FreeYourGenius.com (hereinafter referred to as FYG) was first conceived in 2007 due to a gap in my head when I was delving into internet marketing full time, running an online personal development information business, then known as UltimateSecretsofSuccess.com (USoS – yes, I love abbreviations).
Wait a minute… Gap in my head?!
No, not a literal gap. I meant a mental gap. A feeling that something was missing.
I observed (and I still do, now) that internet marketers, affiliate marketers and other people who generally try to make money online lack something that is essential to their success – self motivation and personal development.
I find that most internet marketing gurus, bloggers and writers focus more on their money-making programs, courses, software and services and less on the “inner game” aspects of it.
Everything comes with an “inner game” – i.e. the motivations, mental processes and cognitive and emotive skill sets – that contribute to the effectiveness of what you do.
So I wanted to start FreeYourGenius.com because I want to fill this gap and link the 2 of my favourite passions together – internet marketing and personal development.
A Bit About Me & My History With Trying To Make Money Online
Obviously a cartoon of me - that's supposed to be a cup of honey tea (my favourite coffee alternative brain booster)
My full name is Mohamad Latiff Bin Rahim. You can call me Latiff. I’m a Muslim, so my name consists of 2 parts – my own name (“Mohamad Latiff”) and that of my father (“Bin Rahim” – literally meaning “Son of Rahim”).
But why just Latiff?
Because there are probably a billion other Mohamad’s in the world, and one peculiarity about Malay Muslims is that about 90% of them love to prefix their sons’ names with a “Muhammad” / “Mohammed” / “Mohamad” variation thereof – e.g. Muhammad Ali, Mohammed John, Mohamad Latiff (hey, that’s me!).
If you happen to try and call a particular Malay Muslim male among a group of a hundred Malay Muslim males, statistically speaking about 80% of them would have “Mohamad” in their names. So if you call out, “Hey, Mohammed!” a good majority of them will turn their heads to look at you.
So Latiff would suffice to singularly distinguish myself.
I was born in 1983 (so calculate my age accordingly if that’s important to you) in Singapore, raised in Singapore and been staying in Singapore for all my life so far.
I got married at the age of 27 to a beautiful Thai Muslim woman who is the love of my life and the life partner of my dreams. As of this writing in October 2011, I have yet to reach the next stage in my life of being a Father (yet).
I think it’d be awesomely cool to be a Father, but just not yet.
"I Am Your Father"
Anyway…
I was first introduced to the idea of making money online in 1997 when I was just 14 years old, through one of those newsgroup (how many of you know what a newsgroup is?) spam messages that says you can make $50,000 in 5 days if you pay a list of 5 people 5 bucks each and then pass the same message to others in the newsgroup after placing your name in the same list.
Any guesses for how much money I made from that scheme?
US$5.00
I’m a Singaporean, and at that time, the USD / SGD exchange rate is around 1.70 Singapore dollars to 1 US dollar. I think I spent that money on a single ticket to watch The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition.
Then a few things got in the way of my ultimate destiny – school, acne, trying to get a girlfriend, teen angst, rebellion against authority, et cetera…
Then a year later in 1998 I got involved in one of the earliest Pay Per Click (PPC) affiliate programs on the Internet preceding even Overture and AdSense.
I made a whopping total of US$25.00. Hahah…
But that incident cost me a friendship. It strained my relationship with a childhood friend because I over-exaggerated the earnings I made from it. We were supposed to do the project together and split the profits and we were both very invested (in time and energy) into it. Since we agreed to split the profits in half, and half of $25 is not too much, I blew up the figure to $250 and paid $125 of my own savings to pay him his “profit share”.
That, coupled with my poor grades in Secondary 3 (high school) that required me to repeat a year in school, was when I took a break from trying to make money online.
My Dad forced me to sell my PC. We were having some financial problems. The PC that my Dad bought for $1,500 SGD, we sold for less than $500 – the power of technological obsolescence at work.
Perhaps it was a good thing. A year away from that addictive thing and the Internet forced me to focus on building my self. I returned to an old passion of mine which was reading, I hit the libraries, I started writing. English, my most boring subject just a year ago, became my favourite subject in school and I even wrote essays beyond what my English teacher asked us to do for homework.
That was when I discovered my destiny and my life passion – writing. I can write. I am no Ernest Hemingway nor Shakespeare, but I have a lot of ideas in my head that just streamed and sometimes gushed out as words on paper (or on the screen). Heck, my weakness is that I seem more charismatic and articulate in writing than I really am as a real person in speech (which causes people to think that I am a Quiet Thinker / Silent Killer – actually I am a Genius Introvert Creator Mechanic – but that’s another topic for another day).
I read books in various fields which people (at that time – pre Google and Wikipedia) might deem ‘too mature’ for a 16 year old – quantum physics, cosmology, theology, history of religion,
About
Why I Wanted To Start FreeYourGenius.com
FreeYourGenius.com (hereinafter referred to as FYG) was first conceived in 2007 due to a gap in my head when I was delving into internet marketing full time, running an online personal development information business, then known as UltimateSecretsofSuccess.com (USoS – yes, I love abbreviations).
Wait a minute… Gap in my head?!
No, not a literal gap. I meant a mental gap. A feeling that something was missing.
I observed (and I still do, now) that internet marketers, affiliate marketers and other people who generally try to make money online lack something that is essential to their success – self motivation and personal development.
I find that most internet marketing gurus, bloggers and writers focus more on their money-making programs, courses, software and services and less on the “inner game” aspects of it.
Everything comes with an “inner game” – i.e. the motivations, mental processes and cognitive and emotive skill sets – that contribute to the effectiveness of what you do.
So I wanted to start FreeYourGenius.com because I want to fill this gap and link the 2 of my favourite passions together – internet marketing and personal development.
A Bit About Me & My History With Trying To Make Money Online
Obviously a cartoon of me - that's supposed to be a cup of honey tea (my favourite coffee alternative brain booster)
My full name is Mohamad Latiff Bin Rahim. You can call me Latiff. I’m a Muslim, so my name consists of 2 parts – my own name (“Mohamad Latiff”) and that of my father (“Bin Rahim” – literally meaning “Son of Rahim”).
But why just Latiff?
Because there are probably a billion other Mohamad’s in the world, and one peculiarity about Malay Muslims is that about 90% of them love to prefix their sons’ names with a “Muhammad” / “Mohammed” / “Mohamad” variation thereof – e.g. Muhammad Ali, Mohammed John, Mohamad Latiff (hey, that’s me!).
If you happen to try and call a particular Malay Muslim male among a group of a hundred Malay Muslim males, statistically speaking about 80% of them would have “Mohamad” in their names. So if you call out, “Hey, Mohammed!” a good majority of them will turn their heads to look at you.
So Latiff would suffice to singularly distinguish myself.
I was born in 1983 (so calculate my age accordingly if that’s important to you) in Singapore, raised in Singapore and been staying in Singapore for all my life so far.
I got married at the age of 27 to a beautiful Thai Muslim woman who is the love of my life and the life partner of my dreams. As of this writing in October 2011, I have yet to reach the next stage in my life of being a Father (yet).
I think it’d be awesomely cool to be a Father, but just not yet.
"I Am Your Father"
Anyway…
I was first introduced to the idea of making money online in 1997 when I was just 14 years old, through one of those newsgroup (how many of you know what a newsgroup is?) spam messages that says you can make $50,000 in 5 days if you pay a list of 5 people 5 bucks each and then pass the same message to others in the newsgroup after placing your name in the same list.
Any guesses for how much money I made from that scheme?
US$5.00
I’m a Singaporean, and at that time, the USD / SGD exchange rate is around 1.70 Singapore dollars to 1 US dollar. I think I spent that money on a single ticket to watch The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition.
Then a few things got in the way of my ultimate destiny – school, acne, trying to get a girlfriend, teen angst, rebellion against authority, et cetera…
Then a year later in 1998 I got involved in one of the earliest Pay Per Click (PPC) affiliate programs on the Internet preceding even Overture and AdSense.
I made a whopping total of US$25.00. Hahah…
But that incident cost me a friendship. It strained my relationship with a childhood friend because I over-exaggerated the earnings I made from it. We were supposed to do the project together and split the profits and we were both very invested (in time and energy) into it. Since we agreed to split the profits in half, and half of $25 is not too much, I blew up the figure to $250 and paid $125 of my own savings to pay him his “profit share”.
That, coupled with my poor grades in Secondary 3 (high school) that required me to repeat a year in school, was when I took a break from trying to make money online.
My Dad forced me to sell my PC. We were having some financial problems. The PC that my Dad bought for $1,500 SGD, we sold for less than $500 – the power of technological obsolescence at work.
Perhaps it was a good thing. A year away from that addictive thing and the Internet forced me to focus on building my self. I returned to an old passion of mine which was reading, I hit the libraries, I started writing. English, my most boring subject just a year ago, became my favourite subject in school and I even wrote essays beyond what my English teacher asked us to do for homework.
That was when I discovered my destiny and my life passion – writing. I can write. I am no Ernest Hemingway nor Shakespeare, but I have a lot of ideas in my head that just streamed and sometimes gushed out as words on paper (or on the screen). Heck, my weakness is that I seem more charismatic and articulate in writing than I really am as a real person in speech (which causes people to think that I am a Quiet Thinker / Silent Killer – actually I am a Genius Introvert Creator Mechanic – but that’s another topic for another day).
I read books in various fields which people (at that time – pre Google and Wikipedia) might deem ‘too mature’ for a 16 year old – quantum physics, cosmology, theology, history of religion,