Nowadays, what can 5,975 Philippine Pesos buy you?

Maybe a budget smartphone?

Around 30-days worth of your Starbucks or CBTL (Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf) frappuccino fix?

An overnight stay at a posh hotel?

Round-trip flights to our Asian neighbors?

All of those are more or less going to cost you 5,975 bucks, right?

For me however, I opted to invest my 5,975 pesos.

Wow Argel! That’s great! Where did you invest it? You might ask.

I invested in myself.

That’s right, I invested in myself.

If you don’t know already, I am a member of the Truly Rich Club. And being a member of this club opened my mind to being more conscious of where I invest my income.

I learned that one of the best investments is investing in yourself.

How?

By reading books, joining clubs, attending seminars and meeting like-minded people.

When the Student is ready, the Mentors will come

Then, the opportunity of joining the Wealth Summit 2013 appeared before me in the form of an email from Bo Sanchez.

What is the Wealth Summit?

The wealth summit is one of the biggest conferences that feature superheroes of abundance. These superheroes are millionaires and billionaires that want us to become entrepreneurs, investors and millionaire-makers like them.

They come from diverse backgrounds and they have diverse businesses and enterprises. They also love teaching! They love sharing and mentoring and have their own mastermind groups where they get together, share learnings and create new ideas.

How much did it cost?

Well, since I really, really, REALLY love discounts, I grabbed the offer of exactly P5,975 for two whole days of learning and being with like-minded people. The offer was just for the first few registrants of the summit and since it was such a deep discount, I didn’t think twice.

That’s where I invested my 5,975 pesos. Of course, that’s just the icing on the cake.

Let’s fast forward to day one of the Wealth Summit.

Meet the Superheroes of Abundance

The summit was held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) and I arrived just in time because people were still lining up at the registration tables. As I walked in the lobby, me and the other participants were greeted by guys and gals wearing superhero costumes! Can you believe that!? A Wealth Summit with friendly ushers and usherettes dressed as superheroes!

The minute I saw them dressed as Captain America, Green Lantern and there’s even a Voltes V character which was around 10-feet tall, I said to myself “Wow, this is going to be a great conference!“

What’s Voltes Five doing in a Wealth Summit?

The summit was hosted by two energetic Truly Rich Club mentors, Dean Pax Lapid (Professor of Entrepreneurship at Asian Institute of Management and Dean of Entrepreneurship of the Truly Rich Club. He is a serial entrepreneur that runs 8 successful and totally diverse businesses) and Mike Vinas (Director of the clubs Stocks Update and also works for my favorite online stock broker, COLFinancial).

For the morning session, it was kicked off by none other than Bo Sanchez, talking about “How to Become a Superhero of Abundance”.

It was all about how we should learn how to produce wealth and how we should good stewards so we can reproduce wealth.

truly rich club - Bo Sanchez - Captain Abundance

The Two Superpowers of Abundance

After being inspired by Bo, we were captured by the story of Miriam Quiambao.

She told us her story of coming from a PT student and Gym Instructor to being a successful Beauty Queen. But that’s not what made her the woman that she is today, a lot of trials and tribulations came to her life leaving her to arrive at the crossroads of her career, her love life and her family.

At the end of the day, she chose to remove her worldly desires and put God at the center of her life.

Everything that she is today is a product of that decision in her life.

The Beauty Queen relates her journey to find herself

Then a network marketing forum was mediated by Bo Sanchez, in this session he interviewed a former-SM-Saleslady-turned-highly-paid-IT-professional-turned-network-marketing-millionaire, Ivy de la Cruz who is a marketer for USANA.

A dentist-turned-homegrown-products-network-marketer for Royale, Butch Mercado.

And also the couple-buried-in-debt-turned-personal-finance-advocates of International Marketing Group (IMG) Benjie and Fely Santiago.

Each of them had their fair share of failures that led them to the successes that they are today.

The network marketing superheroes

The learning-filled morning was done and we proceeded to what they call, a networking lunch. Here, you had the chance to get in touch with your fellow attendees, trade emails and cellphone numbers and pick each other’s ~~nose~~ brain all in the comfort of the dining table. After all, your network is your net worth!

Right after the filling lunch, we headed straight back to learning mode and Benedict Hernandez was the one tasked to start the afternoon session.

Benedict can be said to be the one who started the Call Center and BPO industry in the Philippines and is currently the President of Accenture.

The key takeaway for his talk is having a mission and a vision that is bigger than yourself and is bigger than your company which will eventually lead to you having enormous amounts of inexhaustible energy to achieve your big goals.

Talking about management by ownership

Right after that was another interview/forum session involving real estate which was hosted by Larry Gamboa, the CEO of Think Rich Pinoy.

He interviewed a couple of his students, Ronald Cagape who is one of my mentors for real estate investing and if you are familiar with Robert Kiyosaki’s board game, Cashflow 101, he applies that game in real life real estate transactions.

And Maves Angeles who is one of the real estate mentors for the Truly Rich Club who is now venturing in real estate development.

Truly Rich Club - real estate entrepreneurs

The Business of Real Estate

Just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all, enter Steve Tamayo doing the crazy Gangnam Style dance on stage as his introduction.

Behind his comedic nature is a strong network of Food and Beverage companies which he built from the ground up, Tamayo Catering.

His journey from being a fisherman, janitor, waiter then into an OFW who was struck by war in the Middle East exemplifies the fact that hard work and know-how really goes a long way.

The Catering Crusader

With all the speakers and with all the knowledge they shared, I couldn’t believe that there were still two speakers left before we wrap the day up!

If you have desktop computers at the office, then you may probably have encountered this bulky object where you plug your computer in and when there’s a power outage, your computer does not lose power.

Well, you call that thing a UPS or Uninterruptible Power Supply.

Now imagine how many of these things do Jollibee and SM Malls have.

Then, imagine servicing and repairing ALL of those. That’s what Charlie Fernando does best.

By the way, did you know that he had Brain Surgery twelve days before talking in front of us? Talk about super powers!

The self-confessed geek

Last and definitely not the least (because it’s very close to my investor heart) is all about the stock market!

Edward Lee, founder and chairman of my favorite online stockbroker COLFinancial, gave a rundown on why being invested in the stock market in the long term is the best and probably the safest investment today.

He also strongly believes that the current uptrend in the Philippine Stock Market is sustainable and we are just beginning our journey to become Asia’s next ~~top model~~ big economy!

The Stock Market is for everyone!

That was just the first day!

WHEW!

To think that all of these happened in just DAY 1 of the Wealth Summit is mind boggling!

I can’t wait to share to you what happened in DAY 2 of the event!

By the end of the first day alone, I am convinced that it was 5,975 Pesos well spent. But, in order to get the full value of what I invested, I need to apply and take action!

Thanks to the continuing guidance I get from the Truly Rich Club (and God, of course), I can do all that and more!

See you in Part 2 of this 2-part series!

To our success in all areas of life,
Argel Tiburcio
I’m on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/argeltiburcio

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Argel Tiburcio

Founder and CEO at ArgelTiburcio.com

When he is not busy watching "The Office", lounging at the beach, or playing 1st person shooting games, Argel consistently invests in the stock market, both local and global. He loves learning through books, training, seminars, and workshops. He also helps Pinoys create, manage, grow, and protect their wealth as a globally-certified Professional Financial Advisor. Get in touch with him by sending an email to contact[at]argeltiburcio.com