Years in Insurance Sales

I started my insurance business at the end of year 1989. It's been 21 years already, how time flies. Ever since I was 14 years old I've been thinking about starting my own business. Every night I would thought out the type of business that would need the least capital and convenient and the thought of selling hot dogs came to mind. Unfortunately I never manage to start it, so now we have the 1901 hotdog stand.

A LITTLE HISTORY

My father own a business selling electrical items and also he is an electrician, where he would service electrical items such as T.V., radio, electrical installation and lightings. Those were the good old days when the business was good cause he was the only one opening an electrical shop together with servicing. When business was good, we can see that we have streams of relatives wanting to share in our good fortune.

It was in the year 1978, all of a sudden, my father suffer from stroke, that's when all the dreams fell apart. Creditors came to collect their debts and business became slow. Now we have streams of creditors and no more relative to share our misfortune. Things became tougher when my mom would be worrying about our financial status and the cost of my father's medical bill. Every night she would cry and I would be crying too in my room. Things pick up a bit when my two brothers join up and carry on the business.

Everyday after school, I would have to help my mom feed my dad and help him do some exercise. When he got better, he stated to go out to do exercise on his own. When he got even better and started driving, he started drinking again.

Then in year 1984, that's when my father suffer the second stroke and this time it was serious. He was totally paralyzed and stayed in the General Hospital for few months until the doctors said that they could not help him any more and have to be send back home. My dear old mom is the only one who suffer the most, day in day out, she have to care for him, from cleaning him to injecting liquid through his nose. After a month or so due to his inability to move, he started to suffer from bed sore. That was the hardest part, to do cleaning on his bed sore,for the caretaker that is my mom. I feel for her, but was unable to help much. So far I can't remember helping at all, I felt so useless most of the time and disturb by my mom wanting to die most of the time to end her suffering. So the idea of ending ones life came to mind, that's when I started to try to commit suicide. Most of the time, as you can see, I failed. That make me start to think that even to commit suicide, you need courage, that I don't have. I was a coward!!!!

Cowardly suicide methods/don't intend to die but don't know what to do:

a) Use a blunt pen knife and press it on your wrist, rub it until you feel the pain then stop;

b) Hanging - use a towel to try to strangle yourself and when you run out of air, stop;

c) Drugs - consume lots of vitamins (folic acid and vit B), hoping for overdose of vitamins will kill you but if you don't die, you'll become even more healthier and smarter;

d) Pretend dying and see whether anybody cares; and lastly

e) Knock you head against the wall but make sure it is made of chipboards.

So after trying all of the above and failed to disappear from the face of the earth, I decided to live a more meaningful life.

I decided to pick myself up and started to think of the best way to earn more money and to give my mom a better life. Not long after that, my dad passed away. No tears fell from my eyes and everyone felt that it was best for him to go than to suffer.

I started working in a audit firm in K.L. (with a bogus accountant) and work very hard to learn as much as I can cause I was in a hurry to start my own business therefore I wasted no time. I started taking up courses to upgrade myself and read a lot to better my knowledge. I volunteered for any outstation jobs to exposed myself into the business field. Get to know more clients and help them in anyway I can to build better rapport.

After 2 years of learning from the bogus accountant, I decided that it's time to come back to my home town to work (with lower pay) with a qualified accountant. I thought, a qualified chartered accountant would be able to guide me better in this line. To learn to read reports and advise client on tax planning. It was all very exciting for me, cause I was too willing to learnt and the accountant was willing to teach me.