The Birth of Something Precious

As some of you have heard, I have started my own company.

No, it is not an investment firm or the like. It is an extension of what I have been doing all this time. Its primary activities deal with coaching and allowing others to grow with proper investment knowledge. I teach the exact process and framework that I use for myself.

Initially, I did not intend to be an entrepreneur. It was never my interest. My interest lay with meeting people to know their stories and discovering how I could help them with my skill set of stock investing.

I started coaching people selectively. Most of my leads came from Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp sources without solicitation. It was fun but sadly, it was tiring as well.

I used to visit Centrepoint’s Dal.Komm to coach my friends on every other day. One day, I went home and I collapsed on my sofa. I felt exhausted. For the first time, I wanted to just sleep for 1 day and not reply any messages.

I questioned whether this model made sense at all. While I loved to help, this format of teaching could not go on when demand starts to increase.

Do I want to stop teaching? NO!

What is the solution? I struggled with this thought for months…

Background

After leaving my first job post-Army, I decided to be a full-time investor. This provided me flexibility and the time to pursue further self-education. In the first 6 month, I was blessed to interact with various business owners and other full-time investors from around the world.

After seeing how you can create jobs as an entrepreneur and allow others to grow to their fullest potential, I decided to consider starting a company to serve others, and help those who decided to join me. I sought advice on everything –  from the way I should run it, to the name of the company and my product. I decided that we should not focus on hype or fluff, but rather to work as hard we can and deliver our training in a conservative manner. We were fortunate enough to have a group of early supporters who provided us the financial resources to grow this company.

In fact, I did not know choose my company name. I did not choose my course name.

It was largely crowd-sourced.

Someone told me that I’ll be an good entrepreneur but I’m just a man of flaws. I err sometimes too. When I started this business knowing that my life will be forever intertwined with it. It is a long-term game; not something I will take it lightly. Up till today, with 3 freelancers and one full time employee, I still don’t see myself as an “entrepreneur” at all.

I need to earn the right.

My focus will be on how my team and I can provide daily satisfaction and growth to my loyal community of investors.

Lessons from Running a Company

Customer Obsession

When our customers pay us their hard-earned money, they expect back something of commensurate value that is equivalent to our pricing. If we fail to deliver our quality product, we must take a hard look at ourselves and more importantly, we must improve. As a company, we do not always have all our answers. We can survey our market all we want but it is useless if we do not translate that into improving our company.

Why not spend more time to engage our community and hear what are their pain-points in investing? Spend time with our customers to know them better.

Therefore, I make it a rule to prioritise replying to my customers first then other friends second. Some of my friends may not take it but I think it is necessary. This is because my customers are the ones who give my company the ability to pay salaries. Our customers are our bosses, without their support, we are unable to pay for any of the business expenses.

source: Peng Joon

However, I cannot do everything for my customers. They must take some steps by themselves.

Growing Profit is a Good Sign

Another entrepreneur friend said I tend to value myself negatively and that is detrimental to my community and my freelancers. When I price our products at a very cheap price, my profit margins are very thin. This approach did not provide my company with the financial resources to hire the best talents or provide a space for my community to mingle and interact. To be fair, I did not know whether the product and its framework would deliver the results I want for my community.

After I have ascertained that confidently, I shifted my product pricing to SGD $1,500 to SGD $2,997. At that pricing, we incorporated tons of value and our customers received 2 – 3 times of the price they paid.

Then, a strange thing happened.

At SGD $2,997, we started attracting more students who are serious and we managed to build a strong community out of it. I also have more financial resources to make sure they earn more than they paid for the course. Now, I have many students telling me after attending the programme, they found my course fees to be too cheap.

One of our Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is to allow our community members to earn back their course fees too.

In short, while a business must make profit to pay its staff, it should do so by delivering immense value to its customers. When the customers are highly satisfied, a high price could be justified as long as the value supports the price. In fact, it shows that the business is healthy as it targets a right segment of the marketplace. I believe there is something unique about us but we must keep iterating to improve on our value proposition.

A Company is Nothing Without Its People

Without its occupants, a home is a house.

In the similar light, a company is nothing without its people.

People synergise together to create awesome products and generate profits.

A company, no matter how wealthy, will sink once its best people decide to leave.

On the other hand, a dying company with little resources will be able to rise if good people start to commit to a common corporate mission.

In some sense, true leadership or ownership of a company is decided by how the owners can drive the culture and synergise all business units towards a common direction.

So what if there  is the cash in the bank? So what if it has plenty of hard assets (furniture, computers)?

They mean absolutely nothing if a management is unable to utilise it correctly.

I also realised, by being an entrepreneur, I cannot expect all my freelancers to behave like me. It is better to give them clear job descriptions because it helps them in executing their job without ambiguity.

Another point that I like to mention is, by being an entrepreneur, I need to bring out of my own personality. I need to learn how to show more personality by communicating and motivating my people. I must be their cheerleader and support them. All of us play our role, but a management role is far greater than any other roles. If anything does not go well, it is down to poor management.

I must take responsibility for the state of the company, including culture, welfare and the pace of innovation.

I must not let my own personal emotions affect the company too. There were days where I felt sad over certain events. Inevitably, my mood affected the entire atmosphere, which was not a good thing. I must learn how to hold my emotions well. It is not about suppressing them, but I have to learn how to release my emotions in other outlets. On the other hand, when I feel happy, I must learn to spread the joy around too.

Conclusion

I must stop here before this gets too long and you guys stop reading…

At the end of the day, a business is fluid and it can become anything. But the key resource is the people that I have. I must learn to nurture, cultivate and encourage them.

As I have started this company, I will do everything in my power and responsibility to ensure this company grow well and focus on the right metrics.

“The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It’s 7 x 24 x 365 x forever.”

Never give up!