The Pandemic

 Maybe 5 years later when we look back at year 2020/21, we'd probably still remember some of the happenings. But 10 years later, or 20 years later, we'd only be able to recall so little about it. That's the whole idea of why I started blogging but I gotta admit that it's difficult to make it consistent.

Well, while the memory of 2020 is still vivid, let me just write it down.

Let's break 2020 into 4 parts.

Part 1 : Jan-mid March
We were on the rise, recording good numbers, and were planning for new outletsssss opening. Things were looking so good we really thought 2020 is the year we fly.

Part 2 : Mid March to Early May
Then we all know, 18th March 2020, the beginning of the darkest period of Malaysians in recent year. And for retail business, it suckssssssss. Can you imagine while you are flying high and fast, out of sudden you got pulled down from the sky ? and your dreams and goals got crushed and put on hold for an unknowingly long period.
Days were dark, and it got darker when it's your first time handling things. Just when you thought things cannot be any worse, communication with team gone haywire just gave you another mega punch.
On one side we made monetary loss, on the other side, talents left, team morale dropped, and I went into darkness.

Part 3 : May to December
MCO was lifted and business rebounded. This was an interesting period. Opportunities just came knocking door, sales were good with minimal manpower. We were covering the business with 60% capacity while trying to create different revenue streams. Suddenly, the sun shine so bright that it made you forget about the past cloudy days.

Part 4 : Stepping into 2021
"Things are now back to normal, the new normal, with less uncertainties," we thought. We pivoted from our original plan and prepared to restart. December number was good and January 2021 is supposed to be on par or probably better considering CNY shopping spree kicks in.
Mana tauuuuuuuuuuu MCO 2.0

Kthxbye, let's go back to part 1 aforementioned. 

Just want to share the roller coaster we in the retail business (I believe most of the businesses too) are riding. It's just both mentally and physically tiring. It is difficult to hold everyone together, to show hope when even I could not see, to stay calm, and to decide whether to move on or not.

Sometimes it's because we have been suppressed by lows for too long, a little bit of good things got us over celebrating. Heh. But it is what it is.

Final words : The world outside can be too noisy. All you need to do is answer to nobody but yourself.

Rediscover myself

Wow! I finally gotten the account back. The last post was 2 years ago, I was supposed to pen down every stage of the journey but I lost the account for quite some time. Now that I have gotten it back, I shall continue blogging.

It’s also a good moment to record. Fast forward 2 years, we are much bigger now. Sometimes when I look back at the target we set, we have achieved so much more. But then, without those target, we would not be where we are today.

For this chapter, I wanna talk about rediscovery of myself. I have been building the company since day one, banging wall, and failing here and there. Definitely won’t skip credit for that. Still, as a person who is hungry for growth by nature, I reached another obstacles, bottleneck, threshold, whatever you call it.

And this time round, after tirelessly looking for solution, I look into myself. Yes, fundamentally there is a problem that I need to solve. It is SELF AWARENESS.

Self awareness is knowing who you are and accepting the fact. Self awareness is knowing your strength, and acknowledging your weakness. Self awareness is admitting everything about you truthfully. Self awareness is be as naked as possible to yourself.

After knowing who I really am, my weakness, my strength, I need to work around these. I came to realise that I am good at planning and bad at xxxxxxx (not disclosing here). So I need to get help on that.

When we were younger, we were taught that thing is either wrong or right. But I think this is the biggest mistake in our belief system. There is no absolute right or wrong. Perspective matters. And there is no single absolute best solution or method.

Accepting who you are allows you to build things the way you want.
See, end goal can be the same, but methods can vary. Different individual does thing differently, yet producing equally good result.

After all these turbulence of understanding myself, how my mind works, things suddenly become so much clearer. And I feel so relieved. Of course, there are so many things to do to finally reach this understanding. I believe it’s a journey everyone needs to go through by himself. Or may be it’s just me, who is so complicated. Then again, I accept me being such a complex person :)

对自己有要求才对得起自己

还记得小学时最讨厌的事就是笔顺练习。每上完一堂课就要写一大堆的作业。从一撇一纳，到十多划的《鼎》，麻木乏味的笔顺练习让我们学会了认字，写字，从而能够造句，写文章表达。还真的要感谢严格的纪律，才学会这些。
慢慢的长大了，没有老师的监督，不需要被教育系统里管教，自由了，也任性了。自我提拔的心态，也停止了。
即便了解自律的重要性，我们也只不过听听看看就好，反正不自律也不会被惩罚。却不知道最终惩罚自己因不自律而不长进的，是后悔也迟了，堆满了遗憾的自己。

刚开完会，看见团员想进步却又不努力，心里是很失望。失望为什么人可以对自己没有要求，为什么有更好的未来没有去奋斗，为什么就得过且过。一年后，两年后，还没有改变。这次尝试设一个挑战计划，每个人有一个挑战，希望三十天后大家会变得更好。可是即便这样做，参与性也不高，大家放佛就在找一个可以逃避的方式。

要变得更好，就必须向自己挑战，做没有做过的事。事情没有很简单舒服，但结果会是更好的自己。就这样简单直接，有很难吗？一向来的领导概念是偏向于启发性的，希望可以让身边的人自己找到自己想要的，激励他们，变得更好。但好像都没有很足够，大家就比较喜欢有人自己以身作则，好像是要自己做到了，他们才愿意尝试。既然是这样，如果管用，就这样做吧！

When engineering blends into business

4 years in engineering school moulds me into one who likes the bird's eye view. I like to understand the entire system before going to the ground to further do the work. I also like to build the branches that help to develop the future. And I am heavily influenced to the word "sustainability", be it in terms of growth, operation or sales. To me, this word means a lot; it kinda feels like an automated system that is self-nurture and gives compounding growth, as if it breaks the 1st law of thermodynamic, where energy can now be created because of constant work that results in better result which in return motivates the work to be done on an even larger and efficient way. And bigger result. We sometimes call it the viscous cycle.

That is the belief I always have. So this is how Pott Glasses develops and will be developing. What is it now for Pott Glasses? We are now focusing on developing new sales channel which can drive recurring if not consistent sales. We are also focusing on duplicating what are in place, at the same time optimising them. To be able to do things like this, it requires a lot of learning, studying, getting reference and a lot of cross-discipline application. Unorthodox way of doing thing is really fun without getting limited by any norm or constrained by the dogma. But of course, there comes a constant fight with doubts and nothing to bench mark against. It all boils down to the risk taking mentality.

We are really not doing anything that we are used to or we had done before, at least not the speed of growth and hiring. And all these lie on one and only one thing, the vision of self sustainable business. So when I zoom into the details, thankfully the entire thing does not obey 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics or come to think about it, it really obeys, but the attributes are now different.

With human resource in place, we can create energy and transform all these energy to our work. When the work gives us result, it motivates us and makes us further committed to creating the bigger impact. The key here is to be able to envision what the future should look like, and align the team members' personal goal to the company goal. Work has to have more essence than just financially sounds. We need to make sure the part where we add value to the customer is where it makes us feels rewarding at the same time. Think of it as a mutual gain that gives a long term healthy relationship.

I always believe that empowering human is the way to go in growing and running the company. We need a goal that resonates with everyone's one in order to have the utmost commitment and energy. Moving forward, we are going to face more obstacles and words from naysayers. But I guess that is what makes the journey exciting.

Trying to recall all the things

My intention and urge to write a new post died almost as soon as it appeared, every single time. Mainly because I want the blog to have good content, to have rich emotion and to have essence. But i think I've been missing for some time, and it kinda defeat the very first intention of starting this blog. Just like how each chapter is being name, entrepreneurship #n, I wanted to write down just about everything i met along the journey, no matter how big or small it is.

So let's see what i can recall since my last post in Feb.

Things turned a bit sour after we got back from Chinese New Year. The sales wasn't performing but we were still pretty chillax. We assumed that it's due to post CNY. And I proceeded with my plan to go Bali with Chuckie and KJ. Sales dipped even further the and we started to get panic. On top of that, there're so many things to plate to be done. The expansion plan, our B2B sales, our KPI etc. Out of sudden, I felt so lost. 

I began to wonder what's our forte, what's our USP, what are we good at. All these questions did not help to reduce the pressure, they did the opposite. In the accelerator program we joined, CGP, we faced the same question too. 8 months in the program, we're supposed to be very clear about our direction and it's about time to take off, but we were not!

Actually we were told about what we are good at and what we should be focusing, but we just refused to face it. We are simply a retail company, but because it doesn't sound sexy enough, I personally don't quite like it. However, there's something we are good in. We are good in lean management, we are pretty innovative, we have good brand, we know that reducing friction in buying process is the key, and more importantly we've been profiting since the beginning.

We had to convince ourselves to accept this truth and work from here. So we did. The moment we accept the fact, everything becomes so clear. It's about proper execution to get things done efficiently. 

Sometimes I really think that it's super hard to create "sexy" business that make money. But when I change the perspective that the sexiness is about running a validated business efficiently, epiphany moment appeared. 

22nd of July marked the birth of the 3rd outlet. Same old thing, quarrels among the team and miscom, but we were aware that it's part of the process. Let it happened and let it past. 

How do I feel now? Mixed feeling. I am trying to build and build and build. The team, the company, the customer base, hope to harvest the result in one year time. In terms of pay check, good enough to live by. Gotta delay the gratification and believe that the direction that we're heading towards is the right one. 

Till then, see ya!

The miserable start up life that eventually worked out

It’s a quarter to 9 now. I just got back from the beach waiting for a beer session. Today has been fun kayaking for hours exploring some snorkeling spots ourselves and free-dive to search for turtles. More than these activities, I am writing to celebrate the goal that I set 3 years ago right before I ventured into the business. Though it came a year later than my plan, I think I still made it and it’s important to celebrate this. No, I am not bragging about what I have attained, I have no intention to do that at all. I am, however, especially happy and excited to share that 3 years ago, I set a goal to attain a free and easy lifestyle, to be able to take leave as I like, to be able to work on computer from anywhere and to have a team to take care of the operation. I wanted a paycheck to have my necessary expenses covered (housing, car and daily expenses) with a little overflow to travel and explore the world. I want to celebrate this very moment that I’ve made it, and I hope this blog is able to encourage you to celebrate your success too.

See how detailed and how average my goal was. Compared to the lavish lifestyle and really filthy rich (which is one of my ultimate goals), the goal I set 3 years ago is simple but uncommon to many.  To aim for an free and easy lifestyle at this age seems to be non-mainstream goal. I admit as I started running the business, I became greedy, I wanted more (I still want), but I think we owe ourselves some credits, so important that these credits tell us we should take a pause and pad on our shoulder and tell us we are good. We made it.

We grow up being taught that keep pushing the boundaries is a good attitude to have towards life. We are taught that we should keep raising the bar because that’s we should strive for better living standard. While all these are good practices to have, I realised that many of us are trying too hard that it hurts. We never get contended. We are programmed to be reaching new height after another that it eventually breaks us up internally. How irony things work.

My plan was to get what I wanted in two years time, but hey, 2 years for a business is really short. It’s just about the time you start to know the game, people start to know you, things start to work out, you become mature. Then a year later, here I am, proudly acknowledging what I have gotten.

In this 3 years of running Pott Glasses, I am lucky to have met a lot of great business people. People of the same age like Eddie, Joddess, Mandy, Jodie, Roger, EJ, Bryan, Johnson and so many more who are doing much better than me in the business. Then my mastermind group, Julius, Sereen, LeeChin, Ryan, Larry, who have more experience in business than me and guided me. Not to mention the excitement to meet the legendary Beer Factory founder Kent Chua and Sakura Crystal and ever growing Makan Culture founder Alex who have achieved great height in business at the young age. How can I forget Fax and Wee Kiat!

These people open my eyes to the world of business. They show me there’s no limit to possibilities and they inspire me to set higher goal and to put me out of my comfort zone. I am so prepared to expand the business this year. I am so excited to bring Pott Glasses to another height with my business partner Hong. But before anything, I would like to share what I have experienced so far.

One of the articles that got me kicked start my business journey is “How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked up my life”. I would read it every now and then. It feels very relatable every time I read about it, if not more. Long story short, he wrote about his struggles and eventually made it after 2 years (that is also why I set 2 years). And if you read about it, the author also mentioned that he’s at the beach when he blogged that. I actually envisioned myself to be in similar setup and yes, I made it, so literally.

In these 3 years, if there’s one struggle that I always face and hardly get resolved, that would be the mental struggle. Mental struggle haunts me on how incompetent I am compared to my peers, compared to my competitors and this breeds the intention of giving up. Peers in MNC are making good money, setting up family and entering another stage of life. Me on the other side paying rental, not giving anything to family, reinvesting the money to the business and bank account went back to square one. Then the number of competitors grew tremendously in 2016, seeing glasses shop opened after one another, and the big players started their price war game. Then another one came out with another marketing trick. All these just were so good at breaking my mental strength. Insecurity kicked in bringing her friend, insomnia along to accompany me for countless nights and became a regular companion. Halfway through I got steered away the initial goal, wanted to try out more things, and even gotten an offer from VC.  Many dilemmas that I had to fight through, I had to answer to myself; And I couldn't tell if I had missed a boat or the decision was made right.

I sometimes had to turn to alcohol (don’t feel like covering the fact and make running business a glamorous thing so I prefer to tell the truth). This negative spiral could’ve grown out of control but thankfully I started to learn to take control of the mind. Thankfully good news and sales came in in time. Thankfully exercise does release endorphins to steer me back to think positively. Thankfully all the kind words from friends (Sijing especially you) help to regain the faith. So here I am now to share and hope to encourage you to give yourself more credits on all the work that you’ve done. It may not be perfect yet, but hey look how far you have come along, hey you have achieved one of your goals. Oh yes, one more thing. Every one has their own set of success. Some want work life balance, some want tonnes of money, and maybe some are like me still exploring. Let’s focus more on ourselves rather than letting others to define. Meanwhile I have already gotten what’s next on my list. Definitely going all in for expansion and building my team.  Let’s enjoy the moment now.

做到了！

终于我们也突破了新的的业绩。我们终于做到了。写着一遍部落格不是要炫，只是想把这成绩和心情用文字把它记录下。每个月的挣扎，每一次的低潮，每一个烦恼，也不就是为了这发光的时刻。在月尾结账的时候，心里是多么的紧张。就这一次，就这一次让我们突破。业绩固然重要，但更重要的是那努力后的来结果的那信念，那份感动，那让我们更相信坚持的，更相信自己能做到的那把火。

有了一次的突破，接下来就会有千千万万次的突破。出了这让我控制不了心情的业绩，另一个让我值得去想的是，其实生活还有很多领域是我们忽略了的。心灵，健康，家人，友情，爱情，个人目标等等。有时是不是该停下脚步，把时间放在这一些已被遗忘的事情呢？

2018年会是一个充满很多突破及圆梦的一年。我很期待😊