Two Years of My Life – Part 8

How I joined remains particularly strange to me every time I thought about it. The only reason that seems to sound credible is that I was desperate to prove myself. I was in a family where my father had achieved a respectable level of success that I, at the age of 19 with little experience in the real world, wanted to emulate. I was at a period in time where I thought I was invincible.

Most of these things are now like fragments in my memory, and as such I present them as little “blurbs” rather than a more coherent story.

**

After that first meeting, I began my series of long correspondences – call it apprenticeship if you will – with Director Rath. He did seem like a very humble man. And, of course, with every humble man that made it to the pinnacle of success, he had a story to tell.

“I didn’t really do well in school,” Director Rath told me. “But I did well enough to get myself a diploma in engineering, and like most of the teenage guys at the time I was hoping to get myself excused from National Service.

“I didn’t manage to, however, and I then narrowly missed out to become an officer. So, there I was, sent to become a sergeant.”

A sergeant’s life was supposed to be all right – until the last three months of his army, when Rath was sent by the officer-in-command for his camp to go beyond his call of duty and attend the Ranger course.

At that point in time, no sergeant ever attended the Ranger course, not especially a soldier on the verge of ORD.

He had a culture shock on the first day of attending the course, when he saw that someone’s bed was thrown out of the bunk, from the third floor. He said that made him realise how serious the course was about.

While he didn’t have the respect of the commanders at first, an incident made them change their minds. The officer in command for the course had given him an impossible task to complete – yet, despite the challenge, Rath chose to follow the officer’s orders rather than give up. During the mission he had to walk through a swamp that no other officer would ever have dared to. He became one of the few sergeants to pass a course that not many other soldiers from his vocation would have done.

“That built me. Army was a major influence on the person I am today,” He told me quite a number of times.

**

“You must find the reason you want to succeed in this business,” Rath told me for the umpteenth time.

It was probably several meetings after that – I was already coming in to the “Entrepreneurship Centre” (or, in Chinese, 会场 – HC) every day to “explore the business”, in their terminology. These meetings were like attempts to “tune” my mindset to the right operating mindset. Without the right mindset, the directors often told me, it would be impossible to succeed.

“I do want to succeed,” I said. I was rather tired, but I did want to succeed, so I told him. “I am just worried about my other commitments.”

“What other commitments do you have?”

“I’m currently taking Japanese lessons. They’re held every Monday, until 9.30pm. And I am currently a Scout leader and am supposed to be involved with the troop and the responsibilities. Also, I’m giving tuition to two students and pursuing a scholarship. I also have my own business outside that I’m doing with a group of friends…”

Rath nodded. He stared at you when you talked to him sometimes, while at other times he looked down, his fingers criss-crossed, while the golden Buddha statue that he placed on the altar in his office gave off the smell of sandalwood. From my conversations with the other associates in the HC, Rath always had an answer. He was a saint-like figure in the network, the founder and the soul of the business.

“Well, Owen,” He said, “You will have to think of what is really important to you. What are the things that can bring you closer to your goal? What are the things that will bring you further from it?

“But, Owen,” he continued, “Remember that this business does not demand all of the time that you have. It is not an S-quadrant business*. You are your own business leader now. Plan your own time. Think about it.”

**

“Let me talk to you about the marketing and compensation plan.”

Sure, we’ve talked enough about all the mindset stuff. Now, it seemed like I was ready to succeed. I was ready to join the team of very able associates that I can stick with through thick and thin. I was ready for the techniques.

The 80/20 rule – this was continually emphasised in the Cashflow workshops that I attended. Pareto couldn’t have been more proud of the way the presentation was conducted. 20% of the population hold 80% of the wealth. 20% was about the technique to success, while 80% was about the mindset. So, I was done with the tuning of the mindset. Now came the technique, the marketing and compensation plans, that could bring me to success.

America – a place of adjectives

America is a place where you don’t know when someone says “wonderful” if they actually mean it.

Breakfast, at the University Inn: a place filled with nothing except bread, a selection of teas, bagels, coffee, cereal bran, and a nice, cosy fireplace.

Walking 20 minutes in the snow to the Bank of America branch – opening an account took me an hour. Racial prejudice? Not really in this branch. The youngster, a white, reporting to the manager of the branch, an African-American. Tables turned.

Lunch was a takeaway at Domino’s Pizza, two medium-sized pizzas for $5.99 each. More for curiosity than hunger, we “made it a meal” for another $4.99. We ended up only finishing the pizza when dinner came.

Now: 12.49am, feeling exhausted but super full, and waiting to check in tomorrow. We shall see how Emory will be.

Halfway across the world

Greetings from Atlanta – turn your watches back 13 hours, and you’ll get the local time here. In short, the time now is 12.47am and I have just settled down (kind of) in this very decent place called University Inn.

It still hasn’t sunk in yet: the fact that I’m 22 hours (by plane) away from my home, and am going to attend the university that is across the road right now. It snowed today – a worrying sign, especially since Atlanta rarely snows.

Airports were as a fellow passenger described – terrible in both friendliness and user-friendliness. The check-in attendant in Los Angeles sounded and looked like she wanted to bite my head off, while the security attendant had no smile on her face, just a curt “There’s something you haven’t taken off,” pointing to my winter boots, when stepping through the gantry.

New safety regulations – you can’t cover your legs when the flight is landing, and an incredible before check-in body search in Narita – showed that the US is really trying to clamp down on would-be terrorists.

Flight delays have tripled since then, according to the International Herald Tribune. Little wonder. My flight to Atlanta via Delta Airlines was overbooked, and Delta offered to pay us US$100 to switch to a later flight (and put us up at the Hilton in LA in the process).

It isn’t just the security that’s posing a problem for travellers in the US, but also the weather conditions. Atlanta’s flights have been delayed also because of the snowstorms ravaging across the northern part of the States. Atlanta has thankfully been spared from the worst of the storms, but today’s snow proves that it is not completely immune to climate changes.

Will attempt to sleep. Jet lag probably setting in.

When should a taxi driver drive?

Being an SMU student allows me to have an extraordinary privilege – to learn about the inner workings of a taxi driver, especially late at night when they are especially garrulous. It brought me to think about something that appears to be simple on the surface: When, exactly, should a taxi driver drive to maximise his pay? Of course, I’m thinking in the dimension of tiny Singapore (hence my theory might not apply to every country).

Before we go any further, however, we have to assume two things:

• Taxi drivers aren’t slackers – they’re looking to maximise the amount of money they can make for the least amount of time driven. (Or, they aren’t really THAT passionate to want to stay on the roads for an inordinate amount of time.)
• Potential customers of taxis are roughly distributed uniformly across space. Sounds like a reasonable assumption (especially for a small country like Singapore). You might argue that the probability of finding a customer at Lim Chu Kang Cemetery will be lower than finding a customer at the National Library, for instance, but I’m saying ROUGHLY.

To understand my theory, you must first understand the social workings of time. Before the invention of the clock (more specifically, the minute and second hands), things were never as pressurising as now. The invention of the clock made “timing to perfection” possible and because of this, for some strange reason, most of us schedule meetings on the hour, “on-the-dot”. Because of this, most meetings start at 9am, not 9.55am or 9.50am. In short, you can say that while customers are uniformly distributed across space, they are not uniformly distributed across time frames, not especially a 24-hour time frame.

To represent it on a graph, things would look something like this:

The hypothesis here is that there is a peak in the number of passengers wishing to take a cab 15 minutes from time. This time, of course, is just a rule of thumb and varies across different countries. The distribution of passengers becomes more uniform when the taxi drivers operate further from the bustling business district, where most people in a rush will likely be heading towards.

So, taxi drivers should watch out for two things when deciding when to work harder and when to have a break:

• Location. This matters a heck of a lot, but it’s not just “hot-spots” that taxi drivers should be considering. They should also think how far they are from the popular locations. For instance, a taxi driver who is driving far away from the city can take a break anytime they like, since they won’t be missing out on that many passengers if they don’t drive at the “peak hour”. But, a taxi driver in the city should make sure they drive at the optimal hours as suggested in my graph.
• Punctuality. The issue of punctuality is of course different for different countries. 15 minutes before the hour seems reasonable to consider for Singaporeans. In fact, it is likely that for Singapore, the “peak” will last longer, possibly even after the hour (yes, some people are terribly late sometimes).

So, we kind of know when taxi drivers should drive to maximise their incomes. But what about where they should drive? A peek into the “distribution” of passengers that is hypothesised here suggests an intuitive answer: drive in the city. Think about it, most passengers in the city going from one meeting point to another will probably be located in the city (or close to it). The distances between two points is not as long as compared to driving in the residential areas to the city.

If all the taxi drivers in the world were to see my theory, I might never get to take a cab in the future from my house (I stay, unfortunately, 20 minutes’ drive away from the city). Well, but if this happens, then the $5 city surcharge might be moved to the residential areas instead (which will be fascinating – and depressing for the passengers).

The mystery of Celergen

You will need to read my previous posts to know why I am so interested in writing about particular health products in the market that you haven’t really heard about but are purported to be excellent for you. In any case, as with any article that you read on the Internet, read this post with a pinch of salt and a lot of research.

I’ve been out of MLM for close to a year now. There were some things that I had so much faith in that I had never doubted their capabilities. One of these things was, of course, the nature and the capability of the products that I used to sell. I had never doubted in the ability to restore health to all the people around me. I felt close to being a saint when I gave those products away for free. I had so much faith in TCM essential oils that I used them on my brother, who had acute stomach pain, and I thought he’d get better. 12 hours later, he ended up on the hospital bed, awaiting surgery for severe appendicitis*.

Despite that, my faith in the products were never shaken. One year on, however, I decided to do what I’d call an “itchy-hand” investigation on the latest product that had been circling around through emailers from the company that I used to be with: Celergen.

I found the following on the website about Celergen:

Researched and developed by prestigious Swiss, French and German Anti-Aging Experts, Cell Therapists, gerontologists, biotech chemists, scientists and pharmaceutical professionals, CELERGEN is a powerful, multi-faceted cell therapy treatment system that helps intercept and prevent, repair and maintain, rebuild and rehabilitate your body irrespective of your age.

There have been loads of testimonials on Celergen on its website: Benefits include alleviating one’s depression, quick recuperation from strenuous activities, alleviating back pain, increasing sexual satisfaction etc.

Celergen’s ingredients include BioDNA Cellular Marine Complex (unable to find on Wikipedia), Peptide E Collagen – which is a high-elastin collagen that is supposed to help reinforce skin texture and elasticity, and Hydro MN Peptide. According to the Celergen website, it reduces conversion of carbohydrates to fats by 37%, and also helps in improving the biodynamics of the body.

I just thought that this must be a heck of a wonderful supplement (I initially thought it was a drug, but the corporate video stated that it’s actually an enteric coated supplement). Think about it, it sounds absolutely brilliant. And what sounds good is that it’s been rigorously tested and certified:

Celergen is an extensively certified anti aging supplement with full conformity to international stringent standards of current Good Manufacturing Practice, Organic Farming and Non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) compliance, European certifications and Total Environmental Free Quality Management.

It is clinically tested by Bio-HC, one of Europe’s largest and most sophisticated Clinical Test Research Centres in Pessac, France under Good Laboratories Practice conditions. Bio-HC comprises professionals which include physicians, Pharmacists, dermatologists, allergologists, biochemists and bacteriologists.

The website of Bio-HC is a relatively simple one. The laboratory analyses a range of different health supplements and methods and determines if they are safe enough to end up in the market. Interestingly, however, there are no supplements that are listed on the website. That isn’t really important as long as we know the process by which the supplement was made, which you can find from the official Celergen website:

The science of cell therapy is not a recent phenomenon. In the Eber papyrus of medicine written in 1600 B.C., the Egyptians recommended the injection of animal organs to improve human vitality. – Somehow, I have my doubts about that. But anyway, I just continued reading:

At the end of the 19th century, Paris physiologist Brown Sequard also pronounced the potent effects of cellular therapy when he experienced a significant increase in virility through an injection of cellular extracts from the testicles of a bull. In the late 19th century, remarkable research on Cell Therapy by the French Novel (sic) laureate Dr. Alexis Carrel not only stunned the medical world but had a profound effect on Professor Dr. Paul von Niehans, a world renowned Swiss surgeon.

I highlighted these three characters because they are supposed to be the pioneers of Celergen. A simple search on Wikipedia, however, seems to suggest that not only do they not support Celergen, but their studies did not really suggest that cell therapy was effective.

Brown Sequard is really Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, a Mauritian-born physiologist. In his extreme old age, he advocated the hypodermic injection of a fluid prepared from the testicles of guinea pigs and dogs, as a means of prolonging human life. It was known, among scientists, derisively, as the Brown-Séquard Elixir. - Well, I really don’t know if this actually works, the Brown-Sequard Elixir. Even so, injecting testicular fluids into the human body MIGHT only prolong human life in the sense that it contains testosterone, nothing more. I’ll update this page when I do a Google search.

Dr. Alexis Carrel was indeed a Nobel laureate: His work on cellular senescence (aging), however, did not really “stun” the world as mentioned inside the facts given on the website. Carrel believed that the cells could grow indefinitely with proper nutrition and proceeded to demonstrate using chicken cells that they could grow indefinitely (and, interestingly, he did prove it; unfortunately, no other scientist has been able to conclusively demonstrate this procedure). However, two other scientists (Hayflick and Moorhead) proved that this wasn’t possible. Their conclusion – that cells have a limited number of divisions before they die – is now called the Hayflick limit. Today scientists conclude that Carrel’s study could most likely have been confounded by other substances inside the test tube without his knowledge.

That brings me to the last of the three “famous” scientists: Dr. Paul von Niehans. Interestingly, I couldn’t find von Niehans inside the English version of Wikipedia. I delved further into Google (ah, the wonders of Google for a cynic), and I found this – translated into English:

Paul Niehans (November 21 1882 in Bern, † September 1st 1971 in Montreux) was a Swiss physician. He is the inventor of the live cell (life cell therapy or cell therapy).

Niehans conducted in 1931, the process of live cell as cellular therapy book. Suspensions of fetal cells from sheep are injected while the patient. It is a non-surgical form of xenotransplantation in humans, which today has only a minor role.

Read the last paragraph carefully: Xenotransplantation means the usage of animal cells, tissues or organs to transplant into a human body. The procedure has involved many ethical and medical issues. Of course, xenotransplantation now appears to become more and more feasible with the advance in technology: you are now able to “trick” a pig organ, for instance, to behave like a human organ in a body. But questions have been raised about whether an animal organ can live as long as a human one.

So where in the world did Celergen even get those wonderful testimonials of its supposedly groundbreaking research? Unless Bio-HC comes out with something spectacular to counter my argument, I find it doubtful that Celergen is trustworthy enough to observe any sort of usefulness – beyond the placebo effect, of course.

P.S. I am not implying that Celergen does not work. I am only talking about the inconsistency of the historical background of cell therapy that they’ve placed on their website. In any case, do your own research before consulting with anybody, even if the person is a trusted friend, when he or she is selling you a particular product.

*I am also not implying a causation: my brother, obviously, did not contract appendicitis because of the essential oil. But he might have had a less painful experience if we had sent him to the hospital earlier rather than relying blindly on the oils instead.

Two Years of My Life – Part VII

Suddenly, I realize that since I decided to come clean about the two years that I spent in MLM, that it is now easier to talk about this to my friends, and sometimes even have a good laugh about it.

It’s made me recover a bit of my confidence back.

**

The definitive part of MLM is, almost certainly, the continual discussion of your “dreams” – that is, your aspirations. And that was something that was also definitive of naive 19-year-olds like myself, I think: the mistaken assumption that just because I was awaiting entrance into university, that I already had the required ability to make a living for myself in the outside world. I came from a family where my father had managed to climb out from losing his job to become relatively successful, and I naturally thought that setting up a business would be easy.

When I went back to the dilapidated building where the Cashflow workshop was held (you should by now naturally assume that Deem was always by my side during any meeting), Jingle was there once again, the young lady who had spoken to me during the badminton tournament. This time, she was dressed in a blazer, and had a pin (they call it the “Manager’s Pin”, where you will only qualify after making it to the ranking of Manager). So, Manager Jingle (that’s what Deem introduced her to me, anyway – I realized that the people whom I spoke to were all the successful Managers, except that prior to my going for the presentation they had never introduced them as Managers) sat me down at one of the tables and began to talk to me.

She was studying Engineering in NTU, and it was during her university years (I think – it’s been a long time so I can’t exactly remember if it was during or before her university) that her father suffered an accident and had to go for an operation. She now had to pay for her own school fees and expenses, because her father was no longer able to work. Manager Jingle became a different person – a driven person, trying to make more money to support the family. Then, she joined an insurance company as an agent and made a decent amount of money (from what she claimed, she regularly made $5,000-$6,000 a month). Like me, she said, she was skeptical of MLM before she joined, and took one year to join it. Yet eventually she did, when she realized that “she looked at the ROI”, and understood the importance of having the ability to make the money in the long run.

“You don’t want to be the people who only look short-term when it comes to investment,” That was her parting words to me.

After Jingle left, Deem moved from sitting beside me to face me directly. He then asked me how I felt about the entire talk. I admitted that it made sense, and was willing to listen to more about what exactly this business encompassed. He then told me – this would be repeated ad nauseam in later conversations with everyone else inside MLM – that it wasn’t about how the business operated that was important, but rather the why. Why was it that you wanted to join this business?

I told him that I had dreams, and then he took out his clipboard and said, “Very well. Why don’t you write them down?”

He passed me the clipboard, then left somewhere. I looked at the clipboard and I thought to myself that this was oddly familiar. When I was teaching in my educational workshops that I conducted, I was telling children to write down their dreams. Over here, the roles were reversed – Deem was now the person telling me to write down my dreams. The irony didn’t stop me from creating a concept map of all the dreams that I had, though.

I’ll share them with you, and you can probably look at them and say “Wow. You’re nuts.”

• Contribute to Singapore – Think up of strategies (or be part of the process) in making Singapore the most exciting place to come
• Set up an educational business for children – Doing something that MindChamps is currently doing (but with a fresh perspective of things, of course)
• Become a bestselling author – Damn, I’ve always wanted to write my own biography, maybe my “success story” to empower people to realize their dreams!
• Pay for my own university education – Initially, I thought this could be done if I manage to get my scholarship, but things were to change…
• Retire at the age of 35 – Sounded damn cool to me. While people were at their prime of their working careers, I would already have reached the pinnacle, and retired comfortably.

Deep down, I really didn’t want to depend on my family for financial support anymore. I felt as though I was sponging on my parents, who had spoilt me since I was young, and I really wanted to make some money on my own so I didn’t have to.

Multi-level marketing, at that point in time at least, presented a golden opportunity for me to make the money that I wanted to be independent. Looking back, I realize it wasn’t really the money I wanted, but the need to “be my own man” and not be influenced by my family was the important thing for me. And that made me vulnerable.

Writing down all my dreams, I passed them to Deem, and I was quite sure that his eyeballs bulged a little when he looked at the sheer audacity of the dreams that I had. He didn’t say much, but then told me to watch a video.

It was a video of MLM called Brilliant Compensation – and it was about how the MLM system was the fairest of them all. They raise out some “typical” objections that people have prior to their joining MLM, and rebutted those objections. (I’ll talk more about Brilliant Compensation in my next entry.)

The video “corrected” my perspective of MLM and made it seem like it really was not a bad system to join. I began to think of the possibilities. If I had a network of 1,000 associates under me, I could make a heck of a lot of money if I got just $5 from them every month…

“Owen, I think it’s time to go.” I stirred from my daydream – night, to be more precise, since MLM meetings are rarely held in the day – and packed my stuff. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

At the entrance, a tall, well-built man who looked like he was in his 30s was standing. He was wearing a black Nike jacket and had his hands in its pockets.

“Owen, this is Director Rath,” Deem spoke enthusiastically, almost unnaturally. “He is the Director of our entrepreneurship centre, and the leader of our entire network here.”

Prior to meeting Rath, of course, I had already been given a piece of the man’s success – in almost every meeting, Deem had spoke of the founder of the entrepreneurship centre and how inspiring this man was, and that he had businesses all across the region and the black Mercedes that was parked outside the centre belonged to him. After my discovery that the place was actually an MLM, Deem updated the history a little – he was the leader of a network spanning across to Myanmar, Malaysia and China. But now that he was such a “successful entrepreneur, he wants to step down and help others to become successful as well”. A millionaire, and a mentor to many. “He makes a five-figure sum from Vie every month – and that figure does not start with 1 or 2,” Deem said (but not in the presence of Rath, of course).

I shook hands with Rath. He commended my desire in wanting to find out more about the business, and hoped that I could really have an open mind and see for myself what the business is all about before accepting or rejecting it. After the short exchange of words, he raised out his hand as though he was holding on to an invisible trumpet, which I was supposed to mimic. We then clasped our hands together.

“It’s our culture,” said Rath. “In every organisation, you know there’s a culture. And it’s the same over here for us. Most importantly, have an empty cup mindset…”

Somehow, those words sounded so familiar that I had this strange feeling they were reading off a tape recorder. But the positive vibes of the place left me with a good feeling. Everyone here was in the pursuit of their “dreams”, without the apathy or the already given-up feeling that most of my peers had. Subconsciously, I had already given this business a chance, and it was the next few meetings that would seal the deal for me.

Breakaway

Here’s a post that’s not going to be about MLM – I decided to take a breather about that story to write about one that is just developing, in my school at least.

Note that these are not linked incidents, and taken separately, the following incidents shouldn’t seem to have any impact whatsoever. And the things I write below are just my observations, and, ultimately, my opinions. So don’t skin me over it. I’m just saying what I think.

The first – I’m currently taking an introductory course to sociology and completing that module requires us to participate regularly in an online forum. One of the topics I posted for discussion was the falling attendance in CCAs. And reading the entries of some students, one of them said that “I’m being heavily involved in my CCA for purely practical reasons… and I make no apology for that.”

The second – Normally, when people join the organising committee for a particular social cause, you’d expect them to have some sort of interest in it. Interestingly, asking for comments from my friends about a recent social project that had ended culminated in nil replies (except for one, who said that she’d prefer not to be interviewed). Perhaps I am being oversensitive, but aren’t you supposed to vocally defend/promote the cause that you joined? Or… maybe, is it for the resume?

The third – I don’t want to name a particular incident, but comments like “I came here to maximise my GPA” and “I’m doing this just to boost my resume” were, prior to now, hitherto unknown. And I’ve been hearing it more than once this term. There’s nothing wrong with being practical, but what are you being practical for? Have we all lost our way and become a group of helpless GPA skirt-chasers?

Three (rather) unrelated incidents got me thinking. There is something terribly wrong with this school, and I have never felt more like breaking away from this institution. It’s becoming harder to assert the reasons why I joined this school when people start laughing about it and saying how idealistic I am. “You came here to LEARN?” The guffaws are getting louder and louder.

Well, what the fuck. Of course I came here to learn. Economics, something that’s fascinated me since I was in JC. The social sciences, figuring out the human mind, behavior in groups, what people do with a disparity in power – these are things that I’ve always been interested in. And no, I’m not the best student – I don’t think I even ask the best questions, or speak up the most in class – but YEAH, I CAME HERE TO LEARN. And it’s getting harder to shout this out when people all around you mutter the G-word, or numbers with decimal places that start with 4.

It’s a rant (of course it’s a rant), but I have never been more disillusioned with school. And if you’re a freshman and you’re here, try proving to me that these things aren’t true. I bet you can’t.

Two Years of My Life – Part VI

After a little hiatus in writing, I decided that perhaps I should just continue during Econometrics class (though I think I’m letting my professor down, he’s darn good).

I went back to work. At that point in time I was still serving my National Service – in my second year – and I considered myself quite a good-performing clerk. No, honestly. I had done a couple of pretty decent projects (that my eventual understudy, who was a diploma graduate in IT had me know, could have reaped me a neat profit had I done it for any external organization). I was one of those people who always sought improvement for anything that I thought wasn’t performing good enough.

Joining MLM, however, would be the turning point of my NS career. At this point I’d like to acknowledge how patient my superiors and colleagues were towards my performance (even though I knew that it had significantly dipped in the second year, and not entirely due to what most of my colleagues would call the infamous ‘ORD mood’).

A few months ago, my friend had asked me if I knew anything about multi-level marketing. I told him that “Well, you really have to consider carefully before joining MLM. I mean, sure, you can definitely make a lot of money, but you’ve first got to put in a lot of effort – and it’s going to take up a lot of your time”.

He didn’t join in the end. I did.

Back in the office, people were listening intently to what I had to say about the presentation and how I was hoodwinked into everything. We were laughing over it, to be honest. Some of us had had experience with people in MLM and had advised me to stay clear of all their meetings afterward.

I told them, no. I wanted to find out what their story was – and, I convinced myself happily, there wouldn’t be any harm listening to them since I was always in control, wasn’t I? After all, I was going to be the one to sign on the dotted line.

To be continued. (Apologies, I know it’s too short to actually be considered a post.)

Two Years of My Life – Part V

It’s been quite tough for me to hide about doing multi-level marketing to the people around me, because of the many objections that I faced. It gets harder to write as I continue telling the story of my journey.

The talk

This was the first of the series of MLM presentations that I attended. Vie’s* presentation (*Note: Vie is not the real name of the company) was something like the Saturday variety shows that Chen Shucheng hosted on Channel 8 – there was a lucky draw at the beginning for guests to win prizes: products made by Vie which should have cost you a bomb should you have chosen to purchase it off the counter. They threw a huge soft toy all about the room, which was filled from the front row all the way to the back with people dressed in black suits.

At first, Deem brought me to sit down just beside a few people who were just as smartly dressed as he was and introduced me to them. They really didn’t need much introduction – I had known them all from playing the badminton tournament a month earlier, and they had all attended the Cashflow workshop at some point. Or, perhaps, they were the organizers. Most of them told me to keep an open mind and really put away all the preconceived notions that I may have had of network marketing up to that point. Deem also told me that it was important to differentiate between network marketing and multi-level marketing. (Now, however, having done more research, I realize that there really isn’t a difference between NM and MLM – the only distinction is in the name that you give it.)

A voice suddenly blasted from the speakers inside the room – which smelt of a very strong flowery smell. I would recognize later that it was a mix of eucalyptus and rose, emanating from the aromatherapy diffusers strategically placed all over the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, presenting to you your emcee for tonight, Mr. Oh!”

Mr. Oh, of course, was none other than the Gamemaster for the first Cashflow workshop that I attended. As he ran up on stage a loud, grand entrance music played and he ran up on stage and shouted, “Dear associates!”

“YO!” Came the reply from the suit-wearing audience.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Oh shouted again.

“Good, very good, YES!” The audience replied, but this time with an elaborate arm-rolling action which was synchronized with their replies.

(It’s been a while since I was in MLM – I can’t really remember the entire repertoire of the cheers and songs and dances that we used to do, but I’ll just post what I do remember. None of this was dreamed up – it actually happened.)

“My name is Oh!”

“Oh, Oh, 你是最棒的 (ni3 shi4 zui4 bang4 de4 – Chinese for “You are the best”)!” The reply came from the audience, with another elaborate clap that was synchronized with the reply.

“Yes, I am the best, because every one of us here is the best!” To this there was another rapturous round of applause from the seated audience, which the guests – clearly distinguishable with their lack of “proper” dressing – politely clapped together.

He then told a joke to crack the audience up – Oh was actually quite a good storyteller (this is not on hindsight – I seriously thought he does have some fantastic speaking ability) – and after which he told us the moral of the story, which was to “seize the opportunity whenever it’s present”.

“After all, you never know when the next opportunity will arise,” he said.

He then spoke about this very special mentor that he had. I was already prepared for the introduction – Deem had given me a very detailed introduction (which is, in MLM circles, called a “tee-up” – I’ll explain in another entry) about the speaker for tonight. He had graduated from a local university with an engineering degree (“With honours,” he also added), and could have chosen to take over his family business if he could. Yet, he took the “path less chosen” and joined Vie as an associate just four or five years ago. Now, he said, he was one of the youngest amongst the high-ranking associates in the company. He is already a millionaire and has hundreds of associates under his network.

“And he is a truly dynamic speaker,” Deem said. I could hardly wait, I thought.

But to be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with the way Mr. Huay, the “dynamic speaker” spoke – he raised his eyebrows and swallowed at strange moments – and his eyes narrowed whenever he swallowed, giving a choked expression every few minutes, and made me rather uncomfortable.

I did try to listen to what he had to say though – after all, he was a millionaire, and I wasn’t – and he spoke about the emerging trend that aromatherapy had compared with the other types of markets. “It is up to you,” he concluded, “If you want to seize on this opportunity that is presented to you.” He went off the stage to a great round of applause from that suit-wearing audience once more (everyone standing up, mind you), while Oh went up and reminded us of the “opportunity” that awaits us.

“Remember – in life, there are three life-changing opportunities. The thing is, you don’t know if the opportunity that you face now is the first one, or the last.”

After the talk

Deem didn’t really tell me where I was going – except that I was going to be hitching a ride in one of the associates’ cars somewhere. It turned out that his Corolla Altis parked at the carpark just opposite the food centre that we had eaten just that evening.

We sat down, where the entire food centre was now filled with blazer-clad ladies and gentlemen ordering beancurd and grass jelly drinks. It would have been quite an incredible sight for me if I wasn’t thinking about what in the world just happened in the past few hours – dinner seemed a long time ago and I wanted to just get the hell out of there. The associate with the Corolla Altis – let’s just call him Berto – ordered beancurd and drinks for us, while Deem had lighted up his aromatherapy diffuser and put it just between where both of us were seating facing each other. It was giving off a strong fragrant scent (which I eventually learned to be sandalwood – the scent is good for concentration).

“How did you find the talk?” I tink Deem had asked me that for the nth time that evening and I said I had a few questions which someone could help me answer.

Just at that moment, someone tall and familiar in a black suit walked over. I recognized who that was immediately – it was Mr. Ay, the first table leader for the Cashflow workshop that I had. He put a hand on Deem’s shoulder and asked, “Hi Deem, how is everything going?”

At this point Deem almost jumped up from the table to shake Mr. Ay’s hand. I was convinced that he only just stopped short of kissing his hand by a fraction, with the enthusiasm that he showed. “Owen, let me introduce Mr. Ay to you. He is one of the higher-ranking associates in the company and also one of the unnamed shareholders. Mr. Ay, do you…?”

“Yes, Owen,” He said and smiled. “I remember you.” Deem ushered Mr. Ay to his seat, while he sat at the side.

“Okay, Owen, how did you find the talk just now?” He asked. “Do you have any questions that you want to ask?”

I noticed a gleaming silver brooch attached to his blazer. Deem later explained that only the Managers, the mid-ranking shareholder associates, would be given this brooch to differentiate themselves from the rest of the lower-ranking ones.

“I have three,” I said. “First, isn’t MLM all a scam? I have heard of other companies before and all of them had sounded very suspicious to me. Second, how do you make money from this if it isn’t a scam? And third, how much money do you have to put into this to make this work?”

At my questions, Mr. Ay nodded and acknowledged them with an “Mm-hmm.”

How my objections were cleared

1. MLM was a scam.

“What are the companies that you have heard about?”

“NTI Paris, Amway, Sunshine Empire…”

“What made it uncomfortable?”

“They didn’t have a product, kept forcing me to sign so they could quickly start to ‘recruit’ people into the cause…”

“See, that’s what makes us different. Owen, you must understand that every industry has its bad eggs. And even though MLM does seem to have a lot of bad eggs, you cannot simply generalize and say that all MLMs are like that. Actually, there are some good MLMs around. You have to notice the calibre of the people inside our network. People here can go outside and work and easily earn a good income. Yet they decided that they want a better life and chose to join this business. Do you think that doctors and lawyers will join network marketing if they thought it was a scam?”

2. How do you make money from this if it wasn’t a scam?

“All these questions that you are asking, Owen, are only the techniques. More importantly, you must find your why. Why do you want to become rich? Find a good reason why, then once the why is clear, the how will become clear. If you read Robert Kiyosaki, he’ll tell you that even though he was a bankrupt, he still managed to get out of the Rat Race in his real life, at the age of 47. The only way he could do that was that he changed his mindset! So you must find your why, first.

I can tell you how to make money from this, but I can guarantee you it won’t be the answer that you are most looking for. Plus, I am only a Manager and I think the person best suited for explaining the marketing plan will be someone far more successful and with more experience.

And in this business, it’s not just about selling products or hunting for people. We are looking for partners, people who have the same hunger as you and I and are willing to bring this business to another level. You see, Owen, it’s not other people choosing which company they want to join: it’s us who are choosing which people are most suitable to be our partners to move to the next level. This is not a get-rich-quick scam as you may think. It’s a long-term business. It doesn’t mean you will make a lot of money one year down the road, but as long as you put in the effort, you will be able to succeed in this business.

Duplication – the power of franchising

You know that there’s a famous Peking Duck restaurant called 全聚德 (quan2 ju4 de2) which serves excellent Peking Duck. It is already renowned the restaurants that serves one of the world’s finest Peking Duck. It was established in 1864 and has a history stretching much further than many other restaurants, yet today it has only slightly more than 50 franchises in China and in neighbouring countries. It’s annual revenue is close to US$500m, quite decent.

Think of another famous restaurant, called McDonald’s. Today it’s also known as the world’s biggest fast food chain, and has 31,000 restaurants all around the world. That is close to 600 times more than Quanjude and certainly its brand name isn’t as old – it was set up in 1940, almost a century after Quanjude.

But McDonald’s succeeded because its business model could be easily duplicated. Similarly, in network marketing, we teach you to be a business leader so that eventually when you have your own downlines and associates, you also can duplicate what you have learnt and pass it on to the next generation. This will ensure that your network builds quickly and smoothly, given a good system that you can learn from.”

3. How much money do I have to put in?

“Remember, Owen, it’s not about the money. You’ve played Cashflow before, right? Think about the ROI, the return on investment – that’s what you should be thinking about, not just about the downpayment. What do you do when you’re stuck with not enough money but a very good deal on the table?”

“Borrow money from the bank.”

“Exactly! If there is an opportunity for you to earn more than double, five times, or even ten times the amount of money you’ll put in, does it really matter how much money you need to put inside the business?”

**

After answering the questions that I had, Mr. Ay left, and I was about to leave but Deem wanted to share with me a piece of his mind.

“I think that was very rude of you,” Deem said. “Mr. Ay is a very busy man, but he still took the time out to explain the business and how it operates to you. And you were constantly looking at your phone. I mean, I really hope that you take this opportunity seriously because we have all specially arranged our time to help you understand.”

I was flabbergasted. I was getting scolded for getting lured into an MLM talk. But I bit my tongue and waited for him to finish, before I told him that I was very tired, and I wanted to go home.

It was 11pm.

Two Years of My Life – Hindsight bias?

I look back at the MLM experience with a bit of sadness. For close to two years of my life, I was like “serving National Service” – that was what one of the leaders in the business spoke to me when I joined – and sometimes people ask me what would have happened had I chosen to put my money in a high-interest fixed deposit.

Sure, I could have made more money, but while people may claim that I am writing my entries only with a hindsight bias – because I failed, that’s why I don’t encourage people to join – let me just disclaim that.

1. Hell, joining MLM was one of the basic – though unfortunately flawed – step for me to move towards the financial freedom that I desired. Sure, I made a few steps back with that investment, but I did mature as a person and think that did benefit me a lot.

2. The sales experience was incredible. It was crap, but priceless. There is truly no other platform which can allow you to be exposed to so many different types of people – and I say this with confidence.

3. It made me realize that it’s really important to be doing something you love to make money and not trying to fit the money-making into doing something you love. There’s a huge difference. Okay, remember to take your emotions out of the business, but for sure, you want to be doing something that you have confidence and are interested in.

4. It made me become more cynical as a person – a double-edged sword, perhaps? But certainly, a lot safer. And I think this level-up in cynicism will serve me well to protect against the malicious world under all the good stuff that you may hear from these people in suits. (Or, depending on the occasion, shorts.)