Hi and welcome to my site. I guess you’re interested to find out about my story! It’s ok, I like to read about others’ stories as well as it helps me understand the person behind the site a little better.
Humble beginnings…
Just kidding! I’m not going to be writing from the time I was born. I grew up in a small island called Penang, in Malaysia. I recently read a Facebook post where someone wrote about the traits of a Penangite. I must say it totally fits! Having grown up on a small island (it’s not really small per say), I moved to the big city – Kuala Lumpur when I managed to secure employment with a rather large banking corporation.
My whole career was about servicing customers based overseas – this depends on which country I was servicing, and I must say, it really opened up my eyes to the different cultures, and people and I made a lot of life-long friends along the way. For some of you who may have also worked in the financial industry or working and living in a big city, you would understand that the society and also the corporate wheel has made all of us into ‘robots’. My days consists of waking up, going to work and coming home to sleep. The only people I meet and talk to were colleagues or customers.
In my first few years, being the foot soldier was tough with low salary, so what did I do? I tried getting into management level, only to be told I’m not fit and would never advance further in my career. Needless to say, my supervisor clearly does not know me well enough. Fast forward a few years later, I quickly climbed up the corporate ladder – mainly due to the fact that I was lucky to eventually get line managers who valued my hardwork. The team sizes that I managed ranges from 20 – 150 team members, covering various countries and services. During this period, with abit more financial stability, I started to embarked on an annual holiday trips overseas – with such stressful work environment, you need to be able to take time off to relax and reward yourself as well. These downtimes will help to re-charge you for another ‘battle’ LOL.
Was corporate life enough?
For some, where they crave titles and power, why not? For me, it has always been about the people – namely my team members and of course, having a bit more stability financially doesn’t hurt. But do I want to be continously tied down by a 9-5 day job? Or do I want to be able to have flexibility in my life. (mind you, work from home for a company isn’t what I have in mind as flexibility LOL). I started to wonder how nice it would be to never worry about money, or even look at the price of food/items before deciding if I want to purchase it (I mean you still need to decide if the item is worth buying – even if you have tonnes of money sitting in the bank). So, I started looking for side hustles, anything that I can do online to earn a few bucks here and there. Throughout a period of approximately 10 years, I went through numerous sites such a GPT (Get Paid To…), crypto-currency faucets (mind you, I actually came across this way earlier before anyone starts trading or knew the value of bitcoins – but no, i didn’t pursue that at the time as I didn’t take the time to understand what it was – Major Regret in life… but life moves on… )
In the last 2 years, I eventually discovered Wealthy Affiliate and the possibility of building an online business. It totally changes everything! They taught me how to build an online business, how I can work for myself and earn affiliate commissions from the comfort of my home (or anywhere in the world).
An online business which would allow me to work whenever and wherever I want and to take control of my own financial. I put my heart and soul into it because I know this is the only way I could have the flexibility that I want and living the lifestyle I’ve always dreamt of, without putting myself into financial difficulties. As a result, WorkAnyplaceAnytime was borned.
This eventually led me to a drastic decision! Leave my 17 year career in the banking industry (by this time, I was already in a senior management role, head of the business service for the entire country!). It had never been a better time and opportunity when we were offered to undertake the voluntary separation scheme (VSS) and I jumped on this.
What am I trying to achieve here?
This site Life’s Crossroad would be totally different from WorkAnyplaceAnytime and would be more of a site where I share information on various topics related to management, team building/motivation, customer services, personal reflection/projects I’m working on, among others. I hope this site would be able to help others who are still in the corporate world and who very much would like to continue in the race – everyone’s gotta do things that they’re passionate about, right?
As you can see, this site is a work in progress and I hope to continue to publish at least 1 – 2 post each week and gradually have enough posts/articles for everyone to refer to, however, do note that these are all mainly my personal view/take on life.
If you ever need a hand or have any questions, feel free to leave them below in the comments and I will be more than happy to help you out. On a side note, do check out my other site as well if you are more interested in learning which sites can help you earn an income from side hustles. These are all mainly tried and tested sites that I personally used, if it is not tested, then rest assured that I have done a thorough analysis/research before posting them.
All the best!
Alston
Life’s Crossroad