Friday, August 8, 2014 :: Of Everything I Am
With Love,
It has been a such a long time since I am able to sit down peacefully to write a personal entry without any obligations and to-do list staring at me in the most perverse way of guilt tripping. All because I am stuck 30,000 feet in the air on a plane now with no connection to the outside world. You probably have seen lesser of such personal posts nowadays because I have been caught up with so much work commitments.
Other than having vgystore.com and the lovely boutique in Haji Lane under my wing, I am also bounded by my commitment to Gushcloud, my media agency for advertorials, keeping up with my social media presence in the midst of doing so. In addition to that, I have been honing my skills in the property industry ever since I gotten my license to practice in late Feb this year. I have been quite the enthusiast at it; attending courses, seminars, classes and even heading out on a bi-weekly routine to get to know the landed residents at my Geographical Targeted Area. In doing so, I get myself really tanned (and extremely exhausted at the start of the day) because landed properties don't usually come with the privilege of being in the shade. So there I go, knocking from door to door early in the morning until 12pm sometimes 1pm when the sun is at its hottest, brushing up my courage to speak to the residents while I put into practise the knowledge I gotten from all the classes/seminars I attended to earn the trust of the residents.
Some people ask me why do I multi-task so much, how do I handle my work load, how do I manage my time and so on. The honest truth is I don't know haha. There you go, I really don't know and I am a total wreck at managing my time. I just squeeze every available time I have to do a crap load amount of tasks like:
Just listing everything that comes into my mind but there is more I am sure. My mind is always like a congested traffic jam in China (haha what an analogy). Hey but this is exactly how I feel. When a vehicle of thoughts come into my mind (say as I sit through a meeting with my manufacturer to discuss VGY designs), another vehicle of thoughts will be right behind honking at the first vehicle in a rush seemingly "hey move on, I am in a hurry!", in a way guilt-tripping me - here I am discussing samples when I have a buyer to serve and that I need to get to the office quick to search through my emails and property listings to get the best deal for her. Even as I sit in the car to take a quick shut-eye, I feel guilty for taking that 15 minutes break and I beat myself up for wasting that 15 minutes when I have emails to respond to.
I was much worse at handling these guilty emotions but am definitely much better than I was in the past, I believe that is with the grace of God because I can do all things through Him :*)
Thank you, Father.
Although I get really really tired at the end of the day that I can fall asleep at any given opportunity, I feel happy knowing that my life is meaningful and that I am working towards my goal of growing VGY as a local brand with the people behind it driven by passion in what they do and being able to grow the team of passionate individuals as well. Something which I have learnt from John and am still in the process of learning and working towards it - Grow your people first, then your company will take off. Which is why even though I have been up to my neck, my thorax in fact, with an unimaginable insane amount of work load, I am agreeing to a 4 hours long workshop with Success Legacy where I will talk about my experience in building and running VGY. It will be a pretty intense workshop because in here, I will be sharing every single thing I have learnt in the process of running VGY since 2008. I wish to be able to share my experience with young aspiring entrepreneurs out there to help you grow because I understand how hearing from someone who had been through it will help in inspiring you. I myself have heard from inspiring figures in the past and their words have stuck with me for long and moulded the company's values as well. One of which was from John; Grow your people first, then your company will take off. I may not be really eloquent with my words but I am taking the first step out to share my experience so do sign up for it if you are able to bear with me for 4 long hours! ;)
To answer many emails out there which I receive weekly regarding property work, yes, I am in the industry right now and I am under Propnex. I do not write about this side of my work because I realized through many emails that people think this is an easy industry with high commission dollars to earn every month. With my possible influence through my writing, I dare not speak much about it because at the risk of sounding flippant, I could make it sound easy and risk many people entering this industry because of the impression I put across when in fact, I myself am struggling - when I say struggling, I mean struggling to be a good property agent. I have high expectations of myself because there are so many things to learn that you can never learn everything in a single course. You need to constantly upgrade yourself, be disciplined enough because this is a highly freelance industry where you do not have to report to work at 8am. Transactions do not come easy as well because you need to be on the ground under the sun working your ass off to knock on doors, speaking to residents, collecting your own listings to market. It is not as breezy EVEN THOUGH this can be a highly profitable industry if you are a property agent who work on QUALITY than quantity. When I say quality, this means turning 1 transaction into 4 transactions instead of being just a normal "I am a buy/sell/rent agent". But I am a very optimistic individual and I never stop learning :) When I happen to get involved in a conversation when agents waste time drinking coffee while complaining they are not doing well, I will walk away. Hell I would, walk away as fast as I can and spend my time doing more productive matters.
I entered this industry with a passion for the property market. I yearn to learn about this market and I am working towards an insane dream - where I can buy a land of my own, and build my dream house here in Singapore, just like John's inspiring family members. This is a really far-fetched dream but hey, at least I have taken the hardest first step out ;) Yes, even though I am a total wreck at managing all my work load for now haha but I believe with faith that I will learn to manage through time because I am doing things that I enjoy doing now and I never stop at learning new things.
The plane has started to descend as I am nearing the end of my post. Till then! :)
Tricia
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