There is a deluge of seminars on creation of wealth and how to create more income source. In a recent financial survey among working adults in Malaysia and Singapore carried out by MasteryAsia, a mentorship organization that has been coaching individuals in wealth and income creation over the last 14 years; came out with some interesting results:

Fact 1:70.22% of all the respondents will not have sufficient financial resources if they do not go to work tomorrow
Fact 2: 72.57% of them does not have any other additional sources of income.
Fact 3: 59.72 % admits that they don’t know how to create multiple sources of income
Fact 4: Only 29.31% say that they are up to date with the latest income opportunities in the market place
Fact 5: 73.98% agrees that financial re-education is a priority
Fact 6: Most interesting is as much as 31.36% confess that they do not know what their passion is.

Results from this survey shows that when it comes to making money or wealth; Malaysians and Singaporeans wants it but unfortunately most has not achieved one of the first step in wealth creation; creating multiple sources of income. This is in spite of the fact that most will face real financial challenges should the worst case scenario happen to them; losing their job or their business. It will also happen if their sole income source for whatever reasons it might be; simply disappear.
In today’s tumultuous economic environment that is not unthinkable. Unemployment rate is higher than ever in some countries. Business owners are facing increasingly challenging market situations and close downs are happening. And losing your income source need not necessary be because of economic reasons. A natural catastrophe like the disaster in Japan wipes out not only homes but also livelihoods of people.
A major part of the problem lies in that most of them actually do not have sufficient knowledge on how to go about creating additional income sources. That admission could either because that they actually don’t have any idea how to start or that they could have attempted to start something and then discover that it is not a piece of cake as they might have expected it to be. Or simply they carry too much mental blocks and they some how conclude that it is too difficult and thus they give up.
From the survey we also found out that majority does not have up to date information or knowledge of income opportunities in the market place. Either they don’t know it or perhaps they just don’t see it. These seems surprising given the fact that they been a lot of so-called ‘money-making opportunities’ been marketed out there. These ranges from network marketing, to low-cost franchise to ‘ready-made business in a box”. Nothing wrong with any of them although some are actually jobs–in–disguise.

Another interesting revelation is that most of the respondents realize that they need financial re-education. This could be because of the great abundance of training programs teaching people how to make money. MasteryAsia in their research found that as much as that 70% of people who invested in these two or three days training program end up doing nothing. MasteryAsia also believes that financial re-education cannot be done in two or three days and it must start with first re-examining their money beliefs. If their money beliefs do not change, the money results will not change. And that for most people is unlikely to happen in a short seminar.
However the saddest piece of data we got is that a significant portion of the respondent people doesn’t know what they really want…they don’t know what their passion is. The question posed by MasteryAsia to people is why they want to make a lot of money of they don’t know what they really want to do. MasteryAsia believes that the ultimate purpose of wealth is so that you can have all the time and the money in the world to do what you really want to do. So what do you really want to do?
To help the public understands the concept of Multiple Sources of Income better; MasteryAsia is running the Multiple Sources of Income Summits in a few locations in Malaysia in the next few months, Proceeds of the tickets goes to the National Kidney Foundation.

* Money Mastery carried out the survey in 2010 and we have 683 respondents. If you like to have a copy of the report, please write in to kcsee@masteryasia.com. This report was first published in ‘SME and Entrepreneurship’ magazine.