KOTA KINABALU: Aspiring entrepreneurs should focus on creating value rather than chasing fame, while young people should invest their time in gaining skills and experience before pursuing financial returns, said financial educator and entrepreneur Peter Yong, better known as Mr Money TV.
Sharing his journey on the Sabah Matters podcast held in conjunction with the CEO Masterclass 2026 at the Sabah International Convention Centre (SICC), Yong said his decision to leave financial planning and venture into online content creation was driven by a desire to reach and educate more people.
Before starting Mr Money TV, Yong worked as an insurance and unit trust agent and later became a registered financial planner, spending close to a decade in the industry.
However, he realised that the impact he could create through conventional financial planning was largely on a one-to-one basis.
“I started realising one thing, that the impact I can create is at a one-on-one level. Suddenly one day it got in my head, what if I can create a bigger impact?” he said.
The decision to pursue online financial education was not without risks. Yong left the industry and went all-in on building Mr Money TV without having a stable source of revenue or profit.
At the time, he was facing financial difficulties after an attempt to establish an independent financial planning firm failed, while also preparing for the birth of his child.
For months, he juggled different jobs while trying to keep his new venture alive, until a friend told him that his lack of focus was preventing him from fully developing the idea he believed in.
“Every moment that you are spending your time doing something else, you’re taking away time building what you believe,” Yong recalled his friend telling him.
That conversation prompted him to give himself one year to fully pursue the venture. His wife returned to work to reduce the family’s financial risk while he focused entirely on producing content.
Within about six months, financial institutions began approaching Mr Money TV, followed by further growth during the Covid-19 pandemic as audiences and businesses increasingly shifted online.
The experience, Yong said, reinforced the importance of focus and commitment, but he stressed that aspiring entrepreneurs should not simply chase popularity.
“My advice is focus on bringing value. Think of social media as just a medium and focus on giving value,” he said.
“Once you are able to do that consistently and you can do it well, that is when the rest comes as a by-product.”Yong said social media could open many doors for businesses, but warned entrepreneurs against making fame their main objective.
Instead, he said they should first establish what value they could offer before using social media to make themselves and their businesses more visible.
For younger people looking to build their careers and financial future, Yong said the first step should not necessarily be deciding where to invest their money, but learning how to earn and build valuable experience.
“There’s a key place there to make money first. Because if you don’t make money, how are you going to invest?” he said.
He encouraged young people to learn how to use artificial intelligence and seek opportunities to work closely with entrepreneurs to gain practical experience.
“The age of AI has made building a product very easy. The age of AI has made distribution much more easy as well,” he said.
Yong said young people should view time as one of their most valuable resources.
“Everyone is born with money. It’s just maybe not in the form of RM or USD, but your time is the first money that you’re being born with,” he said.
On investments, Yong said there was no single answer suitable for everyone, as investment decisions depended on an individual’s financial circumstances and time horizon.
For those looking at extremely long-term investments, he said land could be a consideration, while he described contributions to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) as a practical option for many Malaysians saving towards retirement.
For beginners seeking to understand investing, he suggested learning about the stock market first.
“The best place to start off is stock market. Not so much to put everything in, but to learn,” he said.
Yong said understanding how the stock market works could provide knowledge that was transferable to other forms of investment.
He also shared that his own liquid investments were mainly concentrated in the stock market and Bitcoin, while he had begun accumulating gold as part of his portfolio.
However, his central message to aspiring entrepreneurs and young people remained focused on building capability before pursuing wealth.
For him, the path to financial growth begins with using one’s time wisely, gaining experience, developing useful skills and consistently creating value for others.
