“My mother said “if you want to study any course, you would need to handle it (financially) by yourself.” There was a lot of pros and cons to this kind of upbringing.
The pros: she gave us freedom in doing anything we want. Meanwhile the cons: we have to do everything by ourselves.
I think that’s how people become more aggressive; you need money to survive. You need to be aggressive to get what you want.
Growing up in high school, I was busy working part time as a promoter, a gift sampling employee to selling minyak kilat – I did any job that can give me money.
By being aggressive, you get what you work for. If you are hardworking enough, you will get at least something in return. The secret to getting where I am today would be to ‘put in effort’.
My mother’s ways taught me to be accountable in everything that you do – for your own life.
If you want to have a bright future or a better life, then do it yourself.
That’s the biggest lesson for me. I never resent my mother for bringing me up that way. I am thankful.
Growing up, I have seen people who have such protective parents that the individuals are afraid in making a decision. Afraid of failure. Or those who talk about how big their idea is but never execute it.
When my father passed away and the situation was as such, I was scared of the future. I felt insecure. To be honest, I am still insecure today. However, my childhood has taught me to work even harder to this very day.
We grew up in Ampang in one of the low cost flats there and my late father was a businessman, a contractor who renovated a hospital, until he lost a lot of money due to guarantor disputes.
When he passed away, my mother was a housewife and had to find work, earning RM400 a month.
I went on to study part time, got a PTPTN loan and immediately started working as a Salesperson – a Personal Banker. I was really aggressive and it resulted me in getting the Rookie Award within 2 months.
My good performance got me headhunted to work at a bank in Singapore, and when I first got my salary in Singapore, I sent back almost all the money to Malaysia. I left a very small portion for myself.
Sometimes I feel what I have accumulated wasn’t good enough. Maybe it is a weakness of mine because I always thought it wasn’t good enough, and that I need to work harder because I can do better.
I regret staying in corporate for too long, because after that, I started an events company with the tagline: ‘Beautify your happiness”, and later on, started ChubbeeCloud, when I realized people were always looking for a unique gift to give to their guests.
I realized the gifting industry in Malaysia was very boring, giving gifts like flowers, printed shirts, and mugs – and I thought, ‘why don’t we do something creative?’
Something that can be personalized, takes thought to create – and can be eaten too.
So marshmallows it was. We make customisable, printed marshmallows using edible ink – customized boxes for everything from corporate gifts, to little birthday treats and even proposals.
And we hope to create a culture of thoughtful gifts amongst Malaysians.
Once we got the idea, we executed. No point to talk and think some more.
During that time I joined Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre Global Accelerator Programme (GAP) whose experienced mentors helped me to look at the bigger picture, how to add value to my business, how to engage with your audience and in digital marketing and shared different business strategies.
I always believe that everyone of us needs to create more income. You can’t depend on just one income. My advice to other entrepreneurs out there: execution, execution, execution.
And looking back, the biggest gift that I had ever received was from my late brother who passed away when I was 19 years old.
He died of cancer within 2 weeks when we all found out he had cancer. It was too sudden. 2 weeks is a very short time. He underwent chemotherapy but there was a lung infection and died from it. Its like he just disappeared.
I find that if you don’t treasure your loved ones, you will regret it one day. I miss everything about him until today.
It has been 15 years but he was a very loving person and took care of all of us very well.
He got our backs when we were growing up together with our tough situation.
Right before he passed away, my brother spoke to my second eldest brother. He said: “use the insurance funds for us younger siblings to further our studies”.
And if I could go back in time and tell him something – it would be “I love you”.
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!#HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on July 29th 2018)
