Monday, September 27, 2010

The Way My Boss Got Rich

He was quite broke actually.

He got a marketing degree at some UK college (or uni, I forget). Can't remember his job history but what I know is that he got a job at a real estate agency as a Marketing Support Executive. His job then was to essentially provide property listings to his agency's real estate negotiators.

Boy, he was really hard working then. His concentration was to cover the entire industrial sector in the-then most expensive industrial properties in the whole of Malaysia, which was in Petaling Jaya (PJ). With his hard work, you could ask him about any industrial property in PJ and he would know who was the owner, which property was for sale or for rent and how much was the price/asking rental.

At the same time, he started studying and passed his exam to become a registered real estate agent proper. He then quit his job and set-up his own start-up real estate agency together with a few partners.

That would be his Jackpot #1. His agency really did well. Really well indeed.

While there, he closed a deal whereby he got to know one of his clients pretty well. Together with that client, as well as a few other friends he got to know, he started to develop a property; his first foray into property development.

That would be his Jackpot #2.

He then quit that agency and started a new one. The property he co-developed with others was a 6-storey flatted factory-cum-office project and it was built solely as a long-term investment i.e. for rental income generation.

During that time, the property scene in Malaysia boomed. It was during the early-to-mid 90s. His new real estate agency did even better than his first one; most of his real estate negotiators there regularly had 6-figure annual incomes year-in-year-out.

With his property development partners, he continued to look out for specific properties to develop. Which they did so, with quite a few new properties developed, all with the focus on long-term rental income generation.

His property development/investment company then became a real estate investment trust company listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.

Jackpot #3.

He is now worth many hundreds of millions of Ringgit.