I spent my 3 years of University life at E&I Club. From being a member, a committee member, a President, and an Advisor.

It has been the most meaningful thing I have done in those 3 years.

Even until today, the experience I gained has been useful in my journey. This post will explain what E&I Club is truly about. If you are one of the members, it is worth a read, trust me. 🙂

The purpose of E&I Club:

1. To create future entrepreneurs. It is important for the world.
2. To make people understand about investment. It is important for every family.

How I became the president

First of all, E&I Club was not a big club. However, there is a right mindset that has been introduced by Felicia (Felle is her nickname), the previous president before me. She has encouraged people to dream big  and created a solid foundation for me to continue building the club. Thanks Felle!

When she approached me, I was starting a business with my partner. We just raised RM1x,xxx for us to invest in public stocks. I was trading stocks (fundamental analysis). We managed to naively convince a few of our friends to invest in us. First of all, we were young and we dreamt big. We didn’t understand rules and regulations. We were just passionate and excited! Looking back, I always smile and think that we were pretty badass as 19-year-olds. The fund was eventually closed in 2014 as we decided to focus on other things. Felle requested me to join the election and I eventually became the president for the period of 2013 to 2014.

Why do we want to create entrepreneurs?

The definition below is taken from Wikipedia:

Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching, and running a new business, i.e. a startup company offering a product, process or service. It has been defined as the “…capacity and willingness to develop, organize, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit.”

From the definition above, it mentions taking risks to make a profit. This is very interesting. Everyone wants to make a lot of money. A lot of people want to change the world. How many of them are willing to take the risk?

Taylor’s Entrepreneurship & Investment Club thinks different.

At E&I Club, we believe that Entrepreneurship is not only about making money. It is about solving problems, creating value, and contributing to the society. We believe that every single thing we do will improve lives while making a profit at the same time.

With the reasons above, the potential risk is worth taking.

Have you ever wondered why people queue for an interview to get a job? Why are people nervous for the interview?

Well, I am from Indonesia. It’s a developing country. We only have around 1.65% of entrepreneurs from a population of 250 million people. We just don’t have enough entrepreneurs here. Entrepreneurship is about creating value and in the process we need to hire people. We all know that people need jobs to have food on the table for their families.

The whole idea of Entrepreneurship & Investment Club at Taylor’s is to create future entrepreneurs. We make students dare to dream big, we spark ambition within them, and in the process, they are willing to take risks.

Why are we doing this? Dreaming big is a mindset, it is a valuable mindset that has to be earned since young. The older we get, the more risk-averse we become. When we have few risk takers, we have few entrepreneurs, then fewer jobs. The world just needs sufficient risk takers. 🙂

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It is hard work. It is very tough. And it’s ok. People have different roles and capabilities.

How do we create future entrepreneurs at E&I Club?

We take moon-shot goals. This is a term introduced by Google. What is a moon-shot goal? It is a goal that seems unachievable. The goal is big enough that it makes most people think, “It’s impossible.”

We knew that we have to get the best people at Taylor’s University to join us to be able to achieve our mission to create more entrepreneurs.

We also understand that the best people love challenging ideas and love to do big things that matter. We continued with announcing and planning for the first Entrepreneurship & Investment Conference, targeting 800 participants. Of course, we did not have enough resources. A lot of people told us that we should start small. We didn’t agree. The truth is, previously we only organized events with participants below or up to around 100, so it was pretty challenging.

We worked really hard to be able to achieve our goal. We eventually gathered a lot of interested people to join the club, because we wanted to do something interesting, different, and great. The best people love that. Although we needed to scale it down to 300 participants because the biggest grand hall was booked for the year for University events, we managed to make a meaningful conference for everyone. We invited 3 CEOs who shared their life stories, how they started, how they failed, and how they succeeded. It was a valuable learning curve for everyone.

We won The Most Outstanding Club again. Thanks to moon-shot and hard work.

Through that process, we have created a lot of future entrepreneurs. We have created mission-focused individuals who dream big, take calculated risks, and don’t take No for an answer. That is one of the most important ingredients to be an entrepreneur.

Why do we make our members understand about investment?

Investment knowledge is a very important component to building a happy life and family. The school and university do not teach about investment to every student while everyone needs the knowledge.

Everyone needs to own sufficient assets to be able to gain freedom in life. Everyone has the chance to achieve it, but not everyone knows they do. We understand that if we invest in the right things in life, we will be able to provide a happier life for our family when we have sufficient passive income and capital.

A lot of people at our age think that investment is all about trading stocks, forex, etc. It’s not only about that.

At E&I Club, we understand that investing is a form of acquiring and growing value.

We understand that there a few things we can invest in:

1. Ourselves. We understand that the most valuable asset we can ever have is our mind, body, knowledge, happiness, and skills.
2. Other people. We understand that we can add value to others, they can add value to us and another person. We understand that the cycle of value adding activity eventually leads to an overall prosperity and betterment for everyone.
3. Business. We understand that a business is where we can create the most value. This is where we can impact the most people: our employees, customers, and shareholders.
4. Property. We understand that investing in property is one of the best ways to grow value with cash flow.
5. Stocks. We understand that investing in stocks cannot give sufficient cash flow, but can generate good capital gain if we do it well. It also has liquidity.
6. Forex. We understand that trading Forex is like gambling. We don’t recommend anyone to do it.

At E&I Club, I shared that business and investment are actually the same. It is a form of acquiring something and grow its value. Hence, there are 2 types of investment:

1. Inside investing. We can create investment for people to invest in. The Initial Public Offering of Alibaba is a good example. Jack Ma is an inside investor. He grew the value of Alibaba and sold the stocks during IPO.
2. Outside investing. We can also purchase an investment that we understand to be good. Using the same example, the people who bought Alibaba stocks during IPO are outside investors. They purchase the stock which they believe to be able to grow in value.

A combination of smart inside-investing and outside-investing can lead us to become the next Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.

Taylor’s Entrepreneurship & Investment Club has been a great journey and memory for all of us. I believe that it will create a meaningful impact a lot of students in Taylor’s University for a long time. We need to rely on all of you, the younger generation, to preserve its value and let no one takes it away.

If you would love to learn more about Taylor’s Entrepreneurship & Investment Club, click: Taylor’s University Entrepreneurship & Investment Club FB Page

Btw, the 2016 conference is on this coming 7 May 2016. Register now before it’s too late: The E&I Conference 2016

The E&I Conference 2014

The E&I Conference 2015