One fine day, this friend of my boss, who is an insurance manager, came over to our office and chit chatted with me. He told me that his line of business is the most honorable line because it helps him earned a decent income as well as helping people in need. That's when it strikes me, that this is the business that i want to be in. I took up an insurance policy from him because I felt that should I become disable one day, I will not want to burden my mother or any of my loved ones. Immediately I told him I was interested in joining him to be an insurance agent.
I started attending classes and sat for all the required exams and managed to start my business part-time. I started with cold calling, meaning we have to go door to door sales. Cold calling is a good way to test your people skills and to build up courage. I remembered once, equip with our company's survey forms, I went up the HSBC head office building and went floor to floor to approach office staffs. Some of them were very kind to entertain me with our so-called survey, some have nothing to do and just one to talk to somebody but most complained that they don't get good service or they already bought a lot.
I went back continuing with my full-time job as an audit clerk and tried to approach some of the clients' staff. I managed to sold some small cases but I was getting desperate to get more sales in order to stablized my income and be self sufficient. I tried my best to be as professional as possible in my approached but my desperations shown on my face makes me failed to get in sales the first year in this business. Without my own transport, going around from town to town is quite a hassle. So, I decided to buy myself a second hand car. I managed to get an old junk (I forgotten the name) for RM1,000 only, without aircond. Everywhere i go, with this weather, I will reach my destination, all sweaty and smelly. After a few months of using and decided it is more of a burden than useful, I decided to upgrade to a better car. The second car was a colt lancer, it's a little bit better than the first car, it cost RM 2000. I use it to drive to nearby town only and every where I stop the car would not start again and I have to called my brother for help to jump start it again. I tolerated with it for some time and manage to do some sales. Then I decided that it's time for me to go full time on my insurance business, I quit my job in 1992.
My boss then offered me a joint venture into another business and I accepted his offer. We started a data processing services, which is actually a company that helps businesses set their accounting system as well as selling them software system, such as MYOB and other custom made system that we engage a programmer to do. One year later, I decided that it's time for me to own a company car. Since I do go out to meet clients and finding new prospects, I finally got a brand new car (at that time the best and cheapest company car would be a Proton, of course). I managed to do both business at the same time when I spoke to the client(s).
My insurance business was going on pretty well, and I started to see my income growing at a steady pace. I saved up most of my insurance income and I started to find ways to improve the returns through shares investment. I was introduced to a broker and I started buying shares. I remember the luckiest time was when I bought AHP (property trust), the minute I bought it at RM1, two days later it went up to RM5, then another day RM6, then the next day RM 7. At that time there is no such thing as CDS accounts, therefore, we have to sent the share certificate for registering under our name and if you are a speculator then normally, most of them will not sent it for registration because it takes nearly a month for that procedure to complete and by then you would have miss the boat of selling it at a high price. But luckily, after a month later when I got my certificates, I managed to sold it for RM5, good enough for me. I've learnt never to be greedy and make sure you have the money to pay up, should your investment goes down, if you are not willing to cut losses.
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