath a sign of relief! Phew!

Wooooo Hoooo….San Fran here we come!