Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................ 2
Entrepreneur Profiling Interview.............................................................................................3
Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 7
References............................................................................................................................. 7
Appendices............................................................................................................................ 8

Introduction
According to the explanation found in books, entrepreneurship is a process of
creating and expanding businesses that collectively form a force for national development
and societal prosperity. Whereas entrepreneur are individual who actively form or lead their
own businesses and nurture them for growth and prosperity. In order to be a succesful
entrepreneur, Mayers and Goldstein mentioned that one should possesses several good
quality such as rationality, objectivity, realistic expactation, ability to plan carefully,
managerial competence, suitable personality and emotional stability.
As an soon-to-be-engineer, studying entrepreneurship is as important as learning any
technical skills. Why is entrepreneurship required in our line of work? One of the reason is
that it would enable us to create job opportunities. When an entrepreneur starts a business
using his financial assets, he must need some time to share his work load. For this purpose,
he hires people to work with him. As the time passes, the entrepreneur gets satisfied that he
is investing his money in the right place. So he starts a huge business, hence creating more
job opportunities for people.
Apart from that, everyone loves cool ideas and new technology. As an engineer,
before investing a lot of time and money into any idea, we should assess the commercial
viability. That means evaluating third-party market research, getting real customer feedback
from prototypes, and listening to concerns of successful executives in the same business
area. All this knowledge could be acquired through the studying of entrepreneurship.
In order to gain first-hand knowledge and guidance from an actual entrepreneur, we
had carried out a simple entrepreneurial profiling interview with Mrs. Chang Siew Chin. A
successful woman entrepreneur who is the owner of two furniture stores Perabut Rasa
Sayang CNK, and a salon SC Secret Garden Beauty Salon. She had been on business for
over nine years since she started her own first furniture store. She then involves herself in
beauty salon when her primary business had begun to provide steady profit. The following is
the question asked during the interview followed by her answers to each question.

Entrepreneur Profiling Interview

The following section illustrates the interview that has been conducted with Mrs. Chang Siew
Chin on her view on entrepreneurship and her own entrepreneurial journey. The section is
organized with the question indicated by the numbering and followed by the answer to that
particular question. The interview guides is presented in the appendix section.
1.

Would you tell us about yourself before you state your first venture?
Mrs. Chang Siew Chin graduated from Pusat Teknologi dan Pengurusan Lanjutan
(PTPL) College. After she finished her studies, she went on to work in a bank at a
young age of 19 years old. After two years, she resigned and move on to work in an
advocate firm and continued to work there for several years until 26 years old.

2.

Did you have role model? Whose and why you choose that person?
Her role model was Mr. Yeoh Siaw Meng, CEO of Home Sweet Home Builders Sdn.
Bhd. in which was based in Penang. She admired Mr. Yeoh for his relentless
dedication, determination and tenacity in establishing his own business from scratch
despite the hardships from his humble background. The perseverance of Mr. Yeoh
was paid when he was awarded as the Winner of Gold Award for Top 50 Malaysia
Entrepreneur by Malaysia Entrepreneur Development Association (PUMM).

3.

Did you have a business or self-employment during your youth?

She does not have any prior engagement with any business entities during her youth.

4.

What are the motivation that make you involved in entrepreneurship/business?

(Experience/self-esteem/life style/ career etc)
During her employment days, she feels that no matter how much effort is being
poured into her job, she could not her effort being appreciated. Her immediate
supervisor or employer would prevent her from overtaking each stages of operation.
Hence, she believes that she could not further challenge herself in such conditions
and struggling to make meet ends with the meagre salary every month. Apart from
that, she strongly regard that the amount of income should confide with the efforts
that was being dumped into that certain business.

5.

Does any of your family members involved in entreprenurship/business? Please state

who they are (father/uncle/grandfather etc).

She does not have any family members involved in the field of business upon her
venture. However, when she started her pathway into business, she invited her older
brother to chip in as her partner for the new business venture.
6.

From whom did you become interested in entrepreneurship and learn some of the
critical lessons?
After her graduation from PTPL College, she was exposed to a lot of different
business entities such as direct sales and insurance. She felt that by doing salesrelated jobs, she would have secured a better future with the view of living a more
luxurious life.

7.

Did you have any sales or marketing experiences? How important was it, or lack of it,
to starting your company?
She was involved directly herself in direct sales as per mentioned previously. Her
involvement in the business entity provided her with the networking that she required
beforehand. It was when she finally decided to start her venture, she realised that her
networking and customer service experience that she had earlier on was important. It
was the fundamental building blocks of her company during the first few years.

8.

Describe how you decide to create a job by starting your venture instead of taking a
job with someone else.
During her working days, people tends to look down on her for not having to graduate
from any well-known and distinguished tertiary instituion. Apart from that, people
tends to steoretype her as she was a woman before her job. However, she strongly
believes that advancement in her career was through her hard work and immense
effort. At one point of her career when she got discontented with her then condition,
she questions herself; Since she could perform so well while working for others, why
not channel all of the effort to start up a business venture own by herself?

9.

How did you spot the opportunity? How did it surface?

In order for her to spot the business opportunity, she must had a good networking or
relationship with the people around her or even the suppliers which will assist her to
become an entrepnreneur. It is hard for her to become an entrepreneur in the
beginning due to she is female entrepreneur. This issues happened because many
suppliers does not trust a single women also can be a successful entrepreneur and
doubt about her ability and financial ability. However, she manage to overcome this

problem and obtain the trust and confidence from both the suppliers and also the
consumers.
10. What were your goals in this business?
As an entrepreneur, her goals in her business is to earn more money by utilizing all
the profit obtain. The way of utilizing the profit can be used to expand her business
such as open branches or make the business larger. The reason of her goals in her
business only with one reason which is to has a securing future for her and her
family.
11. What were characteristics needed as an entrepreneur?
As an entrepreneur, she think that the characteristic and the key needed as an
entrepreneur lies in the ability of communication with people and integrity. She think
that a talkative entrepreneur able to think faster and came out with the solution in the
shortest time. Furthermore, an entrepreneur also must provide and keep their
promise according to the conditions that had been discussion to ensure that the
reliability of her being an entrepreneur can deliver to the suppliers and even the
consumers. This can make sure that the suppliers and her customers will put their
trust and confidence on her when they dealing business with an entrepreneur.
Moreover, an entrepreneur also must know how to make a suitable decision such as
choosing the suppliers for her stock, calculate the quota of stock needed by the
entrepreneur so that the stock will not has too much and also the service that the
entrepreneur will provide to the customers in order to make sure the customers will
choose the same entrepreneur in future.
12. How much capital did it take to start-up your business? How long did it take to reach
positive cash flow and break-even sales volume?
She took roughly RM 100,000 herself in order to start-up her own business. The time
taken for her business to achieve positive cash flow. During the initial state of her
business, she need to spend more capitals for purchasing the stock for her business.
However, her customers during the early state is not much and the cash flow was
negative for 9 months.
13. If you did not have enough money at the time, what were some ways in which you
bootstrapped the venture? Tell us about the pressure and crises during that early
survival period.

As an entrepreneur with good business plan to grow her own business, she do not
face any money crisis due to she has the habit of saving since she was young. This
makes her always has the money for her business financial back up. Furthermore,
she also does not order too much stock to prevent high negative cash flow for longer
term. Then, her pressure and crises she facing during her early survival period was
her business grow slowly at the early stage and get less amout of profit with 9
months of negative cash flow. However, the steady flow of her business was
archieved after that since her customers and business grow better. Finally, she also
will pay her workers salary on time every month which make sure her workers will
supporting her during her early survival period without any doubt.
14. The dark side of the entrepreneur. How did you overcome the challenges?
The dark side for her to become an entrepreneur is she will facing the preconception
and look down by the other people or entrepreneurs due to she is a female
entrepreneur. The people will doubt about her capability of her to successfully
become an entrepreneur. In order to overcome this challenges, she had to do and
even work more hard compare to her workers and other male entrepreneur just to
prove that she can be an successful female entrepreneur as well. Other than that,
when her business was just started, the customers will be picky and annoy her since
the shop was new. However, she will shows her sincerity and honesty to every
customers and treat all the customers with all her sincerity.
15. What is your opinion on global business? Are you prepare/planing to involve with
global business? If Yes, How?; If No, Why?
She has the positive opinion on the global business and she think this is a challenge
which is worth to try and even experience it. Furthermore, she think that global
business is a sign of acknowledgement within the field. So, she had the thought and
plan to involve herself in the global business if she had meet any reliable partner
whoever want to cooperate with her.
16. Did you have business succession planning? Who going to take over your business
after this?
She does has the business succession planning which she plan her son will take
over and continue to manage her business after this.

Conclusion
As a conclusion, in order to become an entrepreneur, the studies of the fundemetals
of entrepreneurship is an important course because it deliver the initial concepts to the
people whoever wan to become an entrepreneur. Other than that, an entrepreneur must be
able to communicate well and shows their sincerity as this is part of the characteristic to
become a successful entrepreneur. Then, an entrepreneur also must has their business plan
before they starting to become an entrepreneur in order to make sure the business flow is
going in the positive direction as an successful entrepreneur.

References
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Entrepreneurship.Pearson
Barringer, B. and Ireland, R. (2006). Entrepreneurship. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson
Prentice Hall.
Scarborough, N. (2014). Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management.
Boston: Pearson.
Hisrich R. & Peters M. (2011). Entrepreneurship, 8th Edition. McGraw Hill Publishers.
Rasmussen, E. A. and R. Srheim (2006). "Action-based entrepreneurship education."
Technovation 26(2): 185-194.
Dana, L. P. (2001). "The education and training of entrepreneurs in Asia." Education+
Training 43(8/9): 405-416.
Ollila, S. and K. Williams-Middleton (2011). "The venture creation approach: integrating
entrepreneurial education and incubation at the university." International Journal of
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management 13(2): 161-178.
Appendices