Mann my updates here have been getting a little sparse lately. Heck it’s not just here but my social media updates here in general. I know what you’re thinking… shouldn’t I be updating more now that I don’t have a day job?
Well I thought so but actually I’ve been spending a lot of my time soul-searching. That’s time doing a lot of reading online, meeting up with old friends and talking to people from different industries.
The reason ? I’m trying to find my next calling. The next business that I’m going to commit the next 5-10 years of my life to. And it’s been hard.
Decades ago during our parents’ generation I think starting business was a bit of a land grab. If you see someone else having a coal mine, try to get your hands on one and you’re ok. If someone has a plantation then start a plantation too and you’re ok.
In today’s world all those easy land grabs are all taken up and are now owned by families that have become really really wealthy. So in order to make it big, our generation can no longer just “land grab”. We have to create something that people want… not something that people NEED, because all the NEEDS are already being fulfilled.
To make things even more complicated, today we live in a world where we want instant gratification, and we’re very fickle. So what we want today can be very different from what we want tomorrow. That’s why you see trends come and go so quickly. That’s why a cafe that does so well in the first few months suddenly dies a year later.
So I’ve been carefully looking at what to go into. I think business is hard and choosing a business to go into is really really hard. There are just so many uncertainties and so many things that are really hard to predict because very often we’re creating new industries. So there isn’t any past data to make predictions on or anything like that.
I have a number of ideas in mind, and some of them with Shorty. But it’s still something that we’re still carefully thinking so I’m not sure if I’m ready to announce something like that yet.
I do however want to do a little bit of market research and I was wondering if you guys could help me. I’ve created a short 7 question survey about working in KL. If you’re from KL or if you know anyone from KL, could you send them this survey link? It’ll take like 2 minutes.
Thanks very much guys. Please click here for the survey.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space