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the Germans need to up the tempo & not play the slow possession game the Spanish are playing to stand a chance! This might go to penalty! #

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For starters, blogging wise, this year, i.e. 2009 has been less than productive. In my mind, there are a lot of things I want to say & write in all the blogs that I’ve set-up, yet it never materialized the way I pictured it. Call it laziness or just lack of time, those are just excuses and justification that I make to myself.

Yet, in retrospect, I would have placed 2009 as one of the best learning & personal growth experience that I had in my life, and here, I will try my best to share this with everyone on this simple blog entry.

How do I do this? By answering these 5 elementary questions;

1. What was your biggest triumph in 2009?
This question is a tough one as I have quite a few. So, let me just list them down here as the biggest in no particular order;

• I moved to my own house in D’Rimba with my small family in March! Finally, a place to call my (our) own!
• I celebrated my 30th year of existence in this world with my loved ones
• I closed big sales account with BFM through mainly my own effort and contacts
• I am a Money & You and Creating Wealth Graduate! (see q2)
• I only job-hopped once in 2009! Hehe!!

2. What was the smartest decision you made in 2009?
To invest in myself and join the top 2% of the world population by joining the many Money & You graduates of the world. I sincerely believe that it was one of the best decision that I made ever to grow myself and I have experienced such great love, and got tremendous clarity & distinctions towards what I want to achieve with my life. The transformational journey has only just begun and I commit myself to applying all the principles of Money & You and Creating Wealth everyday! It was definitely PRECESSION at work. In fact, just by being in Money & You, my friends list on Facebook has grown to the 1000s!!

3. What one word best sums up and describes your 2009 experience?
TRANSFORMATIONAL!

4. What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2009?
To be truly successful in life, I need to take FULL RESPONSIBILITY.
FULL STOP. No more blaming, no more excuses, no more justification.

5. What was the most loving service you performed in 2009?
This is another tough one. Got a few as well. For my small family, Nia & Nadyne, I’m sponsoring 2 return tickets to the UK for them and we will all embark on a 9 days Easter family trip to the UK in April next year. WooooHoooo! Can’t wait! And my wish to be able to celebrate Nadyne’s 1st birthday at our own home was fulfilled in April this year too!

For the beloved pjfamily, I’ve shared whatever that I learned and got from Money & You and I’m proud to have both my elder sister (Kaklong) & brother (Acat) has joined the M&Y family! We had a fun family day outing just recently and it was a BLAST!

For the community, I’ve committed my time & effort as best as possible to participate fully and contribute my ideas and actions into the betterment of D’Rimba and grow within the M&Y circle.

For my work, I’ve sincerely act with integrity and believe have contributed to the growth of BFM89.9 and now will embark on another start-up journey with Leaderonomics and bring it to greater heights!

So, there you go!

Here’s wishing everyone a great end to 2009 and GREATER START to 2010!!

Between Feb 2007 and March 2008, Sean Aiken completed an epic journey around North America, working 52 jobs in 52 weeks. Sean Aiken graduated from college and didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career (or what he wanted to do with his life).

Instead of take the first job that came along, he found a unique way of figuring it out: the One Week Job project.

How it worked: Anyone, anywhere, could offer Sean a job for one week. Any money he earned for the work, he asked the employer to donate towards the ONE / Make Poverty History campaign.

On his inspirational quest, Sean tried everything: Bungee Instructor, Dairy Farmer, Advertising Executive, Baker, Stock Trader, Firefighter, and more. Wherever he could find work, he’d go there, find a couch to crash on and immerse himself in whatever profession was at hand. And then he’d move on.

Well, the excerpt above is actually taken directly from the oneweekjob.com’s ‘about the project’ website.
You can check it out and see all the 52 jobs he undertook during those times and what he has achieved.

Soon, his experiences will be shared with the whole world with a published book too!
You can also check out all the 52 episodes of his job hopping experiences here.

This guy is my HERO and is pure inspiration to me. I wished I could have done the same thing straight after graduation, finding my true passion and never settle for less. Well, at the moment, I’m already embarking on that journey and I believe one day, I will be able to also do what I love and enjoy and still creating personal wealth. If job-hopping 4 times a year like what I did seems extreme to you, then think again!

What really inspires me about Sean is his conviction and promise in the beginning as outlined on his site:

Shortly after graduating from college, I made a promise to myself:

I will not settle for a career that I am not truly passionate about, I will not allow yearning for weekends and the illustrious two week vacation a year to define my life, I will be in a positive work place situation and I will love what I am doing.

Well, right now, I’m making the same promise too and I hope you will also do the same!
Maybe I will emulate what Sean did in the US back here in Malaysia and find a good cause to support..

Hhhhmmmm.. that sounds like a wild idea, isn’t it? My wife and daughter might starve a year then!
Anyone care to support my journey?

Some, rather most organizations reject his CV today because he has changed jobs frequently (10 in 14 years). My friend, the ‘job hopper’ (referred here as Mr. JH), does not mind it…. well he does not need to mind it at all. Having worked full-time with 10 employer companies in just 14 years gives Mr. JH the relaxing edge that most of the ‘company loyal’ employees are struggling for today. Today, Mr. JH too is laid off like some other 14-15 year experienced guys – the difference being the latter have just worked in 2-3 organizations in the same number of years. Here are the excerpts of an interview with Mr. JH:

Q: Why have you changed 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: To get financially sound and stable before getting laid off the second time.

Q: So you knew you would be laid off in the year 2009?
A: Well, I was laid off first in the year 2002 due to the first global economic slowdown.
I had not got a full-time job before January 2003 when the economy started looking up;
so I had struggled for almost a year without job and with compromises.

Q: Which number of job was that?
A: That was my third job.

Q: So from Jan 2003 to Jan 2009, in 6 years, you have changed 8 jobs to make the count as 10 jobs in 14 years?
A: I had no other option. In my first 8 years of professional life, I had worked only for 2 organizations thinking that jobs are deserved after lot of hard work and one should stay with an employer company to justify the saying ‘employer loyalty’. But I was an idiot.

Q: Why do you say so?
A: My salary in the first 8 years went up only marginally. I could not save enough and also, I had thought that I had a ‘permanent’ job, so I need not worry about ‘what will I do if I lose my job’. I could never imagine losing a job because of economic slowdown and not because of my performance.
That was January 2002.

Q: Can you brief on what happened between January 2003 and 2009.
A: Well, I had learnt my lessons of being ‘company loyal’ and not ‘money earning and saving loyal’.
But then you can save enough only when you earn enough.
So I shifted my loyalty towards money making and saving – I changed 8 jobs in 6 years assuring all my interviewers about my stability.

Q: So you lied to your interviewers; you had already planned to change the job for which you were being interviewed on a particular day?
A: Yes, you can change jobs only when the market is up and companies are hiring.
You tell me – can I get a job now because of the slowdown? No.
So one should change jobs for higher salaries only when the market is up because that is the only time when companies hire and can afford the expected salaries.

Q: What have you gained by doing such things?
A: That’s the question I was waiting for.
In Jan 2003, I had a fixed salary (without variables) of say Rs. X p.a.
In January 2009, my salary was 8X. So assuming my salary was Rs.3 lakh p.a. in Jan 2003, my last drawn salary in Jan 2009 was Rs.24 lakh p.a. (without variable).
I never bothered about variable as I had no intention to stay for 1 year and go through the appraisal process to wait for the company to give me a hike.

Q: So you decided on your own hike?
A: Yes, in 2003, I could see the slowdown coming again in future like it had happened in 2001-02. Though I was not sure by when the next slowdown would come, I was pretty sure I wanted a ‘debt-free’ life before being laid off again. So I planned my hike targets on a yearly basis without waiting for the year to complete.

Q: So are you debt-free now?
A: Yes, I earned so much by virtue of job changes for money and spent so little that today I have a loan free 2 BR flat (1200 sq. feet)
plus a loan free big car without bothering about any EMIs.
I am laid off too but I do not complain at all.
If I have laid off companies for money, it is OK if a company lays me off because of lack of money.

Q: Who is complaining?
A: All those guys who are not getting a job to pay their EMIs off are complaining.
They had made fun of me saying I am a job hopper and do not have any company loyalty.
Now I ask them what they gained by their company loyalty; they too are laid off like me and pass comments to me – why will you bother about us, you are already debt-free. They were still in the bracket of 12-14 lakh p.a. when they were laid off.

Q: What is your advice to professionals?
A: Like Narayan Murthy had said – love your job and not your company because you never know when your company will stop loving you.
In the same lines, love yourself and your family needs more than the company’s needs.
Companies can keep coming and going; family will always remain the same.
Make money for yourself first and simultaneously make money for the company, not the other way around.

Q: What is your biggest pain point with companies?

A: When a company does well, its CEO etc will address the entire company saying,
‘well done guys, it is YOUR company, keep up the hard work, I am with you.”

But when the slowdown happens and the company does not do so well, the same CEO etc will say,
“It is MY company and to save the company, I have to take tough decisions including asking people to go.”

So think about your financial stability first; when you get laid off, your kids will complain to you and not your boss.

As a job-hopper myself, I couldn’t agree more. My wife and daughter are my ultimate boss.
Speaking from experience, even my wife got retrenched or laid-off from the company she worked in for more than 4 years despite having good appraisals and performed much better than anyone else. Not just that, it was done with less than 24 hours notice and I must say brutally. Even till today, she still has not fully recovered from the hurt.

As for me, I am planning my next exit strategy as the current company I’m working for is stifling my creativity and leadership ability.
Furthermore, the remuneration package is not to my expectation. Which is too bad as I do believe in the product and enjoy what I’m doing.

Stay tuned for more updates and job-hopping tips for success!!