His track record is impressive, no doubt. But you know what Adam Khoo is all about only when he literally jumps on to the stage. His hand mannerisms are animated and he effortlessly ropes in humour in his talk. The Singaporean evening was lazy; it was a beautiful day outside and the holiday season had just ended. But a roomful of people stirred out of their daze and instantly perked up as the vivacious 34-year-old started talking. Something told me this was going to be an interesting evening. Though we were at a seminar on insurance, what Khoosaid could bubble over to make sense in all aspects of life. “Years ago I made a choice that ‘I’ was going to be the one driving my bus,” he said. “As long as you work for someone else, your destiny is always in someone else’s hands. But remember, you design your own destiny.” My mind did a mental check to confront my editor the next time he assigned me a story I wasn’t particularly excited about.

When Khoo emphasises on being proactive, you know it’s coming from leaflets out of his own life book. This role model had not always been a straight A’s student. “When I was eight, I was kicked out of my school for misbehaviour and rejected by six other schools,” he told me casually at the end of the seminar. “My primary school examination results
were so dismal that I was rejected by all secondary schools of my choice and ended up going to a government one. But here too I was a problem child, failing in subjects and rejected overall.” Dismayed by his performance, Khoo’s parents sent him to a motivational camp, exposing him to a Neuro- Linguistic Programme where he realised why he was faltering and what needed to be done.

Starting with a plain paper on which he wrote down his goals and what he wanted to do with his life (which he still maintains as a ‘success journal’. His funda - Success is a
process of continuously moving towards the goals you have set for in your life. If you do not keep a record of how you are progressing each year, then how do you measure your
success?), Khoo went on to become a top academic achiever, one of Singapore’s youngest self-made millionaires at the age of 26 and today owns several businesses
(is the CEO of Adcom, an advertising agency, the co-founder of Event Gurus, an event management company and the CEO of Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group) with a combined turnover of over $30 million, is a best-selling author of nine books, a top performance coach and earns $936,000 a year! “And I created all this wealth starting with virtually nothing but the ideas in my head…the same raw material that you have been blessed with too,” he writes in his best-seller Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. Instantly, I envision myself divinginto a pool of gold coins à la Uncle Scrooge. But, I remind myself, it’s been a long journey for this young guy.

A journey which began with him setting up a weekend mobile disco for underage teens at the age of 15. From a debut venture that got him a cool $2,100 in one evening to giving tuitions to school kids ($200/student/month), becoming a freelance motivator ($2,000/day) and authoring his first book I Am Gifted So Are You! (all this while still at university!), Khoo went easily from one milestone to another. But what made him achieve his most significant one of becoming a millionaire at 26 were the self-taught lessons he learnt in savings and investment, making him sell all, right before the dotcom bubble burst in early 2000.