Our business partner in Macau had decided to cease the operation. We had called the Macau Shop as our second shop so as to show our support to him, but in reality the shop was completely independent from us.
So where did it go wrong? Anything to everything that could possibly go wrong, did in fact go wrong !! The primary reason for shutting down is the Opportunity Cost, or simply put, the salary income in the past was higher than the profit generated from the business.
The news came as a surprise, it serves as a rude awakening and put us into a new perspective. In addition to the regular business planning, budgeting, and a whole lot of other what nots, we have learned a few more new things:
1. Irrelevancy of the past experience: Decision to start a new venture should not include the past experience. It is only relevant when the experience is actually integrated into the operation. Past experience can only be considered as a bonus, and no decision of importance should be made by a bonus.
2. Time Management: being your own boss means doing everything !! Expect long hours, and be ready to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Everything is important, but don’t get caught up with just one matter !! For example, keeping your shop clean is compulsory, but you wouldn’t spend the whole day cleaning and claiming to have a busy productive day !!
3. Be adventurous and be curious: Everything is connected one way or the other, having curiosity helps to link up a good many things. Understand there is no formula of guaranteed success, but being adventurous helps to create opportunities you would not see otherwise. Staying curious with a sense of adventure is the trait needed to move, if not a few centimetre out of the box, and this few cm may make a huge difference in the long run.
4. No worries: Learn to differentiate things you should and should not worry. We worry about our business, but we don’t worry about how not good we shoot our videos, how unprofessionally we make our photos, how uncorrectly we write our blogs. Don’t let worries stop you from doing anything, it’s far better to do something than not doing anything at all. Being worried but without an action is a waste of time.
5. Think big and act small: Having a successful business as a goal could be a “think big” mentality, but we all need to act small on a daily basis. Thinking big is a long term goal, it acts as a path, a direction for your business. Acting small is everything on a daily operation. Think realistically big, and act diligently small.
Apart from a bruised ego, this incident is a very good lesson for us !! There are so many things we are lacking, more so than we had thought earlier. Other projects that are undergoing right now are being re-evaluated in order to avoid the same Ole mistakes. Nevertheless, things are on-going !! We still think doing something is better than not doing anything. 🙂