In this episode of Property Agent Secrets Podcast, Yasser Khan shares his weird story as a Property Agent more than 10 years ago.

Ten years ago I was a struggling Property Agent in Singapore at PropNex. For the whole of 2008, I earned less than $1,000 TOTAL in commissions. That’s less than $84 per month, kinda like earning in Zimbabwe, Africa. I was so poor I didn’t even have money for transportation. So I had to borrow money from my mother for the train rides and tolerate her painful lectures. It got so bad, in desperation, I walked out on foot from my mother’s home in Bedok all the way to Toa Payoh. That’s a 25 kilometer long 2-way journey, taking me two sweat-drenched hours to walk per trip. Why was I struggling so hard? I joined as a realtor after I saw my aunt making a lot of money selling houses. I wanted to make good money. But the problem was, I was a shy person trying to work in a field generally more forgiving to extroverts. Since I couldn’t seem to be closing deals, my upline advised me to throw out some flyers. I went and did that. No one called me. Next, she asked me to knock on doors. I did that too, and almost got arrested for trespassing. I didn’t have the money to advertise in the newspaper like all the successful agents did. So I was stuck. Then my upline suggested that I attempt cold calling. But I absolutely hated doing that. Besides, I already was near my breaking point and was very close to giving up. I stopped everything to take out some time alone. I sat down in my mother’s kitchen late one night and thought about what I wanted to do next. Suddenly, I had an ‘AHA!’ moment. I realised I was doing it all wrong! There were others who were more successful than my own upline. All I had to do was copy what they did. Model what worked and throw away whatever that didn’t. This was exciting… But since I didn’t have the budget top agents did, I had to bootstrap. I realised, in 2008, the internet was still up and coming in Singapore. There were few agents there. But I didn’t like what they were doing. So I searched around for inspiration and stumbled across Dan Kennedy from USA. He was teaching direct response marketing methods to business owners. And what he taught made absolute 100% sense to me. All that was left for me to do next was tweak his approach and apply it to Singapore’s real estate industry. I was excited. Since I had taught myself website building and was quite technologically advanced, I borrowed money to put up a domain and created a simple but amazing offer for local home buyers. And promptly got FLOODED with 1,943 inquiries in under 48 hours! That was the first time ever in my life I closed a major deal, earning a cool 79,382.73 in commissions! But I had unknowingly pushed myself into an even BIGGER problem than before; I couldn’t handle it all! My phone was ringing off the hook, and I could barely follow up with any of them. I started becoming paranoid. I was sleeping less, worrying more. I knew I was leaving money on the table. I could close more deals given more time. This time, I needed a different kind of help from before.