Inter:views | Cracking The Entrepreneur Bottleneck Things Take Longer Than You Think | Inter:views 73 | Steve Melhuish | Property Guru | Singapore
Things Take Longer Than What You Think.
Entrepreneurship is not easy. Like anything else in life, you have to put in the time, resources, and effort if you're looking to reap the benefits. You will want to make sure you get hold of your core market and go deeper to level up and scale your business.
Things will go awry, and you have to be prepared to learn, do it better and allow others to contribute to your growth. You will not always win, but changing and adapting to the market is what turns your business into a profitable venture. Innovation demands agility to stay ahead and adaptability to scale and remain competitive while making an impact.
In this episode, Steve Melhuish shares his entrepreneurship journey, the mistake he made, and the lessons he learned to teach you how to break the entrepreneurship code, scale your business, and grow it beyond you. Stop playing small and own your game.
Steve Melhuish is an award-winning entrepreneur with 28 years of building businesses, including 3 start-ups. He is the co-founder and former CEO of PropertyGuru in Singapore, founded in 2007. PropertyGuru was an answer to his own personal frustrations in finding a new home and has become Asia’s largest online property portal. It’s used by 35 million monthly consumers, has 1300 staff, and IPOed at NYSE in March 2022.
Steve is also the founder and CEO of Planet Rise Is New Venture and is passionate about entrepreneurship, climate change, and social equality.
Key Highlights From The Show
[00:30] Episode intro and a quick bio of the guest; Steve Melhuish
[01:53] Steve's corporate life and journey to becoming an entrepreneur
[05:34] What inspired PropertyGuru, and how it was born
[08:50] How Steve scaled from startup, the mistakes they made, and lessons learned
[19:01] Building the foundation market and focusing on your core market
[20:04] Knowing your market before you internalize your business
[21:28] What lead Steve to step back from his CEO role and trust leaders in their company
[24:54] Steve’s drive and how they came up with a succession plan for their business
[30:53] How entrepreneurship has impacted Steve and what he has learned about himself
[33:06] About Planet Rise and what inspired Steve to the climate change space
[37:30] Solving big problems and creating impact as an entrepreneur
[39:48] The achievement that Steve is most proud of
[41:02] Steve’s one recommendation to all entrepreneurs out there
[41:25] Has Steve cracked the entrepreneurship code? Find out
[42:18] How to reach out, connect or learn more from Steve
[43:48] Ending the show and call to action
Notable Quotes- Grow before you move to a different market
- Things take longer than we think, don’t go too fast; build the foundation first.
- As startups, we don’t have too many resources, so rather than spreading them out, focus on one or two key things you want to do with your business.
- Get a core market, focus on it, go deeper, learn the lessons and get the understanding before expanding.
- Sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we’ve to stand back and trust our leaders to make decisions and hold them to account.
- What good entrepreneurs do is solve problems and create an impact
- Building something goes beyond you as an entrepreneur
- I was really worried that to build Property Guru’s competitor you just had to clone our website and within 3 weeks you can have another Property Guru. It nearly broke the company.
- When you scale, you’re going all the way from getting the shit done, to making sure the shit is done, to then building an organization that can get that shit done.
Website: https://www.propertygurugroup.com/founders/steve-melhuish/
LinkedIn: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/stevemel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/public/Steve-Melhuish
Property Guru IPO'd on NYSE in March 2022 - https://aimgroup.com/2022/03/19/propertyguru-makes-ipo-debut/