In line with the Youth Entrepreneurs' Mastermind Series, UTAR Department of Soft Skills Competency (DSSC) in collaboration with Junior Chamber International (JCI) Kinta organised the second Coffee Chat’s talk titled “Coffee Chat 2: Turn Passion into Digital Business” on 25 June 2021 via Zoom. The webinar is the fourth event under the Youth Entrepreneurs' Mastermind Series.

Invited to deliver the talk was Online Business Coach-cum-YouTuber May Ng. The webinar was moderated by Kampar Campus DSSC assistant lecturer Fong Kah Hoong.

The purpose of this webinar was to teach participants how to turn passion into a business. It also aimed to introduce different kinds of digital businesses to the participants as well as enlightening them on how to leverage various types of digital businesses in order to generate various sources of income. Participants also learnt about the types of digital business in the industry which they can venture into.

The webinar kick-started with an opening speech by JCI Kinta Vice President Individual Ethan Cheah. Cheah expressed his gratitude to the speaker and said, “I have known today’s speaker May Ng for many years. She is a mother of two kids and she has a successful digital business now. Thank you for joining this webinar, I hope every one of you will enjoy and benefit from May’s sharing.”

Ng started her webinar by introducing herself, “I was an agent property before I ventured into my current businesses. After I become a mother, I shifted to an online business so that I can have more time to take care of my kids. Then, I found a path that could allow me to turn my passion into a business. Currently, I own a creative agency called The Creative Guys (TCG). I am also an online business coach and YouTuber.

In the webinar, Ng focused on five topics, namely “Identifying your passion”, “5 ways to monetise your passion”, “Turn profit into a sustainable business”, “5 types of digital business ideas” and “Turn your passion into multiple streams of income”.

In order to identify one’s passion, Ng introduced the concept “IKIGAI”. “IKIGAI is a Japanese term. It is very important for all of us as it describes the sense of having a purpose in life as well as being motivated. IKIGAI is comprised of four fundamental components of life, namely passion, vocation, profession and mission.”

She then explained the four fundamental components of life according to IKIGAI, “Passion refers to what you are good at and what you love; mission refers to what you love and what the world needs; vocation refers to what the world needs and what you can be paid for; while profession refers to what you can be paid for and what you are good at. In other words, IKIGAI is about your passion, what the world might need and it is related to your passion, as well as you get paid from it.”

Throughout the webinar, Ng highlighted five digital business ideas, namely e-commerce, drop-shipping, couching business, affiliate marketing and drop-servicing.

“For an e-commerce business, if you have your own products, sell them online in marketplace such as Shopee and Lazada. If you have good branding, create your own website or e-commerce stall for your loyal customers to buy products,” Ng said.

While sharing her experience in doing drop-shipping, Ng said, “Drops-shipping is for those who do not want to keep stocks in hand or do shipping. The profit you get is lower because you are like a middle man for the products. I was a property agent, so I knew many landlords or house owners who wanted to buy furniture. I found a supplier who can provide cheap and good quality furniture. So, when I sell properties, I do drop-shipping works for the furniture as well. You can try to find the manufacturers and try to convince them to let you do drop-shipping works.”

Another digital business that Ng currently focusing on is drop-servicing. She said, “I am selling digital service. I do not know how to design a website but many customers need those advanced levels of website designing or branding. Even though I do not have the skills, I sell my packages and outsource those professional skills in order to provide a ‘one-stop service’ to my customers.”

In order to turn profit into a highly sustainable business, Ng recommended the drop-service model. Ng said drop-servicing can get high profits because it has low or no start-up cost. Besides, the drop-service business model does not require technical skills nor physical products to handle.

“Drop-service business model can achieve high ticket sales and recurring income. It is also a kind of mobile business. The online services you can sell using the drop-service business model are graphic design, digital marketing services, video and animation, writing and translation services, tech and IT services, audio services and business support,” Ng said.

She added, “If you want to sell some digital products, you can consider selling business templates for presentation, website templates, e-book templates, social media post templates, Instagram pre-sets or any kind of online courses.”

Ng also recommended online platforms that allow participants to find outsource services, such as “fiverr.com”, “freelancer.com” and “upwork.com”.

Towards the end of the webinar, Ng quoted Robert Kiyosaki and said, “An intelligent person hires people who are more intelligent than he is.”

The webinar ended with interactive Q&A and group photography sessions.

This webinar is associated with SDG 4: Quality Education, as it provides inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. All the profits from this webinar will be donated to UTAR Hospital.