Nothing Drops from the Heaven - Success is indeed sweat, blood, tears, self-learning and money!
I have friends who fantasize, almost daily on things that pass their thoughts. The distraction in our lives is the things we see and experience on regular basis. I have friends who have talked about starting a cafe, friends who had talked about travelling the world. I have friends who have fantasized about moving into rural towns, no less were those who discussed at length about starting online business. Let me tell you, none of those fantasies took off. The guy who wanted to open a cafe is still employed somewhere, the one who wanted to travel the world can't even travel to the nearest town away from home, and the one who talked about starting online business hasn't even done online shopping, at the least.
People fantasize and most fantasies remain so - just fantasies. It is not easy to start on something, let alone succeed and I say this out of experience.
The year was 1988. I had just graduated from University of Malaya. Most of my fellow graduates have returned to their home towns after graduation because there were no jobs in the city and the kind of families we came from (Indians), a graduate is expected to be appointed as bank manager or equivalent immediately upon graduation. Our parents were baby boomers who had different priorities in life - stable permanent jobs (preferably government) where one retires from at the ripe age of 55 (if death hadn't got in first), buy a car and a house, get married, have a house full of kids, send the kids for overseas education, get them married off and the cycle repeats! The only snag was there weren't enough jobs around. It was 6th year after our current Prime Minister became the 4th Prime Minister of the country. The government was struggling to overcome the global recession. There were no worthy jobs. Security guards, janitors and waiters secured jobs easily - meaning less education guaranteed jobs compared to graduating from higher learning institutions. But at that age I was determined - if no one would give me a job, I would create one for myself.
A few friends and I bought a sewing machine with a capital of RM100. I was already a well trained tailor by then (took up tailoring from the age of 13 to 18 under the Community Development Initiative in my hometown) and I figured that it was no harm in putting my skills to good use. And so, the machine came and we had a few customers, all in Klang. Money wasn't too good but we had customers even at the beginning. When my parents heard about it, they hit the roof. My late mum was extremely angry that despite graduating from a university, with a degree in hand, I had resorted to starting a business - that, too, a tailoring business. Those days, tailoring was mainly done by Chinese ladies and they usually will open their shops next to hair dressing saloons, to tap into the footfall of the hairdressers, or vice versa. I remember her shouting over the public phone (we didn't have mobile phones then😄) at me to open a hair dressing saloon beside my tailor shop and that would complete the equation. In retrospect, that would have made me a millionaire today, for a short 2 hour visit to the hairdresser can make you a couple of hundred ringgits poorer!
A couple of weeks later, while the business was ongoing, a few things happened. My friends who had joined the venture were offered opportunities for post graduate studies, I secured a temporary job at the university where I graduated from, all of us moved out from where we were staying and that business ended there.
Fast forward 2017, my daughter had to do a personal project in order to graduate from the IB programme that she was undergoing at school. So we chose to build an online `social enterprise' kind of business - an online boutique. While it was a personal project, it did well but when we decided to commercialize it, reality hit. It was not easy. No one wanted to buy our designs - because we did not know how to promote them. A search on Google will show you hundreds of apps that claim that if you subscribe to them, you can make tons of money. In reality, they make money out of you. Then there are internet companies that ask you to do drop shipping to become millionaire, over night. And then, there are analytics companies that promise you that they can hunt down your prospective customers - just subscribe to them. People did not know that to be successful in online business one needs to engage with the audience. People need to see the value in engaging with you before they even consider buying anything from you. No amount of advertising products on FB or Insta or Pinterest is going to show any ROI unless you can promise a pleasant experience to your potential customers - pre, during and post sales. It is sheer hard work - blood, sweat, tears, lots of self-learning and money! By the time we saw some sales online, we had spent more that RM5,000 in online advertising! More than RM30,000 had gone into the business - machines, racks, supplies fabrics and sewing knick knacks. Not to forget the hundreds of hours spent learning from others online - Google, YouTube, blogs - you name it.
Our first real collection, Summer collection in June 2018 had zero sales; second collection for Diwali 2018 did much better because a friend who owned a boutique bought the whole set of the designs and stocks, in return we did a promo for him in FB to drive customers to his boutique. Then came the next collection, Summer collection 2019, which saw some of the designs being sold off. Is that success? No, I don't think so. That is just some motivation for us to keep doing what we do best, only better and better each time.
So, the learning here is nothing drops from the Heaven, it is sheer hard work that brings success. Look at companies that have reached success - each will have similar stories like ours in their past, may be a slightly different version. Success is indeed sweat, blood, tears, self-learning and money and doing what we do better and better each time.
People fantasize and most fantasies remain so - just fantasies. It is not easy to start on something, let alone succeed and I say this out of experience.
The year was 1988. I had just graduated from University of Malaya. Most of my fellow graduates have returned to their home towns after graduation because there were no jobs in the city and the kind of families we came from (Indians), a graduate is expected to be appointed as bank manager or equivalent immediately upon graduation. Our parents were baby boomers who had different priorities in life - stable permanent jobs (preferably government) where one retires from at the ripe age of 55 (if death hadn't got in first), buy a car and a house, get married, have a house full of kids, send the kids for overseas education, get them married off and the cycle repeats! The only snag was there weren't enough jobs around. It was 6th year after our current Prime Minister became the 4th Prime Minister of the country. The government was struggling to overcome the global recession. There were no worthy jobs. Security guards, janitors and waiters secured jobs easily - meaning less education guaranteed jobs compared to graduating from higher learning institutions. But at that age I was determined - if no one would give me a job, I would create one for myself.
A few friends and I bought a sewing machine with a capital of RM100. I was already a well trained tailor by then (took up tailoring from the age of 13 to 18 under the Community Development Initiative in my hometown) and I figured that it was no harm in putting my skills to good use. And so, the machine came and we had a few customers, all in Klang. Money wasn't too good but we had customers even at the beginning. When my parents heard about it, they hit the roof. My late mum was extremely angry that despite graduating from a university, with a degree in hand, I had resorted to starting a business - that, too, a tailoring business. Those days, tailoring was mainly done by Chinese ladies and they usually will open their shops next to hair dressing saloons, to tap into the footfall of the hairdressers, or vice versa. I remember her shouting over the public phone (we didn't have mobile phones then😄) at me to open a hair dressing saloon beside my tailor shop and that would complete the equation. In retrospect, that would have made me a millionaire today, for a short 2 hour visit to the hairdresser can make you a couple of hundred ringgits poorer!
A couple of weeks later, while the business was ongoing, a few things happened. My friends who had joined the venture were offered opportunities for post graduate studies, I secured a temporary job at the university where I graduated from, all of us moved out from where we were staying and that business ended there.
Fast forward 2017, my daughter had to do a personal project in order to graduate from the IB programme that she was undergoing at school. So we chose to build an online `social enterprise' kind of business - an online boutique. While it was a personal project, it did well but when we decided to commercialize it, reality hit. It was not easy. No one wanted to buy our designs - because we did not know how to promote them. A search on Google will show you hundreds of apps that claim that if you subscribe to them, you can make tons of money. In reality, they make money out of you. Then there are internet companies that ask you to do drop shipping to become millionaire, over night. And then, there are analytics companies that promise you that they can hunt down your prospective customers - just subscribe to them. People did not know that to be successful in online business one needs to engage with the audience. People need to see the value in engaging with you before they even consider buying anything from you. No amount of advertising products on FB or Insta or Pinterest is going to show any ROI unless you can promise a pleasant experience to your potential customers - pre, during and post sales. It is sheer hard work - blood, sweat, tears, lots of self-learning and money! By the time we saw some sales online, we had spent more that RM5,000 in online advertising! More than RM30,000 had gone into the business - machines, racks, supplies fabrics and sewing knick knacks. Not to forget the hundreds of hours spent learning from others online - Google, YouTube, blogs - you name it.
Our first real collection, Summer collection in June 2018 had zero sales; second collection for Diwali 2018 did much better because a friend who owned a boutique bought the whole set of the designs and stocks, in return we did a promo for him in FB to drive customers to his boutique. Then came the next collection, Summer collection 2019, which saw some of the designs being sold off. Is that success? No, I don't think so. That is just some motivation for us to keep doing what we do best, only better and better each time.
So, the learning here is nothing drops from the Heaven, it is sheer hard work that brings success. Look at companies that have reached success - each will have similar stories like ours in their past, may be a slightly different version. Success is indeed sweat, blood, tears, self-learning and money and doing what we do better and better each time.
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