Hi! I'm Irwin.
If i had to sum up who am i in 1 minute, it would be this:
I am a Multipassionate Zentrepreneur. I label myself as multipassionate because I am just passionate about a few things in life, mainly entrepreneurship, digital marketing and personal growth.
As for Zentrepreneur, if you’ve never heard of it before, it means an entrepreneur who builds time into their schedules for thinking, meditating and investing in themselves holistically to achieve spiritual, mental, financial, relationship, physical and emotional growth and most importantly, balance.
And as I explore myself deeply in zen practices, I’ve discovered what I believe to be my true calling in life, my BIG WHY, and that is:
This feels very true and authentic to me. To understand how I got to my calling, you have to understand my upbringing.
I was born in a small hometown called Saratok in Sarawak, Malaysia and raised in a normal middle income family with 2 other siblings. Both my parents were teachers and that career helped secure our good life, compared to their parents and other families in our communities.
My parents grew up in a tough environment. The main source of income for their parents back then was agriculture – planting rice and black pepper plantation. They even grow their own vegetables and fruits. As for source of protein, there’s river nearby and they rear livestock near their farmland as well.
While survival is not a big issue, it’s still a hard life as most people back then can’t afford an education. But both my parents persist despite the hardship, walking for at least 2 hours from their respective long house to the nearest school.
Back then people knew that the only way out of poverty is through education, so my parents believed in this too and study really hard.
So long story short, their dedication and sacrifice has enabled them to secure top grades in school and eventually graduate to become a full time teacher, which gave them a steady salary and solid foundation for a better life.
Then came my brother, then me and 7 years later, my younger brother. We were brought up in a more comfortable life. My parents can afford to send us to school, we got cars for transportation and we can have our breakfast “Kampua” frequently at our favorite chinese shops.
Despite the good life that we are living, my parents still take us to do rubber tapping, plant rice fields, and harvest black pepper and palm oil. Sometimes we have to walk for almost 1 kilometers to get to the plantation estate. For me, that teaches me the hardship that most of my people and community is living, even to this day. I’ve always felt compassionate towards them, but I just didn’t know what to do.
And as I was growing up, I also have the internal struggle where I just don’t want to live a normal mediocre life like my parent. I knew that there’s more to life that just having career and settling down and retire. And I know strongly that the answer is not by becoming a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or engineer. It wasn’t until I enrolled in university that I finally got my answer.
I was lucky to be offered an International Business course at a local university (UiTM) despite my first 4 choices being a medical doctor because I was on that path like many of my close friends. But somehow intuitively, the decision to choose a business degree felt right. So I took that leap of faith and decided to enroll. Long story short, I got it. (Thank you God, Universe)
And that’s not the best part. The best part about university is meeting a classmate that shaped my entire perspective on this world, and also introduced me to the word ENTREPRENEURSHIP, and gave meaning to it. Yes, as unbelievable as it seems, the word entrepreneurship never existed in my dictionary until I was in University! And most important of all, he introduce me to the word of self help or personal growth, and I got my first book from him, Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that was groundbreaking as well.
Again, I feel intuitively that being an entrepreneur feels very fitting to me. And as I explore deeper this path of entrepreneurship, I knew it is the key to me living an incredible life, and also the key to helping my people.
The real test begins as me and my buddy pursue our entrepreneurship career in university doing MLM. Yep. As I do that MLM, more words gets introduced to my dictionary. Profits, capital, cashflow, balance sheet, marketing and sales.
It complements greatly with what I’m studying. Except now, I didn’t focus on study much. Me and my buddy were more focused on the outside world, networking with business leaders at conferences, joining business competitions, one after the other.
Despite us winning some competitions here and there, the MLM didn’t took off. Then I started a small side business in university selling instant noodle at night. It was a hit. There was demand. However that demand came after 10pm and I find it tiring to juggle between my study. So I quit that as well.
But I didn’t call it quit on entrepreneurship. So the journey continues. I was recruited into another MLM, then another. None worked out. Then graduation came, and I was still not successful and rich as how I imagined it would be, and had to settle to finding a job.
I don’t actually want to commit suicide as I still have a loving family and my people that I need to serve. But internally, I was suffering. Feeling so hopeless as nothing works. What’s worse is the fact that I couldn’t get myself out of my internal dialog of pain and suffering. And it affected my relationship as well. My girlfriend (back then) broke up with me so that’s another slap to my already depressed being.
At that time, I was staying with my buddy and we had a bookshelf with both our books combined. So while in the suicidal state, I had the nudge to get out of bed and go outside the house. As I walk out, I will usually pass by the bookshelf. And during that moment, suddenly I have the feeling of checking this 1 particular blue book in the spirituality section.
It was a blue covered book called Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Guess what, that booked saved me.
The moment i read through the first chapter, I was liberated from my internal pain. Then I read that book for the next 2 days, and I found inner peace. My problems are still there, but they just didn’t affect me anymore. And that’s when I was able to make a Zen decision to solve any problems that I’m facing, one by one.
And it also gave me the courage to quit my job and start my own business, which became quite successful as business revenue hits 100k in the first 12 months. Life was good as the business kept growing, and I was now my own boss.
Exactly 1 year and 4 months later, my business partnership went sour. The main reason? Money. I had a bad money belief that causes me to not take money and cashflow seriously, and what’s worse is I delegate the money management responsibility entirely to my business partner, without any accountability whatsoever. Guess what, I never saw the money in our bank account. So a nasty confrontation ensues.
But intuitively, I know that I am part of the problem in the first place. And I also know that this business isn’t something that I want to do for the long run. And I love the fact that the business is growing and I don’t want it to stop since we still have lots of loyal customers.
Back to a 9-5 job. Yep. But this time, I was lucky to be working under a top internet marketing guru in Malaysia, and I got to see first hand how online business was being run behind the scene.
Unlike running a business where you have good and bad months, having a job afterward was more fulfilling as I have the financial stability to not worry about survival, and I have the space to focus on my personal growth, across various aspect of my life especially my finance and money belief. Also, it’s less lonely as well as I get to have colleagues which became my new circle of close friends.
My career grew. I became a better and more knowledgeable digital marketer today, running and managing 6 figure ad budgets and millions of sales for the company that I worked with. (You can check out my Linkedin if you want to learn more)
I’m also running a side business helping business owners grow their business online. I am very quiet about this previously and only those close to me knows about this, but not any longer! I’m expanding!
Relationship wise, I have a beautiful and loving relationship for almost 5 years now. But of course, there’s are times that we fight as well, but its manageable as we learn how to resolve our issue and have difficult conversation among each other.
Finance wise, I have a more positive belief towards money, and I am now investing in property together with my girlfriend, and actively monitor my cashflow like a jealous girlfriend. Thanks T Harv Eker.
… and that’s where I’ll bring in ideas and wisdoms, either from books or interviews with experts in their respective fields. Also (shameless plug) I’m really resourcesful myself and I can usually figure out solutions or answers to a certain problem with the help of mentors, books, Google and a little help from the universe and the power of intuition.
But as I’m writing this story of mine, I feel a strong sense of calling towards entrepreneurship again, and I know it won’t be long before I pursue entrepreneurship full time again and be my own boss. So we’ll see how that goes. 🙂
My goal for you is simple.
Btw, thanks for reading this far, I hope this marks the beginning of our beautiful relationship & journey 🙂
Join me as I challenge myself to do things that gives me great discomfort. This is actually an idea that was birthed thanks to the corona virus lockdown, and is also inspired by Yes Theory.
So what happens is each week, me and my girlfriend actually set out to do at least 1 thing that gives us great discomfort, or do things that scares us. Guess what, it’s very liberating and fun!
Because as you already probably know, life happens outside of comfort zone. And your income will also grow as your comfort zone expands. So instead of just me and my girlfriend doing this, why not you join us as well? It will be even MORE FUN!
If you’re interested, you can submit your interest in this google form. Then I will reach out to you and get us started 🙂 Just a heads up, while its exciting and scary at the same time, I only accept people who are serious and committed.
I also run a side hustle helping people build an online sales process to help them make money out of their passion and to grow their business through online marketing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a sales process or details put out on the web right now. (Will put out more info online soon)
I am scaling my operations, but with so many things going on in my life, I can only serve 2 clients per month, and I’m very selective as well as to who I work with. If you don’t know what’s a sales process is, well, just think of it as a website that pulls in money and customers for your business.
So if you’re interested, you can fill in this form so we can have a zoom call to understand your situation better.
My full name is Irwin Umban anak Enchi. It’s a normal name among the Iban community to have names in this format. But I had that mentality that this name won’t carry me far when it comes to making a name for myself in the world.
But then I was like, Chiwetel Ejiofor used his real Nigerian name to represent himself and now he is a Hollywood star. (I remember him more as Vincent Kapoor as I watched the Martian so many times already)
So i was like, okay, I’m gonna use my real name, and people who know my name are gonna know my culture and my origin. And they probably will get themselves an Iban tattoo, who knows. So there’s that.
I used to be a hardcore Christian, thinking that becoming a Father would be a great career choice, except I dreamed a lot about angels and getting possessed by demons. And I also became easily confused reading the bible and understanding the scripture as they could mean different thing to different people. It’s also the source of my limiting money belief.
Also I was brought up surrounded by Christian, so religion was imposed onto me. So I decided to break out of this culturescape and explore every other religious faith. From Islam, Buddhism, and even my own culture’s belief on God and spirituality. So now, I’m someone who believes in love, compassion, kindness, karma, humanity and I just take in any good belief from any religion. So that’s my religion. Not sure if there’s a name for this but definitely not the religion of Flying Spaghetti Monster or atheist. I think for now, Zentrepreneur sounds fitting to my religious faith.
That’s my drug. Take me on a fishing trip and we’ll probably have high chances of doing a win-win business deal or becoming long term friends. Also, guess what, I usually teach people digital marketing using the analogy of fishing as well.
To A Life You Truly Love,
Irwin Umban