Lucky Bastard! 

As a writer, among the countless books that I had read about internet marketing, once in a while you come across a book written in such a manner that you could regard it as a rare gem. Truly simplistic but yet totally inspiring, Adam Wong’s “Lucky Bastard” have managed to captivate my undivided attention since I picked up the book. The internet, a recent technological innovation, for many of us aspiring to embrace the internet revolution commercially, it can be a daunting task as well as an exciting one. What Adam Wong managed to do in his book “Lucky Bastard” is rather thought provoking and view realigning as well. Despite the title of the book, Adam Wong is definitely no lucky bastard. He had managed to achieve what so many of us can only dream off by applying the success formula that his mentor and co author, Adam Khoo, taught him.  

Regardless of being a university dropout, Adam Wong is a very successful entrepreneur and internet marketer. At the age of 25 years old, Adam Wong was already making a six figure income, the salary of some multinational CEOs. The book “Lucky Bastard” made it to the Sunday Times Bestsellers list (Singapore) for three weeks amongst other non fiction bestsellers like Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers and Robert Kiyosaki’s Rick Brother, Rich Sister making him not only a successful businessman but also a best selling author as well. His mentor, Adam Khoo, is no less successful as well. A multi millionaire by the age of 26 and a best selling author with over seven bestsellers to his name, Adam Khoo being a peak performance trainer had trained over 355,000 individuals to achieve excellence in their lives. 

Adam Wong managed to tie all the concepts together necessary for success in a simple but yet informative manner. Written with a very personal voice, readers will be able to easily interact with his experiences. His clever use of humor ensures that one will never get bored reading this highly informative book. One of the concepts that he puts forward is that age is never a factor. And like what his mentor Adam Khoo also stresses, success only comes to those who take action. He also tells how he got the idea of asking Adam Khoo to be his mentor when he was just 19 years old. His goal then? …was just to trying to be a millionaire by the age of 25…so he can be a year ahead of his mentor.  

In fact the beginning of the book begins with how regardless of one’s age, with just a one single defining moment; our lives can change in ways we cannot imagine. He uses his case as a perfect example of this line of thinking. I could say he took what he learnt from his mentor, Adam Khoo, and applied “the ultimate success formula” in laying down the blueprint for building a successful internet business. I guess, in this section of the book, he is sowing the seed for successful entrepreneurship generally and not just for the web business.  

For many of us, the cyber world actually represents a paradigm shift not only in the way we thinking but also in what can constitute as successful business models, to paraphrase Adam Wong, “From Bricks to Clicks”. The types of business opportunities for an aspiring web entrepreneur are many but at the same time, we are aware of the various scams that also perpetuate on the internet. Here in this respect, Adam Wong did a great job is showing what types of ventures that novices can look forward to on the internet. He introduces the various options like selling digital products to bring the world of affiliate marketing right to the doorsteps of novices. They will find Chapter Two of the book extremely informative in this respect. There are several market segments that are clearly defined and explained by Adam Wong and with each segments, he gives real life examples of the types of products that can be sold on the internet. For example, in the digital product market, he uses itunes.com as one successful web business that sells mp3 songs for 99 cents each.  

Affiliate marketing is also covered in chapter two of the book. For those would be Web entrepreneurs without their own products to sell, this section is a must read. And in plain simple English, readers will be able to follow the exact steps he undertook to create successful business from several of the models he presented in the book. For those wanting to create and sell their own products, Adam Wong guides them along in Chapter Three of “Lucky Bastard”. He starts off by forewarning readers not to create what they think that will make a good product but rather provide what the market really wants.

He does this by reiterating s an example of how he committed this error. Here he is brutally honest as to the mistakes he made during the early years. I estimated with this admission alone, he manages to shave off six month to a year for a novice’s learning curve. In addition, he also seamlessly introduced the concept of internet market niches and how to search for potentially profitable ones here in this chapter of the book.  

In conclusion, it can be safely said that the book covers every essential steps that w need to know in order to start a successful web business. From market identification, product creation, website design and web traffic management, each chapter of the book shows the required steps and tools to make the whole process of setting up a successful web business. After reading the whole book, two things are very clear to me: 

• Adman Wong absolutely convinced me about the viability of an internet business.
   

• He is no lucky bastard. Hence, if he can do it, with the steps that he just shown in the book, any reader will also be able to do it.

In retrospect, any entrepreneur regardless of whether he is “brick based” or “click based” can learn a thing or two by reading “Lucky Bastard.”