---
title: "Taking over a family business in Malaysia"
description: "Inheriting a business sounds like the easy path. Here is what it takes to earn a company that is already yours, from zero, and win over a 40-year veteran."
url: "https://www.mrmoneytv.com/articles/taking-over-family-business-malaysia/"
category: "Career Advice"
author: "Finlit"
published: 2026-07-28
source: "Mr Money TV"
---
# Taking over a family business in Malaysia
Inheriting a business sounds like the easy path. Here is what it takes to earn a company that is already yours, from zero, and win over a 40-year veteran.
## Key takeaways
- Inheriting a family business is harder than it sounds. On paper the company may be 'already yours', but the authority to run it has to be earned from scratch, often against staff who watched you grow up.
- A workable order for a second-generation takeover is observe, then get involved, then transform. Understanding the real problem before changing anything lowers resistance from a long-serving team.
- When she called the company's first weekly meeting after 40 years without one, nobody showed up. In a family SME, authority comes from proven results and a single clear line of decisions, and the surname alone does not deliver it.
- Convincing a 40-year veteran works better by proving it small than by arguing. With no marketing budget, just a phone and a tripod, one father-and-daughter video reached over a million views, while driving to meet clients in person reached about three a day.
- Trust from an established team is earned by giving it first: explaining changes like CCTV, matching people to roles with tools like MBTI, showing a real career path, and handing them ownership of a project.
- Her eldest brother's sudden death changed how she weighed risk. She started putting safety and family over ego, and the Selamat Calculator built with Volvo valued her own life at about RM82 million, a figure meant to start a hard conversation about protection.
import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
import VideoEmbed from '../../components/VideoEmbed.astro';
import Disclaimer from '../../components/Disclaimer.astro';
import StepList from '../../components/StepList.astro';
import SplitFigure from '../../components/SplitFigure.astro';
import vanessa from '../../assets/articles/taking-over-family-business-malaysia/vanessa.png';
import img1 from '../../assets/articles/taking-over-family-business-malaysia/img-1.png';
You have probably heard that inheriting a family business is the easy route. It is already built, already funded, and the paperwork already has your name on it.
Vanessa, who left New Zealand to run her father's incense business, Foo Kwai Heong.
The paperwork turned out to be the only part that came free. Six years ago she left a settled life in New Zealand and came home to Ipoh to help run Foo Kwai Heong, the incense and fragrance business her father spent more than 40 years building. Within a few months she was, by her own account, the most hated person in the company. She had the title and almost none of the authority it was supposed to carry. Getting that took the better part of her first year.
## 1. Being handed a business means nothing until you earn it
The staff had worked with her father for 20 or 30 years. Most of them were there before she was born, and they remembered her as the kid who came to the office to play. Now that same kid was giving them instructions, and it felt strange to everyone in the room, her included.
She takes a contrarian view of her own position, though. A second-generation heir in Malaysia is lucky, she says, more than they realise. Malaysia is still a developing market, which means opportunity is everywhere, in a way it no longer is in places that have already finished growing. People who spend a few years overseas and come home often say the same thing, that there is simply more room to build something here. It is part of the wider calculation behind [why some Malaysians choose to stay rather than chase a bigger salary abroad](/articles/should-you-work-in-singapore-or-malaysia).
That luck does not remove the work. Her father and her brother are gentle leaders, and she decided early that she could not afford to be. She chose to be the effective one instead, which is a large part of why the first year was so hard.
## 2. Observe, involve, then transform
Her one piece of advice to anyone about to take over a parent's business is not to give up too early, and not to change everything on the first day. The order she used matters more than the changes themselves.
The trap she watched other SME kids fall into is following the path the founder laid out and calling that a takeover. A father builds the whole road so his children can drive it after university, and the children never do anything but drive. The business stays exactly where he left it while the market around it keeps changing.
## 3. Nobody showed up to her first meeting
In four decades, Foo Kwai Heong had never held a weekly meeting. Vanessa called one. On the day, nobody came. Maybe half, she corrects herself, because the rest said they were busy, though nobody could tell her busy with what.
She felt powerless. The empty room told her plainly that she had no authority yet and nobody who trusted her. Her case for meetings was simple enough: when a problem is said out loud, more brains produce more solutions, and solving it stops being the boss's job alone. That was the whole reason she wanted everyone in the room.
The fix was not to scold anyone. Her eldest brother had passed away, and her second brother, a kind boss who tended to hold things in, gave his blessing for her to step up and set the direction. Then she asked her father to make her the single decision-maker, because staff pulled between three bosses never know whose call to follow. If her father or brother saw something going wrong, the new rule was that they told her first and she handled it, so the staff always knew whose instruction counted.
## 4. Convincing a 40-year veteran, with zero budget
This was the hard part. Her father's way of running the business had 40 years of success behind it, and her way had nothing to prove it yet. His line, repeated often, was that he had been in this industry for four decades so she should listen to him. Her counter was that she had been in social media for ten years, a thing he did not know, which was exactly why she was there to help.
He gave her no marketing budget and rejected most of her ideas. His idea of work was to drive from Ipoh to Penang to Kedah and meet clients one at a time, two or three hours each, three customers in a good day. She had sat in the car as a girl waiting those three hours, so she knew the cost of it. Her era taught her to work smart, and all she asked for was a phone and a tripod to test with. She was not trying to go viral, only to see what a few videos could do.
The team would not go on camera, so she started with herself. Instead of generic scented joss sticks, the factory had begun making curated, unusual fragrances, cigar incense among them, and that gave her something worth filming. Then she got her father to join her, and the father-and-daughter videos struck a nerve. The reach was nothing like driving to clients: one clip could pull in a million or two or three million views, where a full day on the road reached three.
His mind changed through his own friends. One of them laughed at him for making the kind of content youngsters make, then came back later to ask him how it was done. He told the friend that his daughter did everything for him, and Vanessa could see he was proud. After that he started arriving with ideas of his own. Forty years in the trade meant he needed no script, so once the phone was pointed at him he was better on camera than she was. When the MCO shut down cross-border sales visits, her promise that customers would come to him turned out to be right. He would go out and someone would stop him: you are the uncle from the incense factory, I saw your video.
## 5. Earning the team's trust, not the title
Being the most hated person in the company within a few months made sense to her once she thought about it. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has done the same comfortable job for 20 or 30 years, she says, and then a new leader walks in and starts talking about change. You would resist too.
The first thing they held against her was the clocking machine and the CCTV. She explained the cameras were there so any accident could be traced back, not to watch whether people were working, though she knew that was exactly what they suspected. She decided to give the team her trust before asking for theirs. She took their complaints about being overloaded seriously and built systems to fix them, moving a business that still updated stock on paper and by phone call toward something paperless. She showed there was a career path, because the assumption on the floor was that only the owner's children ever reach management. She ran an MBTI exercise to understand each person's strengths and put them in the seat that fit, and she worked alongside them rather than simply having them work for her. For the largely Malay team, that meant learning their culture, joining their processes for a month, dressing the way they dressed.
The moment it turned was an exhibition. She wanted a booth at KLCC, went looking for a sponsor, and got rejected, so she told the team it might have to wait until next year. The team told her no. You have a team now, they said, just say yes and we will do it for you. She let them run the project. After a year of effort that was the first time she felt she had actually earned their trust, and it meant she no longer had to carry the whole thing alone.
## 6. What it cost, and what turned out to be priceless
What she gave up was a slow life she loved. In New Zealand there was no traffic, no peer pressure, no comparing whose bag or whose car was better, just weekends at the beach and her own quiet time. It was the settled life she had wanted since she was young. Coming home took her three months to decide on, and nobody had asked her to make it. She offered herself, partly because she had hit a ceiling climbing the corporate ladder there as a non-resident, and partly because after her eldest brother died her father clearly needed help and would never ask for it. Choosing to [move before she felt ready](/articles/say-yes-before-you-feel-ready) was the hardest part of it.
Her brother's death is what reset everything else. It was a weekend, she was off work, and a friend called with news she first took for a bad joke. She caught the last flight back to Malaysia, and her own parents were the last to know. The person who came back from that was different: she stopped keeping quiet to please everyone and started saying plainly when something was wrong. It also made safety stop feeling abstract. When the episode's collaboration with Volvo Car Malaysia had her fill in the [Selamat Calculator](https://finlit.my/selamatcalculator), it put a number on her life of about RM82 million. A figure that big is meant to be argued with, weighed against the people who depend on you. It is the same reason it helps to sit with [how much money is actually enough](/articles/how-much-money-is-enough) before you decide what to chase.
Safety turned concrete on the highway too. A tyre blew at 120 km/h, and because the car was heavy it stayed stable long enough for her to hear the sound, pull over and check, where a lighter car might have lost control. Now she texts the family group when she leaves and when she arrives, and the family shares live locations after what happened to her brother, so if anything goes wrong they know where to find her. The advice she ends on is plain: check your tyres, and text your family. It is worth remembering the [true cost of a car](/articles/how-much-to-earn-to-buy-a-car-malaysia) includes the upkeep and the tyres, the parts people tend to skip.
## What to actually do with this
Whether you are the heir or the employee, the same handful of moves decide how this goes:
- If you are taking over, observe and get involved before you transform. Understanding the real problem first means your changes meet far less resistance.
- Establish one clear line of decisions. Ask the founder to empower a single lead so staff are not stuck guessing which boss to listen to.
- Prove new ideas small instead of arguing them. One cheap test that works will convince a veteran faster than any pitch.
- Earn trust by giving it. Explain every change, put people where their strengths fit, and hand them real ownership of something that matters.
- If you are the employee, expect an SME to change direction often. In return you usually get more room to contribute and grow than a rigid corporate ladder allows, which is worth remembering when you weigh [whether staying put actually pays](/articles/why-loyalty-wont-grow-your-salary).
- Stop treating safety as the invisible line item. Text your family when you move, share locations, and keep the car you actually drive maintained.
Being handed a business is only where the work starts. The paperwork gave her the title; the team's trust and her father's respect she had to earn, the same way anyone does, starting from zero.
## Frequently asked questions
### Is taking over a family business easier than starting your own?
It comes with real head starts: existing funding, infrastructure, staff and a known brand. Authority and trust are not part of the package. A successor usually has to prove themselves to long-serving employees and to the founder, so many find it as hard as building from scratch.
### How do you earn respect when you take over a family business?
Start by understanding how the business already runs before changing anything, then establish a single clear line of decision-making so staff are not caught between two or three bosses. Trust the team first, put people in roles that fit their strengths, and prove new ideas with small results rather than pulling rank. Over time it is the results that earn respect, more than the title itself.
### How can a small business market itself with no budget?
Consistent short-form video on social media costs little more than a phone, a tripod and time, and it can reach far more people than visiting customers one by one. A single owner meeting clients in person might reach three a day, while one video can reach hundreds of thousands. The aim is to test regularly and stay consistent rather than chase a single viral hit.
### What should employees know about working in a family business?
Expect less structure than a corporate job. A small or medium family business is often still working out what sells, so priorities change and direction is not always fixed. The upside is more room to contribute ideas and to grow into bigger roles, if you can stay adaptable while the business tests what works.
### How much is a person's life worth financially?
There is no true figure for a life, but tools like the Selamat Calculator estimate the economic value of your roles and responsibilities, covering income, dependents and plans you have not yet fulfilled, as a way to start a conversation about protection. For someone with a family and a business, that figure can run into the tens of millions of ringgit.