Greetings everyone.
I'm Malaysian. I actually went through the school system, and graduated uni in Mechanical Engineering 2 years ago. Here in Malaysia, it's not too expensive for local unis like in the US. I found out about The Millionaire Fastlane after watching Hamza. Gave it a good read. After graduation, I then managed to get a SGD5K/month job in Singapore as a fresh graduate engineer, but it was pure suffering for me, long hour commutes, waking up early, the working days sucked. I didn't really have much time after work to do anything. I kept thinking I was slaving away and watching all the reels from Andrew Tate("escape the matrix") on quitting your job added to that as well. For some reason, I thought that you can only work a job as an engineer, and not build a "Fastlane" business. So I quit my job after 5months and went back to Malaysia and lived off my savings, as SGD/MYR conversions were as high as 3.5x. My thought process at that time was I didn't want to "trade my time for money", and wanted to work on building a system that grows into a money tree/fastlane to seperate my income from my time. So i quit my engineering job in Singapore March last year, to try to pursue "Fastlane".
You can say i acted pretty rash, but I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just went with whatever, I had balls. I tried multiple businesses. First one, dropshipping pet hair rollers to the US. As I thought if I could earn USD, why not ,as it's the strongest currency. I made a website on Shopify and drove traffic from the US to it with Facebook Ads. It got traffic but nobody bought. I figured it was because the price point was too high. I charged around $49.99 dollars for one of the pet hair rollers. I guess the price point didn't really justify the value of the pet hair rollers. Then I ditched that as I wasn't that interested in pet hair rollers, and the income probably wouldn't be long term as well.
Second, I tried a dating business, in which I taught young men how to be self-confident and approach girls. I was pretty active in the local pickup community, and one of the guys was pretty impressed by my sharings. He told me his issues in self-confidence and girls, and i just saw it naturally as a no brainer to close him on my service. The service was to personally coach him in cold approaching 1-on-1 and dating for 2KMYR for 3months. However, fulfillment had some issues as he lived pretty far away from me. I had to drive pretty far to him 3 times a week. I realised it was not scalable for me to go meet with each of my clients personally every time. New client acquisition was a problem too, as I didn't want to receive backlash in my local community by posting social media tiktoks of me cold approaching girls. I didn't want to be famous for "picking up girls". So eventually I ditched that.
Thirdly, I tried a fitness freelancing business. I was heavily influenced by Jackhopfitness, and his emphasis on personal branding. "The Real World" has a freelancing campus which also recommended use of social media to acquire new customers and leads. The business was to provide an online coaching service in which a customized meal plan, training plan would be given to clients, include that with weekly coaching calls and check ins. I already had 1-2 clients from my time in Singapore. So I thought i'll expand and scale this. So i started posting content on my instagram and cold outreaching people on instagram. I got on 7 sales calls, but all 7 failed to close. I charged 1k USD upfront for 3 months, as I thought I had an okay physique. But the lesson here, is that I haven't nurtured the leads enough and not enough trust was built up. Eventually i stopped this , as I realised I didn't really like coaching people on fitness anyway. And competing in the fitness industry is pretty tough as it's not my main strength...
Then I realised that, in every industry, there's a "job" worker and a business owner. Engineering isn't necessarily limited to a job and working long hours. The whole industry will be a plus point and a high-er barrier to entry because engineering fields require an engineering degree. I was afraid of engineering because it smelled like "Slowlane" and my parents were heavily pruporting me to do it, I didn't want to be part of the "system" and "matrix".
Throughout this time, I nearly got pulled into an MLM scheme as well, even went to one of their conventions, the salesman was pretty good. But i'm glad I remembered MJ's advice on MLMs.
At this point my uni coursemate friend had a local startup focusing on the local market on AI Chatbot Automation, he got me to join because they needed tech guys. I thought might as well since I was feeling lost af. It was pretty new but his brother(owns a loan company) already had connections with the local market so getting clients was easy. It was b2b and we were doing AI chatbot solutions on chat channels such as Whatsapp, Instagram, FB messenger. I was in charge of doing the tech. It wasn't that hard as building it only required the use of flow builder. I knew how programming logic worked, I didn't know much about AI back then, but slowly knew how to call OpenAI API for AI. They gave me MYR3k/month on full time. It was a crazy tank from MYR17k/month(after 5k SGD conversion), but hey it was a startup so i rationalized it by quoting Rich Dad : Don't work for money.
I got a larger network from this endeavour, but ultimately decided that the AI chatbot thing isn't what I want to do long term. I feel it's much more of a fad than TRUE PRODUCTOCRACY value for the clients, as most of the clients dropped off after using the services for a month. So I quit after that.
So it's been 1 year since I quit my job in Singapore, and i'm left here thinking WTF did I do.
I've read Unscripted now, so I have a clearer idea on entrepreneurship and "Fastlane" as a whole.
Now i'm at crossroads and deciding on my next best path of action in life. My parents obviously want me to go back to Engineering and even Singapore. But "Fastlane" is still want I want to do, and I don't want to live "Slowlane". it's just that what industry for "Fastlane" is the best for me, as there are multiple ones that I can choose from - IT,fitness,dating, or even back to Engineering. I won't have a strong USP in fitness, so probably not that. I was thinking with my engineering degree that would be a strong USP as it's a higher barrier to entry field, not everyone can be in that field.
Also, cashflow is running tight now, I probably need to get back to a job. But although the pay in Singapore is higher(after conversion) , I dread the lifestyle and commutes there. Life in Malaysia here is more chill, but here I can drive in my car, but the pay here for a job ranges only in ~MYR3k/month (around 600USD/month) Hence, I am slighlty unsure what to do at this point. I told myself don't get blinded by the money value short term, but focus on the skills you'll learn to eventually build the "Fastlane" business.
Sometimes I even wonder if I need to learn sales and get into a sales job, as I was mostly in the technical side. But then i remembered Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, just built a really great product. So solving problems is still key.
These few days i'm spending some time to plan long term.I think deciding on an end goal vision in an industry, then probably look for a job relating to that to gain domain experience would be best. For example, if the end goal would be to create a patent for a portable dialysis machine, then I would look for a dialysis related machine company to work in for the job cashflow and domain experience. But for this i'll be earning in MYR, which is a weak currency. I could do something online and try to earn in USD, but the competition would be really tough and margins would probably be spread thin. I've also come to realise that people doing SMMA's online to the US probably aren't making that much money. It's tough to decide as I feel I have too many options, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm aware my situation is probably unique from everyone else here.
But yeah that's my story so far of 1 year after quitting my job, thanks for reading up to this point. Let me know what you guys think, and do drop me advice if you can hehe, would really help.
I'm Malaysian. I actually went through the school system, and graduated uni in Mechanical Engineering 2 years ago. Here in Malaysia, it's not too expensive for local unis like in the US. I found out about The Millionaire Fastlane after watching Hamza. Gave it a good read. After graduation, I then managed to get a SGD5K/month job in Singapore as a fresh graduate engineer, but it was pure suffering for me, long hour commutes, waking up early, the working days sucked. I didn't really have much time after work to do anything. I kept thinking I was slaving away and watching all the reels from Andrew Tate("escape the matrix") on quitting your job added to that as well. For some reason, I thought that you can only work a job as an engineer, and not build a "Fastlane" business. So I quit my job after 5months and went back to Malaysia and lived off my savings, as SGD/MYR conversions were as high as 3.5x. My thought process at that time was I didn't want to "trade my time for money", and wanted to work on building a system that grows into a money tree/fastlane to seperate my income from my time. So i quit my engineering job in Singapore March last year, to try to pursue "Fastlane".
You can say i acted pretty rash, but I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just went with whatever, I had balls. I tried multiple businesses. First one, dropshipping pet hair rollers to the US. As I thought if I could earn USD, why not ,as it's the strongest currency. I made a website on Shopify and drove traffic from the US to it with Facebook Ads. It got traffic but nobody bought. I figured it was because the price point was too high. I charged around $49.99 dollars for one of the pet hair rollers. I guess the price point didn't really justify the value of the pet hair rollers. Then I ditched that as I wasn't that interested in pet hair rollers, and the income probably wouldn't be long term as well.
Second, I tried a dating business, in which I taught young men how to be self-confident and approach girls. I was pretty active in the local pickup community, and one of the guys was pretty impressed by my sharings. He told me his issues in self-confidence and girls, and i just saw it naturally as a no brainer to close him on my service. The service was to personally coach him in cold approaching 1-on-1 and dating for 2KMYR for 3months. However, fulfillment had some issues as he lived pretty far away from me. I had to drive pretty far to him 3 times a week. I realised it was not scalable for me to go meet with each of my clients personally every time. New client acquisition was a problem too, as I didn't want to receive backlash in my local community by posting social media tiktoks of me cold approaching girls. I didn't want to be famous for "picking up girls". So eventually I ditched that.
Thirdly, I tried a fitness freelancing business. I was heavily influenced by Jackhopfitness, and his emphasis on personal branding. "The Real World" has a freelancing campus which also recommended use of social media to acquire new customers and leads. The business was to provide an online coaching service in which a customized meal plan, training plan would be given to clients, include that with weekly coaching calls and check ins. I already had 1-2 clients from my time in Singapore. So I thought i'll expand and scale this. So i started posting content on my instagram and cold outreaching people on instagram. I got on 7 sales calls, but all 7 failed to close. I charged 1k USD upfront for 3 months, as I thought I had an okay physique. But the lesson here, is that I haven't nurtured the leads enough and not enough trust was built up. Eventually i stopped this , as I realised I didn't really like coaching people on fitness anyway. And competing in the fitness industry is pretty tough as it's not my main strength...
Then I realised that, in every industry, there's a "job" worker and a business owner. Engineering isn't necessarily limited to a job and working long hours. The whole industry will be a plus point and a high-er barrier to entry because engineering fields require an engineering degree. I was afraid of engineering because it smelled like "Slowlane" and my parents were heavily pruporting me to do it, I didn't want to be part of the "system" and "matrix".
Throughout this time, I nearly got pulled into an MLM scheme as well, even went to one of their conventions, the salesman was pretty good. But i'm glad I remembered MJ's advice on MLMs.
At this point my uni coursemate friend had a local startup focusing on the local market on AI Chatbot Automation, he got me to join because they needed tech guys. I thought might as well since I was feeling lost af. It was pretty new but his brother(owns a loan company) already had connections with the local market so getting clients was easy. It was b2b and we were doing AI chatbot solutions on chat channels such as Whatsapp, Instagram, FB messenger. I was in charge of doing the tech. It wasn't that hard as building it only required the use of flow builder. I knew how programming logic worked, I didn't know much about AI back then, but slowly knew how to call OpenAI API for AI. They gave me MYR3k/month on full time. It was a crazy tank from MYR17k/month(after 5k SGD conversion), but hey it was a startup so i rationalized it by quoting Rich Dad : Don't work for money.
I got a larger network from this endeavour, but ultimately decided that the AI chatbot thing isn't what I want to do long term. I feel it's much more of a fad than TRUE PRODUCTOCRACY value for the clients, as most of the clients dropped off after using the services for a month. So I quit after that.
So it's been 1 year since I quit my job in Singapore, and i'm left here thinking WTF did I do.
I've read Unscripted now, so I have a clearer idea on entrepreneurship and "Fastlane" as a whole.
Now i'm at crossroads and deciding on my next best path of action in life. My parents obviously want me to go back to Engineering and even Singapore. But "Fastlane" is still want I want to do, and I don't want to live "Slowlane". it's just that what industry for "Fastlane" is the best for me, as there are multiple ones that I can choose from - IT,fitness,dating, or even back to Engineering. I won't have a strong USP in fitness, so probably not that. I was thinking with my engineering degree that would be a strong USP as it's a higher barrier to entry field, not everyone can be in that field.
Also, cashflow is running tight now, I probably need to get back to a job. But although the pay in Singapore is higher(after conversion) , I dread the lifestyle and commutes there. Life in Malaysia here is more chill, but here I can drive in my car, but the pay here for a job ranges only in ~MYR3k/month (around 600USD/month) Hence, I am slighlty unsure what to do at this point. I told myself don't get blinded by the money value short term, but focus on the skills you'll learn to eventually build the "Fastlane" business.
Sometimes I even wonder if I need to learn sales and get into a sales job, as I was mostly in the technical side. But then i remembered Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, just built a really great product. So solving problems is still key.
These few days i'm spending some time to plan long term.I think deciding on an end goal vision in an industry, then probably look for a job relating to that to gain domain experience would be best. For example, if the end goal would be to create a patent for a portable dialysis machine, then I would look for a dialysis related machine company to work in for the job cashflow and domain experience. But for this i'll be earning in MYR, which is a weak currency. I could do something online and try to earn in USD, but the competition would be really tough and margins would probably be spread thin. I've also come to realise that people doing SMMA's online to the US probably aren't making that much money. It's tough to decide as I feel I have too many options, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm aware my situation is probably unique from everyone else here.
But yeah that's my story so far of 1 year after quitting my job, thanks for reading up to this point. Let me know what you guys think, and do drop me advice if you can hehe, would really help.
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