Riyaz Mahendy was born in Kuala Lumpur during the 1969 curfew. Exact date was June 8. During the time of my birth, and because my father was away in Penang and couldn’t return on time due to the curfews, my mother was escorted to the maternity hospital by a group of soldiers in a military van!

Spent the first few years of my life in Penang, until the age of five.

Have been living in Kuala Lumpur ever since.

I remember clearly that I was so happy just playing on my own, making airplanes from ice-cream sticks and old toothbrushes I used to collect and making train sets with sewing threads and old batteries discarded by other people and will be so engrossed in play. Then one day, I was told to not play and get ready to go to school. Yes, school.

Early education was in St. John’s Primary School in Bukit Nanas, and secondary education was in St. John’s Institution, also in Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur.

Completed Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM), with mild colours (only 3 As, as compared with the kids nowadays bringing in a string of 15 As), but still managed to complete studies in Mechanical and Material Engineering in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

While in school, I was often seen in Petaling Street as the only non-Chinese young lad trading in the night market there, selling pens and sunglasses. And made loads of money doing that then.

Early employment was in IT, with a trading company, and then moved on to Systems Integration with two other companies up until 1998.

The Asian economic crisis then got the better of me and I was downsized, after which I started my own business, selling celebration hampers to companies.

All my sales were through referrals and word-of-mouth. Business was thriving, especially during festive seasons.

I am an avid reader of books and have read close to a thousand book by now. I have quite a collection of various titles of business, marketing and self-improvement books.

I also read with great interest, books on health-care, and pharmaceutical products. I think I am the only one (as far as I know, from my friends and family) who reads the inserts from inside the boxes of medicines and tablets.

Among the first book on networking I read was Bob Burg’s Endless Referrals, and after-which I was confident about attending networking meetings.

Then in May 2000, I was invited to a BNI Meeting where the concept described by Bob Burg came to live.

Since June 2000, I have been engaged in BNI Malaysia, to start business referral groups, known as Chapters, support and provide skills in business networking to local business people.

Something which I enjoy tremendously. Hence, I am still going strong a decade later.

Because I am a firm believer that the smallest things makes the biggest difference, I am determined to succeed with my team members by applying the fundamentals of success in everything that we do together. I am also turned on with things of beauty, so in everything that we do together, tremendous attention is paid to the detail of getting everything right. And I mean everything. Not something, but everything.

It has been great leading a group of dynamic business people in various BNI Chapters that I lead, and together, we have enjoyed a journey together to progress, learn, implement, improve, enhance every area of our lives.

My current challenge is enabling people to apply common sense into common practice. I know and acknowledge that my job will never be complete and never be done, but patiently I am pursuing this challenge.

I am so lucky to have some of the best people in my team. Truly, I have benefited more from you, and I don’t say this often enough: I do love all of you.

Some additional information for you:

I live in Bandar Menjalara, Kuala Lumpur with my spouse, Rose, and we enjoy the simple things in life: cooking great meals with love as the secret ingredient, watching movies, following football on the telly, spending time with our families, our nephew and nieces.

Something not many people know about me is that I am among the many people around the world who was inconsolable after Princess Diana’s tragic death, the passing of Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and in recent times, the unfortunate death of Michael Jackson. Somehow these individuals are so close to me although they don’t know me.

My burning desire is to retire at the age of 50 from all active economic pursuits and perhaps, relocate to Ao Nang, a beach in Krabi, Southern Thailand and sell beach hats and knick-knacks to the beautiful people passing by. I wouldn’t mind teaching part-time in a business school in the area of business ethics, processes and marketing.

My secret to success is to build strong foundations. Build the foundations deep and solid. Then build my dreams on those strong foundations.

I will be revisiting this space to provide more updates.

Thank you for visiting my site. Please feel free to post your comments or contact me if you need any assistance.