Training Session on Jan 17th!!

17th January has passed quite awhile back but it would be good to keep this in record. Jeffrey, Elaine, Lewayne, and myself attended our 1st training session for the Maybank Money Tree Yes Challenge. Mr. Brandon Liew and Mr. Yu Vee Wong provided us a very informative presentation regarding the important requirements necessary for the Yes Challenge. Most importantly they helped us in forming a better picture on how to write an elevator pitch and an executive summary. The whole session lasted from 10am to 5pm with the necessary lunch and tea break.

Lunch break was good as we trainees were all treated to a western lunch at a restaurant a couple of doors down from Money Tree Headquarters in Petaling Jaya. My team members and I entered into a very casual yet good discussion with Mr. Wong acquiring further about the challenge and also about how he came to join Money Tree.

After the whole session, though a little worn out, we felt ready to push ourselves to begin this challenging journey. Ever since then we have met up twice and further discussed via Msn and Skype. Our last meet up was mentioned by Jeffrey in the previous post and, as he described, it was a 'heated' discussion but a good fruitful one too. We will be meeting up again this week to finalise our executive summary which is due latest on the 6th of February by 12pm. I will thus sign off here for now until our next post.

Humble Beginnings

A heated discussion over Mocha Chiller and Caramelatte took place at Gloria Jean’s on the 30th January 2010, occasional confusion and misunderstandings occurred, holes were punched in each other’s statements, frustration of not understanding each other’s visions cropped up as four twenty year old business students were trying to narrow down their top 3 business ideas (the ones which we have poured our sweat and blood into creating) to the only one that they find is the most viable option and to go for it.

Left to right : Jeffrey, Nigel, Elaine

Photographer : Le Wayne

No surprises there, business students trying to start a business, it’s only logical. Well, only if your point of view is from the sidelines.

What most people don’t know is that only a small portion of students from business courses would actually take the step to try and start their own business this early, eventhough the red carpet had already arrived at their doorstep. Most people would just do nothing and finish up their courses and then look for that stable income job that everyone is vying for.

Instead of climbing someone else’s money tree, why not plant your own?

Rewind back to a few days before the new year starts, I was actually running up the stairs, panting, took the lift up to the first floor of Taylor’s Business School to hand over a registration form for a Business challenge, to my horror, the person in charge of the collection of forms was not there ! I panicked; as I wasn’t sure if it was too late for registration.

So I slipped it under her door, also leaving a note. Few days later, I had an email from Ms.Geraldine stating our team was in, only because another team decided to pull out the last minute. Lucky us!

So, business students joining a business challenge, boo, no big revelation there either. Ordinary Business Competitions is a common resource nowadays anyway.

However, this isn’t a normal business competition that we’re joining, or else it wouldn’t prompt us to have such a hot-blooded discussion. It’s a challenge unlike other business challenges due to its authentic experience you’ll get, its support by Maybank, its partnering organizations, and whether you bag the first place or not is for once, not important, as teams actually get a chance to get your business up and running, for real.

Fast forward to the 30th again, an hour has passed, even with us going off-topic once in a while and joking around, ideas and procedures were agreed upon , visions were aligned, we have decided on the idea we decided to champion (push forward), Codenamed “W.R.I.S.T” to be entered into

Maybank-MoneyTree Young Entrepreneur Startup Challenge.

We then proceeded to attend our farewell party that was organized by our friends, as two of our members, including me are leaving to Australia to further our studies this February 7th. We were about to hop on a train that travels on an unpredictable route.