For me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite for my survival.
– John Green, American politician and attorney
Hope is the strongest weapon you can give a man.
Hope fuels the spirit, gives him clarity of vision, and the courage of lions.
It makes him a fighter.
And fighters fight for a cause, a vision, a conviction. They are committed to a sense of purpose larger than them. They have pride in who they are and what they stand for and they don’t quit until the battle is won.
But there is always another battle. Another challenge, A bigger idea floating on the coattails of a newly won success. The battles are the best part of them all.
And so…they go on to fight more battles, bloody but unbowed, relishing the adrenaline rush. The game of life is always about conflict and managing it. There is no such thing as winning, there are only perspectives.
These fighters never have it easy. But people like these, they don’t choose easy. They choose the path less trodden by.
They go against the grain, unravelling problems, providing solutions, rebuilding broken systems so that the lives of people who depend on them are made easier.
As V said in V For Vendetta, Ideas Are Bulletproof.
An idea creeps into hearts and minds and it stays there, germinating and sometimes, like a desert flower struggling out from the parched cracks of a sunbaked rock, they turn out to be tremendous successes.
The story of a flower that blooms in adversity, as the saying goes, is the rarest and most beautiful flower of them all.
A story that just has to be told. A story that needs to be immortalised.
This world is built on stories that have been told and sold. There are stories, good stories and great stories. And then there are stories that are never told.
And for me, that is always such a tragedy.
Business is nothing more than people. You are not sold merely by the product, or a service, you are sold by the people behind it, the story behind the name, you buy into a conviction, you are sold a promise…by people.
And if you think of business as a dense mass of people, then every business has a soul.
And that soul yearns to be recognised, to speak about who it is and what it does and where it takes flight to.
When you build a business big enough to warrant global recognition you can bet that business now has a mind and soul of its own, you are just relegated to riding it.
That’s what we do at The IBR Asia Group. Unleashing that soul and letting the spokespersons for these businesses talk about why each organisation here has a uniqueness unlike any other.
Through International Business Review which is on a controlled circulation to the top echelon of corporate and government decision makers across five countries in South East Asia, VOICE OF ASEAN, our digital business networking platform that connects 10 countries in South East Asia, our multimedia newsletter to 14,200 emails of corporate and government decisionmakers across South East Asia, including 544 global media, our press releases in PR Newswire’s Asia Pacific newsroom with 70,000 eyeballs from APAC journalists.
We create world-class content at local prices.
The power of the reach and masterful storytelling is why our beloved Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg invited us to hold The Borneo Awards in Kuching on the October 20, 2023, hosted by Sarawak.
There is magic in words. Words are spells. They define our future if used well and often. Especially when they are strung together in stories you create that define who you are and what you will become.
The sheer creativity of a good story is what gives one company the edge over the others.
Winning companies immediately get a whole lot of positioning and profiling to a regional and global audience before receiving the award on stage in front of a who’s who from the corporate and government sectors, including mnisters from three countries, and of course our Premier himself.
When the Premier was our guest of honour at The IBR Asean Awards 2023 in Kuala Lumpur, he went up on stage and in his keynote address, he asked why there were absolutely not a single Sarawakian company amongst the 20 receiving an award, and he went on to say with much pride that so many Sarawak companies were trailblazing in their own industries, and they deserved to have their stories told.
The Sarawak Story and the Sarawak Soul. Watch it soar at The Borneo Awards 2023 in Kuching, Sarawak, October 20, 2023.
Scan the QR code below to send in your nominations so that we can start writing your case studies and getting our adjudication panel to vet it.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribun. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
