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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Hospitality Entrepreneur Expands His Reach

Hospitality entrepreneurMr. Ma is a Laotian refugee raised in Australia, and a successful restaurant entrepreneur. A former commodities trader with a degree in economics and marketing, he began his empire from a sole bar and restaurant combination in little known Club Street in 1999, growing his chain to a powerhouse that now operates in Singapore, Hamburg, Jakarta, Phuket and Kuala Lumpur.

Boasting 25 venues – from casual cafes and bars to high-end restaurants and a Phuket resort that opens fully in the New Year – the hard-working entrepreneur employs a workforce of about 1,000 staff.

His business is solid, having over 70,000 visitors coming through the doors each month in Singapore. Pretty crazy considering that when he first started he was discouraged from opening more restaurants for fear of cannibalising his existing business.

Ma maintains that by opening in different locations they were able to give each restaurant an individual spin, resulting in an increase in numbers and turn-over.  His philosophy is that if you are going to expand you may as well do it on your own terms.

Ma believes that to achieve as an entrepreneur you must see the goal without regard to the resources needed to achieve the goal. While building his successful business has seemed to be second nature, he said the key for aspiring entrepreneurs is to do something that keeps them excited.

His next level of excitement lies in hotels. Ma is pushing ahead with a partnership with renowned American restaurateur Tom LaTour, former chief executive of Kimpton Hotels, in a venture to build and manage hotels.
The first property in the LaTour IndoChine Hotel Group’s portfolio is the still-under-construction IndoChine Resort and Villas in Phuket.

This universe doesn’t stand still for anyone and it certainly seems that Mr Ma is advancing full speed ahead; his dream of being an entrepreneur has become a reality.

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Friday, December 4th, 2009

Personal Success is in the Bag

personal successWayne Loane has more than changed the status quo when it comes to the skip bin industry, it may even be a complete revolution. His personal success has been assured not only by his revolutionary approach to dealing with building waste but his environmental approach too.

The entrepreneur, a truck and car importer, tried his hand at franchising an innovative skip replacement system. Instead of steel bins he has a range of recyclable polypropylene bags.

The magenta-coloured bags come in three sizes (one, two and three cubic metres), ranging in price from $19.95 to $29.95 and are able to hold everything a regular steel bin can handle. The bags have an added advantage because of their lightweight design and convenience; there is no limit on the amount of time the bags stay in one place. They can be moved, the sides rolled down for easy access and they are even porous.

When folded, they are the size of a shopping bag and weigh two kilograms. When full, customers log onto a website and arrange for pick-up, which costs $75, $95 or $115 depending on the size of the bag. The company even has a crane team that can pick up a bag from anywhere, so it’s not necessary for the customer to keep the bag at the front of their property.

Wayne is also doing his part to give back: he’s donating bags to sports clubs, where the club sells the bags on and keeps the money to help cover the cost of their uniforms and other expenses.

Franchise opportunities are lining up and he has sold many franchises already. The reason? Personal success is guaranteed. The plan is to have a bag in every house, flat and unit in Australia in the next few years.

This entrepreneur is also tying up deals with councils and service stations, looking into the future where his product could help in disaster times as well as just help them keep their communities clean. Given the fact that skip bins are bad for the environment, costly and take up large designated areas, the bag is the perfect solution. And so it seems success is in the bag.

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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Achieving Success through Your Personal USP

achieving successA USP (unique selling point) is not something only marketers have to worry about. Achieving success is not necessarily only about your product. T.S. Elliot didn’t fit in as a poet or as a banker. He was good at both but didn’t have the time or energy to succeed at either one or the other.

In a letter in the current British Library exhibition, T.S. Eliot the Publisher, Geoffrey Faber is explaining why Eliot was the ideal candidate to take charge of poetry publishing at Faber and Gwyer, the firm that eventually became famous under the name Faber and Faber.

“In you we have found a man who combines literary gifts with business instincts, who has a wide circle of literary friends, and who is quite as much at home on the lower levels as on the lonely peaks.” — Geoffrey Faber

Ironically it was Eliot’s ability to understand and operate in two worlds at once, as both poet and businessman that made sure he was an outsider among his literary circle of friends.

A pivotal moment in Eliot’s career, it allowed him to escape his day job at Lloyds Bank, and set his literary reputation in stone by achieving success and becoming the pinnacle of poetry publishing in Britain. He was instrumental in publishing writers such as W.H. Auden, Steven Spender, Louis MacNeice and Ted Hughes.

As Frans Johansson explains in The Medici Effect, creativity is often the result of combining existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas and that is how T.S Eliot continued achieving success with Faber and Faber. His separate talents combined to turn an entrepreneur opportunity into a reality.

Shane Krider- Polaris Media Group

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