Ray Chou burned through capital in five countries before learning a brutal lesson: regional expansion feeds your ego while starving your bank account.
After building and exiting 19 businesses and coaching founders across Southeast Asia through Malaysia’s growing entrepreneurship ecosystem, he’s exposing the uncomfortable patterns keeping business owners permanently stuck.
This conversation reveals:
→ Why your loyal Day-1 employees might be the reason you can’t break your revenue ceiling
→ The “Who Moved My Cheese” principle that separates founders who scale from those who stagnate
→ How to profile your future buyer years before you’re ready to sell
→ The generalist trap: why hiring people who “do everything” is killing your growth
CHAPTERS:
00:00 – Intro
01:45 – Biggest mistake Southeast Asian founders make when scaling
04:27 – Growth vs profitability: why growth can kill your business
06:52 – When is the right time to scale a business? (Key fundamentals)
11:21 – The 3 principles behind scalable businesses: repeatability, consistency, predictability
13:11 – When should founders get a business coach? (The real role of a coach)
19:44 – How to prepare your business to sell in 3–5 years
21:45 – Founder syndrome explained (and why buyers hate it)
23:41 – How to think about your future buyer before you sell
25:27 – Why founders get stuck at revenue plateaus (and how to break through)
30:10 – One brutal message every entrepreneur needs to hear
31:48 – Ray’s personal founder “warning label”
32:35 – One rule every founder should follow going into 2026
Follow Ray here:
Owners Circle: https://ownerscircle.asia/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theraychou
LinkedIn: https://my.linkedin.com/in/theraychou
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raychoukl/
Bloom Growth: https://www.bloomgrowthcoach.com/coaches/ray-chou/
