Here’s a very good interview with one of my college mate who single handedly build his own IT company named Sandfil. Although this is not a home based business, but i’m sure this is where we can get lots of inspirations from. I sure did.

Interestingly, he did mentioned about Blue Ocean Strategy and Red Ocean Strategy business method. The red ocean strategy business is something i’ve went through and it was hellish. So, am working on a Blue Ocean Business and i can tell you it’s really very different!

Okay, without much delay, *drumrolls* please welcome our guest today…

***

1. Can you please introduce your name, where are you from and your area of business expertise.

Wilson Ten, Executive Director of IT Consultant Group of Companies, providing consultancy on software development and implementation ranging from small to big scale organizations in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippine and Hong Kong.

I graduated with Bachelor Degree in Computer Science from TAR College Malaysia (Campbell University, United States). I have vast experience in managing nationwide project for banking industry in Malaysia that covers more than 200 branches.

With all the hands-on 10 years experience in research and development, I provide consultancy and project management base on real on the job practice instead of purely theories.

I have practically implemented various sort of software in the industries that covers the whole software development life-cycle, that is system analysis, system design, system development, system testing, system implementation and system training.

I am currently one of the co-founder of few IT companies in Malaysia as well as in Singapore and Hong Kong with the clientele ranging from head hunting companies, multinational national companies and public listed companies in Asia-Pacific region. By having such a good exposure in the IT Industries, this allows me to deliver the right consultancy & solutions for the right environment.

2. What makes you start your own business in the first place? And at what age?

After gaining my five years experience in software development environment, I decided to start my own business at my age of 30. The reason to start my own business is very simple, I don’t believe in working for people and I would like to be financially sustainable after the age of retirement. Not sure if you have noticed this, a lot of top level management people, they will be start worrying about their income after retired, and at that age with high level of commitment, they are not afford to lose the job or taking a high risk of their life saving into business.

3. How long did it take you to smell the first taste of success?

I am not sure about your definition of success here, I lost all my saving in the first two years, and breakeven on 3rd and 4th year, we have double digit growth on 5th and 6th year.

4. Was your family supportive of your business ideas when you started?

My parents passed away when I was in secondary school, I have my freedom to decide what I wanted to do.

5. What is the one event that you can’t forget about your business that leads you to success?

A lot of people failed when they make assumption too early without knowing the market information. I was so confident that my new idea would work but it failed because I failed to understand the market readiness, market needs and practicality.

I always thought my product was very great product and people would love it, when I started marketing the product, customers said, it is a good product, but we are not ready.

This is a big lesson that I have learnt that we have to study the current market challenges and opportunities by using SWOT Analysis before we implement our new idea.

6. Share with us some obstacles that you managed to overcome in your business

My main obstacles was the financial support, I did not have any investor or borrowings. I started my business from my own pocket without any business contacts, customers or funding. From this valuable experience, I am now know how to survive in financial crisis like the current global economy melt-down.

7. Share with us some of the mistakes that you made in your business

I made a lot of mistakes previously by jumping into new businesses and new partners, and I finally realized that the focus is very important. We can do a lot of things, but we will not be excellence in all the things that we do.

If we focus on one thing, we will be the best of what we are doing, this is how we beat our competitors because our competitors are not focus.

8. Share with us why you think people couldn’t find success with their business

Business is about profitability, how productive you are will decide how profitable you are. The amount of time that you and your team spent on the project, you have to be very clear on whether you can make profit.

I have a friend who started his business 10 years ago, but until today, he still cannot grow the business and have been very busy but not making money, so this is a very good lesson that we all should know what we should and shouldn’t do.

9. What are the one last advice you would share with my readers about building our own business?

Firstly, you need to products or services for short sales cycle and long sales cycle. Short sales cycle products or services allow you to stay afloat and long sales cycle allow you to make big profits.

Secondly, you need to be very selective on customers and projects, not all the customers are good customers, some can be very harmful to your business, we have rejected some of the projects base on our experience, we rather focus our energy on good customers.

Thirdly is the productivity of the team, you have to know what are the roles and responsibilities of each employee and the efficiency will decide your business achievement.

Fourthly, is your business model, is your business model a Blue Ocean or Red Ocean? Blue Ocean is a very niche market that no one has done it before, Red Ocean is the market that full of competitors like accounting software.

If you have Red Ocean business model, you will not be able to grow your business easily as the price-war is unavoidable.

Lastly, we all know that we have to manage our overhead cost carefully, we have to be alerted all the time on our financial status, we need to have reserved cash to last our business for at least a year or more.

(I guess Wilson is really generous. He gave us 5 last advices instead of 1. Thank you, thank you.)

Is there any website or business links that you’d like to share with us?

For more information about one of our key product please visit www.sandfil.com