The spark to the system.
Sixteen years. Seven companies. A few painful losses. One Guinness World Record.
The Spark — Age 15
“What if I bought these and sold them myself?”
At 15, I discovered online marketplaces while my classmates focused on school and games. I used all my savings to buy watches from Alibaba and sold them on Lelong, Malaysia’s local platform.
That first sale notification changed everything. It wasn’t just money. I realised I could create value by connecting products with people.
Early failures.
“Each loss taught me something no textbook could.”
My early ventures taught me hard lessons. I imported Angry Birds merchandise, only to have our entire shipment seized by customs. I created Goophy Enterprise, but the platform withheld all our payments. I paid repeated “customs fees” on products that never arrived — losing money in an elaborate violin import scam.
Painful. But every loss built a foundation.
London changed me.
“Standing among the world’s top developers, I understood what separated me from success.”
Studying at King’s College London was financially challenging and often lonely. The rental was high. Expiring salmon and raw carrot were my best friends. I locked myself in the room most days and picked up programming instead.
Good thing about the “environment” — there were a lot of programming competitions. After two failed attempts, I won my third hackathon and got interviewed by the London Evening Standard. Soon after, I won an Apple Developer Competition and flew to California for WWDC.
Success isn’t about talent. It’s about systems, vision, and relentless execution.
My startup dream.
Back in Malaysia, I co-founded a software company, LAVA X Technologies. Through previous portfolios and marketing ability, I secured many international projects. My hope was to build those softwares and watch them explode.
The reality was cold. While clients had amazing ideas and paid us good money to develop their software, most failed because of their lack of marketing experience and execution. I decided to leave the company.
Freelance — and a hard lesson.
I went deep into marketing — studying SEO, affiliate marketing, and more. I even got into black hat and made good money. The problem with that is, I knew it wasn’t a sustainable thing to do.
I still had a dream. I decided to take it in my own hands.
The Funnel journey.
And then we made it. Not at home — internationally.
I started Funnel Duo Media with my brother, Jackson. We wanted to be the ones playing a part in helping clients make more money — not just developing the product. Naturally, we started locally. Trying to explain “funnel” to Malaysians was tough.
We invested almost all of our savings & earnings — over RM 100,000 — into courses and seminars. The breakthrough finally came from Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery: we were too focused on how to sell and not focused enough on who to sell to.
The pivot.
In search of our own product, we stopped taking new clients and went all-in to partner with a local software company in the B2B space. We 10×’d the revenue in a year and set up the company for IPO and globalisation.
But the rigidity of a 120+ headcount company conflicted with our inner desire for freedom. Jackson and I exited our shares in 2023 in search of something more aligned with ourselves.
The Brand Funnels & AutomaticSales AI.
Running an international agency was still fun, so we relaunched it as The Brand Funnels. Same year, we spotted an opportunity to partner with HighLevel (GHL) and launched AutomaticSales AI with added features & support.
Within a year, we had 2,000+ active subscribers and won the GHL SaaSPreneur Diamond award — highest tier, >1,000 SaaS users.
Freedom Business & AI Agency™.
The success of our agency & software made many people around us curious. It was also the year AI got adopted by the masses through the launch of ChatGPT.
We recognised the opportunity for Malaysians to “take it to the next level” had arrived — barriers like language and basic skillset replaceable with AI. AI Agency™ aims to provide an untapped opportunity for Malaysians to make money internationally — a business without borders.
The results speak for themselves: students taking action, making 4–5 figures USD by month.
Feb 2025: ASEAN Records officially recognised us as the region’s AI Freelance Training Platform with the highest number of freelancers trained online in a single year.
★ World Record. December 2025.
We officially set a new Guinness World Record for The Largest Artificial Intelligence Marketing Lesson In The World.
Grow, build, invest — more businesses.
In April 2026, Jackson and I launched Gen AI — the umbrella over everything we run. Our successes certainly didn’t come without guidance from mentors and partners. In 2026, we want to extend the hand to grow more businesses. If that’s you, I look forward to speaking with you.
