Tariq Saleim's Blog

As long as you sell hope, you will always be in business. When you sell a lipstick, you are not selling something that gives color to women's lips. You are selling the hope of looking prettier, sexier, better than before. When you sell a luxury watch for thousands of dollars, you are not selling a time telling device. You are selling status, class, confidence, a hope of being different. Every successful business sells hope and you must do so to be successful.

“Avoid leveraging yourself to the hilt. Leverage is just a tool; it multiplies the effect of movements in market prices. When prices move up, it multiplies that move several times in your favor for assets that you own. When prices move down, it multiplies that negative movement against you by several times. On any given day, it can make or break you.”

"Focus on becoming rich and not just looking rich. These are two very different concepts, involving two different approaches to life and resulting in widely differing finishes. The poor and working class usually exhaust their scarce resources in trying to showcase a certain level of affluence that they do not really have. Whereas what is really needed is they apply the bulk of their meager resources to becoming truly rich. This difference in one’s consumption and investment pattern determines who will end up striving to look rich and who will end up actually rich. If you have savings of one hundred thousand dollars and you spend it all on a fancy sports car, you may fool some people into believing that you are rich, but in reality you are poorer than you were before you made this purchase. You now have an asset that is depreciating and will be worth little in five to seven years."

“The rich, very skilfully build multiple income streams over a period of time. When one income stream starts generating an excess over their immediate needs, they transfer this excess to assets, investments, and businesses that will start generating new income streams over time. Strikingly dissimilar to this, poor and working-class people increase their expenses to match their incremental income and thereby never generate the excess that could be used for setting up multiple income streams.”

“Rich people know their Unique Selling Proposition (“USP”) and they promote it relentlessly. If you want to get rich too, you need to create your USP. It does not matter how long it takes or how difficult it is, this is something you have to do. Many professional, employees and businesses fail to develop and update their USP. Somewhere along the way complacency seeps in. People start believing that their education, knowledge, and skill sets will stay in demand forever. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.”

“The rich understand this simple yet not so commonly known concept very well. Their love of material success is supported by a huge appetite for taking risks, and this is how they make it big. Of course, for one such person that makes it big, there are several who are washed away because risk by its very nature is uncertain. Sometimes it delivers, at times it does not, and that is why it is called risk."

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'2100 AD: A Sly Pretense' has been published and is now available on Amazon, Kindle and NoiseTrade.

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Tariq

Hoping to receive some honest reviews, I am giving away 50 copies of my third book '2100 AD: A Sly Pretense' on www.librarything.com. The promotion starts on 01 Sep 15 and lasts for two weeks. Winners will be given a PDF / EPUB copy of the book. Please register your interest on www.librarything.com.

This book is rated 18+ for violence, sexual references and language.

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Tariq

This morning, when I woke up for prayers, I felt I had a stiff back. After I had finished praying, I did my regular stretching / yoga exercises and struggled because of my stiff back. Almost immediately, I felt bad for myself. I was sitting down, with my legs extended in front of me and trying to touch my feet. I noticed about two inches of distance between my fingers and toes. Despite my best efforts and multiple tries, I could not touch my toes. I let go and cursed ageing.

I regretted my ingratitude soon thereafter and apologised to God and myself. The incident has promoted me to write this brief note and I am hoping some of you will be able to relate to this.

When we are growing up we take a lot of things for granted - health, ability to take risks, flexibility (physical and mental), family, etcetera. We believe all of this comes naturally as a matter of right and we must have done something to deserve it. We are not capable of pausing and reflecting – why me? We hardly look at our poor relatives who are less privileged. We think they must have done something wrong to deserve this life – at least this is what I thought.

Somewhere in our twenties to thirties we mature physically. We realise it is not possible to outdo our previous records. A physically active person starts noticing his / her peak or rather decline by mid thirties. One can no longer run as long or fast as he / she did previously. You need longer intervals to recover between weight training sessions. You struggle to beat your previous best.

This is normally the first reminder that Mother Nature or God, whatever you believe in, has stopped giving and is in a mood of taking things back – things that we had taken for granted so far. Health is normally the first thing to remind us that times have changed.

It is important to clarify that I am talking about average people and not professional athletes who may be able to stretch their peak well into their forties, in some cases.

Somewhere in our forties to fifties we stop growing financially as well. There are several reasons for it. Our depleted health inhibits our ability to work as hard as we did in our twenties and thirties, ability to take risks is comprised, skill set becomes redundant, we fail to reinvent ourselves, etcetera. By the time, we are in our fifties; most of us have seen our peak and are into the descent stages of our health and financial affairs.

Around this is time the third and the most significant change starts to happen – we stop growing mentally as well. We talk about our glory past, how world is so different and bad now, how old times were better, etcetera. This is the most significant of our losses – ability to grow mentally. In a span of three to four decades a young child who was once full of promise and hope becomes a complaining and self declared redundant part of the society.

I experienced a bit of this when I could not touch my feet this morning. That two inches of space between my fingers and toes prompted thankless emotions that were not warranted at all. The reality of life is that we start complaining about blessings when these are taken away from us. But, we hardly show gratitude and care when we had these. In our glory past we had hardly stopped and shown any concern for people who had less than us. Now suddenly, we feel sorry for our lesser self. What about those who never had anything we had in our past? Did we ever feel sorry for them?

We miss parents when they are gone, although when they were alive we never spend time with them. We want to spend time with children when they are busy with their own lives, but when they were young we were busy with our lives. We want to be healthy when we feel the pain associated with being unhealthy, but when it was time to nurture health we were busy drinking, smoking, and eating unhealthy. We value the good in our life only when it disappears. We feel someone’s pain only when the same pain is inflicted upon us.

I started doing yoga in my teens and in a span of about three decades, I have managed to lose lost about two inches of space between by toes and fingers. With a bit of practice and technique, I think I can cover the gap. Even if I am not able to, it is only two inches – not much to lose in three decades. However, instead of being thankful for my good health at this age, I was focused on the two inches I could not cover.

I regret this attitude and promise to check my thoughts as they wander into negative territory. You should do the same.

I am thankful to God for all that I can still cover.

25 Aug 15
SingaporeTariq Saleim