Investment is about Ideas

Small People talk about things (small matters)
Regular People talk about other people
Big People talk about ideas!

I learned this phrase when I studied in USA. But, it was not in the classroom I learned about the phrase. Instead, I learned about it when I was helping my friend working in a restaurant in Boston. As I said before, as a student you are not being taught how to be a millionaire. The real learning about life is when you went through some experience in life! At that time, I don't really appreciate the phrase. Later, after I have worked for several years, I realize that ideas what make us progress. No idea is small except idea where it is not given any opportunity to be tested or practice in real life.

It is normal for us to listen or being in a pep talk without any real purpose. Some conversation may have small purpose such as learning about your relatives or friends condition, life and etc. But, most of the small talk is just a small talk. Most people wasted hours of conversation in small talks rather than learning something out of it and try to execute what they have learned. People always keep talking rather than listening. Nowadays I like to talk a lot. But, if I think and feel my conversation partner has something valuable, I would rather be a listener. This is the reason a Malay proverb said "bila orang tua cakap, diam dan dengar" which can loosely translated to when the older people talk, shut up and listen. You may learn something out of it.

I remembered when I was a young lecturer, we have a problem where the data storage in a EEPROM is too small for an image. In those end of 1990's, a thumb drive was only 64MB which was also not sufficient. One day we sat at a restaurant and had some drinks. There were three persons discussing about the issue. The other persons were my former supervisor and a talented lecturer who read a lot. When we raised about the issue, the lecturer who read a lot suggest to us to try to control an IDE hard disk directly in order to have a large data storage. We taught it was not possible. But, our friend told us that some of the information was readily available. He never bother tried to implement it because he did not have any need for a large storage. After spending for a week, we successfully implemented the IDE controller using Microchip PIC! Later we adopt the technology with a JPEG DECODER to display movies without the need to use a computer at all! And it was being displayed by UTM when Tun Mahathir visited UTM in 1999.

Investment is also the same. What you need is an idea to be successful. Most of the time, I prefer to listen to successful people talk about their investment. However, last week I learned something new from my old friend who migrated to Universiti Malaysia Pahang. Although his salary is not as high as a lecturer, he still managed to invest in property! He already bought and sold many properties for the past five years in Pahang. Most property investors would prefer to focus on big cities in order to get quick return. But, my friend proves that you can still make a decent income if you have the right strategy and execute it properly. I estimated his initial capital was less than RM40,000 when he began five years ago. Now, he managed to build his own house estimated about RM150,000 cash! While at the same time he still own many properties in Pahang.

Let us get back to my blog series about

Balasan kepada Surat Siti Hajar kepada Perdana Menteri Malaysia. 

http://surexperience.blogspot.com/2014/01/balasan-kepada-surat-siti-hajar-kepada.html

I am hoping feedback or ideas from my readers on how to start a property investment for this poor girl. And I am looking forward to have different ideas from different people. No matter what is your idea, please provide the initial assumption to be made.