Do You Wake up on Time?

Just wondering how many of you are able to wake up on time every morning?

Some people wake up automatically. Some people are very discipline. Some people are force to do so. Some people are lazy. Some people off the alarm, and sleep back. Some people are having good imagination that they are waking up in their dream. Some just don't care about the alarm and continue sleeping. So which type of person are you?

For those belong to category 1 and 2, congratulations. You are my idol in this area. No doubt, I'm the type where I sleep back after turn off the alarm. It's simple, I would like to continue to sleep and I guess I don't have enough sleep. I also don't want to think about what is going to happen next in the new day.

I usually sleep around 11.30pm to 12am. And set the alarm to ring around 7.15am. That's about 7 to 7.5 hours sleep. But that only last me till 6pm then I'll drop on my table to take a short nap.

After I read a book named The Sell by Fedrik Eklund early this month. I realized the reason and I can actually overcome it. I have been consistently wake up on time over the past 3 weeks. What is his advice?

Nothing new. Get enough sleep. Human needs 7 to 8 hours sleep a day. Apart from that, we need a goal to wake up on time. For him, getting more deals and paychecks are the main motivation to get him up on time at 5.30am, and sleep at 10am. By following his advice, I started to sleep around 11 to 11.15am. I also think about what motivates me to go work, and how I can increase my income. Then here I go.

I'm not sure how long can it lasts, but at least it temporary resolves my overslept issue. Have a great new Monday ahead!

Do We need to Humble?

My dad is a person that like to talk a lot, talk like he is very good, excel and know everything. On the other hand, my mum is a very humble person. She always taught me to be humble even though we are good at certain thing. The only thing she likes to show off is about her children’s achievement. She is always proud about it. Just happened that my dad also likes to do so, including his grandson, a lot.

I have seen many people who like to extremely like to show off, extremely humble until tell lies to deny their achievements. Well, I’m those people who are extremely humble. I feel myself is just a normal person, nothing superior and living in a difficult situation. In fact, I also have nothing to show off on top of my mum’s lecturing. I wish to show off to my buddies and friends that I have a pretty girl friend, making good income, become celebrity or success in career. But somehow, I did not achieve neither. By growing older, I think these are just materialistic things to me now.

Until today, I really cannot think of 1 single thing I’m proud of. All the things I achieved are just mediocre and below par. So I want to show off, but I cannot. So I think myself is acting humble.

Anyway, a mentor used to advice, there is no point for a mediocre person to be humble. People do not feel the need to be humble, because you are not outstanding. 

Even you are trying to show off, people will aware you are nothing. However, just imagine if Warren Buffet said, I’m not really success in stock market investment, but just look for 2 meals. And imagine if I say that. What’s the difference?

What my mentor is trying to bring out is, you don't have to be purposely humble, but be yourself. Humility doesn't bring any effect to most of us, but to the successful person. When you achieve something, do remember where are you come from and there's always someone better than you do. That’s the right thing to do.

Best Time for Investment

Do you know what is the best time to invest?

I started to invest in stock market in the early of year 2009, when the market was just started to recover. In fact, I did not really meet any serious bear market yet by then, except the recently black August where the KLCI index has drop more than 15% and MYR currency has depreciated against USD more than 27%.

In these 7 years of investment experience, I learned that the best time to invest is the worst period. Sorry to tell you the same thing again from what other experts told you before.

Warren Buffet said, be fearful when others are greedy, be greedy when others are fearful. This is a golden rule in stock market, or any investment. But what did normally people do and practice? They follow the crowd. When others started to make money, we observe. When others made tonnes of money, we started to follow. When we make some money, we sleep into it. We are part of the greedy crowd and eventually we donated our hard earn money to the market.

No doubt I have been making growing profits from year 2009 till 2013. Nonetheless, I started to make loss last year, and this year. Partly due to did not spend much effort in analyzing the company fundamental, and partly I have invested some companies that are already in the end of the cycle, such as plantation, O&G and property developer.

Anyway, that's not the point and they were just part of my mistakes and failure experience. I also caught the right trend before, such as rubber gloves and technology companies that brought me handsome profits.

From the black August few months back, my total stock investment has made paper loss of 10%. Actually it is much more worse as few of them are dropped more than 30%. The loss is mitigated due to 50% of my portfolio are investing in REIT and high dividend companies. I tried to control my emotion but eventually I disposed most of the heavy losing companies. Then I swift part of the extra funds to go for those export manufacturers which earn in USD.

No doubt, within 2 months time, I made handsome profit of 20-40% from few companies. Unfortunately, I just swing part of the extra funds to invest. And also due to the heavy loss earlier, I'm still making minor loss for this year in overall.

By in conclusion, I realized it really can make handsome profit during difficult time, during the time when everyone is disappointed and away with the market. Like the expert shared, when you feel like you are afraid and worrying when you click at order butting, that's the right time to buy! Not the time when you feel excited. I totally agreed with this experience.

Since the market has recovered more or less for now and KLCI index has already shoot back up to 1,700 points, perhaps we will have to wait for the next round of serious correction or bear market.

Motivation

We usually have about 10 to 15 folks to gather and play badminton to kill our Sunday morning. Over the past few months, my performance is degrading, stamina dropping and I don't see myself has any improvement or breakthrough. I'm telling myself, perhaps it's time to either retiring from badminton, or change to other sport hobby.

As usual, we play at new court this morning due to our usual venue has been reserved for competition. I have to admit I've played so well in all my games this morning, the first time of the year. I have full control of the game, where I can easily move forward and backward without getting tired.

I have been thinking about it after went home. I think I found motivation and that's why I played so well. How the motivation comes? There's a bunch of young people including few pretty ladies waiting for their court to be cleared and they are watching how we play. I feel really motivated when they watching us. But why I'm motivated?

I think it's some sort of chemistry that makes me into my peak desire to play the games. It just cannot explained. But why some other times when there's crowd or ladies around, I couldn't performed?

Same goes to my career, where I have almost lost my motivation to move further. I'm stuck there, wake up late to work, and did not put much effort in building the business lately. I'm tiring, sick of building new network, and giving up to think how to resolve the problems.

Thank God that I realized one thing today after the badminton games. It's not about the crowd or ladies, but one important thing.

It's about teamwork and support. If your partner did not set properly for you, you cannot score. If your partner plays very badly, you'll be demotivated. Without the support from your favorite person, it's difficult to breakthrough because you'll feel lonely.

On top of these 2 keys, another most important key is persistence. If you never give up, you are not consider lose. If you never give up, may be your lucky moment will comes. If you never give up, you will be succeed one day. Sounds familiar? Yes, everyone agree with it, but how many can last?

I would suggest, persistence with improvement. Try to improve bit by bit day by day if not week by week, put extra effort, get a mentor to guide, work hard and then only be persistence. That's where never give up will change your luck one day.

:)

Happy Life or City Life?

I read an article about a Thai who born in a poor family in a village. His name is Jon Jin Dai.

When he grows up, he noticed most of the young people started to move to city area, to get more income and what they so called, to be a successful person. He followed the crowd and decided to try his luck in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.

Initially he studied in a college as a student. Due to limited funding, he has to work a lot of part times to keep him survive. However, he fails no matter how hardworking he studies. He also living with over 10 people in a small house and eat 1 meal a day. He did a lot of part time jobs, except lady boy.

After 7 years of suffering, he has enough of such a pity life in the city. He decided to go back to the village and start another new life. He did not expect this decision has changed his life.

After settled down in the village, he started agriculture by planting rices and fruits with 1.5 acres land. He also dig 2 ponds to seed fishes. With these foods, he has excess food supply for his family and the surplus are for sale. He felt very happy about this life compared to the previous city life.

After a while, he heard his friend bought a house in Bangkok, but comes with 30 years of long term debts. He is laughing that he can never have chance to do so with his qualification. After some thoughts, he decided to learn and build his own house with his limited funds. Within 3 months, he managed to build his first house. With his talent, he managed to build more than 10 houses over the years. And how he is headache no which house to stay every night!

Apart from building hose, he also setup farming, Pun Pun Organic Farm, organic food restaurants and organize classes to teach others how to do organic planting and foods. His students also including foreigners from Europe and US.

The good thing is, he managed to marry his wife from US.

After that, he received the invitation from TED to give a presentation. And his subject is 'Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?'. You can find the TED video here.

The morale of the story, Jon has messed up in his city life, but he became a leader and winner in his village. What about you?

Currency Depreciation & Inflation Fear

Is your country facing serious currency depreciation?

For South East Asia, the worst one are Indonesia and Malaysia. Malaysia Ringgit has been depreciated more than 30% against USD and 24% against SGD in less than past 6 months, due to economy uncertainty, poor economy forecast by analysts, and internal politics issues. Imagine your wealth has suddenly shrink more than 30% within 6 months, how do you feel? For those imported businesses transacted in USD or RMB, eventually the price will be paid by the consumers.

Another recent pain point is the inflation within my country. The Government has implemented 6% service tax starting from April 2015. It has caused all items price increased.

I remembered when our family having breakfast in one of the favorite Chinese restaurants back in 1988, a plate of kolomee costs RM2.20. It has shot up to RM2.70 after 6 years, about 10 cents hike per year. Today, it has shot up to RM7.50 per plate. This has indicated RM1 you saved today, does mean it is still has RM1 value next year, due to inflation, or perhaps currency depreciation.

I read a newspaper article just now regarding the new trade minister of Indonesia, Tom Lembong. He suggested ASEAN countries to consolidate and use RMB as trading notes to minimize the impact on notes depreciation issue. I think this makes a lot of sense. It will benefits for ASEAN due to China has a very solid and strong fundamental economy and their currency has appreciated a lot over the past few years. It is the best choice after USD.

As for inflation, we have no choice but to do something about it. What I mean is to avoid unnecessary spending and use the savings to invest. The investment return should be higher than the inflation rate. The best investment vehicles for now will be still real estate and stock market.

I personally prefer stock market due to it is easy to liquidate, instant, flexible and able to start from small amount. Of course, the risk is much higher than real estate. I have made loss of more than RM25,000 over the past 2 years. Well, perhaps I did not really 'invest' but just speculate. I believe I will do well in the near future after paid my valuable lesson fees

Instead of waiting, let's begin now if we want to fight through the inflation and want to have a comfortable retirement life. At least start something first then you will learn along the way. That's how we can become the best.

All the best, people.

A Top Sales Real Story

I just read a local article about how a lady restarted her career from a total failure to leading a top sales team.

She mentioned that she was operating a beauty saloon for 7 years. The business was getting worse and ended up with debts from banks. She has no choice but to follow her sister who is doing well as property agent.

She was doing badly for the first 2 months as she doesn't has connection and she met a lot of problems in mutual price between sellers and buyers. Then she changed to sell new development properties.

Within 3 months, she managed to sell very well, about 70 to 80 units of condominium. And after that, she was promoted to lead a sales team of 6 people. Within 3 years and today, she is leading a sales team of over 200 people. She mentioned she is earning already 30 to 40 thousands in the first year. You can imagine she should be super success now and she is only 37 this year. She also proudly shared that she has accumulated 4 properties including 1 semi-detached worth more than 1 million dollars

Apart from very hardworking, she did share some moral of her story to us, as below:
1. "It's never too late to make a change."
2. "If you want to change your life, you have to change yourself."
3. "As long as you sacrifice, daring to take the first step to change and move forward, you already won."

From what I noticed, there's another point I really need to learn from her. If you want to get rich faster, become the top sales is just the first step, but lead the team to become the top sales and grow the team from there.

This is why the successful people always tell us need to find and absorb talented people to the team. Without that, you cannot go anywhere by just one man show.

Yellow Joke of the Day (Sep15)

Two men visit a prostitute. The first man goes into the bedroom. He comes out ten minutes later and says, ‘Heck. My wife is better than that.’


The second man goes in. He comes out ten minutes later and says, ‘Yeah, you are right! You know what, your wife is definitely better.’

A Short Visit to Labuan Island

 I just back from a 2 days’ vacation trip from Labuan island, Malaysia.

The last time I was there for a business trip about 6 years ago. 6 years has past and I noticed nothing much changed in terms of infrastructure and development, perhaps it is just a small island and land size is very limited.

The economy there seems like not as great as 6 years ago. The town is flooded with foreigners and I don’t see much locals there in the town even tomorrow is the National Day. The foreigners I’m talking about are not tourists but foreign workers from neighbor countries especially Philippines. This island town center is flooded with Philippinos, especially when you visiting their local pubs and get non-license taxi, including the waiters, waitresses and PRs. 

Due to inflation and the drop of MYR currency, the so called duty free alcohol is also not as cheap as I thought anymore. But it is still comparatively cheaper compare to the other places in Malaysia. In terms of tourists, I only can see most of them are Bruneians. They are here like me to kill their weekends. I no longer seeing a lot of tourists from western countries and Asians. I don’t know why perhaps not the right timing.

I don’t think I will revisit Labuan again in the near future as I don't find myself enjoying there. However, it’s great to catch up with some friends together with this trip to kill the weekend.

A Real Story about Lee Kuan Yew's Leadership

My friend shared with me about a story of his friend's father 2 weeks ago regarding Singapore first Prime Minister, belated Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's strong leadership.

Back in early 1980s, Brunei is still dominance by United Kingdom. Mr. Lee visited Brunei to discuss about Brunei independence matter with the British. At that time, his friend's father, Lim was working in a Chinese restaurant.

One night, Mr. Lee was having dinner and discussion with the British in that particular restaurant. The British were used to address Lim as 'boy'. When they call boy, it means they want to order something in the restaurant.

Mr. Lee keeps quiet in the first place. When he wants to order something, instead of follow the British, he address Lim as Mr. Lim, and then proceed with the order. The British heard what Mr. Lee conversation, and all went silent for a moment.

No doubt, Lim remembered what Mr. Lee did and the amount of respect He paid to Lim. Lim waited till the children grew up and shared with them about this story as well. And then his son shared with his friends, then to us, and from me to here.

From this story, we learned one of the important leader's traits, show respect first before you deal. I remembered it is being taught in Dale Carnegie's book, address people's name first. :)

I turned 35 Today!

Folks, I have just turned 35 today.

I checked on my last post and I noted that I've about 15 months did not update my blog! My apology for this as somehow I did not take this as my weekly habit anymore.

It is supposed to be a happy event for me. But when I tried to recall what I have done over the past 1 year, my tear is almost drop. A lot of upset things had happened around me.

But it's okay. Let's move on and I'm sure there are a better days to come and we just have to make it through.

Few hours left, I need to treat myself better before it ends. :)