How Lavinie Thiruchelvam Spends Her Time as an ECommerce Entrepreneur

In 2011, Lavinie Thiruchelvam (a law graduate who worked at ABN Amro and founded Dance Space) started Babydash with her friend from secondary school Tay Shan Li, a qualified chartered accountant and investment banker who formerly worked at CIMB. 

No doubt, the life of an entrepreneur in a competitive ECommerce market can be very hectic. How does Lavinie get things done efficiently? She shares her thoughts with us.

Q1: What makes a good business leader?

Visionary

A business leader starts off with a dream and then sets out to achieve it. They are visionary and full of conviction which then translates to action.

Integrity & Honesty - Honest leaders inspire through words and actions. This then sets the tone for a principled and ethical company where the business fundamentals are based on these core values.

Decisive & Positive – The ability to make choices and decisions as they continuously arise. To be able to weigh out consequences and decide what works best for the company and to be confident about every step taken. To also have a strong self-belief and positive outlook to grow and push boundaries and achieve the goals of the company.

Staff empowerment

Empower your staff so they have a sense of ownership and they will then flourish with achievement in their respective roles. Continuously share goals with whole team so they track the progress of the company and feel their importance in each milestone achieved.

Q2: What is your typical day like?

As a leader of a startup moving into a growth stage company, the ability to multitask remains tops. A typical day involves negotiating & talking to supplier partners, responding to emails throughout the day, communicating with the operations team on daily work, keeping a check on our social media platforms, strategizing new monthly marketing plans & tie-ups. 

On a weekly basis, we also have meetings with potential investors as we plan ahead for our next round of financing. Also attend courses & talks to learn from other business owners and experts. Overall, a typical day as an entrepreneur is continuous working and thinking about building & scaling the business.

Q3: How does your company ensure a work-life balance?

For our team, we start our working hours later than usual so that our staff don’t get stuck and waste time in peak hour traffic. Hence, their daily time becomes as efficient as it gets.

Q4: How has technology helped you manage your time better?

My whole business is about technology. E-commerce facilitates automatic sales which makes operations a straight-forward process thereby efficient use of time. Technology also allows me to work on the go. There is no such thing as wasting time when you can access your email and work files on the go and work anywhere. Technology is also the basis of my daily time & task management tool.

Q5: When opening a business, what's the first thing the owner should do, in terms of managing their time? 

First thing is to map out a structure of what needs to be done to start the business. Categorise all the different facets that are imperative to build the business and then start to prioritize them. Where possible, delegate & outsource to be more efficient. It is common to have a few key items that need to run concurrently so the ability to multitask and manage time to give equal priority to achieve these goals are crucial.

Join Lavinie Thiruchelvam at the Nurture Growth Conference on November 19th in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia as she shares how important it is to plan your time to ensure that things get done efficiently.

 Make sure you get your tickets HERE.