There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.
— Michael Phelps, American Olympics swimmer
Welcome to Episode 3 of my column. So life as I knew it, changed.
All we had was the little house we had bought that we proudly called home. I still remember the colour of the paint that we painted our house with — pink frost. And we bought warm yellow lights and the glow it gave our house was incredible.
We bought our first sofa set — floral and so pretty — from Courts Mammoth and our first dining set, and it was such a perfect little house. But we only stayed in it for less than a year.
Between paying for the house and paying for the car, we had zero left in our bank account every month and when I decided that I had enough content to print our first publication and had found a freelance designer, and a printer who would print our publication, we were ready to start a business but we had no money.
All we knew was the tiny world of teaching. We came from lower middle-income families who were wage earners and therefore had no mentors from the business world.
Thirty years ago, Malaysia did not have incubators programmes, entrepreneur development ministries or incentives for starting businesses. Banks would not give us a loan — we tried, but they did not believe in our capability and even our idea of a pet magazine. Banks wanted to play it safe, and we were not ‘safe’.
But I wanted my adventure. I wanted far much more than the provincial life that was threatening to enslave me forever.
So I sold the house we had saved so long to buy — it was a difficult decision and I was four months pregnant at that time, so it made it all the more difficult for anyone in my family to understand.
Everyone called us crazy, stupid, irresponsible, etc. They warned us that we would fail. They said we had never run a business before, let alone a business we had no clue about. They said we should talk to senior people and ask their advice and that we were arrogant to think we could do this on our own.
We did it anyhow. The sale of the house happened and almost immediately the Asian Financial Crisis hit. We had started our business in the worst of times.
We moved into a rented house — left behind all the furniture we loved as the new owner wanted to buy our house lock, stock and barrel. We made do with makeshift furniture as we did not intend to stay in our rented house for too long.
I remember the sadness in my mother’s eyes as she came to visit me in our new rented house. But she did not say too much, she was more worried about her unborn grandchild and what my wild decisions were going to do.
Her grandchild was born the same day as our first publication of Petworld was delivered to us. We had two babies to care for from that day onwards.
Thus began the start of what is now The IBR Asia Group.
It was a very different beginning altogether and you can say that it was practically another animal altogether then.
But isn’t that how all evolution is? You start from a speck in the primordial soup of life, turning into a fish and then crawling out of the soup into being a four-legged mammal, then an ape and finally a human being if the Theory of Evolution is to be believed.
Business evolves similarly — there has always got to be some starting point, and for those who dare to take a risk from a place of zero experience, that starting point almost always is from a place of strength that you have.
And as you remember from Episode 1, that strength that got me Schlumberger over the rest was my communication ability — to write pieces that could connect and resonate with people. And so I was confident that this journey, though hard, would at least be enjoyable. Because I will be doing what I innately knew was my strength.
I persuaded my other half then to jump on this adventure with me, “At least we would have tried to see how far we can go. And if we lose it all, at least we have our degrees, our health, our smarts and our youth to start all over again. But listen, we would have lived, and what an adventure it would have been.”
I didn’t know then, but those words were prophetic. We could not have foreseen that it would actually happen — but 20 years later for both of us, when we both went our separate ways.
Join me next week, as distributors and bookshops struggled with the concept of a pet magazine, never done before in Malaysia at that time, an idea way before its time. But as always, a target audience was there. We just had to find a way to get to them.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
