Prosperous Bum’s Internet Marketing Blog

What’s it with this guy Joel Christopher? He’s known as the Master List Builder, he made his fortune through internet marketing, he networks with people of significant influence, has joint ventures with numerous “Big” names in the business, personal development, internet marketing industry (to name a few). And yet, there is something about this man that is beyond comprehension. What makes him tick? Why does he, in spite of all the wealth, fame and fortune that he’s accumulated, decide to spend time nurturing people to become successful entrepreneurs? Knowing that many of these students are “energy vampires”, simply waiting to plug in their fangs and suck his energy (and resources) dry. The ultimate question I’m trying to figure out here is… What’s it about this man that makes people resonate toward him?

When he arrived in Singapore, he appeared wearing Bermudas and T-Shirt. A warm welcome, a quick hug and we were off to his hotel to help him get settled into Singapore and prepared for our evening networking session. Details of the networking session you can get from Martin, Sam and Jag. The objective of my post is to share with you the things that others don’t get to know about Joel.

Through the journey, we chat about “stuff”, business and social, had a few gossips and a few good laughs. Later into the journey, I realized something strange about the man. He doesn’t flaunt his wealth, did not wear any ‘branded’ goods, doesn’t wear jewelry, doesn’t wear a watch and Oh My! Doesn’t carry his cell phone??? Not a Prima Donna kind of speaker? He flies economy class but when he’s with his family, he flies first class because he wants to give them the best? At this stage, the busy / kiasu Singaporean in me starts to wonder, is this how a successful business person carries himself? Cos the interpretation I have of successful people look like Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey. So what then is this kind of successful person? Is it the kind that is reflected in “The Millionaire Next Door”? Let’s find out.

As a mentor and a teacher, he’s serious, precise and professional. He sticks to his word and delivers what he promises. In fact, he over-delivers and maintains an ‘open door’ policy where students are free to ask him questions whenever they need to. Many participants of his Funshop in Singapore gave testimony to how approachable he was and how they were “blown away” by the rich content that he provided. No hype, just real internet business building instructions in a “tell all” fashion. Some of these testimonial can be found on youtube.com under the user id “tanliangseng”.
Why doesn’t he wear a watch?

Interestingly, I found out that he didn’t wear a watch because the watch was a symbol of a bondage to time pressures. The wristwatch, although a great tool, has subconsciously made us slaves to time pressures and deadlines. Through the week, I realized that I was more uptight about time than he was, period. However, he still delivered what he wanted to deliver.

Another story about this time thingy is when we were late by 15 minutes to catch our bus back from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Singapore. We were caught up in traffic and honestly, there really wasn’t anything we could do if the bus decided to leave without us. Along the way to the bus station, Joel was still laughing and chatting, while I got a tension headache from worrying about being late. In the end, we got there 10 minutes later but the bus was still there. In fact, there were 3 other passengers who were later than us. Did I worry in vain?

Since then, we have termed the wristwatch, “The Handcuff of Chronos”. You see my friend, I tried taking my watch off for 3 days as an experiment and guess what? I felt a lot lighter and liberated. Well I was late for about 10 to 15mins for appointments but Boy! Was I stress free! Maybe you should try it someday. Since then, I’ve stopped wearing my watch but appointments still get met and life still carries on… a little stress free of course.

Sharpening the Mind

Another thing I would like to share about Joel is that his mind has been fine tuned to stay focused in the moment. There is a time for business and a time for pleasure. On the way up from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, we had a mastermind meeting and it had to be cut short because we had arrived in KL. We agreed to continue the meeting on our journey back. During our stay in KL, it was all fun and no talk about business and we had a ball of a time again, eating Lor Mee, Bak Kut Teh, Fried Wantons etc… etc… We could really eat! We even visited the Petronas Twin Towers and went to Genting Highlands.

On our journey back, I was expecting a mastermind meeting but Joel suggested that we took a nap first before our meeting. We agreed and then rested… Here’s the interesting part. It was one moment of reminiscing about the enjoyment in KL, next moment of “nap suggestion” and in 10 seconds… He was going… going… GONE to Slumberland! Shawn and myself were like thinking… what’s this…. So Fast? And not just that, he slept like a baby! Peaceful and Deep sleep! Shawn and I with our very active minds that usually suffer from insomnia couldn’t believe what we were seeing. This guy could switch between business and social mode in an instant. When he woke up and we finally continued with our mastermind meeting, it was focused and decisive, with concrete action plans that gave clarity and direction.

Conclusion

There is really something about Joel Christopher. There is a down-to-earth attitude with a certain kind of “peace of mind” that he has. There is also a kind of carefree-ness about him, able to live in the moment and enjoy life to its fullest. He’s free from the bondage of money, free from the bondage of materialism, free from the bondage of a time pressures and sleeps like a worry-free baby and I bet he knows the formula of how one can build oneself to achieve that kind of carefree lifestyle.

Over and above the formula, I know that he cares enough to help willing souls reach to their desired goals in life. Whatever it is about him, I’m sure glad he’s my mentor, guiding and nurturing me to achieve my heart’s desires and realize my true potential and destiny, becoming a person of value. He is truly one humble, nurturing Millionaire Next Door.

Would you like to get to know him too? He’s coming to Singapore again on 27th November 2007 for another networking session. Let me know if you’d like to join us. Enter your name and email on the top right corner of this page and I’ll send you updates about the networking session.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Events, Inspiration, Internet Marketing, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.