My Story, Part 3 (Final Part) - What if you fail?

I’ve shared with you, in Part 2, three important things for a business I have learnt during my journey these two years. I believe they are applicable to any startups as well. If you become successful in your own journey, well and good. Congratulations! But what if you fail?

Failure is one topic which is not covered in the media. Not many people like to talk about failure, let alone their own failure. Especially in Asia, failure makes you lose face value in society.

What I’m going to share with you now is in fact more important than what I’ve said so far! Why is this so? Because 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs will fail. Let’s all face reality! Instead of only listening to success stories, we must still be prepared for failure and know what to do if we fail.

I’m not going to talk about learning from your own experience – find out why you fail and the strengths and weaknesses you learned about yourself from this experience. Of course, you’re going to do that!

Earlier, I shared three things you need to know when starting a business. I’m now going to share with you the three most crucial things for true success for any entrepreneur. It’s not even about coping with failure because, like I mentioned before, I see entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go.

1. When to let go
2. What do you want?
3. What are you doing now to achieve what you want?

When to let go

The first thing to learn is knowing when to let go. When to let go of your baby. When to let go of something you’ve spent so much time, effort, sweat and blood in. When your business is your baby, the most difficult thing to do is to let go. Just like the innate reflex in all parents to protect their child.

But knowing when to let go is important. Because if the signs are there that the business is not working out, due to whatever reasons, for eg. unfavourable market conditions, your finances or your relationship with your business partners, the more you hold on to it, the more damage it will do to you and the more devastated you will be.

In my case, we realized the difficulty of making management decisions and responding quickly to what the market needs, we knew that we could not carry on. While my two other co-founders went back to their careers, I continued to research and watch the online education and internet marketing space and further took ideas from other developments on the net and refined my ideas. I am now happy to say that I am again starting my new venture and am ready to talk to investors.

Knowing when to let go also applies to when times are good. Yes, even when the business is reaching new highs. When the company needs a renewal in leadership, perhaps it’s a cue for you to let go. And I’m sure you know it when the time comes. It is to your best interest and that to the company too. I very much applaud Bill Gates for recognizing this and taking actual steps to reduce his time at Microsoft.

Letting go of something doesn’t mean it’s the end. It just means that you move on to something else, and perhaps something better.

What do you want?

Second, the next good thing about having a failed venture is that you can now spend some time alone to think about what you really want in life. Many people, myself included in the past, don’t really know what they want to do. Not just in business but also in career and relationship.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What do you really want?

2. How strongly do you want it?

3. By when do you want to achieve it?

4. How much money are you going to put in and how much do you want to earn?

Knowing the specific answers to these questions helps you tremendously in your life and career. Even if you don’t really know what you want, like most people, put something down and continue down the list of questions. The second question confirms to yourself your answer to the first and the third and fourth questions force you to be explicitly specific and targeted about your want that you wrote down. In fact, putting down every want you have and answering down this list of questions, will help you sort out which are your real wants and which aren’t.

I was lost as a sheep before as well! I spent 4 years to know that I really want to do my own business and another two years to decide that the internet is my future and I’m going to build this future I’ve foreseen. And believe me, this is the most difficult thing to do. It is not about making painful decisions, but searching for that gem in the clutter. As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Once you know, it’s a matter of making that step ahead.

I’m not going to stray into motivation stuff, like Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. You can get that from a lot of books. But I believe that once you are clear about what you want, go ahead and take that first step. Of course it helps if it is a well thought-through step and you have your family and friends to support you in making that decision (not financial support). And like I said earlier, if entrepreneurial is really in your bones, then whatever failures you faced, you know you’re going to do it again.

What are you doing NOW to achieve what you want?

Ok, having now known what you want to do, you need to ask yourself this most important question, “What are you doing NOW to reach that goal?” The key word of this question is NOW. Why now? Because success doesn’t happen overnight! From your first failure to your next project, or when you first decided to start your business, what you do now to prepare for your new venture will determine the success or failure of it.

I can’t stress this enough. I will say it again, “What you do NOW determines your success in the future!”

Let’s use my example again. Only until recently, I decided to put my thoughts in my area of expertise which are online education, building online communities and internet marketing to the world (online). I thought if I’m so good and knowledgeable, shouldn’t people know me? The fact is, I wasn’t thinking this way before. I thought my ideas are great and I shouldn’t share them with the world because someone would copy them.

Well, it’s a chicken and egg problem. Because if I didn’t share what I know, how do I know I’m good? And if I share and others copy it, is it really a concern? If others copy my ideas, it means that the idea is good. But I believe that success comes only with great execution. If I’m good, then I’ll be successful anyway. If other people are good, they’ll be successful too. It’s only a matter of how successful they are.

Now that I know a bit on using open source stuff, my creativity just unleashes itself. I’ve got so much in my head that I start to believe 24 hours a day is not enough for me to get my ideas out! There’s so much I can do now and I’m sure that I will have the recognition that I will earn, not deserved.

Finally, I want to warn everyone about procrastination. Procrastination is the most deadly of all poisons that might strike a person. Procrastination identifies the loser in you very strikingly. Procrastination is a disease of the mind far worse than any terminal diseases in the world. Procrastination is the end of you ever smelling the fruits of success.

I am harsh here and to the point. Because I see and know many people having this dreadful disease. I had it in the past and will not have it again in my life. Are you procrastinating?

Final message

My final message to those of you who’s followed me this far (thanks!) is, “Don’t give up!” Whatever you do, don’t give up. Whatever the odds you face, the barriers blocking you and the financial difficulties that burden you down, don’t give up!

Don’t give up! Because if you do, all the effort you’ve put in and the sweat, the blood and the tears that you’ve spent, would go to waste. You are walking away from what you believed in. Success may be just round the corner, but you’ve now turned the other direction.

Thomas Edison said,

Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

I hope you are not the one who walks away from success.

This post concludes my three part series on My Story, which introduces myself to you in a more detailed manner. I very much hope that you have taken something back, think about it, set out an action plan for it, and take actual steps to realize your dreams. If you have, I’m glad for you. And if you want to share your story with me (us), do comment, write about it on your own blog, or just chat to me about it by email or phone.

Benefits of sharing your ideas and experience

I wrote in Part 2 of My Story that one of the things I learnt from my startup experience is getting the right people to know you. Yes, instead of trying hard to get to know people. And writing a blog is the easiest way to do so.

I was therefore very glad today when Kee Peow of Kaplen I.T. Services Private Limited sent me an email commending me on my blog, saying that my articles are "thought provoking and interesting". Thank you Kee Peow.

He said he was particularly drawn to my piece, Part 2 of My Story, especially on the point where I firmly believe that entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. He went on to add that entrepreneurship is also a lifestyle.

I think this word is powerful as well and it adds to the many meanings of entrepreneurship. Indeed, if entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, then what you do, guided by your belief, is a reflection of your attitude and living out your day-to-day life becomes a lifestyle which you are immersed in entirely.

Kee Peow went on to share with me (and us) about the importance of forming a good team to manage the business. He agreed with me that the team that the founder(s) of a company form, can indeed make or break the business.

Overall, I guess Kee Peow today shared with me, not just his experience, which comes from actually starting and running his business, but I felt also, his feelings about having gone through it all. Times of triumph and times of despair. I very much felt that my article must have tugged a heart string of his, and his email, a heart cord of mine.

I have today, met a friend and a good person to add to my network of business contacts, all from sharing my thoughts on a blog. Though one example, I was able to receive a valued response in a short period of time (2 days). Imagine how much more you would be able to learn from others because you are able to touch them yourself? Do you see the power of reaching out and yet drawing in the right people? What's stopping you to start sharing?

Pre-BlueSky 2006 Briefing cancelled

I just received an email from SPRING today that they will be cancelling a previously planned pre-BlueSky 2006 Festival briefing for entrepreneurs before the actual pitching to VCs during the BlueSky festival.

Well, this means that the piece I've prepared for this briefing will not be presented. But for those of you who's following my blog, that's ok, because I'll still continue with the series My Story, the long version of my original speech for the briefing session. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Part 3 coming up...

Coffee shop business talk with Lionel Yeo

I had tea with Lionel Yeo, founder of YeeOuch.com, this morning at my local neighbourhood coffee shop. Lionel is a young man with an extremely analytical mind and a big dream. This is one young man who has the intelligence and drive to make things happen. Watch out for him on the internet space in time to come!

We met up to chat about an idea of mine. Although I have everything inside my head, including how exactly the business will work, how the revenue will come, how the website will look like and how users will interact with one another, Lionel still offered me some great advice for my business.

Being a mathematician and someone who doesn't take a problem lying down, he showed how one without knowledge of computing can learn and achieve so much in such a relatively short period of time. I respect him for that.

And having had consulting experience for online businesses before, he clearly and confidently impressed me with his logical presentation of ideas and business. For those of you who wants to start up a company, do consult the advice from Lionel which I'm going to show below. Though generic, it's great questions you need to ask yourself when working on a startup.

1. What is the goal of your business?
I understood this as "What do you want to achieve with your business?" This is where you need to write out the mission and vision of your business clearly. Make no mistake here with the word clearly. You've got to write out exactly what it is and it has to be focused and specific. Just look at Google's mission statement:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I'd like to add something very important here. I wrote an article on business positioning two weeks ago. Because your mission and vision will guide your business in all that you do, you've got to be clear about "What Problem do you want to solve?", or how big your business is. In my article, I advocate, especially for online businesses, to grow big first fast and then lap up the rest, as opposed to growing a little by little.

2. Objectives
I understood this as the targets you set for your company's growth. Again, this has to be very specific and this time measurable. For example, you want to have 10,000 people signed up for your service in 3 months; and you want 80% of these users to interact with at least another user within 3 months; or you want to generate 20% of all Singapore's online traffic in one year's time. Some of these can further be sub-divided into smaller categories. For example, you might prefer that 70% of your users are working adults and the rest students.

To be specific about goal setting, I find that the time tested management tool of SMART works best here. Every goal that you set must be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Tangible

SMART works and I'm sure it can contribute significantly in the running of your business.

3. Resources
The above two points are about you asking yourself WHAT exactly you want to do. Having thought about what you want to do, the next is to find out what resources you have on hand to help you towards your business goals.

Think about the most obvious resources you have:
Yourself - and your brain, drive, determine, expertise, etc
Money - how much money do you have or can source
People - Who do you know who can help you or are willing to help you? This can also include businesses who may have an interest in what you're offering. How about the government and public services who also may have an interest?

Personally, I think these are all you need. What you need to do now is to muster these resources to help you in your quest.

4. Business Plan
So ok, you know what to do and the resources that can help you, you know need to know exactly what steps you need to take to achieve your goals. This is where having a business plan will greatly help you.

My post, Part 3 of My Story, will give you some excellent suggestions on how to approach a business plan.

But for now, you'll need to know what products and services are you offering to your users. What is it about these products and services that makes you different from the others? Even if you have no competitors, find some companies who offer similar products and services in other industries.

Next, you need to know how it will look like on your website. You need to know how each part links to the next, where each hyperlink will jump to and how you want to present your information.

If you're not a techie and you can't afford to spend big time to get a full site up, here's a great advice from Lionel. Get a web graphics designer to design an initial page of how your website will look like. You've got to pay but not much. The good thing is you can now show people how your idea will look like on a webpage and you can take your discussions / negotiations further. That's practical and can be easily done and it doesn't really cost much.


I believe these four points will be helpful to any one of you starting up a business. You can read more about my own experience and advice to starting businesses here. If you do need help in crystallizing your business concepts or ideas, you can always talk to Lionel or myself.

My Story, Part 2 (Speech for BlueSky 2006) - Lessons learnt

Lessons learnt from my experience

I learnt 3 lessons over the course of these few years.

1. Making the jump
2. Management team
3. Getting the right people to know you
   

Making the jump

I guess this is the WHY question. The first question which you have to ask yourself why you want to start up a business. To me, it’s more than just a first question. It’s the foundation question which will determine your career, if not your life. If you can’t answer truthfully to yourself why you want to start a business, then it’s likely that your determination will easily waiver when things go wrong.

If your resolve is not strong, the easy way is of course to fall back to work for others. Many people I talked to always tell me, “I’m giving it a try!” and “I can always find a job if I fail.” I mean, this is fine. But to me, entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go. Because if you do, perhaps starting businesses is not in your blood and not something you really want to pursue.

Making this decision is a commitment, just like a commitment to your religion, your family, and your spouse, even your boss. A promise that you will do your best, provide your best and be the best you can be in that role you play.

A commitment is about responsibility and accountability. I read this from Buck Rodgers from his book The IBM Way. In this journey that you are going to take, you are responsible to a lot of people whom you will affect or influence – your family, your colleagues, your customers, your partners, and the most important of all, yourself. Everything that you do affect these people one way or another. It is a power you have. As the saying goes, “Being powerful is about being responsible.” Bear this in mind as you walk this path.

At the same time, great responsibility comes with accountability. You must be held to what you believed in, what you promised and what you can deliver. Many people joined you in this path, because they believed what you believe in. They believed that you can give them a future that they want. Everyday, these people are watching you. And to take on this responsibility is to be fully accountable for what you do, however the minutest detail. Only by adopting this “Siamese Twins” principle can one truly run a great business. And businesses adopting these principles will last the test of time.

Building your management team

The next most important factor for success of any business is your management team. In this case, you, the founders of your company. This is what VCs will be looking for in any business they are going to invest in. It is true that they invest more in the people they trust and who can take the business far than the business idea.

Next, you got to ask yourselves this. What do you have as a team that is so compelling that VCs will throw money at you? Is it your shared vision, so strong and noble that everyone thinks it is a worthy cause. Just like Bill Gates, who dreamt of putting a PC in every family in the world.

Is it your experience? Were you all CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs of MNCs before, or were you the senior management of the same company and you worked closely together before? Or are you just a bunch of very good friends with the same ideals and dreams who grew up together?

Do you all have complementary skills – one with the vision, one has the ability to sell and another with the technical expertise?

In addition, the lesson I learnt from my own startup was that your team has to be geographically together. For us, we were puzzled as to why no one wants to fund us when no one said that our idea was bad. We only realized the real reason when one VC finally was kind enough to tell us that he doesn’t see the team would work well together when we are apart. Decisions cannot be made quickly, timely and decisively, especially at this most crucial period of the company. Thanks to him, we took his advice and pulled the plug on our baby.

Getting the right people to know you

The third factor for success really comes from you. As the saying goes, “In business, it’s not what you know, but who you know.” I’d like to one up this saying by changing it to “It’s not what you know, but who knows you.” Those who have done sales before would know this very well. The success rate of cold calls is perhaps 1-5%. And we always start from our warm market (which is exactly the who you know part). The limitation here is that you don’t really know more than 1000 people right? The more well-networked might know perhaps 3000-4000, but still there’s a limit. After that, you still have to run to the cold market, right?

Well, the answer is no. You can create what I call the “Celebrity Effect”. In today’s world of blogs, it’s easy to achieve it. Some very successful people in this space are Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi, Nick Pan, Bernard Leong, Justin Lee and Bjorn Lee. Are they big time businessmen? No. But do people know them? Yes. And if they want to set up businesses, is it easier to find the right business partners? Yes.

Of course, I’m not advocating you not do the necessary rounds of attending events, seminars, talks, forums, etc. But by sharing constructive views on your area of expertise, you might just have someone knocking your door for a business venture. Which is why, for me, this blog exists, and you’re reading it.

To do this, I suggest you become an expert / guru in your own area of knowledge. This means that you not only have to know what’s happening in your chosen specialty area but also you have to know what’s happening in the world and you give constructive opinions of issues in the world with your applied expert knowledge.

Take for example myself. This entrepreneur journey of mine. Because of all the research I have done, the comments and advice I have received from people and the experience I have gained by executing the business, I am now quite knowledgeable in the field of online education and online marketing. I know very well what works and what doesn’t. I believe I have foreseen what the future trend in online education is. I know what are the effective methods in reaching audiences in the online space. Some executives from a few local education company have even sought my opinion on some of the things they do. It’s just a pity I didn’t charge them consulting fees. So I’m now the online education and marketing expert. For those of you who’s thinking of doing education online or thinking to run an advertising campaign, you can talk to me and find out for yourself.

The advice I’ve given is what I’ve found important to me as I continue to travel this path. Although the path you’ve chosen or the business you’re doing may not be the same, I believe that there’s always something here you can take back, think about and put to action if you feel it’s worth a try.

Finally, I’d like to recommend a great resource to all of you. I found out that there is such a movie called Startup.com. It’s about the life and story of the founders of a startup during the dot com hey days and the successes, trials and tribulations they went through. I recommend this movie because it’s a great resource to remind ourselves why we are walking this path. If you’ve got to watch more than once, do so. I’m sure you’ll learn something new each time you watch it.

You can get it on Google Video here. Courtesy of Bjorn Lee for the pointer.

My Story, Part 1 (Speech for BlueSky 2006) - Introduction

This piece is a longer version of a speech that I will present at a pre-briefing for entrepreneurs who are pitching to VCs at this year’s BlueSky event. I thought to put it up on my blog because here you’ll get to know more about myself and what I’ve done and perhaps learn a few things from my experiences.

You can read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

“My name is Coen Ching. I was the co-founder and CEO of Cafelingoes.com, an online education service for education institutions, educators and students.

I’m supposed to talk about failure today. In particular, my failure. I hope we can all draw lessons from my experience and learn something from it. I will also share with you what I believe are the crucial things you should concentrate on taking this entrepreneurial route and walking it, and how you pitch your business plan. I hope you will be able to crystallize some concrete ideas today, ideas you will now put into action to move closer to your dream.

The primary aim of Cafelingoes is to provide educators to manage their workload, the homework / assignments that they give to their students. Students on the other hand can log in anytime, anywhere to complete their assignment. When implemented in a school environment, the benefits of free-time learning becomes possible and will so make the classroom hours more flexible. That is the third benefit, to education institutions.

When I saw the business plan by my partners, I saw this was the future. I felt the idea was so good that I quit my job as a Regional Financial Analyst at Allianz Dresdner Asset Management, an international fund management firm, to pursue my dream.

When I joined Cafelingoes, I was the only full-time person working on the startup. My two partners were still having a job with other companies. Worse, one of them was in Tokyo and the other in New York. I am the person responsible for developing the business, and one of my partners the technical platform. My main job was to seek funding for the startup.

We didn’t have the money to hire someone to do sales and marketing. Everything fell onto my shoulders. We didn’t manage to get any schools in Singapore. I suspect the reason could most likely be that our product is not something that the Singapore market needs. We tried to get someone to market in the US, but that didn’t work out as well.

After spending some time traveling and talking to people, my money was totally spent. Moreover, we didn’t get funded. So we finally decided to pull the plug last December.

What lessons did I learn? Follow my story in Part 2 here.

1. Making the jump
2. Building a management team
3. Getting the right people to know you
   

To be continued…