Leaving my life as a salary earner after 20 years of back-to-back monthly paychecks, and stepping into the life of an entrepreneur, I assumed it would be relatively easy. I have immense experience with MNCs, worked in many parts of the world, coached and groomed by some of the best global business leaders and I have a huge social media following. So many people like me, so I am sure I can just reach out and build my business network. This is the naiveness that many employees like myself carry into the business world.
Moving from a salary earner to a salary payer was no easy feat. Setting up Asia Retail Academy with the business registration, the brand, logo, name cards, social media pages, and stuff like that was the easy part. But to set up a team, was when things started to get tough. Keeping in mind that I have been interviewing and recruiting people since the age of 25, this too I assumed would be easy.
“Come on Lingesh, how difficult is this going to be? You have spotted talents across the world and groomed them into senior leadership positions” I would say to myself. I have interviewed, recruited and coached talents from Malaysia, Oman, Ecuador, Singapore & India. One of the top talents I recruited into my team was a from Russia. He was working in London when we found him. Flew him to Bangkok for an interview and within weeks, he moved to Muscat with his family to join my team.
The moment we step out of that employee’s shoes, it seems all this experience just suddenly vanishes. It is not about what you know, but who you know, I was told. I was just starting up a new business and do not have any legacy attached to my own brand. The corporate brand that I use to work for had that magnetic pull and great legacy and it was a place many young people dream to work in. So how do we then attract talent? Even if you were someone like me, with the gift of gab and can sell a dream to anyone, how can a newbie entrepreneur afford to hire top talents?
This solo entrepreneur concept does not work for me. People inspire me, motivate me and fuel my passion in me to turn up for work. I was done sitting in my isolated room at home and looking into my laptop screen from day to night. The interactions via Zoom, Ms Teams, and Google Meet were real, but it was still not the same for me. I did not want to work alone. Yes, I could save a lot of money and did not need to share my profits, but is entrepreneurship all about money? What about enriching the lives of others? What about empowering this nation’s talent with my wealth of experience, skills and competence. I wanted to feel a great sense of satisfaction in doing things that I was passionate about. Is this not what they say Entrepreneurship is all about.
Eric Yuan, the Boss of Zoom, predicts his business to keep growing beyond 40%. Almost all online and digital connectivity platforms and tools have achieved tremendous growth during this pandemic era. Good for him, but a nightmare for extroverts like myself, who love to work with a team. Walking into an office, greeting everyone, huddling up for discussions, jumping into a car rushing out for lunch, the occasional arguments and gossip. I did not want to give all that up.
But the irony is, just like many of you, when I was younger, I imagined often how nice it would be to work from home all the time. Not needing to go into an office, avoid the daily hustle, save the money lost on commuting and escape all the politicking in the office. Life would be calm, and peaceful and I would have so much more time for myself. That is what employees want today.
But how can an accidental entrepreneur like myself manage this? What I want, is not ideal. My business model which requires a physical office and a team of young talent working with me was no longer advisable. This is what all new-normal business gurus say and this is what research and statistics prove as well.
The report, “People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View”, said that two-thirds of the global workforce or 64 per cent have already, or would consider, looking for a new job if their employer wanted them back in the office full-time.
This is what employees are saying globally and this is also one of the factors fueling the Great Resignation, which in my view, could also be happening in Malaysia.
So here are my challenges as an entrepreneur. I want to have a small decent office, where I can bring a team together, think and build a productive work culture that inspires and cultivates organisational and personal growth. But that would require some Capex, followed by lots of Opex which as a self-funded entrepreneur, I should aspire to keep at a minimum.
And here comes a curveball, when everyone thought that WFH was going to be the way to go and this would be the new normal, our real-life Tony Stark makes this huge announcement that he wants all his staff to come back to work from the office. Elon Musk is a game changer and when he says something the world takes notice. They were so many reactions to this, both pros and cons, but he doesn’t really seem like someone who cares about public opinion. In Malaysia, we see this trend as well. Many MNCs, GLCs and almost all government offices are back in the office. But the employees’ sentiments are still the same; they want to work from home. This means my team could be physically present with me in the office, but their mind, heart and soul are at home. Would this not impact organisational performance?
Now coming back to my story – The Accidental Entrepreneur who was forced to launch his own business at the peak of VUCA. Now here is another term that keeps hitting me in the face. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) simply means, “It’s Crazy Out There!” and no one really knows if what they are doing is the right thing to do.
Despite all my work and people experience, the skills and competence attained and the track record of training thousands of business owners across Asia in the past 15 years, nothing has truly prepared me for this journey. Rather than just be adamant and do what I want and like, I have tried to adapt and evolve while also feeding my soul with what could give me a little pinch of joy in what I do.
We launched a hybrid work schedule at the start of 2022. Only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays the team comes into the office and that too if they do not have any external meetings or appointments. Every last Friday of the month is declared Learning Day and we conduct Personal Development programs for our team members followed by a team lunch and we call it a day. We moved our office from KL Sentral to Cyberjaya as well. My idea of having a cool state-of-the-art office right smack in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, at a higher floor that overlooks my old office was a desire driven by emotions. But after a few months, we realized it was just too expensive to maintain and did not justify the operating cost. Parking was difficult and expensive. Customers preferred to meet at Starbucks and all my team-mates were living almost 20km away.
So, after some hard thoughts and painfully self-admitting my mistakes, we moved to our new office. Much further in distance, but almost half the rental price and much larger space. We have our own virtual studio now and can deliver immersive virtual training to any part of the world. The drive from KL to Cyberjaya is pleasant as well and takes only 30mins of free-flowing traffic. Lots of greenery, calmness and very few cars which sort of feeds the soul positively in the morning. Parking was free until a week ago, then the barricades were installed and now cost almost RM10 a day but the season pass is only RM80 monthly, something we are now working on providing as an incentive to all team members.
The challenge we had with recruiting talents has also been managed differently. Our salary structures start with a base that is on par with the industry but we have made sales commissions applicable to all employees, meaning everyone has the potential to make much more and keep growing their portfolio. We encourage team members to have a side hustle by commercialising their skills and experience. This can be a little tricky and depends a lot on trust but we do have some big rules around this. The side income generated must not be in any form a conflict of interest to our business, they can only work on it during non-work hours and all external for-profit activities must be declared to the company.
Will this work? Maybe not but what that should not be an excuse to not explore new ways of working and innovate traditional business models. The world has changed and will keep changing. The only difference to pre-pandemic is that it will be changing at greater speed and agility. We will never be perfectly prepared to face these changes, but like this accidental entrepreneur, we can be ready to change when change happens.
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Ambil galah tolong jolokkan
Saya pengusaha baru belajar
Kalau salah, tolong tunjukkan
Join us in this entrepreneurship journey as I share the thrills and spills of running my own business. We shall share, learn and grow together.