OCTOBER 6 — One of the most familiar experiences in microbusiness is having a business that looks busy while the owner continues worrying about money. Orders are coming in, parcels are waiting to be shipped and customers are active during live-selling sessions. Then the end of the month arrives.

Suppliers need to be paid. Packaging needs to be reordered. Advertising has already taken part of the revenue. Some products were sold at a discount, while new stock needs to be purchased. Suddenly, a month that looked very busy no longer feels particularly profitable.

This is one of the lessons that comes with experience. Sales do not necessarily mean that a business is financially strong. Money can constantly move in and out, with little actually remaining in the business.

This everyday reality is part of an important aspect of Malaysia’s economy. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), MSMEs contributed 39.7% of Malaysia’s GDP in 2025. Behind that large national figure, however, are individual business owners making much smaller but important decisions every day: how much stock to buy, whether to spend more on advertising, or whether to keep the money available today for next month.

For the entrepreneur, these are not abstract business decisions. A wrong decision can remain visible for months as boxes that still need to be sold.

When we become very good at surviving

After several years, entrepreneurs develop instincts that are difficult for outsiders to see. When sales fall, they know which expenses to reduce first. When stock moves slowly, they know how to clear it. When a supplier becomes unreliable, they know who else to contact.

This ability to adapt, reorganise limited resources and continue operating during uncertain conditions is closely related to what I have described as Entrepreneurial Survival Capability (ESC). Such capability does not develop overnight. It accumulates through weak sales months, failed products, supplier problems, rising costs and the many decisions that have to be made when circumstances become difficult.

But there is something we discuss much less often: an entrepreneur can become very good at surviving. She knows how to solve this month’s problem. Another problem arrives next month, and she finds a way through that too. Year after year, the business remains open. Yet the business may still be standing in almost the same place.

What saved the business does not always need to stay

Imagine a business owner who once suffered a significant loss after ordering too much stock. Afterward, she becomes extremely cautious. She buys smaller quantities and chooses safer colours. At the time, this strategy may have protected her cash flow.

Several years later, demand is stronger, but popular products repeatedly run out because she is still afraid of holding too much stock. A difficult experience from the past continues to shape decisions in a business that is now operating under different conditions.

The same can happen when an owner has a disappointing experience with an employee and decides it is easier to do everything herself. Initially, the decision saves money. Years later, she may still be photographing products, replying to messages, conducting live sessions, checking payments and packing parcels alone late at night.

Those strategies were not necessarily wrong. They may have been exactly what the business needed at the time. The difficulty arises when a temporary survival response becomes a permanent way of operating.

This is where experience needs to do more than remind us of previous mistakes. Experience becomes capability when lessons from the past improve future decisions.

Recovery is progress too

When sales become stable again, the natural temptation may be to think about growth: buy more stock, introduce another product, increase advertising or enter another sales channel. But a business that has just been through a difficult period may not be ready to grow. It may need to recover first.

Recovery could mean replacing the personal savings used during difficult months, clearing old inventory, rebuilding working capital or creating enough financial reserve so that one slow month does not immediately become an emergency. These achievements are not particularly exciting to display on social media. Yet they make the business less fragile.

Survival keeps the business alive. Recovery allows it to regain its strength. An entrepreneur who is rebuilding should therefore not assume that she is falling behind simply because the business is not expanding quickly. Sometimes rebuilding what was lost is exactly the progress the business needs.

Has the business grown, or has the owner simply become busier?

Another familiar phrase among microbusiness owners is, “Better I do it myself.”

At the beginning, it makes sense. Doing things personally saves money. But when five orders become twenty, and twenty become fifty, the owner’s workload increases too. Sales increase, but so do the hours she works.

This creates an important question: has the business actually grown, or has the entrepreneur simply become busier?

Growth does not necessarily mean opening ten outlets. For a microbusiness, it could mean better inventory management, more repeat customers, additional help during busy periods, or the ability to take a day off without the entire operation stopping. Sometimes growth means making the business stronger, not simply bigger. This matters because remaining small is not the same as remaining fragile.

Still standing, but what comes next?

There is something meaningful about an entrepreneur looking back after eight or ten years and saying, “I am still here.” Behind those words may be unsold stock, difficult customers, rising costs, supplier problems and countless decisions that only became obviously right or wrong after the money had already been spent. All those experiences have value. The ability to survive has value too.

But we should be careful not to romanticise permanent struggle as entrepreneurial success. Working longer every year simply to remain in approximately the same position does not necessarily mean the business is becoming stronger. Being busy is not always the same as making progress.

Farah may still be packing orders tonight after everyone else in the house has gone to bed. There may be a few boxes of slow-moving hijabs beside her, along with another message from a supplier waiting to be read. Tomorrow, she will probably wake up and do what years in business have taught her to do: find a way to keep going.

She may never describe herself as a resilient entrepreneur. She may never use the phrase “Entrepreneurial Survival Capability.”

She may simply say, “Business memang macam ni. Ada masa okay, ada masa susah.”

But after years of navigating the ups and downs of business, perhaps the question is no longer whether she knows how to survive. She has already demonstrated that capability many times.

The next question is how everything she has experienced can help strengthen the business.

Because survival keeps the business alive. Recovery restores its strength. And growth creates the space to build what comes next.

* The author is a Research Fellow Post Doctorate at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies (UAC), Universiti Malaya, and can be reached at nikzirwatul@um.edu.my

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.