(1/2) “If I were to write a book about myself, I would call it ‘The Roller Coaster’. When I first entered university, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know what to study. I think this stage happens to a lot of people. In my first year of uni, I failed my subjects. But something happened that changed my life forever – my father was hospitalized for 6 months and it was a wake up call for me.
After he entered into hospital, I decided to stay in Malaysia, I studied in a local university so I can be close to my family.
In my first year of uni, I failed my subjects, so you can see that I was not too keen on studying, but after my father got hospitalized, that’s when I woke up and I realized I want to start a business to support myself and I said ‘you know you need to study hard’.
My results improved in second and third year of university when I started getting Distinctions.
While studying, I also started working to support myself. I made a decision to start a contracting company, for renovation. It was tough and I didn’t have a wonderful university life – it was always spent either working, going to meetings or studying. This is how I started my career and background in this industry. That actually changed my whole life.
When I graduated, I went into the construction business. I remember there was one project where we lost a lot of money due to a combination of factors. Because of this loss, we realized that we have to change the industry by increasing the transparency and options for homeowners and contractors. I won’t call it a failure, I call it a learning curve, and it taught us how to recover from a loss.
From there, BuildEasy was formed.
BuildEasy is an online platform that connects freelance interior designers and homeowners. We help homeowners find the right designer, design their dream home and turn their dream home into a reality.
My advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is this – idea is cheap and execution is a lot of hard work. Success is 97{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} hard work and 3{eb97150a49149dc6c9e8165e90f1c9129bb6172e02a598b4264a1fc329d7d5bc} luck. I believe luck will only come when you set the right conditions, and the right condition will only come when you work hard for it. There is no substitute for hard work and there is no shortcuts.
Along this journey, MaGIC has really changed the way we look at things and we are very proud to be a part of them. We participated in the Stanford Go2Market programme, where we had a one week course with a professor from Stanford. We even went to Stanford University in the US for two weeks! It taught me to see things from a global perspective – from my small tiny dream to be a Malaysian champion, to eventually become a regional champion.
I think MaGIC really stands for magic – it has given us the magic and through it, we created our own motion and spell.
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering with Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!#HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Samantha Siow
Edited by Mushamir Mustafa and Amalina Davis
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(This post was first published on July 18th 2018)
