Ligwina Hananto doesn’t just dream big, she executes.
“Most people only have dreams, and dreams are goals without a deadline, without any action, so that doesn’t work. If you want to dream something, you dream big, yes, and then you make it into a goal, and so you set a deadline when you want to have it and how you want to achieve it, and then you start working on it.”
And that’s exactly what she advises her clients at QM Financial. In her late 20s, Ligwina went from being a stay at home mom to the CEO of her own company that now boasts hundreds of clients.
So it wasn’t a right-away success.”
“No, no, it took time and after 13 clients I ran out of cousins to contact. So I said to my partners at that time,‘we need to expand to different areas here, I can’t just work on my contacts.’ ”
And she ended up here with an idea that turned out to be a big hit for her business and listeners.
“I said to them, I want this to be an honest radio talk show, if one company wants to sell their products and if I think that product sucks, I get to say it on air. And they love it; they are like, ‘like, like Suzie Ormond!’ Yes, yes, with Suzie Ormond but with a hijab.”
She is one of Indonesia’s movers and shakers and she is in good company. At 26, Donny Pramono capitalized on something he thought was missing from Indonesia’s marketplace.
“They didn’t really believe yoghurt gonna be a big hit.”
Investors didn’t believe then, but they do now. In two and a half years, his “Sour Sally” brand yoghurt has gone from one store to 26 in the country and it’s about to go international.
“Because I started young and I’m still young, so I think, all I think is that success is not just a destination, for me, success is a journey, so it’s never ending, I have to keep working hard.”
The country believes Indonesia’s recipe for sweet success is actually its young minds. More than half of the population is under 29 years old.
“So what we call this the ‘demographic dividend’, which I think will put us in good shape, to have productivity increases for the next 10, 15, even 20 years in the future.”
But Indonesia’s Trade Minister says the education system needs to be improved to give its up-and-comers tools to compete. As for young CEOs Donny and Ligwina, they brought back business know-how from universities abroad and have been experiencing the taste of success ever since.
Sara Sidner, cnn, Jakarta.
