With so many business models, which one should you choose for yours? In this special episode, we interviewed Murshidah Said from M&Z Empowerment, a social enterprise with offices in Singapore and Malaysia.

She shared her journey as a fempreneur and her major shift that resulted in greater clarity for her business. You'll definitely enjoy this episode, so let's tune in!

Listen to the Episode below:

In this episode, you'll hear about:

Murshidah’s RM2 story
Her Journey into Social Enterprise
How She Chose this as a Thriving Business Model

Key Takeaways

01:44 — How Murshidah Jumped from $0.20 to $5000 In 2-Weeks
- Murshidah had only RM2 (USD0.25) left in her wallet and nothing else. Her husband lost his job and they didn’t have a place to stay. They needed money for their schooling daughter and have to find a way to get safe housing for her.
- She overcame the odds and stayed focus to meet as many people as possible for their business.
03:32 — How this Shift Lead to More Profitable Business
- Murshidah had a mindset shift away from profitability and more focused on creating an impact. That helped her see exponential growth in her business.
04:40 — Stereotypes Starts From Your Mind About YOU
- Murshidah taught herself to change mindsets, starting with breaking stereotypes from her own mind. That has helped her worked with prison inmates to male CEOs have a great mindset shift within themselves and their organisation.
06:20 — Social Entrepreneurship Will Experience a Boom
- If large companies like TOMS Shoes are exploring social entrepreneurship, so will startups and smaller businesses. If you are not adding a social impact element in your business, you will likely lose out. But above all, do it because of the impact it gives and not because of it’s potential publicity.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

My name is Huda and I’m the founder of Fempreneur Secrets, an online community for women to start and grow their business. I created this podcast to inspire women from all walks of life to get started in business. They’re all meant to be step-by-step so you can take quick action into your life and business today. Let’s get started with today’s episode.

Today I have Murshidah from Love & Respect Transformation Centre. Murshidah a social entrepreneur and a corporate trainer. Hi, Murshidah. Thank you so much for being here.

Murshidah: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Huda: Maybe you can share a little bit about yourself and what you do. Tell us a little bit about your business?

Murshidah: Sure. My name is Murshidah. I am the co-founder of Love and Respect Transformation Centre. I’m also a certified NLP practitioner, a certified law of attraction trainer, as well as a certified life coach. Everything has to be certified these days. Yeah. And I also run a company, a corporate training company called M&Z, it’s an empowerment institute in Singapore and it’s called M&Z, apartment centre in Malaysia.

Huda: Who are your current clients and maybe you can share a little bit about where they come from?

Murshidah: My clients are mainly from the government bodies in both Singapore, Malaysia, and also in Brunei. I also do have some clients from Indonesia, but they normally come to either Singapore, Malaysia to attend my training programmes. My clients also include a government linked corporations, as well as private companies, multinationals, Fortune 500 companies, SMEs, as well as manufacturing companies, yeah.

Huda: For yourself, when you were starting out, was there any specific moments that made you realise that this is what you want to do?

Murshidah: In 2001, my first business actually failed. And having paid all my debts in Singapore, I settled a lot of bills and all that, I had only two ringgit in my wallet and then nothing else. At that time, my husband lost his job. We didn’t have a place to stay. We had a temporary place that we had only for two weeks and we had no money. So at that time, when I started to find strength, where can I get the money? I need to have a good school for my daughter. I need to get a safe housing for the family and I need to be able to generate some income in the shortest period of time. I started to meet as many people as possible.

And the question I asked when I meet people, the contacts that I had at that time was not, can you help me? I have no money. The question I asked them was, how can I help you in your business?. And I asked a lot of people that question and all of them giving me ideas of how I can help them. And that was how I started being giving. I was like, okay, let’s hook you up with this one. And then they made a sale and I got a commission. Whoa, and that was the first commission I got was 1000 ringgit and I say okay, from two ringgit to 1000 in a few days, within a week I got it. I was like, well, very grateful, but that was not enough for me to move out and find a nice place to stay.

So I said I got to ask more people and within two weeks I got 20,000 ringgit and that’s how M&Z started.

Huda: What is the one thing that actually influenced you to be a fempreneur?

Murshidah: I’m not a new entrepreneur. I’ve been running my business for 20 years already and I consider myself, yeah, a Fempreneur before. But that purpose was not clear. I was only focused on making money. Profitability. I didn’t care about the business, I didn’t care about knowledge or anything that I imparted or the impact that I left behind through my business. I was just concerned about money and when that business failed or I failed as an entrepreneur at that point in time, then I started to rework my whole mindset, my belief system, my intentions, and when I started focus on purpose, on giving, on adding value, my legacy, my impact, my social impact, that I considered I am a fempreneur.

Huda: For yourself. Do you have any unique encounters when it comes to being a woman entrepreneur?

Murshidah: Yeah, what I realise being a woman entrepreneur is sometimes we women, we tend to look at ourselves and we are very judgmental of ourselves. What if they cannot accept me? What if I’m a woman? What if I’m this and that? When I started to change my own mindset and I said, let’s break stereotypes. First of all, stereotypes within my own head about myself. So that was when I started to look, I’m not just going to focus on women or participants. I’m not just going to do workshops for women empowerment. I was going to do workshops for everyone and that brought me to the Singapore prison, where I spent about six months there helping mindset change with the prison inmates, the male prison inmates. And I worked with COs who are male, all of them.

It was a male dominant industry and that took me out of my comfort zone. Yeah. So I was first breaking my own stereotype about myself and from there I said, look, a woman can be training a group of men, a very senior men of all races, of all religions and we can empower them, we can lead, and that to me was so empowering.

Huda: Are there any pillars of support that you have for your business or for yourself that you hold onto to be where you are today?

Murshidah: For me, it’s my faith, my family, my husband, my daughter. They push me to excel and I have good friends and I’ve got good business mentors who just pushed me at all the wrong places that I get to a higher level of awareness.

Huda: How do you foresee the future of social entrepreneurship, say, in five years on the road?
Murshidah: Social entrepreneurship is going to boom. Right now we have big names, entrepreneurs like even Richard Branson running social enterprise at the level of million dollars. Companies like TOMS shoes, has a one for one model. Every shoes bought will be actually giving shoes to a child from a developing country with no shoes. All these companies, multimillion dollar companies, it’s already there and I foresee there’s going to be more.

Huda: How about M&Z Empowerment? Where do you see M&Z Empowerment in five years time?

Murshidah: Doing more corporate training and also training more trainers to carry out our message because that would be our legacy. The message of love and respect is our legacy. Keep in touch with us. Follow me on Facebook, www.murshidahsaid.com. We also have other programmes listed on our Love & Respect Transformation Centre Facebook, Instagram. Any upcoming announcements. Keep in touch with us because we have programmes for people who are looking out for programmes that you can participate in.

Huda: Is there any words of advice that you would like to give to our Fempreneur TV viewers, especially when it comes to the social enterprise industry itself?

Murshidah: Focus on your intention. What is your intention and be very clear of your intention. Is it really for self or is it really to help people? So think beyond yourself when you are creating a social enterprise. Some people create social enterprise with their self in mind only to make themselves look good or to improve their brand. So all those things come with it. But when you have the right intention, your brand improves, your image improves, the profitability comes in, everything else will fall into place.

Huda: Thank you so much Murshidah for your time.

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