Learning to Win at the Game of Entrepreneurship

In the past few years, the business focus on entrepreneurship and start ups has increased. What exactly does it take to be an entrepreneur? Vincent Chew from Eduvo sheds some light.

1. The entrepreneurs who start their businesses in Malaysia seem to be getting younger and younger with a lot of them getting into e-commerce businesses. In 2011, Nielsen & PayPal was forecasting online commerce market size in Malaysia to be RM5.76 billion in year 2015, both products and services (travel, ticketing etc) included.

What other industries do you think have room for growth? Do you have advice for entrepreneurs who suddenly find themselves in saturated markets eg F&B outlets?

​A business exists because there are customers. Without customers, you don't really have a business. So, as long as you are very clear about your customers (ie your target market, including their needs & wants) and you're continuously listening to them to create and deliver better solutions (offering) and better value, there's always room for growth in any industries or businesses that you're in. Of course having said that, to create breakthroughs and not merely satisfying your target market's current needs/wants, you have to look ahead, figure out and create a solution that can make the life of your target market even better without them realizing it now. When you do that, you become the leader of your market.  

However, the challenge for most (startup) entrepreneurs is that, rather than figuring out what problems/issues/challenges/pains they are trying to solve for their target market and make their lives even better, they try to "push" their current idea(s) ie their products or services across to their target market. So to begin with, here are a few questions for you to consider: 

- Who is your target market? Why?

- What are their demographics and psychographics?

- What are their buying behaviours?

- What are their main problems/pains/challenges/issues faced?

- How are your ideas/solutions (products/services) helping to make the lives of your target market better?

- What benefits do they get from your solutions?

2. It is very unique that Eduvo Academy chooses to teach practical real life experiences to students. How did this business start and where do you see the academy going in the next 10 years?

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Founded by myself and my business partner, Keith Ngai, Eduvo started off as a professional human capital and business development firm and is the only Malaysian firm focused on Accelerated Action Lifelong Learning based leadership, management and entrepreneurship learning and development. Eduvo, which stems from the words, "Education Revolution & Evolution" has taken this initiative to assist in enhancing the quality of human capital development for individual learners, SMEs, and corporate organisations by providing a mode of education and learning which is holistic, flexible, innovative and far-sighted. We focus on delivering our 3H philosophy - Hope Humanity and Happinesse. And the "e" in our Happinesse is not a spelling error. It is done on purpose as we believe that true happiness has to be in harmony and align with the "ecology" of the environment and the people that we are in contact with. 

As we move forward, we envision a world where everyone should have a fair chance of getting a more holistic education especially for those who are not academically inclined. It saddens us to know and see that a lot of students who are "neglected" simply because they cannot fit in the traditional academic-based education system. Many young people who struggle academically are often left with bleak prospects for their future. Year after year, thousands of students leave school (either they graduate or mostly dropout) carrying nothing but empty hopes and uncertainty.    

​With these issues in mind, the inspiration behind Eduvo Academy was born. Both my partner and I shared the same passion towards the young people, and hence were eager to see transformation in these lives. We believed that our efforts mattered as nobody should be left out – everyone deserved a hope for the future. And we realised that there is a big gap in the market place when it comes to employment, between those who are academically inclined and those who aren't. With the mission to provide every individual with an equal opportunity to be achievers, we embarked on the next journey in our lives to start a school that nurtures people from all walks of life – Eduvo Academy, the School of Accelerated Action Learning.

Eduvo Academy’s main focus is placed not solely on transferring knowledge (30%) and skills (70%), but also the learners’ application and experience in the real world. In contrast with the conventional classroom learning, Eduvo Academy centres on Accelerated Action Learning, ie. real life work issues, challenges and experiences which makes learning more relevant, practical, enjoyable, successful and satisfying. Coupled with specialised techniques focused on personal growth and development, we aspire for every student to walk out of our doors with renewed and rewarding horizons in sight.​ 

Now that we have catered for the working adults and young adults, we are targeting to move down the life cycle to cater for the young children - an Eduvo Kindergarten perhaps?... And that's a longer term mission and vision.  

3. One of the programmes offered by Eduvo Academy is about Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management. How different is your offering compared to other business schools?

​Our programme is an outcome based learning programme. There's the knowledge part ie what learners will know and there's the skills part ie what learners can perform at the end. As mentioned earlier that our focus is on real life application and experience. So, learners are measured based on the outcomes that they are expected to deliver, and not just theory. 

Our modules are very customised to teach real life applications. For example, one of the measurable outcomes is to register a company. How do we make sure they know the process of registering a company? Well, we will bring the learners to SSM, have them figure out what type of company they would want to register (whether a sole prop, partnership or sdn bhd - but usually we encourage either a sole prop or partnership to begin with), have them think about and write down the top 3 names for their new venture, fill out the form, pay up and get their company registration cert, while having us to impart the knowledge along the process. Done! By doing so, unlike any classroom based education, the learners now know exactly where to register a company, how to register a company, they learn through real life experience the differences among the type of entities available, the price for registering the different types of entities, and how a company registration certificate looks like. 

This is just one of the many outcomes that a learner can expect to perform from the programme. There are many other real life applications in areas including sales and marketing, small business management, finance and accounting, operations, to name a few. There are also mini projects that the learners need to complete to ensure they know how to apply the knowledge that they have learnt. 

And on top of that, besides having experienced industry practitioners as trainers for the different subjects, learners will also get a mentor and a coach to guide and support them in their real life projects, dealing with real customers, suppliers and team mates. So, learners not only learn entrepreneurial and business knowledge and skills but building up their character as well - including building up their self-confidence, self-esteem, leadership and team work, to name a few. One of our proudest success story is transforming a so-called "spoiled brat" to now a purposefully ambitious young man who is focusing on lifelong action learning and very determined to start his next business venture.        

4. As an entrepreneur yourself, if you could time travel back to day one of your startup and have 15min with your former self to communicate any lessons you've acquired with the intention of saving yourself mistakes and heart ache, what would you tell yourself?

​Oh... This is interesting. If this question is posted to me a few months back, I would probably have an unstructured way of telling my former self the things to do more of, do less of and things to avoid during my startup. But now that I have fine tuned my Game of Entrepreneurship framework, I'll just pass The Game of Entrepreneurship framework to "me". There are 4 levels in the Game of Entrepreneurship. One of the area is How to Win the Game, and in it I've defined the focus areas and how to play the Game to win in each of the Levels and move up the levels accordingly. 

5. How did Eduvo Academy get funded or what creative strategies did you use to execute on minimal cash flow?

So far, ​Eduvo Academy is self funded. I would say that the top two main strategies we used to execute on a minimal cash flow basis when we started were (1) leveraging and (2) business model innovation. On leveraging. We firstly leverage on our own core competencies and our philosophy ie in our expertise to design, develop & deliver good programmes and ensuring our students are happy during their time with us. Also, using our expertise in human capital development to develop our own staff so that they can perform better to bring in more sales. Secondly, we leverage on our partners' and associates' brand image to provide us with a better platform to build our credibility in the marketplace.   

As entrepreneurs, we have to also be flexible enough to be able to change when things or outcomes don't turn out to match our expectations. This is where we have to be innovative and creative with our business model. Again, our basis for business model innovation still goes back to truly defining who our target market really is, the segments, and the niche and then creating and delivering better value to them and make their lives even better.   

​As with other entrepreneurs or businesses, we too faced with challenging times with funding. However, I think we were lucky enough to quickly realize our shortfall and depleting cash flows that we had a full meeting day, in fact 2 days to be exact, to brainstorm, design and develop a few new renewal strategies. But this is another story for another time.   ​

6. You will be speaking about the Game of Entrepreneurship at the Nurture Growth Conference. Can you give us a sneak peak about what attendees can expect to learn?

​To a startup entrepreneur and individuals who are thinking to get onto the path to entrepreneurship and business: If you want to learn the proven 5I's to Entrepreneurial Success, the 4 Levels in the Game of Entrepreneurship and a tested and proven way on how to play to win Level 1 (the Startup stage) of The Game of Entrepreneurship, then this session is a must for you! Period.   ​

Join Vincent Chew at the Nurture Growth Conference on November 19th in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia as he discusses how you can win at the Game of Entrepreneurship Make sure you get your tickets HERE.