Two retrenchments, a failed first business, and a year of sending out job applications taught me something most career advice won't tell you: a job, any job, stops paying the moment you stop showing up.
I worked for Intel Singapore in the 1980s. Got retrenched with about S$30,000 to show for it. Started a business after that. It failed. I spent roughly a year sending out hundreds of job applications before I landed on my feet again.
Eventually I was managing a factory, 7am to 7pm, helping grow it toward US$6 million a year in revenue. On paper, that sounds like success. In practice, I was choosing restaurant food by price, dreading the phone ringing at night in case something had gone wrong at the plant, and barely seeing my own kids. I got retrenched a second time.
A job pays you for the hours you're there. The moment you stop, so does the income. I needed something that didn't work that way.
I tried to build that "something" more than once, and got burned more than once. Stocks. Forex. Bitcoin mining. A string of other network marketing companies. One outright pyramid scheme. I lost real money chasing the wrong vehicle before I understood what I was actually looking for.
When I found Amway, I didn't take it on faith. I vetted it the way I'd vet anything with my own money on the line: the product and company track record, how much they actually invest in R&D, whether the compensation structure holds up over decades instead of just looking good on a slide, and whether the training team behind it was real. That's what made the difference. That's been the vehicle for 18 years now.
I work with people in three stages. Attract the right person, not everyone. Cultivate the relationship with honest, useful content, not pressure. Transform the conversation into a real decision, which is always a human conversation. No chatbot makes that call for you, and no chatbot ever will on my watch.
I've had too many nights where the fear wasn't abstract. It was: can I afford this, will I be able to retire, will my kids be okay if something happens to me. I want to free people from that choke hold the way I freed myself from it. Not just for them. For their spouse, their parents, their kids, and anyone in the family who depends on them.
I also coach and mentor my own team. One of my frontline leaders started in this business at 19. He's since reached Sapphire by helping two other teams of his own reach Platinum, and now has more than five Platinums under him, some who got there in under three years. He's still in his early 30s. His wife has since retired from full-time work. I didn't do that for him. The system did, and he did the work. That's what this is built to do.
If any of this sounds like where you are, or where you're trying to get away from, let's talk.