On Your Own

After an early Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner with relatives, my wife, daughter and I left for KLIA to take a MAS flight out to Auckland. It was a fully sold out flight and boarding took a bit longer than expected. Then when everybody was boarded, the electrical power suddenly cut off and it took a full 5 mins to restore the power. Since it was the proven Boeing 772 and not the Dreamliner, I was not unduly worried that it was due to battery problems.

This flight, every thing else worked out well, from the movies to the meals. Service was as usual top notch especially from the semi bald senior stewards. Nothing beats experienced staff with good service attitude. For those with businesses in the service trade, it is important to keep certain senior experienced staff within your front line team. I know junior staff costs much less but if you are claiming 5 star service, you need an experienced and willing crew to deliver. Still have the return journey to look forward to.

I rented a Camry 2.5 since I planned to travel some 8 hours south to Wellington to meet up with old varsity friends who quit high flying jobs with Securities Commission and UOB Bank to start a new life in New Zealand. Auckland was generally boring even though the restaurant scenes at the pier was interesting. But there is only so much Kiwi, Italian and continental meals that you can eat.

So we set off to Matamata where Hobbiton town is and the only reason why I managed to drag my wife to travel with me to New Zealand. Peter Jackson is a big deal in Kiwiland since he made USD 125 million from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Imagine a land where sheep outnumber humans by 10 to 1 and you will appreciate the fact that there is one major export earner other than milk, milk powder and merino wool.

Even their Prime Minister wanted to be associated with Hobbiton since he graced the opening 2 years ago. Now you know why our own Datuk Michelle Yeoh and Datuk Jimmy Choo are so popular with our politicians and socialites. If that is not enough, why not bring in the one song sensation Psy to our political rally? He is not Malaysian? Never mind. He is more popular than Justin Bieber, isn’t he?

Then we stopped by Rotorua just to understand why an old love song was written about loved ones leaving the town. Maybe the Gen Y groupies might not know about this childhood song that I learnt in school. But it goes something like this: “hurry hurry hurry home love, hurry back to Rotorua….through the mountains and the valleys….hurry home to me….”

After covering Rotorua town in half an hour, we decided to take off to Lake Taupo. It was a really boring town with nothing interesting for me and my family, the city folks. Now I know why their residents leave Rotorua and never came back. I believe the song is still relevant today as Rotorua is like Sibu and so many of our small towns where the young people have migrated to major cities in search of fortune and fame.

In Lake Taupo, we were the youngest couple at the hotel restaurant. Looking at the rest of the customers, you could tell their age by the amount of patience they have while waiting for their meals. Time stood still in restaurants from Auckland to Lake Taupo. You have to wait for between 30 minutes to an hour for your main course to arrive. So un-Asian.

A big portion of their so called highways are actually just two lane trunk roads where you have to wait for opportunities to overtake. I was pulled over by a highway patrol car driven by a single policeman who was traveling the opposite direction. He claimed that I was speeding at 129 km/ hr and I wanted to asked him how he managed to speed camera me while he was driving. But he looked like a friendly koala bear with a mustache and he wasn’t as helpful as our local traffic police. He certainly won’t understand my colloquial Malay, “”Encik, boleh tolong ah?”

Upon arrival in Wellington, we rushed off to a Chinese restaurant which was packed with people. Food arrived in 10 minutes and we were out of the restaurant in 40 minutes. Half the price, quarter the time and I managed to get really spicy chopped chilies. Feels more like home.

I did learn something new this trip. Like how to sell the wrong product to the customers who think with their heart and not their brain. Like I should have just rented a 1600 cc car instead of a 2500 cc car. After all, the top speed allowed in New Zealand highways is just 100 km/hr. To stretch my logic a bit further, why bother to buy a car that is more than 1300cc in Singapore when the top speed allowed anywhere on the island is just 90 km/ hr? I can understand if you buy a Ferrari in Singapore because you can always exercise the engine on Malaysian highways. Speeding tickets at RM 300 is peanuts when converted and you incur no demerit points.

If you are in the prestige business, emotional appeal is much much more important than practical reasoning. When you sell Myvi, low downpayment and low interest Hp payment will be most appealing to your target market whereas you should always sell upgraded big engine models to those with stuffed wallets. The bigger the wallets, the bigger the ego, the bigger the engine. Just remember, big wallets, big ego, big heart, small brain.

And how do you keep young people from leaving their small towns? The only solution is to find the right complementary businesses that offers employment and small business opportunities for them. For instance, Kuantan port would have been a great port for import- export to East Malaysia and Philippines just by the geographical fact that ships do not have to travel down the Straits of Malacca and round Singapore. With the new east coast highway, trucking takes an extra 2 hours minus the Port Kelang jam but shipping time can be reduced by 2 days. Maybe a Sea Asia budget shipping line might work. Tony, are you up to it?

Kuantan has one of the most beautiful and commercially viable public beach in Malaysia. But the Teluk Cempedak beach has been so badly developed over the last 20 years that the natural beauty of the the property is destroyed beyond recognition. In Lake Taupo and Rotorua, all the beachfront properties were hotels or motels and even though the customers were local aged tourists because they can afford, there were many job opportunities created for young people in the service industry, from hotels to Eco tourism activities. Instead, all we got from Kuantan is Lynas, not enough hotels and an ugly and sad Teluk Cempedak.

New Zealand never promised me a slick city with modem amenities. They played to their core strength which is to promote their rugged and beautiful landscapes. They have built an integrated Eco tourism industry around each of their towns and cities. I was definitely not their target market. But for those who loves outdoor activities, you will love this country.

And you won’t get a speeding ticket for cycling over 100 km/hr because Lance Armstrong couldn’t either. Despite the fact that he pumped himself full with steroids and he hid the truth from the world for so many years. I believe he will join American politics soon and the public will forgive and love him.

Before it becomes legally haram, I would like to wish all of you a Happy Valentine’s day!

P/S

There will be a mid week posting on “Things to consider when starting a new business”. Should warn you that it could be a boring and dry article but it is an essential read for entrepreneur wannabes.

Is there life after Starbiz for a small time columnist? I will be lucky to have 1% of The Star readership logging in to read this blog but 1000 genuine readers is still an achievement of some sort….for a small timer like me.

No, I did not stop writing for The Star because I was asked to. Nor was it because I wrote on controversial topics. I decided on my own to withdraw my column. Their Directors did encourage me to continue writing the column despite the common knowledge that my stark viewpoints could potentially caused them political discomfort and loss of commercial revenue. They have been very supportive and I would like them to know that I truly appreciate their friendship.

I wrote on issues that most people already know, whether it is business issues or business related politics. Nothing original. Being an impatient writer with limited vocabulary, I have no idea on how to be politically correct so I normally write from my heart and straight to the point. A bit raw in terms of content and intent but I am learning word by word and sentence by sentence about responsible journalism.

Many people complain about government bias reporting by The Star and other main dailies. Through the publication license, the government have a stranglehold on the editorial direction of all the mainstream media. In addition, these dailies are majority owned by political parties that constitutes the government. So any Chief Editors who wants to keep his job will have to play by the rules set by their bosses. Either that or he will be replaced by someone who does not care about journalism integrity. Tough way to make a living.

On the other page, the political news available via Internet is skewed the opposition way. Being cut off from mainstream media, the opposition fully exploits the cyber space which is unrestricted by law. Finally, the opposition possesses a weapon of mass disruption that can match the reach and depth of pro government mainstream media. Game on.

Human beings are typically news hungry animals with a bottomless pit to consume. We want to believe what we read. If you are pro government, naturally you will want to read the pro dailies and likewise if you are anti government, then you will swallow every Internet word that your eyes can feast on.

From a business perspective, let’s assume that pro government readers have shrunk from 70% to 50% market share. That constitutes a 20% drop in readers to the new competitors, the Internet news portals. Reflective of the current 50:50 political support for both coalitions, the market is now clearly divided right down the middle.

For dailies that are entirely dependent on advertising revenue, the loss of eyeballs will be matched proportionally by the loss of advertisers. No media agency worth it’s salt will recommend to their commercial clients a medium that is shrinking in terms of circulation and readership. If you want to reach 100% of your target market, then they will recommend that you park equally your advertising budget into both mediums, the pro government dailies and the Internet news portals.

You read the newspapers for the latest news and you watch TV for its entertainment programs so presumably TV and radio mediums will be less affected by political affiliations. If you are the publisher of a pro government daily, how will you address the problem of dwindling readership? How should you re strategise in terms of editorial content to win back the lost eyeballs? How do you win back customers that has lost faith in your product quality? How do you repair a damaged brand?

A newspaper business is just like any other business if you read its audited Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss accounts. Revenue less operation cost equals net profit. A no brainer. So to improve (or reverse decline) revenue, you need to increase eyeballs which draws in advertising dollar. To increase readerships, you need to offer products that caters to the whole market or differentiated products to different segments but ultimately covering the entire market. Then you have a fighting chance to survive.

If you want to remain in your niche segment and continue to offer the same products, you better pray that your segment does not continue to shrink in size or you will become a midget in no time. On the same note, the same product quality in new packaging will win you no new customers since everybody is so darn smart nowadays.

Winning back customers who has lost faith in your brand will be your toughest job. A complete rebranding exercise will only be possible if you discard your legacy problems. To rebuild trust, you will need a new editorial team that can instill confidence amongst the readers that the new product is impartial and genuinely news worthy. Just make sure your editorial team is impartially skewed to no one.

For a news daily, timely delivery of news content is the core of the business model. CNN is successful because they rushed the latest major news to their viewers via live TV and also the Internet. Even though they try to be impartial in their reporting, most instances, they look at the rest of the world through their American eyeballs which translates into lecturing the rest of the world on American ideals and cultures. So they lose eyeballs to Al Jazeera for Middle Eastern news and BBC for boring ‘hard’ interviews and insights into Europe.

I believe there is a major gap in the Malaysian news delivery business for entrepreneurs to exploit. Fed up with the current buffet of mish mashed skewed news, there is a growing segment of disenchanted but well educated portion of the population who are willing to pay for truthful, unbiased news reports and analysis. Neither pro government nor pro opposition. News and analysis delivered as it is for intellectuals to make up their own minds on what to believe in. I am not just talking about current disenchanted Gen X intellectuals but also the potential of the Gen Y market. This is the undeniable future.

Fortunately for the entrepreneur, the current political media owners can’t think beyond their survival instincts and will lose out eventually on the commercial potential of the new era of news delivery. But setting up a news gathering team costs big bucks with a long gestation period before you see any returns on your investment. But it will still be easier to build a new brand than to try to resuscitate an old damaged brand.

Is there a Malaysian billionaire willing to sponsor such a venture as a personal CSR project for the good of all Malaysians? I will be your first customer.

THIS is my 52nd and last article for StarBizWeek. It started more than a year ago out of a challenge from my golf buddy to communicate with local entrepreneurs in a simple and straightforward manner.

Since I am a simple and straightforward person, I believe I have carried out my duties to the letter even though most of the time, my articles did not make much business sense. But I did try to inject a business idea or concept in each weekly article which I hope did not put you in a further state of confusion.

I have not been friendly to entrepreneur wannabes who wanted to start a business without a solid business model nor having sufficient funding in place. I hate to see precious capital and talent being wasted just to please the ego of being your own boss. Starting a new business is exhilarating and exciting but closing down is painful to your pocket and your soul. Some people healed slowly and some did not recover at all.

If you really do want to be on your own, may I suggest you prepare well, seek experienced advice and stay humble. Lower your expectations and work out survival plans on worst case scenarios. If you are worse off income-wise, are you still keen to continue? Get real but stay true to your dreams.

I have great admiration for the AirAsia business model, not so much for its originality but more for its single-minded execution on its core strategy of low-cost high-volume. The whole organisation is fixated on lowering cost across all expense so that lower priced tickets can be offered continuously to secure constant high volume on an Internet platform that works tirelessly 24/7.

This business model is easy to scale across the region which adds purchasing power when negotiating with Airbus. All airlines pay the same fuel cost but AirAsia, with newer and lower cost planes, are much more fuel-efficient and if you add its competitive edge of having the lowest operating cost per seat, it now has a sustainable business model. While Ryanair dominates Europe, AirAsia will dominate the Asian airspace.

While the low-cost model has been proven successful over short quick turnaround flights of less than five hours, I was sceptical from the beginning of the viability of the long haul low-cost operator AirAsia X. True enough, the numbers did not work out for 13-hour flights to London and Paris. But it has found a profitable niche in six to seven-hour direct flights within Asia. The management has been decisive (no political interference) in pulling out of unprofitable routes and concentrating all its resources on routes that makes commercial sense.

Just imagine the potential of AirAsia X if it is able to replicate its business model operating out of Indonesia to Australia or out of Japan to the Middle East and beyond.

That’s why I am looking forward to the listing of AirAsia X this year. It will be the first successful long haul low-cost airline in the world. Malaysia Boleh!

When you think you have a viable and sustainable model, stay true to your strategies and focus on executing the appropriate strategies across your entire organisation. If you are a five-star operator, make sure your organisation is able to deliver five-star services consistently to your customers.

If you have a business model that is able to scale across cultures and countries, your growth potential will reward you in multiples. Big dreams are for those who look beyond our small domestic market of 28 million people. But dreams will remain as dreams if you are not successful with your home market first. You should only replicate successful models.

If you do not find optimum success with your business model or defined strategies, be decisive and admit to yourself that it is not working as planned. Eat the humble pie and swiftly change direction or tweak your business model to find a sustainable and profitable niche where you can survive comfortably.

Do not be afraid to change and do not delay until the shit hits the fan. Unless you can go begging to the Government for more funds, it will be difficult for you to find friendly benefactors to help you then. Your business will suffer a slow and painful death and you will wish that you have not been on your own.

I have been active in the consumer product markets for the last 27 years and I have often wondered why the multinational companies make more money per dollar sales than my company. That is despite them paying higher salaries and spending more on advertising and promotions. I consoled myself then by reasoning that they had first mover advantage, better brand equity and they were smarter than me.

After looking closely at their numbers, I discovered that they have a higher selling price and a lower cost of goods which means their gross margins are easily 10% to 20% higher than mine. Their products fetch better prices because they spend more on branding and they have a lower cost of goods because they understand the supply chain system better than I did. They are brilliantly efficient in logistics and channel management.

To compete, I have to match them in all aspects. Share of voice, understanding the supply chain forward and backward and having an efficient logistic set up. But you can only compete if you have comparable margins. My business model was subsequently amended over a few years to a comparable high margin model with similar A&P spend.

Building brand equity

High margins mean lower break-even point and less pressure on volume sales. Less working capital required means less financial risk. It is easier to make a profit in a high margin business but you have to find the margins in the value chain. Apple makes 30% profit on sales but its OEM manufacturer Foxconn makes only 1.5% profit. Our telco companies make 30% on sales but their prepaid card wholesalers make a 2% gross margin. Soft dollars versus hard dollars.

To earn the soft dollars, you need to build your brand equity. Whether it is product branding or corporate branding, you must be committed and consistent in promoting your brand. Margins for great brands differ substantially from commoditised generic products or services. Differentiate or suffer low margins always.

I particularly like SP Setia as a perfect example of how to build a strong corporate brand. However just as Tan Sri Tony Fernandes is synonymous with the AirAsia brand, Tan Sri Liew See Kin is the face of SP Setia. What will happen to the SP Setia brand after Liew leaves? Can he be replaced successfully by another brilliant marketeer from the new owner, PNB? Your guess is as good as mine.

There are many key words used by management professors to describe the hectic changes in the current business environment but my favourite phrase is the concept of disruption. Technological advancements disrupts technological laggards which disrupts our lifestyle as well. Phones gets smarter by the day, from voice to SMS to data to watching Astro on-the-go. Brands come and go at the speed of disruption. What was your favourite phone-brand five years ago? Can’t remember? Me too.

My thought process gets totally disrupted trying to figure out how to sell products to the Gen Y segment. They don’t watch TV and they don’t read newspapers. They socialise with screens and they communicate faceless through a “book”. They shop anytime in the Internet mall and they sleep in different time zones. As they are our biggest customer segment, we have to tweet them with respect. Or for the heck of it, just blog them into submission.

Gen Y and the Internet

Because of Gen Y and the Internet revolution, entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger. With a laptop, they trade anything and everything across countries like borderless pirates while prim and proper Gen X businessman worry about traditional sales team and distribution channels across the country. They collect cash in advance directly from consumers while Mr X gives credit to the trade. They have all the personal details of their customers and they are connected on a daily basis whereas Mr X can only guess that someone of a certain race, age and size has bought his products.

E-commerce will be the single biggest influence on rental rates of brick and mortar retail space. Already certain successful e-commerce products like books and music have decimated the traditional distribution channels of bookshops and music shops. The middleman’s job has been taken over by Amazon.com.

Now you see other products like shoes, apparels, contact lenses etc gaining popularity on e-commerce platforms. And retail prices trending downwards much to the delight of consumers.

The only option for traditional businesses threatened by the e-commerce wave is to join them. Sephora has seen its cosmetic and fragrance sales slowing down and rental rates of their shops going up. So it set up sephora.com which has been growing very well, protecting its overall market share in the luxury segment of cosmetics and fragrance.

For traditional media companies, all the newspapers have a similar e version now. Even though visibility of e advertising revenue is still shrouded in fog, they are prepared for any eventual switch by news hungry consumers to e-consumption. While Astro offers TV couch potatoes with Astro-on-the-go mobility, Media Prima countered with Tonton, an e-content platform where you can watch missed programmes on the net and on-the-go. Mind you, these massive investment and creative efforts are made just to ensure its business stay relevant in the fast changing landscape.

Just as I give an “A” to these top private companies for their innovative business acumen, the Government and the GLCs deserve an “E” for their involvement in business. I do agree that the Government should play a major role in sensitive sectors of the economy like utilities, education and national security but to be actively involved in all businesses competing with the private sector is counter productive and in most cases a waste of public money. Lack of competition breeds inefficiency and lethargy. Enough said.

I am pleased to note that there has been a major shift of public perception towards politicians being involved in business. Politicians should stay exclusively active in the political arena if they want to avoid unnecessary accusations, nasty tweets and rumoured scandals. A clean politician who cares and fights for the people that he represents will always be voted favourably by his constituents. I read that from Dummies for Politicians.

I was born in 1960 thus I was given a blue Identity card. Having been a Malaysian since birth, I grew up in Petaling Jaya and studied in local schools and Universiti Malaya. I have worked all my life in Malaysia. My wife is Malaysian and all my three children were born in Malaysia.

So you can imagine my outrage when I am called an immigrant by some senseless and dumb politicians out to score a point or two with their supporters. As a Malaysian would say “I so angry until I cannot speak.”

But speak out you must in the coming 13th General Eelection. Choose wisely and please vote for sincere and smart candidates. Avoid wolfs in sheep skin for the sake of our children’s future. Do not live to regret.

It has been a fun write for me the last 52 weeks and I must thank the StarBizWeek editorial team for sacrificing valuable space to accommodate my nonsensical and shallow articles. I hope I have given you some weekly chuckles and brought a wry smile on your face on lazy Saturday afternoons. I thank you for your kind patience. Goodbye.

The writer has decided to go e-communicado. For further nonsensical musings, stay in touch with him at thiamhock.com. You might just find some useful tips on your own.

IN this penultimate column, I would like to explore the world of romance, courtship and partnership. Why some marriages are happy and long lasting and why some end in a messy divorce. I will also talk about quickie engagements, marriage of convenience and spouse for hire.

No, I am not Aunty Thelma providing counsel on your turbulent personal life. Neither am I qualified to talk about politicians and rent seekers. This discussion is confined to entrepreneurs who need partners to help them kick start their business. Occasionally, desperately sourcing capital for survival and sometimes needing a healthy dose of cash injection to grow.

For new startups, courting the investors will be the most stressful stage. Before they part with their money, they will question the viability of your business, sustainability of your business model and most importantly, the potential to scale. You are advised to be well prepared with facts and figures supporting your proposal. If a knowledgeable investor tears up your assumptions and forecast, swallow your pride and rebuild your model if necessary. You will be better prepared to face the next potential investor.

Knowing the type of investors that you would like to “sleep with” will save you unnecessary stress and avoiding misaligned discussions. Short-term investors think very differently from long-term investors. Temporary relationships means moving in together and having fun without any responsibility. Breaking up is not hard to do.

Long-term relationships requires patience, understanding and tolerance between both parties. Like all marriages, there will be fights and misunderstandings but both sides will make up and continue for the sake of the children, albeit on an uneasy truce.

If you have a quick turnaround project with an early exit plan, then you will click immediately with short-term investors who will be willing to take on higher risks but expecting immediate returns on invested capital. Normally they do not mind having a smaller equity share as long as they see good upside but you will have to pay interest or dividends on their different class of preferred shares. It is best you find out more on terms like convertible cumulative preferred stocks and RCCPS (redeemable convertible cumulative preference shares) etc … If you want to be on the same page as these savvy investors.

If your project has a long gestation period, get a rich investor who looks for steady recurring income with an eye for capital asset growth. Be conservative with your forecast and highlight your cashflow management skills. Nothing pleases the long-term investor more than having a mature thinking partner who will conservatively build a meaningful asset business in a steady environment.

Once you have the investor interested, the real negotiation starts. Assuming all investors are fools, you will be able to load the investors with a high valuation, retain majority equity and management control and yet raise a lot of capital by giving little away. Alternatively, assuming you are the desperate fool, you would end up working for the new investors, saddled with a low valuation and stuck with minority equity stakes. Nobody likes playing the fool so either one of these relationships will definitely end up in divorce.

Basically, the whole negotiation rests on the basis of valuation. For a new startup with no prior track record, the valuation is based on forecast budgets normally over a five-year period. To investors, getting the forecast right determines the level of risks to be taken. But his guess is as good as your guess. Then you end up with two sides articulating their understanding on market trends, benchmarking best practices etc, just to justify their number guessing skills.

So the final numbers to be agreed upon will depend heavily on your negotiation skills or how much the Investors believe in you. If you are desperate, the Investor will see through that and you will not be negotiating from strength. A right minded investor would prefer to have a highly motivated entrepreneur at the controls of a start up so you will not be forcefully bullied. Just remember to tell him that you need to feel motivated when you wake up every morning and he will back off and see that you are fairly treated.

If the Investor pushes you into a corner, just walk away. You have not lost anything. That said, I assumed you have been realistic with your forecast numbers and have comfortably addressed the investors concerns. If not, do not be surprised if the investor walks away instead.

Understanding how investors think will help you prepare your proposal. Greedy investors look for maximum short-term returns and these are normally fund managers who wants to believe in well structured glossy presentations so that they can justify to their investors why they should invest their money into your project. It will be unfair for me to say that these professional fund managers are willing to invest in high risk projects since it is not their personal money but the pressure to perform forces them to take higher risks that carries higher returns.

Individual investors are way too careful and they prefer proposals with reduced risks and long-term asset building models. This has been my preferred business model as an entrepreneur then and even now as an investor. But the lure of fast short-term gains enjoyed by so many has whetted my appetite and I am now reconsidering my investment strategies. Greed is indeed sinful and irresistible.

Since I made a promise not to write about politicians and GLCs (government-linked corporations), I will not be elaborating on the topics of quickie engagements and marriage of convenience. I apologise if you have found this column dry and boring but I hope my advice on having safe sex in a monogamous marriage will help you live longer with a healthy bank balance by your side. Stay happy always.

I AM in a grumpy mood right now. Somehow, as I grow a year older, my mood swings from left to right like a pendulum more frequently. I have less patience nowadays and I totally shut off when I am forced to listen to people who talk gibberish and being totally out of point.

I am grumpy because I do not understand the social and political changes that are happening right before my weary eyes. I am tired of listening to crappy comments by politicians and so-called social activists in an ongoing slanging saga. Pots calling the kettle black. And it works both ways.

I am grumpy because I have enough problems trying to understand the world economic landscape that is constantly changing at a very hectic pace. Back home, I am confused by the daily barrage of heavily-skewed misinformation from both sides. Half truths and pure lies spew in abundance. I am really confused and do not know who and what to believe.

I acknowledge that local politics and local businesses are intertwined and as a businessman, I must be wary of the winds of change that is blowing. Shall I risk everything and bet on a winning side or shall I play safe by playing both sides?

I am feeling less grumpy now since I realise that I have no businesses tied to politicians or to the state or federal government. In fact, I do not have much of any business right now. Which explains why I was grumpy in the first place.

So, can some smart tycoons out there advise me what business should I invest in?

I am game for any high-margin business that does not require political connections. I am definitely not into the water business since I might cause tremendous distress to the coffee shops and the neighbourhoods when I am forced to turn off the tap. Also a no-no is a free land scheme which I can flip for a song lest I am called a cheat cheated by another cheat. Or in short, a twit cheat.

And please do not ask me to promote concerts and cultural performances. I have poor taste in revealing costumes and poorer taste in heart-moving patriotic songs. I am not much into education or being a professional speaker either since I am not a persuasive person by nature.

The last time I barked an instruction eleven times to my deaf Maltese bitch, she rolled over and played dead. Then she wanted to play hide and seek.

So, my wise super-rich tycoon, what non-governmental high margin business can you recommend to an old grumpy entrepreneur?

I am too old and slow to react when the Chatime fad fades, so please enlighten me to a business that an old heart like mine can beat to. I love the idea of farming but worry about what the pesticides will do to my weak lungs. However the idea of having clean fresh air and wide open space to enjoy a cigar or two certainly appeals to me.

I also love the biomass story backed by Pemandu but still not sure as to when it will take off. Theoretically brilliant but practically flawed in terms of cost and logistics.

Iskandar projects are reserved for the GLCs, the rich tycoons and Singaporeans. Any leftover crumbs for small Malaysian entrepreneurs?

Nationwide, there are so many new shoplots, we are running out of entrepreneurs to fill them. Very soon, blocks of shoplots will have Bangladeshis and Burmese residing in the upper floors, with car workshops and printing presses greasing the pavements below. Reminiscent of the good old depression days of late-1980s.

Worldwide, brick and mortar retailing is suffering from an irreversible e-commerce onslaught but tycoons are building more shopping malls in Malaysia. The weak malls will drag the small retailers down into a life of poverty and debt. Heed my warning.

E-commerce looks exciting but it is a business by the young and for the young. To survive, I will need to talk fast and move fast. Even though my mind is willing, my flesh and brain refuse to comply. So I will just have to wait for my sons to graduate and relieve me of my misery of not being able to cope with the Internet pace.

Easy opportunities like the gold rush came and went in a flash. Fortunately, I was slow to react so my life savings stays intact. But what about the poor souls whose greed was preyed upon by the supreme con artistes? Just to show that there is no such thing as easy money.

So, what business opportunities are there for an old entrepreneur like me? Despite having a nice break by missing two columns for the new year, there is not much for me to mull over. There is no energy left to start a new business and investment in existing business is expensive and carries high risk. Game over?

To the young entrepreneurs, the world is your oyster. I hope you have listened ( X11) carefully and learned from the mistakes of the older generation. I am still advising you to steer clear of businesses that includes politicians and anything linked to governments.

Admittedly, the new political landscape do offer vast opportunities for easy money to the brave and the daring. But you will have to compete with the incumbents and the rich and powerful.

Whichever route you may decide to take, keep your eyes wide open at all times and may your journey of hard knocks and bruises be as smooth as possible. Before you know it, time catches up with you and you will have earned the right to gripe like an old grumpy entrepreneur. Have a great year ahead.