Singaporean Entrepreneurs

One of the questions I am most often asked in Singapore (not elsewhere), is this: “How can you expect me to start a business when I don’t even have enough money to put food on the table?” As you can imagine, this is often asked with much disdain and distaste. I can understand the frustration involved. A person who is struggling financially doesn’t want to be told after working hard day in and out that they need to pull themselves out of the economically suffocating situation they are in by becoming an entrepreneur.

Unfortunately, it is precisely this question that keeps them in that cycle of living from paycheck to paycheck. My only answer to this question is this: “If I gave you $100,000 right now, what would you do with it?”

I am always met with stunned silence.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” is most likely what is going on in the person’s mind, along with a list of purchases and possibly loan payments. But nothing in that person’s mind is thinking about how they can grow that $100,000 so that they can get themselves out of their financial quagmire. Nope, they are clueless as to what to do with the money so that it works for them.

So this is the deal- “it’s not about the money and it never will be about the money.” If money was the central issue to the success or failure of a business, then only big companies with loads of cash should be succeeding. But everyday, in dozens of countries, entrepreneurs, small ones, new ones, penniless ones, are making leaps and strides surpassing big money-laden companies in innovation and growth.

So what is the central issue? It’s not the idea either. Ideas are a dime a dozen, maybe a dime a hundred with the internet. It’s about your character. Can you see through the mess and the now and imagine a better future- not just for yourselves, but for others? And of course, do you then have the guts to actually do something about it.