2.

0 Reflection

2.1 Introduction

This task was done as a part of the assessments for English Proficiency 3 course. In this task
we were required to conduct an interview with a prominent figure. We choose Mr. Benedict
Humphrey Liew, the owner of BHL Computer store as our interviewee. He is one of the
UPSI alumni that received the Tokoh Alumni awards due to his achievements and
contributions. The reasons why we choose Mr Benedict Liew is that he is a good role model
for everyone. After almost 15 years he starts up his business, now he has 3 branches stores in
Tanjung Malim. Apart from that, he also a former teacher for a year that makes us more
interested in him for switching his career. The interview was conducted at the Mamak’s
Restaurant on 16th October 2018 and took almost 30 minutes. The questions that were asked
during the interview are all about his successful career, his background and some of his
opinion. This is some information about the interviewee:

Name: Benedict Humphrey Liew

Birthday: 18th February 1980

Birthplace: Beaufort, Sabah.

Educational background: 1. Bachelor of Sport Science Education, UPSI on 2004.

2. Computing Certificates (MCSE, MCSD).

Achievements: 1. Registering BHL Computers company on 2003.

2. Become a teacher at SMK Syeikh Abdul Ghani Bidor,
Perak for a year from 2004 until 2005.

3. Open the second branch of BHL Computers on 2009.

4. Open the third branch of BHL Computers on 2016.

2.2 Content

In this interview, we asked 10 questions to the interviewee. The questions that were asked are
based on the inspiring life and successful career of Mr Benedict Liew.

The first question is about how he got the idea to start up his business in
entrepreneurship. Mr Benedict said that because of his desperate situation that he came from
a poor family background, he only focused on the ways to find the mean and support of
living. At that time, the only way he could think is by starting up the business. From being
tutored by his brother who knows a lot about information technology (IT), he starts up his
business in IT field and opened BHL computer store in 2003.

His passion towards IT started from semester 2 while he was staying with his brother
for part time job as a waiter during holiday. During that period, he learned IT stuff from his
brother. Started at semester 3, he learned about computer and business part time job. He got
a lot of support from his friends because of his better and cheaper services. After he
graduated from University Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), he was posted in SMK Syeik
Abdul Ghani Bidor, Perak. Despite of being a teacher, he continued his part time job in
servicing computer. After a year of being a teacher he started to think that teaching is not for
him because he felt that the time is wasted while waiting of the class sessions. He thinks that
he can do a lot of things in the meantime to pursue his dream although he loves teaching.
That is the reason why he chooses to change his career.

The part of living poor was the most helpful background for Mr Benedict in becoming
an entrepreneur. His background pushed and motivated him further to be successful. These
aspects made him stronger and do not give up easily because after he quit his job as a teacher
he realized that there is no way to turn back. With his strong determination and wills, he
managed to pursue his dream because he loves to learn new things and he loves what he does.
He said that “If you love what you are doing, you will not think that it is a job, you take it as
a hobby”.

Even though, Mr Benedict came from a poor family, he proved that he can open a
shop with his own modal. His first capital started up from servicing computer. He took
whatever amounts that have been given to him. At that time, the charge for servicing
computer was quite expensive in Tanjung Malim. When Mr Benedict started servicing
computer with a lower price, everybody started to use his service. He tried to maintain the
prices depending on the type of service. Another capital is from his PTPTN money. After
finishing his study, he managed to collect RM7000 from the money he barely used. When he
was a teacher, every month he managed to save some money. So, after he quit his job he
managed to collect enough capital to rent and open a shop. He stressed that, although he was
busy with his services, he never neglected his study and received dean’s list a few times.

Started from below to his way to the top, he always makes Sri Computer company in
Lowyat plaza as a guideline. He realized that before he starts up his business, all the
computer shop in Tanjung Malim charged double the price from Lowyat Plaza. Since he
acknowledged the struggle of being a student, he tried to bring a cheaper price for electrical
devices to help the students. So, he begins from being a student dealer, so he can get a
cheaper price and sell to the students as little as possible. Now, he did not buy from the
Lowyat Plaza anymore. They take the electrical devices directly from the manufacturer. He
mentioned one thing that differentiates his company from the others is his company sell
cheaper price to help the students compared to the other companies.

Being success in life means that you must accept all challenges that come your way.
For Mr Benedict Liew, the toughest challenges in doing his business are human management
and financial management. In human management, he need to manage his customer and his
own staff. Customer have a lot of attitudes because some of them have different demands and
some of them press his company to give a cheaper price. They came and have the mentality
that ‘customer is always right’ even when they are wrong. The hardest part for him is to
educate and to tell them that they are not the one who makes all the devices. He educates
them by making his customers understand about the term and policies of the electrical
devices. He also thinks that managing his own staff was tough because he needs to educate
his staff to give the best service to the customers. In financial management, it was tough
because as the time pass his staff want the salary to go up. So, he need to balance the profit
from the expenses and from staff benefit to happiness. He wants to make money but at the
same time if he put the price too high for the customer, then nobody would come to the store.
But if he makes the price too little then it will be unbeneficial for him. Other than that, he
needs to think about how to maintain the longevity of the company. Therefore, the toughest
challenges for him is all about managing people and financial.

As time pass, the network of his company had grown wider due to his contribution in
helping students. His initial plan in opening computer store was to help students especially
students from UPSI by giving cheaper price and easy access to them. He declared that by
giving cheaper price and good service they already made a contribution to the society and to
the students. He started up by helping his friends. He does not want his friends to get cheated.
That is how exactly he felt towards the students. He does not want the students to get cheated
also. Therefore, he always tries his best to monitor his own staff in any ways he could
because he does not want his staff to cheat on the customers. He said that it takes years to
build the reputations, but it takes one person to bring it down. For him the most importantly is
the boss. If the boss does not cheat so the staff also will do the same. That is the principle that
he follows until now. Due to his principle he had made his company the most known in town
for their best services and contributions.

After being a success owner of BHL Computer store, he admitted that teaching had
become a part of his life. Even in his company he tried to educate people as more as he can
about the knowledge of electrical devices. He did not really miss his last job as a teacher
because he still educate people but in a different way. He loves to educate, so if they got
problems he will explain more about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ the devices broken, so that it will
not happen again in the future. Customer can get the best information from him as he trained
himself to do that. This is because the most important part in doing business is to educate the
customer, so they would not get cheated. It is one of the reasons why he succeeds in his
profession.

Being an UPSI alumni who succeeds in his profession, he received the Tokoh Alumni
awards for his achievements. He was the Tokoh Alumni number 34 after 14 years he
graduated from UPSI. Dr Izuwan who is the alumni director, choose him to receive the
award. According to him, it was a win-win platform because they have a project studio to
achieve and in return they help to promote BHL Computer Store. Despite of his title as
Tokoh Alumni, he still thinks that he does not deserve to receive the award because there is a
lot of people who are more credible than him.

As a successful person, he defines that success is not about money. Success is about a
balance in life which are the balance of your emotion, physical, social life, spiritual and
intellectual. For him, there is no point if you have success when you do not have a good
family. There is a lot of people who make success in life but did not get a good family. He
said that success is when you can balance all the important things in life such as family,
religion, monitory, friendship but the most importantly success comes from knowledge. He
also said that if you have the knowledge of how to manage, knowledge of how to love the
family, knowledge of how to be humble to people and God, then that is success all about. He
summarized that success all comes from knowledge first.

Some of his advises to UPSI students are when you come to UPSI it is not to get a
certificate nor a degree. The certificate or degree is just a piece of paper and it can be bought.
There is no point if you have the title of Dr when you do not have knowledge. You come to
UPSI to search for knowledge and to learn. If you want to learn then learn it to the fullest, not
just 2.0 CGPA. Learn more even if the knowledge is not in your course. You come here to be
called as graduated but the most important parts are your brain must be a graduated brain.
The search of knowledge is what you are after. Even you do not get posted in the future, but
with the knowledge itself, he is sure that you will be successful. Therefore, you must have
equipped yourselves with knowledge at your own level.

Based on the interview, there are a lot of things that can inspire us. Firstly, we learned
from the interviewee the needs to learn somethings that is not in your profession because
knowledge can bring you anywhere. If you are studying about your course, it does not
guarantee that your future career will be all about what you have learned in your course. It
will be a wide range of knowledge. So, knowledge is very important in our life. Having a
poor family background is not an obstacle for you to success. There is a ton of people that
came from poor family background that succeed in their life. It does not matter if you come
from different family background. If you have strong determination to success, then you will
succeed. If you are passionate about somethings, you have learnt it to the fullest. Do what
you want to do the most and not doing something that does not define yourself. Do not
hesitated and go for something that you like.

The biggest challenge when we carried out this interview is to deal with the
interviewee. This happened because we all cannot speak English language fluently. Since the
interviewee speaks fully English, it takes us time to understand or to make him understands
about the questions. Furthermore, it was awkward for us to speak English because we used to
speak in Bahasa Melayu in our daily life. So, it requires us to practice verbally to get a better
communication with the interviewee.

The second toughest challenge is to edit and to transcribe the video of the interview.
Our video for the interview was about 29 minutes long and we must cut off the video to 10
minutes. The challenge is when we need to choose just some of the information instead all
the valuable information that we get from the interview. We are having hard time to cut off
some of the information because everything that the interviewee said was important. Other
than that, the toughest challenge for us is when our interview did not go as what we have
planned. As we are imagining a formal interview in a proper place, it did not go that way. We
even carried out the interview in the place with a crowd of people. It is hard for us to
communicate because of the noise from the surrounding. However, we overcome that
problem with another alternative method which is by using a sound recorder to make our
voice sounds clearer in the video.

The arrangement of the questions begins from how he started up his business, to how
he achieve his success and lastly asking for his opinion as a successful entrepreneur.

2.3 Conclusion

After conducting the interview, we realized that a few things need some improvement.
We would like to suggest few things to improve this task to be more effective. One of the
improvements that should be done for this interview is the longevity of the duration time for
the video. The video should be longer than 10 minutes for the overall presentation so that we
can show more interesting information about our interview. Other than that, we suggest that
the total questions that were asked during the interview must not more than 8 questions as the
more the questions, the more boring it will get. It will cause the audience to lose their focus
and confused because there are too many questions and answers.