At that time, I didn’t understand why the bottleneck happened in the business until I learnt that it’s about beginning with the end in mind. We want to start a business on a small scale and slowly grow bigger. But we always must think, what is the end that you will like to achieve because this is very important to lead you to the right path and right way. Back then, I didn’t have a really clear direction or just started the business, then learn along the way and grow along the way.
Evon Heng
In today’s episode, I am speaking to Evon Heng who is the Principal & Chief Operating Officer of PropNex Malaysia, a real estate agency with 1,000 negotiators. It wasn’t always this way and in the early days when she started the business, she found it a struggle to grow after a certain point.
Evon grew up in Klang, Selangor and she had always wanted to become a businesswoman because of her parents.
Evon began as an ISO 9001 consultant and later moved into sales. After getting her real estate negotiator licence, she began her career in selling real estate.
Her father, who was a property negotiator, was her main inspiration to join the real estate industry. While working at her first job, she enrolled on a part-time diploma course in an estate agency.
After that, she worked as a probationary estate agent for 2 years, where she was drafted into Propleague as a license holder. Together with her business partner Steve, they opened a branch in Sungai Besi, Kuala Lumpur. They started from scratch selling low-cost apartments, gradually built the network and grew her agency to 67 negotiators.
It’s actually not the product but how you brand yourself. Some of our customers will search on Facebook first to find out about the property agent first like is this person reliable?
In 2018, Evon and her partner became the master licensors of PropNex Malaysia, enabling Malaysian real estate negotiators to become even more successful based on the systems of its mother company – Propnex Singapore.
PropNex Singapore has been in the Singapore property industry for over a decade calling itself the largest home-grown estate agency with over 7,000 negotiators.
As a result, Evon and her team at PropNex Malaysia are provided with the tools, structure and systems that work for the property industry and in this regard, offer business strategies, consultation, training, marketing support and more for real estate negotiators in Malaysia.
PropNex also works with the community under the PropNex Care Foundation which encourages literacy among the underprivileged. The foundation also helped a woman named Nurfatin who was diagnosed with a tumour on her left knee bone. “We collected a total of RM39,106 for her to undergo a total knee replacement surgery and no she is able to walk and fend for herself,” says Evon. During the pandemic, Evon and her team joined a campaign ‘Love Brings Protection’ organized by JCI Klang to deliver PPE items to health workers.
Propnex Malaysian received the Golden Bull Award in 2020 and Evon herself has served on the board of the Malaysian Institute of Estate Agents (MIEA) since 2019. She is also with Toastmasters International, the Federation Of Ong Clan Associations and a member of the Elite Entrepreneurs Club.
Fulfilment is when you see someone come in, not knowing anything and transform and grow, becoming a totally different person. I have a property negotiator who was a housewife and didn’t speak English fluently. She didn’t know a thing. But today she has earned more than most people and could even take her entire family to Tokyo Disneyland for holidays!
Her favourite books include Who Moved My Cheese by Spenser Johnson, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, Peaks & Valleys by Spenser Johnson and Think, Learn, Succeed by Dr Caroline Leaf. Music-wise, she enjoys jazz and bossa nova.
She lives by the quote, “Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives!”