My name is Jasmine Yap from born in the Northern Malaysia and currently living on a beautiful island called the Penang island in Malaysia. Penang is a state of Malaysia located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Strait of Malacca. Many visitors from all over the world come here to indulge in its historical, multi-racial and mixed culinary scene.
Picture taken from the top of Penang Hill.
In 2010, 23 years old I graduated with Master of pharmacy from the top school in University of Nottingham, and have my pre-reg training with the Boost pharmacy. I returned to my country with a vision of hope. It was after the general election campaign. There were so much promises of bright future to the nation welfare and development. I joined the government workforce and work in the healthcare sector as a pharmacist in the second largest hospital in the northern region. Working as government servant was good. I felt the job security as I was told that government servant will never get fired! It was well known as the “golden rice bowl”, which means a rice bowl that is very hard to break. It was a nice 9-5pm job. But, somehow I felt that I was too comfortable with it and I started to feel bored and lifeless with the repetitive errands.
One day, I found an advertisement about property investment seminar and I attended the free preview during the weekend day off. There was where I learn about the basic concept about property investment and money. I took the advantage of the ease to apply for mortgage and I bought my first property at age of 24. This was how I started my journey of becoming a landlady. It was just an apartment but it was the most expensive item I had ever bought in the life time. I rented out the property and the rental managed to cover the mortgage monthly installment. I actually continued to look out for more flat and apartment of similar kind, until I have 5 properties and put all them to rent. If you are interested to know how I did that, let me know by commenting below.
During that time, I met a property agent. In an occasion, she showed me a shop lot available for rent in the outer ring of tourist spot of Unesco Heritage Penang. Without much survey and budget, the agent and I turned into business partner. We went to start a business of travel lodge and café in the shop. We named it Transfer Lodge and Mushroom Café. It was my first venture into business, and I was 25 that year. We did some simple renovations, layout a dormitory of 10 double decker beds that can fit in 20 people. 3 double rooms upstairs, 3 shared toilets and 2 shared bathrooms. That time, year 2013 was still the booming trend of mural and street arts in Penang, inspired by Ernest Zacharevic.
We hired a Singporean artist come to paint our hotel’s outer wall as well as the dining area of the interior. At the kitchen, we were serving some ready bakeries such as pie and cake as well as beverage like fresh juice, smoothies and coffee. We put the hotel booking on agoda, ibilik and booking.com; and setup a facebook page. Business started to come in after 1-2 months of operation. We even received group bookings, usually from students and families.
Sales are okay but considered slow. We were unable to cover our expenses with the little earnings. I was still working a full time job as a pharmacist in the hospital, and every day after work I had to rush to take care of the café. I was just making around 1000 usd that time and basically my salary was used to pay for the shop rent. Eventually we decided to close down the business after 1 year. That was my failure business. If anyone is interested to know more about the details, I can write a bit more about it. Although it was a failure business, it was a thrilling experience and I am glad that I have done it in a younger time. Lesson learnt were: Do not involve in a business that you do not have time for. On top of that, find the right partner, do enough survey of the location for local business and do not rush to start a business or it will be harder to change later and even it may be just determined to fail.
My property coach was building his team of trainers. Somehow I have the opportunity to be trained by him and other coaches to become a trainer to coach other people to buy properties. The world just has too many coaches. They had me put my journey of property investment into testimonials and to share with new students to ‘inspire’ them. In a preview of property seminar, my coach did an ‘upsell’ of my course. I did not believe in flipping property for profit as it involved too much of speculation that will hurt the economy. I preferred to keep the property and collect rental. In my course, I shared with people on how to buy cheap properties furnished it with second hand furniture and rent it out. I also compiled the landlord kit which includes the tenancy templates and all the checklists to become a good landlord who can find a good tenant that can pay promptly. It was also a very good experience, but I did not really enjoy become a speaker and sell courses. Because I realized that I did not like to be hard-sell. That experience was like a sharing session. In which we collected 20 usd per head just to cover the rent of the seminar hall and printing material. Another reason of discontinue was that I felt it required too much of my attention and energy to talk in front of crowd. Although I had a kind intention to share and help, sometimes I just felt that I have to prove myself and explain myself so much to make them believe what I said, and yet did not make any profit. It was like a charity to me. So I didn’t host a second seminar.
This was the book I wrote and shared with my students.
I attended many seminars back then, including from Blaire Singer, Robert Ropels, and other famous speakers.
So, with the influence, I got convinced and aspired to become a trainer. It is true! Half the world are trainers now! So many people want to be a trainer. So many yet- to-success people want to train people who want to success about how to success. It’s such a joke! Nevertheless, I was sort of motivated after learning from much seminars and yes I said I want to be a trainer. Here was my facebook page when I was a trainer https://www.facebook.com/JasmineYapTrainer/ with nearby 10k fans, I shared about money and investment. I did not update the page for quite some time already because I started to doubt my direction.
You know when one is in the circle of people who want to be rich, and every day they read the vow to become a millionaire, what will happen? Not everybody go to the Money Mind Seminar, going through a week of brain washing training and everybody come out can become a millionaire by saying I want to be a millionaire each day. Do you know that, these seminars are the top places where the multi level marketing uplines go to hunt for prospects? It is such a perfect place to kick starts their marketing plan. Imagine such a pool of highly motivated manpower that is activated by greed! These naïve people have subconsciously blinded themselves, with so much courage elevated to do brainless things just to achieve the so-call success. In a way, the definition of Success is very misleading nowadays! … Well, so what happen was I made many liked minded friends which all of us looked like very successful and highly energized to do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. There was an opportunity where I was introduced to an oil investment in the United States, it’s something like a multi level marketing with a mixture of share market investment.
8% monthly return for 24 months. I actually joined and recruited some people. The pay was well for the first 3 months but after that there were many occasions of delay in payment and at last the payment stopped. I managed to get about 50% of my investment back however because of greed I put the money back for more. So, that was a big loss to me! Not only that I felt so sorry to my friends who trusted me and put their saving altogether. I was so sorry. I apologized to them even now when we met. That was a big lesson learnt. Never believe in any get rich scheme. In fact, that time there was a stranger Facebook friend, who had warned me about it. But I had taken my action too quickly! It was too late. So now, I am trying to save people from falling into any similar scams by sharing my experience.
I was still working as a pharmacist. But I quitted working for the government. I was working in the community pharmacy that time. Some sort like profit sharing with the big boss of the chain store and I was given control of the one store that in charge of. I left the government because I felt myself too comfortable inside. It was a risky decision. Nonetheless, the government was a good secure place to work, if anyone can bear with the racial politics. I did not just stop here. While I was still a pharmacist, I had become a property agent too. Haha! I hired an assistant to take care of my shop and I become a part time licensed property negotiator. In less than 5 years, I have tried so many things. What didn’t change since 10 years ago was, internet marketing. I was in the internet marketing niche since back in my university time. I bought low and sold high on ebay and gumtree in the United Kingdom. While I was running my lodge and café business, I set up websites, and used social media to engage with interested customers. I used Eventbrite, Facebook event, websites to sell my property course. I also used search engine optimization, blogging and Facebook to help me sell properties while I was a property agent for developers. Along the way, I had learnt about paid traffic, pay-per-click, pay-per-view and targeted online marketing. With the skills, my husband and I imported hardware from oversea and sell locally. Business was good!
Overall the most satisfying results I had ever gained thus so was from the internet! At a point, we started to provide services about helping local businesses to bring their businesses online. One of my recent project is http://chiakfree.com It is a social food and dining platform that connects the restaurants goers and the restaurant owners. It is made with the vision to bring more online presence to local businesses and to improve the food industry. I actually published my first steemit blog about chaikfree 2 days ago. If you are interested to know more, feel free to check it out:
My husband and I got married early this year and we planned in 2 months time to quit working in a pharmacy shop and focus on making a living on the internet.
Recently I prayed for being able to find a way of living that can give me more time for the family. Then, last week I found an email from 
I wish to give all my time to my raise my babies, giving them all the love, time, care and proper education. Thanks that Steemit exists, I hope that it can allow me to achieve the lifestyle as a good mother without losing too much in terms of income.
Lastly, I am grateful to 
This is a paid product though, but I am not asking you to buy, may this just serve as a reference to you if you would like to explore more about Steemit from different angle.
That's the humble introduction about myself. Glad to know all of you in Steemit, let's together make a difference to the world! If you have any advice for me, please feel free to comment below. I am looking to grow and learn together with the community of Steemit! Grateful to be here!