My Superpower:
Dream specific. Act early. Get lucky.

It is not really luck. But luck is definitely involved.

Here is what I have noticed about how I operate. When I want something, I do not just want it vaguely. I picture the exact thing. A specific unit. A specific half of a specific store. A specific floor and corner of a specific block. I say it out loud to my wife Sylvia. We sit with it, imagine it as if it already happened, and then I go do the one or two practical things that put us in position to receive it.

That last part is important. I am not sitting at home visualising. I am already in the arena. I have already expressed interest with the landlord. I am already in the queue. I am already walking the space. So when the opportunity opens up, I am not a stranger. I am already the obvious answer.

The other thing I want to say upfront: this does not work 100% of the time. Things still go sideways. Deals fall through. Plans change. But the people who are always firefighting in their business or their life — a lot of the time, it is because they never looked up far enough ahead to position themselves. They are reacting to what is already happening instead of trying to get ahead of it.

Dreaming specific and acting early does not guarantee the outcome. But it massively shifts the odds. Here is the evidence from my own life.

The warehouse next door.

This was our second industrial property, picked up on a fire sale. It already came with a private parking lot which was a big deal for our operations. But as Vivre kept growing, we needed more space. The unit next door was the obvious answer. So I started imagining we already had it, told Sylvia, and kept that picture in my head while we carried on with the business.

We eventually got offered that neighbour unit. Made our interest known early, stayed visible, and when the timing was right we were the natural first call.

The Bugis Junction shop.

Our first retail space was at Far East Plaza. It worked, but I had a specific picture in my head of where I wanted Vivre to be next. That alley stretch at Bugis Junction. Not Bugis generally. That specific stretch. I told Sylvia, imagine us there. We kept doing the right things for the business, stayed on the radar with the right people, and after months of waiting we got offered a unit exactly there.

Months. Not days. You have to be comfortable holding the picture for a long time without abandoning it.

The Wisma Atria half.

We were walking a big empty unit at Wisma Atria. Too big for us on its own. But I looked at it and said to Sylvia: if they cut this in half and gave us the right half, we would take it. That specific. Not the unit generally. The right half. I said it like it was a real possibility we were genuinely open to. We made our interest known on that basis.

Weeks later, we got offered exactly that. The right half.

The VivoCity split.

There was a tenant at VivoCity occupying both halves of a unit. I looked at the layout and thought: this can easily be split in half, and based on how their business looked, I figured they would eventually need to downsize. So I said to Sylvia — if they ever give up one half, we will take it. Called it early, held that picture, stayed connected to the right conversations.

That half became available. We took it. This one still gets me when I think about it.

The BTO ballot. More on this one later.

The most statistically unlikely one of all. Second-timer BTO ballot, prime location, top floor corner unit. The odds were not in our favour by any measure. But we got a good queue number and we got that unit.

I will write a full post on this one separately because it deserves its own space. But it belongs in this list because it shows the same pattern playing out in a completely different context. This is not a business strategy. It is how we operate in life.

The same cycle that got me to semi-retirement.

The retail spaces and the BTO are the dramatic examples. But the same pattern is behind something quieter and more important: how I designed my own working life.

A few years ago I started paying attention to where my time was actually going. What work was producing results. What was just noise. I started cutting the noise, systematically, over time. I had a picture in my head of what I wanted: enough income from enough sources that I could stop grinding and start choosing. Semi-retired, but still building things I care about, still trading, still running Vivre with Sylvia.

I did not get there by accident. I dreamed that specific outcome, said it out loud, and made the cuts and moves that pointed me toward it. I call this the victory cycle — pausing to look at what is actually working, cutting what is not, and redirecting the energy toward where you want to go. I will write about it properly in a future post. But it starts here: you have to know what you are aiming at before you can build toward it.

What this actually looks like in practice.

It is not complicated. But it does require a few things that most people skip.

Be specific. Not "I want a bigger space" but "I want that half, that unit, that corner." Your brain and the people around you need something concrete to work with. Vague ambitions produce vague results.

Say it out loud. To your partner, your business partner, someone. Saying it makes it real in a different way than just thinking it. It also creates a kind of soft accountability. You have committed to the picture now.

Do the one practical thing that puts you in position. Express interest with the landlord. Get into the queue. Walk the space. You do not need a hundred moves. You need the one move that makes you the obvious answer when the window opens.

Hold it for as long as it takes. The Bugis unit took months. VivoCity took time. You have to hold the picture without abandoning it just because it has not happened yet.

Accept that it will not always work. That is not a reason to stop. It is just how odds work. The point is that over time, this approach puts you in position to catch significantly more of the opportunities that come your way than if you had no picture at all.

Kevin Chia is a Singapore-based entrepreneur, options trader, and consultant. He co-built Vivre Activewear from $10k to $2M+ in annual revenue, and is the founder of Snapbook.ai, a SaaS platform for Singapore SMEs. He writes about business, semi-retirement, and tools that actually work at kevinchia.sg.