entrepreneur

8 Reasons Why Malaysia Is The Best Place For Entrepreneurs To Launch Their Business

by

WHY MALAYSIA THOUGH, YOU MAY ASK?!

Despite all the political and economical chaos that has happened and is happening in the country this year, the future’s looking bright.

Statistically speaking, Malaysia is having a strong expanding economy, as The World Bank has forecast that the country’s economy will go steady at a GDP* rate of 5.4% which makes its an ideal place to start your business. (*Gross Domestic Product).

Apart for stable economy growth, there are millions of reason why Malaysia is perfect spot for your business venture.

Whether if you are foreign investor looking for a new market or if you are local trying to venture into foreign market, take a moment and appreciate the resources and sources available in the country and you will realize that there is no place like Malaysia.

Let’s take a look at eight solid and factual reason why it is feasible to kickstart your business without any hesitation and fear in Malaysia.

1) Strategic Location

Malaysia is located  in the heart of Asia Pacific Rim with many ASEAN countries surrounding it.

Offering business an easy yet massive access to the South East Asia market, which is the fastest growing market in the world right now says Forbes Magazine.

In fact, this is the main reason why many foreign investor chose Malaysia.

After all, Malaysia is Truly Asia.

2) Young, Intelectual and Urban Demographic

Though it is not the biggest country in the world but Malaysia definitely is a metropolitan with an 76% of its total population urban.

In the Peninsular alone,1/3 of the population are living in urban city areas. Kuala Lumpur alone has 1.7 Million people, and the population is continuously growing.

Apart from that, it is the only country in the world with more than 95% of literacy level for both male and female.

3) Low Operation Cost and Cheap Labors

Over 80% of startups spend half of their monthly expenses on labor and operations, if not more.  

Being able to reduce these 2 main expenses of the business can dramatically increase the survival rate of the company, especially during the early stages of growth.

Due to the lower exchange rate of the Ringgit to many foreign currencies today, hiring talented & skilled labour in Malaysia is also a lot more affordable compared to anywhere else.

4) Flexible Banking System

Modern and flexible banking infrastructure is available across the country making it easy for you to have multiple foreign currency accounts.

There are two types of banks, onshore and offshore in Malaysia. Means you can use your international card here and use local card abroad.

Personal banking on various currencies is also conveniently available for local and international entrepreneurs with valid residency visa.

5) Excellent Infrastructure and Wide Connectivity

Malaysia has an excellent network of highways which boosts connectivity and accessibility across the country with efficient cross-border highway that even links Singapore to Thailand!

It is also the home to international award-winning airlines such as Air Asia, Firefly and MAS, offering cheap flights for great savings and convenience for you to move in and around the country and beyond.

In terms of internet connectivity, Malaysia continuously upgrade its networks for its wide broadband penetration throughout the country.

Plus, it is home to one the highest number of mobile and internet users.

6)  Peaceful and Safe for Living

Since its independence in 1957, Malaysia has been an land of multi-ethnicity and culture  which consists of three major races the Malay, Chinese and Indian living together harmoniously.

It is also politically stable led by a democratically-elected coalition Government committed to the socio-economic development of the nation.

Malaysia is also well positioned and safe from major natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and typhoons.

7) Friendly and hospitable citizens

Malaysians are well-known for their hospitality and friendliness to each other as well to foreigners visiting the country.

Values of honor and respect are well ingrained in the culture in spite of racial and religion differences.

The friendly nature and positive attitude will make you feel very much ecstatic and offer great opportunities for further collaboration.

8) Wide use of English

Being under the CommonWealth shell, Malaysia has a strong English influence.

Almost of all its people can speak good English and you can find English everywhere!

Wide use of English, especially in business, legal and accounting practices based on the British system making it easy to reach global level.

 

5 Steps to Taking Time Off as an Entrepreneur Without Worrying

by

Aside from all the decision-making, financial burdens and day-to-day responsibilities of entrepreneurship, the central dilemma of owning a business springs from the dissonance of managing a healthy work-life balance. You’re fully invested in your organization, so the more work you put in, the more rewards you’re likely to see and the more passion you’re likely to feel about that work. The problem is, that combination leads many entrepreneurs to work with their heads down, indefinitely, until the stress of overwork finally catches up with them.

The “easy” solution, of course, is to take time off in the form of occasional mental health days or extended vacations. But those scenarios often backfire: Once you’re out of the office, you can’t help checking your email or at least worrying about what’s going on back in the real world. Under those conditions, a vacation can wind up feeling more stressful than a normal day of work.

Clearly, time off is necessary, but only if you can take it without preoccupying yourself with more work. So, how can you do that as the committed entrepreneur you are? Here are five steps.

1. Make a plan.

The more intensely you plan your vacation, the more likely you’ll be to follow through on it. Schedule your time off weeks (or even months) in advance, and tell everyone you know in or out of your organization about it. Spreading the information this way does two things. First, you’ll be prompted to follow through on your commitments, if for no other reason than to avoid the “Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?” questions.

Second, everyone around you will develop plans for your absence. For example, one of your partners can start charting out the responsibilities he plans to take over temporarily while you’re gone. Set the expectation that you will be unreachable except for emergencies, and chances are your team will follow those expectations.

2. Delegate or postpone.
For each task, including your ordinary day-to-day responsibilities as well as emergency situations that might pop up periodically while you’re gone, decide whether to delegate or postpone your action. To delegate, designate one of your team members to take on the task in your absence. To postpone, deem the task “unimportant,” and know that you’ll handle it only once you’ve returned.

Delegated tasks require no worry, because you’ve left someone qualified in charge of them. Postponed tasks require no worry because they don’t need to be done until you come back. Theoretically, you should have no worrisome tasks left by the end of this process.

3. Disconnect.
Disconnecting is a simple step, but one we’re all guilty of neglecting. When you’re on vacation, disconnect from the world. Turn off your phone, disconnect your Internet and try not to turn on any of your gadgets. Doing so could serve as a gateway back into worrying about work — it’s almost unavoidable. If there’s an emergency, someone on your team can mitigate it until you come back, or reach you via hotel phone or in person (if it truly is that bad).

4. Establish “worry time.”
If you find that even while disconnecting, you can’t help but worry about your job, try to refocus your efforts so you only worry for a certain period of time each day. For example, you might designate 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. as your “worry time,” to check emails and think about what’s going on back at work. But as soon as 1 p.m. hits, you have to pull yourself away from the screen and focus only on enjoying yourself.

This compartmentalization strategy doesn’t work for everybody, but if you find yourself worrying no matter what, this can mitigate its effects on your time off.

5. Practice and scale.
Some entrepreneurs will undoubtedly find themselves incapable of taking a truly relaxing, worry-free vacation. They’re natural-born worriers, or they care too much about their businesses to let them go, even for a few days. If this sounds like you, practice taking worry-free vacations by starting small and working your way up.

Start by taking a half-day off, following all the rules I mentioned above. Once you’ve become comfortable, try taking a single whole day off every once in a while. From there, you can scale to two-day, three-day or even weeklong vacations and more. Like anything else, you’ll get better with practice and experience.

With these strategies, you should find it easier to take time away from work without being bogged down with worries. It takes a real effort to disconnect your mind from work, especially in an entrepreneurial role. But if you want to avoid burnout and maximize your potential for happiness and satisfaction, it’s a step you’ll have to take.

Even a short tech sabbatical can change the way you approach your business.

Whether traveling for business or to recharge your batteries, you need to be confident all will be well when you return.

Save yourself from the constant flow of emails, texts, calls and notifications that barrage you during the week.

One problem for all entrepreneurs is too much to do. Doing too much is a second problem for most of them.

As entrepreneurs, we are often so driven and focused that we get wound up and forget to then unwind. That leads to burnout.

Saving our species is exhausting. It’s time for a break.

Her are some tips that will help you make the most of your vacation and return to your team completely recharged and refreshed.

While taking a trip with your team is definitely fun, there are also lessons you can learn from the experience.

Go off the grid (temporarily) and stop feeling anxious about it.

As an entrepreneur, the to-do list, ideas and things that clamor for your attention never stop. It’s time to take back control.

Why fly the friendly skies in cramped economy when you could fly like a boss? If you’re lucky…

Everybody’s working for the weekend, but is it best to get ‘er done in long, eight-hour stints? Probably not.

Here are five surefire tips to take the stress out of managing a small business while you’re away, drinking piña coladas and kicking back on the beach.

Visiting new places in the world can help you develop those intangible assets that help you succeed.

Workers tend to fear being perceived as dispensable and also dread a work pileup upon their return.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251767

How I Overcame My Fears And Became An Entrepreneur

by

“Entrepreneurialism isn’t part of my professional hardwiring,” says Sallie Krawcheck. “At least not until recently.”
Have you ever had one of those head-slapping, a-ha moments? An insight that, looking back, seems to divide things into “before” and “after”?

I’ve had a handful. This particular one hit me not long ago, as I was applying mascara: The retirement savings crisis is a women’s crisis—and not just because of the infamous wage gap, but also because of the much-less-discussed gender investing gap.

After a while, the idea of taking the plunge began to seem less abstract and more achievable.

“AFTER A WHILE, THE IDEA OF TAKING THE PLUNGE BEGAN TO SEEM LESS ABSTRACT AND MORE ACHIEVABLE.”

That was the founding idea for Ellevest, a soon-to-be-launched digital investment platform focused on women, which I’ve founded and funded—and the idea was the easy part. Much harder has been turning that idea into a business. As I wrote recently, entrepreneurialism isn’t part of my professional hardwiring, at least not until recently. Starting something from scratch—hiring the first person, buying the first computer, setting up the legal structure, finding office space? Not my expertise, and not my interest. And that’s not to mention the whole fear-of-failure thing. At first, I thought: Who needs it?

As it turns out—given the size of the issue, my background, and how much I love a new challenge—the answer is: me. I needed to do this.

Still, I wanted to reduce the risk as best I could, particularly since it required making such a significant career switch. So how did I get the confidence to make it, and “de-risk” the venture, as much as possible? I did a number of things.

TRY ON THE IDEA FIRST

My first step was to spend time with entrepreneurs so I could “try on” the idea. I was fortunate enough to have had a number of business leaders in my professional network to consult—people I’d connected with over time, and a few that I’ve mentored. So I turned the tables and talked with them about what they were doing, plus every conceivable aspect of business building and funding: How they spend their time, what obstacles they’ve had to overcome, the surprises of their journeys, how they manage the day-to-day pressure.

These conversations proved crucial. After a while, the idea of taking the plunge began to seem less abstract and more achievable. I decided I could see myself really doing it.

But I had to be pretty honest with myself: How would I feel about losing the rhythm of working in big companies—the executive assistant, the established ritual of business meetings and reviews, the paycheck? What about the softer perks, like people at cocktail parties instantly recognizing the name of company I worked for? (Or the softest perk of all: the warm cookies my office served at 3 p.m.? Okay, I could give those up.)

Some of these corporate-culture features might seem small, but if you’ve spent a long career working in big organizations, you may not miss them until they’re gone. If you’re considering striking out on your own, you have to face up to every change that awaits you, right from the get-go. You have to decide what’s really important.

TALK (AND TALK AND TALK) TO PEOPLE WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY

My next, hugely important step was to find a cofounder with a very different background and business disposition from mine. I found that in Charlie Kroll, who’s been an entrepreneur since his college days. If I’m more the “fin,” he’s more the “tech.” We’re both deep into different parts of the product, and that natural balance makes it easier to divvy up key duties. Charlie has put our processes in place and holds everyone to them. He negotiates the contracts, and he’s pretty unblinking on keeping the team to our commitments and on deadline.

Entrepreneurship is about finding new approaches to problems, and discomfort can be an important part of that process.

“ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS ABOUT FINDING NEW APPROACHES TO PROBLEMS, AND DISCOMFORT CAN BE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THAT PROCESS.”

Soon after partnering, we set about building a team that is the most diverse of any I’ve ever worked with—diversity of background, thought, age, gender, industry experience, disposition.

And diversity isn’t something we thought hard about solely because Ellevest is a women-focused business. You may find it more relaxing to work with people just like you, but entrepreneurship is about finding new approaches to problems, and discomfort can be an important part of that process.

To further de-risk the initiative, we’ve engaged with our potential clients on the topic of investing almost constantly. We’ve talked and talked and talked with women in order to truly understand their perspective.

And we tested and tested and tested our potential solutions from the very beginning—before writing any code. I’ve learned as a result that some of my strongly held hypotheses seem to be on track; some of my equally strongly held hypotheses have proved dead wrong. But there’s no way to know if you don’t get out there and start talking to people.

(A side note: This testing process is completely new for me. I like to joke that when we built new platforms at big companies, we 1) did initial research; 2) spent $500 million building the technology; 3) rolled it out; 4) spent six months apologizing; then, 5) spent another $200 million fixing it.)

FAILURE ISN’T AN OPTION, BUT IT IS A POSSIBILITY

Many entrepreneurs don’t recognize the risk of bringing in the wrong investors—until it’s too late. We made it a top priority to search for the right ones. It was important to me that our lead investor (Morningstar) has a history of building businesses with an eye to the long term. And it was also important to me that all of our investors care about the broader issue and the problem we’re trying to solve with Ellevest.

Still, we may well fail.

Whenever you start a new business, the sheer number of variables at hand makes failure a constant possibility. But I’ve found that taking these steps has helped contain that risk as best as we can.

The reason I was able to overcome my hesitance to become an entrepreneur was because I kept coming back to the problem and poking at it.

“THE REASON I WAS ABLE TO OVERCOME MY HESITANCE TO BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR WAS BECAUSE I KEPT COMING BACK TO THE PROBLEM AND POKING AT IT.”

Ultimately, the reason I was able to overcome my hesitance to become an entrepreneur was because I kept coming back to the problem and poking at it—talking about it at dinner parties (seriously, you don’t want to sit next to me at a dinner party), jotting notes about it, and asking other women about it.

I’m no longer a reluctant entrepreneur because I’m now more certain than ever that I had to take a run at solving such an important issue. It can take a while to establish that certainty, but it’s the foundation for everything that follows. If not me and my team, I finally decided, then whom?

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3052673/lessons-learned/how-i-overcame-my-fears-and-became-an-entrepreneur