I get such remarks a lot.

After all, it’s hard to imagine how a good-for-nothing who was expelled at P3 could achieve success if he didn’t ride on his parents’ wealth.

You see, the truth is… I did achieve success thanks to my dad. But not by inheriting his money, like most people think. In fact, it was the total opposite.

He never gave me what I wanted. His famous line was “Waste money.”

I used to be envious of my friends — their parents would give them money to buy computer games; my father only gave me enough money to eat. He was an extremely frugal man, and in those days, he would not even buy a brand-new car despite his wealth. He would compare prices of toilet paper and toothpaste all over the supermarket before deciding what to buy.

It was only decades later that I realised how my “stingy old man” had shaped me to be the go-getter I am today. “When I die, you will not get a single cent,” he always said. His tough love drove me to earn things that I wanted with my own hands.

It helped that every Chinese New Year, from the time I was 15, my grandfather would give me hongbao with cash plus Malaysian shares like Genting, Kuantan Flour Mill and Hicom.

When I was in the army, I started dabbling in shares.

At about that time, I was inspired by a book I read, Buffetology, based on the success and work of Warren Buffett. I was amazed by a man who was able to build his wealth purely through investing.

Sadly, my path was not a smooth one. I had decided to venture into the stock market, but I did so without much prior knowledge. In just two years of investing in the stock market, not only did I not make any money, but most of my stock holdings fell in value by more than 30%.

To make matters worse, one of the companies whose stocks that I owned became bankrupt and was delisted from the stock market.

Frustrated and disappointed, I told myself that investing was a gimmick and a waste of time, and proceeded to sell whatever stocks I had left. I deposited whatever remained of my savings into ‘safe’ instruments like insurance policies and fixed deposit.

The story doesn’t end here, though.

I couldn’t get over this setback. For the next couple of years, I kept asking myself, “What did I do wrong?”, “What could I have done better?”

I knew I had to take whatever it takes to crack the code to investing profitably, consistently.

I had previously been dabbling in Value Investing (some of you may know of this as the strategy used by the famous Warren Buffett). Now, Value Investing is great for picking out undervalued companies, but investors (like myself!) often see these cheap stocks getting cheaper after buying in.

Taking whatever I knew about Value Investing, I began adapting it into a strategy to find sure-win stocks AND pinpoint exactly when they are at their cheapest.

I used it to profit during the economic depression from 1998 to 1999, buying stocks of highly profitable and undervalued Singapore companies. At that time, I bought stocks like SIA, OCBC, DBS and Keppel. The techniques in VMI™ allowed me to enter the market only when these stocks were at their cheapest.

In the dotcom bubble burst of 2002, and the financial crisis in 2009, I once again spotted various opportunities (missed by most investors who were frantically dumping away their stocks), using the VMI™ strategy. I managed to buy many great U.S companies at bargain prices, and within the next 12 months, I had again made profits on my investments.

Now, I’m happy to say that I’m quite comfortable living off my passive income. Here’s the thing, though. When you have struggled for years to achieve success, it is impossible to forget that feeling when you once hit rock bottom.

I might have since put those days behind me, but trust me when I say I know how awful it feels when you have lost all your hard-earned savings in the stock market.

And the reason why I’m telling you this is because I have myself, in my younger, cockier days, made pretty much every investing mistake in the book. I believed I could invest profitably by relying on hearsay and so-called “advice” from friends and self-proclaimed gurus.

Sure, you can follow my path. You can stumble, make mistakes, suffer losses, and eventually learn enough to create a sizable second income for yourself.

What if I told you, though, that there is another, much more straightforward path to financial success?

After years of developing and perfecting my VMI™ strategy, I started my Wealth Academy (WA) Introductory Workshop in order to help fellow new investors like myself back then.

The information provided by Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group Pte Ltd (AKLTG) and its associated trainers is meant for educational purposes, and at no instance to be regarded as investment advice. You are advised to practise due diligence before making any financial decisions. AKLTG and its associated trainers are not liable for any losses incurred from your investment activities. All forms of investments carry risks. Such activities may not be suitable for everyone. Past investment performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance, even if the same strategies are adopted.