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On 6th March, we went to “Go Youth 2.0” events that were held at Kolej Tun Razak’s hall. This was the second time this event has been conducted as the first one was 2 years ago. There were 2 sessions of talk that were organised by the organiser. The first session of the talk focused on the skills and quality that were acquired to develop the Entrepreneurial mindset. This topic was delivered by Datin Fouziah Gous, CEO of FG Walet Bird Nest.
FG Walet is a business platform to spread the passion of healthy living by discovering the wholesome goodness of bird’s nest consumption and made it a mission to share this beliefs with society. She shared with the students throughout her journey of her early involvement in the business world, the development of her own business and her life experiences that will give us the idea on how to develop entrepreneurial mindset.
The most important key to be an entrepreneur is to have passion in what you are working for. This will motivate you every time you feel like giving up as you face lots of challenges in your business. She did mention that it is not easy to become an entrepreneur especially if you have no foundation in business management but if you are passionate enough to be one then you will have the courage to learn and deal with all those challenges. Other than that, proper manners are also important as an entrepreneur because you have to deal with other people so the first impression is always crucial.
Next, she emphasizes the importance of having knowledge in the business field that you are pursuing. Make a very detailed research regarding the business service or product that you wanted to provide to the society. In this case, she took her time to learn the benefits of the bird nest itself and what good it can give to the human body. By doing this research then only she discovered lots of the benefits can be obtained such as the high amount of glycoprotein that will boost your immune system, the presence of collagen can be utilised for skin care purpose, and the vitamins in the bird nest can be used as supplement for humans.
Datin Fouziah also creates the opportunity for young entrepreneurs to start their own business by selling her products too. She stated that you can also be a businessperson by selling other people's products. She said that in everything we do, we must try to help other people too in order to bring benefits to the community. She also likes to always be better than before, try to venture into new things that will bring you to a higher level.
Finally, there is a Q&A session where students were given a chance to ask questions and Datin Fouziah answered it with accurate and meaningful answers. We also had the chance to ask her a question on her future plans, and she answered that she is trying to venture into a new product.
The second session of the talk is mainly in developing your passion and your expertise in related fields. The first panelist of the forum is Mr. Arif Tukiman, CEO & Co-founder of a software developer house based in Cyberjaya. Mr Arif stated that whatever business that you want to venture in, you need to find the best goal not only in the short term (2-5 years) but also in the long term (7-15 years). He also said that being a profitable and rich company is not a strong goal to begin your business as people become more intelligent and creative but they do not have a proper mindset. Therefore, many young entrepreneurs are having difficulties the first few years in business. Mr Arif also said that we need to aim our goal higher than what we can achieve so that we will work hard to accomplish it even though it might seem impossible.
As a computer science student, Mr Arif's advice is really relatable to me. The needs to keep growing and learning especially in this era is very important. Technology has been evolving rapidly for the past decades. If I can keep up with the requirements to barely survive. In my university time, I have never joined any entrepreneurship talks especially involving IT and computer science FIELD. While this is very new to me, it makes me realize that starting up a business is not very difficult if we do it in the right path. From this experience, I managed to see a clearer picture on how to become a successful entrepreneur in the IT and computer science field. Previously, I realized that I’m lacking in motivation and the correct mindset on how to become a successful entrepreneur. Thanks to Mr Arif’s advices and motivation, I think I can try to get out from my comfort zone and try to achieve to become a successful entrepreneur and I need to start from today to see the results for the next 5 to 10 years.
The forum continues with the second panelist, Mr Bryan Chua, who is the founder of Nescafe @ UTM. Mr Bryan gave a few good pieces of advice on how to stand out from the other entrepreneurs. Having a bright idea and innovation itself does not bring success, but you also need a good business module on how to sell and market your innovation so that it can be a great success for your business. Sometimes, you need to pitch the idea of innovation with several expertise so that you are able to sell the idea to specific markets. His motivation for continuing as an entrepreneur is to focus and give attention to what you are doing so that if you drifted away from your goals, you need to find the motivation back so that you can be on the right track.
Next, Mr Arif stated that do not treat the task as a burden, instead look at it as one of the ways of growth and self improvement. If you change your mindset into this positive thinking, your business will become better and more stable. He highlighted that we are supposed to develop the skills of multitasking as early as in undergraduates day. This is because multitasking is one of the skills that can be developed and become one of the advantages in expanding your business in the future.
Before the forum ended, there was a Q&A session. One of the questions asked to the panelist is what are the tips for students to start a business and what is the critical qualification to start a business. A few key points that Mr Bryan gave was to involve more entrepreneurship events in UTM. UTM always provides many entrepreneurship events along the semester so you need to grab as many as possible. Next question was how to manage and balance your work-life time? Mr Arif answered that you need to set the priority first on who and what you need first. He said that for him, the priority of people in his time is his parents, work and lastly socialize with friends. He also added that you need to find a good friend that can help and motivate you.
These 2 session seminar talks really were eye opening for all of us. It really gave us a clear picture of this world of entrepreneurship as it was given based on first hand experiences from top entrepreneurs themselves. They really gave in depth on every experience that they faced throughout their journey. As a group, we can conclude that the most important thing to be an entrepreneur is that we must have passion for it. Without passion there will not be motivation to succeed and discipline to learn and venture in new fields to further advance ourselves to be a better entrepreneur. Without passion we would not have a good mindset to succeed. Another important aspect to become a successful entrepreneur is that your will spirit must be strong. Many of the young entrepreneurs do not have the will to face the challenges of becoming successful or achieving something great. They normally quit after a short while in this business because they don't have the will to succeed. Therefore, will spirit is also a key to be successful. In conclusion, everybody can be an entrepreneur, but not everybody can be a successful entrepreneur. With a powerful passion, strong desire and discipline strategy anyone can succeed.