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| NEWS ARCHIVES | | | | Entrepreneurs | | 4 Feb 2010 | | | |
Last year people were glad to hold on to safe jobs, but could 2010 be the year for entrepreneurs?
Some who have had success with their start ups are saying that the outlook for 2010 is favourable and now may be just the time to seize the moment.
Thomas Fernandez and Sant Qiu are co authors of a new book Niche Dominators Success Secrets Exposed.
Devika Misra has more,
Have you been waiting for the end of the recession to go out and start your own business?
Or expand your small start up?
Some entrepreneurs say it's partly about being in the right place at the right time, and now may just be that time.
They say they have the secret to success.
San Qiu is a Profit strategist for Maneuver Marketing ,
" '09 is a very good lesson for entrepreneurs because they experience good times are not here all the time, you need to be able to react and adapt to happenings in the market. There is a principle that actually helps you become successful faster; put yourself in the right place not just wait for it to happen."
But there is more to it than that, San's co author, Thomas Fernandez, says there is one crucial element.
"Right now in Singapore its a very mature market you have to think of something different so you've got to find a niche to find out what is your competitors not giving that there is a pool of target audience are looking for and that will be the secret. And thats when you hit the nail on the head and said Okay this is an area that I would like to go in and provide that kind of service because they are unable to get that kind of service elsewhere."
Yes it's key, San agrees, to remember that you are not operating in a vacuum.
"A lot of times people who are just coming into the market they always think that Okay since I'm new I'll just open up, I will give a discount or something like that and they just hope and pray that people will just come. They don't think strategically about how they will compete in comparison to competitors."
And once you have worked out your niche, Thomas says that there is one more surefire strategy to success.
"Start with your money because when you're money goes down it hurts you. When it hurts you you'll work very hard. Most of the time they're looking for government funds or relative funds or Dad's money and when you are not making it you will just say Okay never mind I'll find somewhere the money to return back you know but when it comes to your own money I can guarantee you you will make sure that you want to make back that money."
Michael Tien is somebody who had to employ that strategy.
The CEO of Atlas Sound and Vision rebuilt his parents' business from scratch in 1985 when it went into voluntary liquidation.
Just out of national service at the time, the only seed capital he had was the money his parents had set aside for his university education.
"Bank wouldn't lend us money and suppliers wouldn't give us credit so the only thing that we could do was to take the prudent way, sell whatever we could then re invest whatever we make and the whole process goes on and on. For the first twenty years of our business we didn't depend on any financial backing except for our own."
The outlook for 2010 may be optimistic now.
But what if there's a second wave of financial turmoil?
A start up business plan has to build in the crisis factor, says Michael Tien.
And the way to manage finances during a crisis runs counter intuitively,
"In the good times we can look to save and in the bad times we can spend. When you dont have enough financial backing and you don't have enough fat built up through the good years when the lean years comes you find that you're not ablet o do things and you tend to cut back and when you cut back you end up doing the wrong things rather than take the risk to go forward and invest in more. Last year we had a fairly good year,we put aside the money so that this year which is actually bad we could pay our staff bonuses and this is quite unexpected."
San says in fact a crisis is when a start up should spend.
"Instead of stopping and shrinking their marketing efforts for those companies who actually do more marketing they will gain a lot of market share in comparison to those who actually didn't. The competitors will mostly just stop because they are afraid of the uncertainty. The way they actually do more marketing doesn't have to be more exoenses, they can actualy do a lot of marketing that is guerilla marketing where the expenses are low and yet they can still reach out to alot of different people like Internet, like the flyers and all these things, the whole point is to create awareness and gain new customers."
Thomas who is also Chairman and CEO of PestBusters says there is no need to fear a crisis -- it could end up being an opportunity.
"During the SARS we established GermBusters within thirty days, we had a brand name that everybody looked to during the SARS so instead of spraying pesticides we were actually spreaying germicide."
In the end it's mainly about mind-set says Michael,
"In America theyd eine a true entrpreneur by the number of times you fail (laughs) and finally you'll probably get the formula right and I think in Singapore context many of us are not quite equipped to fail beacuse of the way of the success story of Singapore and the boom years so failure is not really in the minds of most people but I believe that any good entrepreneur would have failed at leats once or twice if not more than that; what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."
Michael Tien is one of ten entrepreneurs featured in a new book co authored by Thomas Fernandez and Sant Qiu called Niche Dominators Success Secrets Exposed.
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