The Edge Personal Money Nov 2009
Six years ago, Azlan Deraman, 36, and Siti Rohana Yusoff, 35, were average wage earners – he was an engineer in a private automobile company while she was a teacher in a secondary school in Batang Kali, Selangor.
In 2003, she started looking ways to supplement her income. “I wanted to upgrade my lifestyle and have savings for emergencies, I also started thinking about my children’s education.”
So, Siti Rohana joined Hai-O as a part-time agent. When she saw that prospects were good, she took unpaid leave to focus on her new business. After six months, she resigned as a teacher and went full-time.
“My husband and I were already using Hai-O products, so we felt confident about them. Moreover, when we did some research of our own, we saw that there were many people who were interested in the products as well.”
Encouraged by his wife’s success and the handsome returns she was getting Azlan decided to join his wife a few months later.
“We put 100% into the business. We used whatever we were marketing so that we could provide effective testimonials of their effectiveness. We shared the products with friends, who then introduced them to their other friends.”
“We had to work a lot harder in the beginning to provide demonstrations and training. We spent a lot of time trying to train our partners until they were able to manage on their own. However, we preserved, telling ourselves that we had to work hard for two years before we could receive our ‘return on investment’”, adds Azlan.
They also faced rejection at the beginning but look it in their stride, believing that it was a normal part of the business.
“Rejection is good as it taught us how to tackle future rejections. We could help our partners when they were faced with similar situations.”
With business taking off, they began to set some goals, one of which was to achieve one million in profit.
“We targeted to maintain RM1 million in group sales consistently through a period of 10 months. Once, we would receive one million in savings ourselves,” says Siti Rohana.
So, Siti Rohana joined Hai-O as a part-time agent. When she saw that prospects were good, she took unpaid leave to focus on her new business. After six months, she resigned as a teacher and went full-time.
“My husband and I were already using Hai-O products, so we felt confident about them. Moreover, when we did some research of our own, we saw that there were many people who were interested in the products as well.”
Encouraged by his wife’s success and the handsome returns she was getting Azlan decided to join his wife a few months later.
“We put 100% into the business. We used whatever we were marketing so that we could provide effective testimonials of their effectiveness. We shared the products with friends, who then introduced them to their other friends.”
“We had to work a lot harder in the beginning to provide demonstrations and training. We spent a lot of time trying to train our partners until they were able to manage on their own. However, we preserved, telling ourselves that we had to work hard for two years before we could receive our ‘return on investment’”, adds Azlan.
They also faced rejection at the beginning but look it in their stride, believing that it was a normal part of the business.
“Rejection is good as it taught us how to tackle future rejections. We could help our partners when they were faced with similar situations.”
With business taking off, they began to set some goals, one of which was to achieve one million in profit.
“We targeted to maintain RM1 million in group sales consistently through a period of 10 months. Once, we would receive one million in savings ourselves,” says Siti Rohana.
They were right on target: Two years later, they were millionaires.
Today, they have 80 downlines, all of whom are millionaire leaders who have their own sets of downlines as well.
“Not only can we now afford to send our four children to further studies overseas, we can afford to have four more children and send them overseas for studies as well, if we wanted to!” says Azlan.
Their motto and also advice to aspiring millionaires is to:
Do the right thing and do them at once. Make it happen and do not waste time.
