aimansjaafar

How Property Developers Cheat You

To most, buying a house may be the most expensive purchase you make in your life.

And it is in purchasing a property that many would find out that they have been cheated.

In Malaysia, in purchasing your property, at most times you are only provided two reference documents to base your decision which will cost hundreds of thousand or even millions. These two documents are: (1) floor plan and (2) artist illustrations. The next time you visit a property booth in a mall or go to a property expo, see what they give you, it’s just these two documents.

What most don’t realize is that these items are not binding and that is how and why many get disappointed. When homeowners, after waiting 3 years for their new condo or house, get a poor product and gets upset, the property developer would tell you it’s not binding.

You are upset that your lobby is not equipped with quality furniture per the artist illustration. Developer will tell you artist illustration is not binding.

You are upset that the condo changed name from a expat-friendly English name to a Malay one. Developer will tell you the local authority now requires a name in Malay. Developer will tell you that in your SPA, there is a catch-all clause that says developer is empowered to do anything to deliver the product (and tell you this is industry standard). The developer will not care that a different name in Malay may make the property to be perceived differently in value.

You are upset that the overall quality of the condo is poor – surfaces are not coated with sufficient paint and/or common area not completed. You suspect the developer is rushing the handover to not get hit by LAD (the fine paid to end buyer for not finishing project in time) and tell you – “if you have a problem, raise it with the architect, they gave us the CCC, to us that means it’s good to go”. Better yet, they spin the story by further lying, attempting to confuse customers by saying they have 2 year defect rectification period. Think about it, it’s in the name, defect rectification is to rectify defect, not to give you an incomplete product to begin with.

In truth, the most expensive purchase you’ll ever make is subject to the good will and integrity of the developer.

You may be inclined to tell yourself, let’s buy from a reputable developer, a listed property developer, a developer whose management are in REHDA but these are not sufficient assurances. I have heard to listed companies whose CEOs are in REHDA and their product is appalling. The association is represented by industry players and if the players have established so well the means to cheat the game, how do we protect the buyers?

This is a problem that appears at every price range – from moderately priced homes to luxury ones. When deep pocketed owners of luxury units are short changed, they have the resources to pursue the issue legally but you will be surprised to know that upon consultation with a lawyer, they would be told that almost no action can be taken on the developer. The level of collusion between developer and architect and other players is strong.

What I would like to see is the property development industry in Malaysia to grow to be more consumer friendly. Consumers are making the biggest purchase of their life – it’s only fair that the authorities set expectations higher for property developer. Perhaps periodic updates of the unit progress should be made mandatory (not just the bank telling you the loan has been disbursed). Perhaps a better mechanism for end buyers to contest a cheating developer should be in place.

As of now, the best advice I can give is perhaps for you to buy from a GLC developer (with the government equity in majority). From my experience, GLC developers are more inclined to eat into their profits and spend more to deliver a good product.

Here’s wishing to a more mature property development industry.

Special Officers – What’s So Special?

I recall a time when becoming a Special Officer (SO) was the coveted job of graduates. In student body circles such as UKEC, among others, becoming a SO to a Minister or a CEO of a big company became the aspiration of its Chairman. Student leaders in Malaysia are no different.

Becoming a Special Officer is sexy – it’s a validation that a person of power acknowledges your ability over your peers, that you are smarter, more proactive, more driven. It entails an unprecedented learning access to seasoned influential individuals and as you stand at the fringes of power, you wield for yourself a degree of influence. And with influence comes power and respect.

I myself was a Special Officer for 3 years and as I reflect on my career, these are five (5) things I observed about the Special Officer job and how it has affected my career:

1. All Special Officers Differ In Job Scopes (and Usefulness)

The title may be general but from my experience meeting other SO, all are different. Not just in who they report to (e.g. a Minister or a Corporate Person) but in what the job scope entails. If a spectrum could be drawn of their job scopes, at one end would be those who are only additional hands and feet to their bosses and at the other end, owners of unassigned portfolio. So you’ll meet some SOs who do special projects that others in the organization can’t or won’t do and you’ll meet some SOs who just simply carry bags.

2. Power is Intoxicating and Damages Your Humility

SOs are often bestowed by others the respect deserving of their boss (people treat you as if you are the Minister or CEO themselves) and over time, you will fall into the trap of telling yourself that this respect is earned, that you deserve it. People who retire from positions of power often remark how the loss of people respecting you is one of the hardest thing to adjust to. SOs who leave their job without going to something bigger or have not created a reputation beyond their job may find themselves stuck with an ego of not wanting to report to a less powerful person and simply thinking I’m too good for this.

3. It’s a Ceiling Job

For most SOs, it’s a ceiling job. Some SOs are fortunate when their organisation structures their career path that becoming SO automatically becomes a stepping stone (e.g. fast track promotion). For most however, SOs are left to figure out what to do next. The ones who are strategic are able to maximise their influence and find something better as a next step, like a Ministrial SO who gets a political position and makes a career as a politician.

SOs need to be smart to be able to have sufficient influence over their boss to be able to frankly speak to them about what’s next for them. E.g. After 2 years of working 24/7, make me a HOD or CEO somewhere. The worse ones are those who make a career being a Special Officer, deliver little and can’t transition.

4. Limited Hard Skill Growth

Yes, Malaysia is a country where who you know matters more than what you know. And the job of an SO means you get to meet people of power and influence on a daily basis. I personally believe the most effective executives (political or corporate) in Malaysia are ones who have a strong network, good access to influencers and at the same time, grounded in content and ideas. As SOs mostly coordinate, they almost never go to the level of detail that enables them to develop a hard skill. If you simply know powerful people, can open doors and coordinate between working level and your boss – what skill do you sell on your CV and what are you employable as?

The more proactive SOs are the ones who are aware of this dilemma and request for a portfolio to own and deliver, who possibly takes courses and professional qualifications (PMP, CFA) to strengthen one’s skill and are perhaps smart enough to use his influence and work on an opportunity himself, may it be for private growth and gain or for social purposes. Because at the end of the day, unless you transition to become an entrepreneur, CEO or HOD somewhere, you almost always need a hard skill to bank on.

5. Understanding How the Country (and World) Works

One of the biggest personal takeaway from my SO role is understanding how the country works – how business and politics, power and influence intertwine. Some aspects of this is disappointing to realise, like why the best ideas don’t win, but the maturity gained in understanding how things work means you know how things could and should be done. Prior to becoming a SO, I was a management consultant for 4 years, fresh out of university.

As a professional, we were good at what we do: understanding global mega trends and having efficient work ethics. But more often than not, my then colleagues and I care little about how governments work, understanding why business we consider cronies are the one’s leading the change and understanding what it takes to make a difference. We were just too engrossed making Powerpoint decks.

In general, I advise fresh graduates not to take up offers to be Special Officers. Despite the glamour and power associated with the job, joining as a fresh grad is an easy way for you to be delegated to do menial transactional work as your boss (and even you) would not know your strengths and weaknesses. One should always, where able, start with a job that provides rigour in a hard skill, work at a place that provides training and feedback. Should you be considering the offer to be an SO or if you are already one, you should think of the transferable skills that you would want to develop so you may have a clearer future after your stint.

A New Adventure – Fluff Bakery KL

Yesterday we opened the doors of Fluff Bakery KL for the first time to customers as part of our trial run. Alhamdullilah it was met with great response. It’s humbling to see how much support we get from our friends, family and the public in bringing this cupcake shop to life, bringing them from Jln Pisang in Singapore to Jln Tun Mohd Fuad 2 in TTDI, KL!

Fluff Bakery KL is led by 5 entrepreneurs – Syaira & Ashraf (Mrs & Mr Fluff respectively), Nina, Alia and myself.

I wrote before how in the many things I learnt being an F&B entrepreneur, one of it is that you should have multiple partners to manage the workload. This venture is a validation of that – 5 entrepreneurs with varying business experience with complementing knowledge of business and networks working together.

I long believe that you should be conscious of learning something new everyday. That is how you know you’ve made the most of your day. Any entrepreneur who have had a physical shop will tell you they will have wish lists for their next shop – most likely lessons learnt from kinks from the first shop! Fluff KL is it for me – a second shop where I am able to make sure things work better, aesthetically and most importantly operationally.

I once told Alia that as a fellow Taman Tun boy, I would love to have my next shop in TTDI and it’s with great satisfaction that I am able to open Fluff in TTDI!

It’s been a great journey getting the shop from bare to what it is today. Thank you for the support, from the pop ups to our first shop sale and we are excited to be able to fully open to the public! See you then and do say Hi when you come 🙂

Answered Prayers

Ramadan is a time when all of us would be making doa more frequent than usual, more detailed than usual. In your many doa, how do you know it has been answered? You pray for work success but how do you know Allah’s plan for your success is the same thing you consider to be inconvenient now. You pray for good academic results but how do you know you not getting your targeted results is a door to greater successes?

I recently watched a lecture on the power of doa and it made reference to the story of Nabi Musa A.S, as mentioned in surah al-Qasas ayat 24-27. The story told of how during one of his visits to town, he accidentally killed an officer from the ruling class. That incident made him a wanted man, despite him being affiliated to the Pharoah’s household. He escaped Egypt immediately and had to traverse uncomfortable desert conditions with little provisions. He happened upon a well and he saw two girls, holding back their herd of animals from running towards the water. He asked them, “what are you doing?” The girls tell him the area near the water is populated with men, that the girls’ father is old and that the men rudely call out to the girls when they come so they have to wait till the men leave before they can bring their herd to drink. Musa told the girls that he would gladly help and brought the animals to drink on their behalf.

After he was finished, in the shade, he made doa to Allah, “My Lord, I am in need of whatever good you could send me”. The girls said their thanks and left only to later return and to invite him to meet their father. Musa had to the wisdom to realise this is Allah’s answer to his prayer, he said yes to meeting the girls’ father. What came to follow was that the father rewarded Musa with a roof on top of his head, a job and in realising his good character, marriage to his daughter.

There are many lessons to be learnt from this story – one of which is having the wisdom to know the form Allah’s help appears. In our many doa this Ramadan, may we all also have to wisdom to recognise in what form our prayers are answered.

YCM CEO Series 67: Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar

For YCM’s 67th CEO Series, we had the privilege of hosting Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, Chairman of PNB.

I’ve hosted YCM many times enough to realise that different people resonate to different styles of leadership. I have learnt that the leadership style I admire is one steep in humility, decisiveness and a person of good moral character, evident in what one speaks about and how one reacts to things. To me, Tan Sri Wahid ticks many of these boxes and he is easily one of the corporate figures I admire.

In his talk, Tan Sri spoke of his family background and shared his ambition and journey. He spoke about how he thinks the accounting profession is one of the more versatile professions in the corporate world and of his early ambition, to be a CFO in a listed company. He fulfilled this ambition at age 37.

Tan Sri shared his lessons learnt in personal leadership, corporate leadership and management. These principles I believe, make for great personal reflection regardless of where you are in your career, a young executive, middle manager or even a CEO:

Tan Sri’s advice on personal leadership is something all of us can reflect on and I echo his points on need to be articulate, need for leaders to go to the ground (“gone are the days CEO can just tell people what to do”), that you don’t need to be loud to be heard and that you should focus on doing a good job on your tasks and not worry about your next career move – your reputation will precede you. Tan Sri’s lessons learnt on management principles are valuable reflections for both senior management and entrepreneurs/businessmen alike.

As part of his presentation, Tan Sri reminded us of the importance of the Rukun Negara and he emphasized the last point of the Rukun, which is Kesopanan dan Kesusilaan, that we as Malaysians should remember we live a multiracial multireligious community and Good Behaviour and Morality is required of us.

In his final words, Tan Sri imparted advice to the crowd in the form of six points. Of note, Tan Sri spoke of embracing the attribute of Integrity, Competency and Humility. Lastly, he spoke of the importance of gratitude and you should be grateful, especially to your parents.

It was an inspiring evening session with Tan Sri and I’m looking forward to see how he transforms PNB.

What makes a good Malaysian CEO

I had a chat recently with my colleagues at Young Corporate Malaysians and we spoke about ‘what makes a great CEO?’ and ‘what makes a great CEO in Malaysia?’

I noticed immediately that one’s view and expectation of a CEO varies on what stage you are in your career (this observation shows that a good CEO needs to be many things – a different person to different staff groups. The common adjectives were mentioned: visionary, teamplayer, driver, empathic, timely decision maker, able to decide when to be what kind of person.

I have worked for nine years and I’ve spent my nine years in three distinctly different types of organisation. I have worked in a global management consultancy, an entrepreneur set up headed by a Malaysian billionaire and also a Ministry of Finance owned government linked company. My understanding of what makes a great CEO comes from my experience in these companies.

To me, one attribute not mentioned often enough when talking about the context of Malaysian leadership is this – that to be a good CEO you need to be an effective lobbyist. An effective lobbyist is defined by having a good degree of influence on private sector leaders and a real access to political leadership (I say ‘real’ because many GLC CEOs can say that in their company structure leading civil servants or ministers are board members but in actual fact, he/she doesn’t have the relationship to pick up their phone to call the person to push ideas). Malaysia is a country where the balance tilts in the favour of who-you-know over what-you-know. CEOs of multinationals in Malaysia and private Malaysian companies alike need to be effective lobbyists to be able to cut through red tapes and participate in lucrative government opportunities. CEOs of GLCs need to be effective lobbyists to drive ‘transformation’ (the popular word now) and drive results.

Too often I see GLCs hire smart individuals – those with the right work experience and academic grounding but with very little influence. CEOs such as these are able to craft, or sit with consultants to craft frameworks, ideas and envision a transformational change but after paying millions of dollars to consultants to craft these, the CEO is not able to access political leaders to present these great ideas and influence it to execution or not having access to other private ‘big boys’ to finance it.

If a CEO does not have this influence, he or she is no better than a manager. I often stress to young corporates that I meet, value your professional relationship and that you will never know who can be of help to you. The cost of keeping in touch is low – it comes in the form of sending a text or card during major holidays (Raya, Chinese New Year, New Year). This simple gesture goes a long way and may benefit your career in the long run.

6 things I learned after 2 years as an F&B entrepreneur

I became an F&B entrepreneur slightly over 2 years ago, when my wife and I decided to open Double A Cafe.

As an introduction, my experience in F&B are with cafes – dealing with coffee, cakes and hot kitchen. Cafes are increasingly becoming popular here in KL, you hear a new one opening almost every month. Owning a cafe is exhilarating and it’s like street-cred, it’s the new cool. What people don’t tell you is that, if you are small business with limited cash and you plan to be hands on, owning a cafe involves being exhausted a lot (imagine being on your feet for 10 hours a day for 6 days a week). It is your passion that will drive and sustain you. What people don’t tell you is that while new cafes open every month, cafes close down every month too. If you plan to open a cafe because you want to create a hang-out spot for your guys or you want to look cool and not because you have a genuine love for coffee or cooking, my advise is: Don’t Open A Cafe.

Here it is, six things I learnt:

1. Buy things second hand. Some things you can upgrade.

For a small business where cash is limited, you need to be aware that cafe business requires somewhat large capital (a good estimate of a set up cost of a cafe in a shop-lot would be ~RM250,000). Because many cafes close down on a monthly basis, always be on the look for good bargains for equipment. Coffee and kitchen equipment have a lifespan of 5-10 years and many cafes don’t get far past their 1 year mark before closing down hence equipment should be in good condition. Often, when cafes close down, you can get bargains of up to 50%.

In Malaysia, you can find bargains in Mudah.my (search for Coffee Machine) or on the Facebook groups Barista Club Asia or Malaysian Chef Connection for notice of cafe closure.

2. Don’t rent a place thinking it will boom. It is better to rent in a mature area with proven traffic.

Rent will make up a significant portion of your monthly fixed cost. It is tempting to tell yourself to rent at a relatively new area as it has a slightly lower rent and telling yourself it will be a matter of time before this place will boom (the common lies you will tell yourself include thinking occupancy of condos above are picking up, your shop is near LRT/MRT etc). My advice is to not fall into this trap – yes perhaps the place will boom but you won’t know if it takes 6 months or 6 years and you won’t last that long. It is better to pay RM10k rent for a mature area with strong purchasing power for your products than going to A new development and paying RM7k. The absence of traffic will kill you.

3. Don’t rely on traffic as a revenue. Supply.

Relying solely on foot traffic is one major reasons why many cafes fail. Traffic is unpredictable and the cafe game is a volume game – if any given day you have no traffic, you make no revenue and you are still paying for staff with low productivity. Whatever it is you choose to be known for, may it be coffee, cakes or food, create a new revenue stream by supplying – you can get a head start marketing this by having a good social media account. Getting your staff out to deliver to nearby offices makes more money than them just sitting in the shop.

4. Work on your marketing early. Build social media influence.

Unless your cafe is situated in a heavy traffic area, it is a good idea for you to work on your social media presence early – even before you construct your shop. Malaysians are heavy users of Facebook and Instagram and these platforms play a big role in influencing customers / foodies to come to your shop. If it’s possible to get some, endorsements by instafamous folks will carry a long way.

5. Sometimes, putting yourself in your staff’ shoes is not a good idea. Someone needs to clean the grease trap.

F&B is a physically demanding job – it involves a lot of standing, discipline to come in on time and doing the kind of cleaning that you usually don’t do at home (like cleaning the coveted grease trap). One trap I see many owners fall into is letting things slide with their staff – the ‘kesian’ mindset. You may think you are practising empathy when you tell yourself, wow they work this much and get paid so little, let’s not be so hard on them – empathy has a time and place and this is not one of it. Your business is not a charity, it needs to make money and people must do what you expect of them for your business to thrive. Yes you will have rebellious staff who do not want to do what they are told – my advice is one bad apple spoils the vibe for everyone. In a small business where many legal aspects are not well understood by staff, it is a good idea to explain to your young staff the grounds for you to terminate them and do not be afraid to issue warning letters and firing them.

On that note, F&B is the kind of business where you should trust in your hiring instinct and give trust to your staff first, until they break it. Else you will be checking the cctv every 10 minutes. People have the capacity to perform and impress you given the right conditions.

6. Have multiple partners. Having 50% in a successful business is better than 100% of a failing business.

As much as you are passionate for your cafe business, you still want to have a life outside it. Putting “everything you got” for something like a cafe, where returns are not guaranteed, is not a good idea – both in regards to time and money. It is much better if you can find partners and friends to do this with you. If you have 5 partners, what this means is you spend 1/5th of the expenditure and if you negotiate right with your partners, you work 2 days a week and not 6 or 7 days a week full shift. It is better to have a small share of a successful business (and retaining your sanity) as opposed to full ownership of a failing business. If you are telling yourself on the get-go “I have a good idea for a cafe and I don’t want to share the profits of this brilliant idea”, tell yourself it’s all a big IF.

As a final word, if you are set on having a cafe, it already means you are an entrepreneur which means you are driven. The key thing is to be prudent and execute.