Having a mentor at different stages of your life

I am learning to appreciate things I have learned in the past as I get older. I am an engineer by training. However, I started appreciating finance at the age of 21. I moved on to history, geography and now economics. When I was young, I couldn't understand why people did their PhD in history. It was boring to me. At different stages of life, you learn to appreciate the usefulness of different knowledge domains and starts to apply them in your daily life.

Having a mentor at early stage of your working life helps you to appreciate these faster and easier. I had started to have mentors after entering university. My first mentor Dr. Ewe gave me advice on entrepreneurship when I started my first techo-venture at age of 18 . I learned a lot from how to lure venture capitalist, striking an elevator pitch to writing professional business plan in the early days of my university life. I thanked Dr. Ewe for his enthusiasm and guidance in bringing up the future generations of technoprenuer in Malaysia.

During the final years of my university life, I met Mr. Yap, an ED of a public listed company in Malaysia. He was kind enough to mentor me on starting up new companies and running a profitable business. I had a great lesson on startup essentials and know-how on maintaining a successful business cycle. I thank him for his patience with a young punk like me.

I met my ex-CFO, Mr. Chew, who was also a Finance Controller in a listed company years later. Cool and quiet person, he is a great mentor in guiding me on financial management and stock market investment. Having graduated from engineering studies, financial management is a total stranger to me. I started learning about the basics of financial management from my cool mentor when we got closer in a trip to Ipoh. I continue to learn about ways to control operational cost as well as to increase company's profits from a financial standpoint. Terms such as technical analysis and fundamental analysis were added to my dictionary throughout the mentoring process. I was trained to be a shrewed investor. I wouldn't say I am a financial expert now but my financial knowledge are much superior than my university peers thanks to Mr. Chew. I opened my first CDS account after knowing him and my stocks portfolio has been multiplied by 800 % since then.

Ms. Lee and late Elder Cheng were my spiritual mentors. Their guidance and teachings has kept me walking in a righteous path throughout my career and life. Being successful in your life without ethics leads to emptiness. I thank them for planting ethics and God's word in my life.

Good mentors are important in shaping your thinking and character. They fill your innocent mind with useful tips and advice which can be applied for lifetime to make you a better person. I could never imagined myself to be what I am today when I moved from a small town to the big city of Kuala Lumpur. My mentors gave me substantial survival skills to survive in a city. I certainly hope I could mentor the younger generation someday.