On 11 September 2002, I posted the following article in my organization's private website. I never let go of this vision through the difficult years when the burden was heavy, the journey was lonely, and the result, nothing to shout about.
Now in conjunction with Singapore's 46th National Day, celebrated with great fanfare and fireworks just a few days ago, and given the great success and inspiring results we've been able to produce in the past 2 years, I feel it is time to roll out what I called ..
A Million Dollar Vision: An opportunity not to be missed.
Please read on.
I envision Singapore emerging as the Network Marketing capital of the world. I foresee a vibrant, happy, positively-charged city in which an unbelievable 40% of the 4m population is actively or passively involved in Network Marketing.
The active network marketers, celebrated on a global platform, do a global business connecting every day with people within the immediate region, Southeast Asia, and well beyond.
Their activities touch millions of lives all over the world, certainly in all the active network marketing regions of the world – Asean, China, Japan, Korea, USA, Latin America, Europe.
This vision is founded on certain conditions currently in place and trends that are at work today.
1. Singapore is the most globally connected city of the world. That makes it the best place in the world to build and run a global business.
2. Singapore is losing its edge in many traditional industries in the light of sustained competition from low-cost manufacturing giants such as China and others. Hence, a government-sponsored drive into biotechnology or life sciences.
3. However, the climb up the technology ladder involves ever-smaller job creation. People displaced by unprecedented shake-out in many industries - from manufacturing to finance and other services – are forced to look for new ways to make a living and ensure their economic well-being. For many, going into business for themselves has become a matter of necessity rather than a matter of choice.
4. Network Marketing, totally banned until the year 2000, provides a compelling option to middle-class risk-averse Singapore, unused to the ways and risks of traditional businesses. For a people unprepared to risk their personal capital, lacking in entrepreneurial experience but abundantly blessed with capacity and desire to learn, the emergence of Network Marketing is but a timely Godsent. It provides more than a welcome relief to thousands of people at a time when they feel deeply insecure about their economic wellbeing.
5. Serious Network Marketers cannot help looking beyond the domestic market, driven out by the smallness of Singapore and attracted by the bigness of the market potential regionally and beyond. Their international endeavors will be facilitated by the connectedness of Singapore and encouraged by the ease of building a global network of relationships by leveraging on unrivalled socio-cultural, linguistic, physical and technological connections.
Socio-cultural connections
Singapore has a globally-connected population of 4m. It includes expatriates and foreigners who have “permanently resided” in the island state but still maintain family and friendly links with people from various parts of the world. Even the core group of Singaporeans have active family and social contacts in various countries where they or their forebears come from – Malaysia, Indonesia, China, India, USA, Europe. In addition, the transient foreign worker population includes hundreds of thousands from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and China, even the US and Europe. Many of these groups - such as the 500,000 Chinese nationals said to be working in Singapore - have a very visible or audible presence in Singapore’s social landscape. Look out or listen out for them not just along Orchard Road or Shenton Way but also in the HDB heartland.
Linguistic connections
If you can’t speak Pudonghua, you can find thousands who do in Singapore. Likewise with Malay, Indonesian, Thai, Tagalog, Indian, Japanese, Korean, even Russian, French and Dutch. If you want to communicate with someone in Thai, find a Thai in Singapore who speaks in English with you and speaks in Thai with his compatriot. Likewise, with the others.
Physical connections
Singapore has one of the busiest airports and seaports in the world. Global competition and a marketplace open to all major players in the world will keep prices down and send them even lower over time. Travel is already easy and cheap, and it will become easier and cheaper; so will movement of goods. This is the positive spin-off missing from the generally negative press coverage of Port of Singapore recently losing some high-profile customers to Johor’s new port. The positive spin-off, however, is relevant mainly to those who travel frequently and those who have a vested interest in the cost-effective movement of goods.
Technological connections
Singapore has the highest mobile phone penetration rate in the world – a remarkable feat after only 5 years of breaking up Singapore Telecommunications’ monopoly.
In March 1997, as M1 was rolling out its competing services, SingTel had achieved a penetration rate of only 14%, based on 430,000 subscribers on a narrowly-defined population base of 3.1m Singapore residents. In August 2002, the mobile penetration rate had climbed to a previously unimaginable 75% - or 3.1m subscribers, on a more broadly defined population base of 4.1m. Prior to 1997, the conventional wisdom of how high mobile phone penetration rate can be was 50%, or a level below that. The 50% was the mobile phone penetration rate in Scandinavia.
Singapore’s Internet connectivity is also possibly one of the highest in the world, and its cosmopolitan population, exposed to the latest in technological gimmickry, one of the most Internet-savvy in the world. Singapore epitomizes a world where business can be done “at the speed of thought”!
Interpretations and Postulations
Here’s one interesting interpretation of the phenomenal increase in mobile phone penetration: Great ideas, products and services spread like wildfire in Singapore’s compact marketplace, and can far exceed conventional wisdom of what’s achievable or thinkable.
Now, imagine combining the opportunity of network marketing on a global scale with the necessitating, facilitating and encouraging (or push and pull) factors that are uniquely Singapore’s. What do you think will happen in 10-20 years?
Based on this convergence, I believe Singapore will, within this generation i.e. in 10-20 years, emerge as the Network Marketing capital of the world, with a currently-unthinkable audacious-sounding 40% of the population involved, providing a rich pool from which many inspiring Global Network Marketing Leaders will appear.
Singapore is the right place and now is the right time to build a global business that can produce million dollar cheques, and I am thinking per month and in US$! Next, all you need is the right vehicle with the right products – not any company and any product.
Are you going to pass up this opportunity of a lifetime and continue to gripe about life being hard in resource-poor Singapore? Or are you going to take advantage of Singapore’s unique global advantage and turn its connectedness into a currently-unimaginable personal fortune?
I have made my choice, and will continue to steadfastly build my global pipeline to realize what some may call my global pipedream.
How about you? The choice is yours, has always been.
Lim Eng Hai
11 September 2002
– a day to celebrate humanity
