Tweet
Today I posted a story on Facebook. It set in 2018 and describes my downfall during the tough years of 2009-2011 and how I recover and make it big. This long post is more about positive mindset and visualisation more than anything else (I'm big on these things). However, as there is quite a bit of mention of our beloved airline, I thought I'd share it with you guys.
All stories up to today are true, and everything from today to 2018 is imagined. Please post a nice comment if you like it, but please do not flame me if it doesn't resonate with you.
---
8 December 2018. Jack adjusts himself in his seat. He is on Singapore Airlines SQ12, currently on the second segment of its journey between Singapore and Los Angeles. Peering out of the window from Seat 12A in the upper-deck Business Class cabin, he notices that it is pitch dark outside the aircraft. The aircraft had taken off three hours earlier from Tokyo-Narita Airport and Jack has just finished his dinner of chicken satay and lobster thermidor, a perennial favourite that Jack normally orders with the airline's Book-The-Cook service. It will be another seven hours before the giant Airbus A380 aircraft, affectionately known as the Whalejet, makes its final approach towards Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
Jack, a personal development and business trainer just starting to make his mark on the world stage, is on his way to New York City to speak to 1,000 young entrepreneurs during their 5-day Business Boot Camp, an annual event that brings together thousands of young business owners from North and South America. His close friend and business partner, Queenie, is already in New York to oversee the logistics and preparation of this mammoth event. On the way to the East Coast, Jack will stop by Irvine, California, for a day to present a USD100,000 cheque to the University of California Irvine Entrepreneurship Centre, as a token of support to the non-profit organisation for its efforts in encouraging entrepreneurship and grooming a new generation of new business owners among university undergraduates. Jack has always had a soft spot for young entrepreneurs, a group of risk-taking folks who are not content with staying in their comfort zones but looking to push themselves to new frontiers.
As Jack reminisced about his past, he realises that it was not too long ago when he was a young and passionate entrepreneur himself. Back in August 2007, as a Senior Market Analyst with a market research firm, he had found Vietnamese coffee during a business trip to Ho Chi Minh City. A rash young man who possessed no business skills and lacked guidance, he plunged into the treacherous world of business when he brought the aromatic product into Singapore. Two months after his wife quit her job following eight years in her company without any career progression, Jack did the same. This was the worst decision he had ever made in his life. Suddenly, two young adults leading a comfortable life were left without income and with a son to feed. One thing followed another and before long, the coffee business and subsequent businesses failed. The $130,000 that they had been given from the sale of their grandfather's property quickly dried up, and Jack's family found itself in deep financial trouble. The appearance of a Guardian Angel, his friend Queenie, who showed him his direction in career and life, together with the support of his wife, Suzanne, turned things around and by 2014, Jack had finally recovered.
Jack does not come from a privileged background, and was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Everything he enjoys today is the result of his hard work and his perseverance through rough times endured during the darkest moments of his life. And what he had gone through in the last decade or so was probably ten times more intensive than those endured by his younger business counterparts, as he had gone through the rigours of building his business and feeding his family while his three kids were very young and demanded attention. Unlike fellow real estate agents in their 20s, Jack did not have the advantage of youth and the luxury of lack of financial commitments. Unlike many of his agent friends, he did not have the support and encouragement of business owner parents. Trying to bring home the bacon while ensuring his kids’ education was not affected by the family’s problems was a constant struggle. Jack’s aim during those trying times was not bringing himself to the next level but basic survival. That Jack survived the ordeal at all is an achievement in itself.
Jack has certainly come a long way. Today, he heads a profitable company, Big Grey Things Pte Ltd, a licenced real estate agency specialised in Singapore industrial real estate. Having built a self-running system comprising of real estate agents and a support team running the backend operations, Jack is now able to free himself from the day-to-day rigours of deal-closing and spend time building alliances with developer partners and other real estate agencies. Big Grey Things has come a long way since November 2014, when it was founded with just 10 agents, most of whom had followed him from his last agency with which Jack was an associate. Today Jack leads a team of 115 capable real estate entrepreneurs (a term coined by Colin Tan, Singapore's #1 real estate coach), each with his or her own area of expertise and geographical specialisation. Almost a third of the agents are salaried employees who prefer the safety net of a basic income but are otherwise equally passionate and eager about their real estate duties as their self-employed counterparts. Nearly half of the total strength are recipients of the Real Estate Support Foundation (RESF), a charity set up by Jack and Queenie in June 2015 to aid people who are struggling to get ahead in life but due to various reasons, are unable to afford the fees to take the Real Estate Salesperson (RES) course and get themselves licenced. RESF is funded by donations from well-wishers, many of them successful business owners who wish to give back to society in a small way. While Jack is on the way to the United States, his team of 115 real estate entrepreneurs is undergoing team training by his friend and successful teambuilding coach, Kenneth Kwan, who runs his own training firm Deep Impact. Jack is slated to increase his agency's strength by another 30 agents, pending successful negotiations with Intero Real Estate Consultants, a smaller agency also involved in industrial real estate but which draws a part of its revenue from industrial building sales and JTC consultation projects. Jack learned very early in his career that while growing the company organically is sustainable, if the right opportunities present themselves, acquisition of companies with complimentary strengths can be a good strategic move.
Ever the successful business person with a strong entrepreneurial mindset, Jack never fails to attract like-minded people into his life. While waiting for his flight at at Narita's ANA Business Lounge, Jack had had the honour of making the acquaintance of Chin Yau Seng, Singapore Airline's Executive Vice President for Commercial. Chin had been in Tokyo with a ministerial team discussing Singapore's bilateral air services agreement with Japan and Singapore Airline's Fifth Freedom Rights out of Japan, before travelling on to Montreal for the annual International Air Transport Association (IATA) conference. Jack had noticed Chin back in 2013, when he was the airline's Acting Senior Vice-President for Sales and Marketing, following stints in various functions in the Singapore Airlines Group, including Athens Station Manager, SilkAir CEO and Tiger Airways CEO. Chin had been credited with turning the subsidiary companies around during harsh times and returning the parent company itself to profitability following its weak performance attributed to a slowing global travel market and the proliferation of budget airlines in the fiercely-competitive airline industry.
Jack has learnt to accept that humility is a virtue in life and business. When he first entered the business world in 2007, he was a proud and arrogant entrepreneur who regarded himself as superior to employees. However, he quickly learned that there are many lessons to be learned from the working group too, whether they are people in senior management making important strategic decisions or janitors carrying out their less glamourous work that keep people happy in the washrooms. Indeed, these days Jack values each encounter he has with people around him. And as far as the meeting with Chin goes, they seem to click well. Chin has indicated he will consider sending his staff to join The Bread Project, a charity initiative started by Big Grey Things which sees unsold bread collected from bakeries around the island and delivered to orphanages. The Bread Project has its roots in Food From The Heart, a similar project that was founded by Dave Lau of ROOF Real Estate Group, with which Jack was a volunteer from 2011 to 2013.
(To be continued...)
All stories up to today are true, and everything from today to 2018 is imagined. Please post a nice comment if you like it, but please do not flame me if it doesn't resonate with you.
---
8 December 2018. Jack adjusts himself in his seat. He is on Singapore Airlines SQ12, currently on the second segment of its journey between Singapore and Los Angeles. Peering out of the window from Seat 12A in the upper-deck Business Class cabin, he notices that it is pitch dark outside the aircraft. The aircraft had taken off three hours earlier from Tokyo-Narita Airport and Jack has just finished his dinner of chicken satay and lobster thermidor, a perennial favourite that Jack normally orders with the airline's Book-The-Cook service. It will be another seven hours before the giant Airbus A380 aircraft, affectionately known as the Whalejet, makes its final approach towards Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
Jack, a personal development and business trainer just starting to make his mark on the world stage, is on his way to New York City to speak to 1,000 young entrepreneurs during their 5-day Business Boot Camp, an annual event that brings together thousands of young business owners from North and South America. His close friend and business partner, Queenie, is already in New York to oversee the logistics and preparation of this mammoth event. On the way to the East Coast, Jack will stop by Irvine, California, for a day to present a USD100,000 cheque to the University of California Irvine Entrepreneurship Centre, as a token of support to the non-profit organisation for its efforts in encouraging entrepreneurship and grooming a new generation of new business owners among university undergraduates. Jack has always had a soft spot for young entrepreneurs, a group of risk-taking folks who are not content with staying in their comfort zones but looking to push themselves to new frontiers.
As Jack reminisced about his past, he realises that it was not too long ago when he was a young and passionate entrepreneur himself. Back in August 2007, as a Senior Market Analyst with a market research firm, he had found Vietnamese coffee during a business trip to Ho Chi Minh City. A rash young man who possessed no business skills and lacked guidance, he plunged into the treacherous world of business when he brought the aromatic product into Singapore. Two months after his wife quit her job following eight years in her company without any career progression, Jack did the same. This was the worst decision he had ever made in his life. Suddenly, two young adults leading a comfortable life were left without income and with a son to feed. One thing followed another and before long, the coffee business and subsequent businesses failed. The $130,000 that they had been given from the sale of their grandfather's property quickly dried up, and Jack's family found itself in deep financial trouble. The appearance of a Guardian Angel, his friend Queenie, who showed him his direction in career and life, together with the support of his wife, Suzanne, turned things around and by 2014, Jack had finally recovered.
Jack does not come from a privileged background, and was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Everything he enjoys today is the result of his hard work and his perseverance through rough times endured during the darkest moments of his life. And what he had gone through in the last decade or so was probably ten times more intensive than those endured by his younger business counterparts, as he had gone through the rigours of building his business and feeding his family while his three kids were very young and demanded attention. Unlike fellow real estate agents in their 20s, Jack did not have the advantage of youth and the luxury of lack of financial commitments. Unlike many of his agent friends, he did not have the support and encouragement of business owner parents. Trying to bring home the bacon while ensuring his kids’ education was not affected by the family’s problems was a constant struggle. Jack’s aim during those trying times was not bringing himself to the next level but basic survival. That Jack survived the ordeal at all is an achievement in itself.
Jack has certainly come a long way. Today, he heads a profitable company, Big Grey Things Pte Ltd, a licenced real estate agency specialised in Singapore industrial real estate. Having built a self-running system comprising of real estate agents and a support team running the backend operations, Jack is now able to free himself from the day-to-day rigours of deal-closing and spend time building alliances with developer partners and other real estate agencies. Big Grey Things has come a long way since November 2014, when it was founded with just 10 agents, most of whom had followed him from his last agency with which Jack was an associate. Today Jack leads a team of 115 capable real estate entrepreneurs (a term coined by Colin Tan, Singapore's #1 real estate coach), each with his or her own area of expertise and geographical specialisation. Almost a third of the agents are salaried employees who prefer the safety net of a basic income but are otherwise equally passionate and eager about their real estate duties as their self-employed counterparts. Nearly half of the total strength are recipients of the Real Estate Support Foundation (RESF), a charity set up by Jack and Queenie in June 2015 to aid people who are struggling to get ahead in life but due to various reasons, are unable to afford the fees to take the Real Estate Salesperson (RES) course and get themselves licenced. RESF is funded by donations from well-wishers, many of them successful business owners who wish to give back to society in a small way. While Jack is on the way to the United States, his team of 115 real estate entrepreneurs is undergoing team training by his friend and successful teambuilding coach, Kenneth Kwan, who runs his own training firm Deep Impact. Jack is slated to increase his agency's strength by another 30 agents, pending successful negotiations with Intero Real Estate Consultants, a smaller agency also involved in industrial real estate but which draws a part of its revenue from industrial building sales and JTC consultation projects. Jack learned very early in his career that while growing the company organically is sustainable, if the right opportunities present themselves, acquisition of companies with complimentary strengths can be a good strategic move.
Ever the successful business person with a strong entrepreneurial mindset, Jack never fails to attract like-minded people into his life. While waiting for his flight at at Narita's ANA Business Lounge, Jack had had the honour of making the acquaintance of Chin Yau Seng, Singapore Airline's Executive Vice President for Commercial. Chin had been in Tokyo with a ministerial team discussing Singapore's bilateral air services agreement with Japan and Singapore Airline's Fifth Freedom Rights out of Japan, before travelling on to Montreal for the annual International Air Transport Association (IATA) conference. Jack had noticed Chin back in 2013, when he was the airline's Acting Senior Vice-President for Sales and Marketing, following stints in various functions in the Singapore Airlines Group, including Athens Station Manager, SilkAir CEO and Tiger Airways CEO. Chin had been credited with turning the subsidiary companies around during harsh times and returning the parent company itself to profitability following its weak performance attributed to a slowing global travel market and the proliferation of budget airlines in the fiercely-competitive airline industry.
Jack has learnt to accept that humility is a virtue in life and business. When he first entered the business world in 2007, he was a proud and arrogant entrepreneur who regarded himself as superior to employees. However, he quickly learned that there are many lessons to be learned from the working group too, whether they are people in senior management making important strategic decisions or janitors carrying out their less glamourous work that keep people happy in the washrooms. Indeed, these days Jack values each encounter he has with people around him. And as far as the meeting with Chin goes, they seem to click well. Chin has indicated he will consider sending his staff to join The Bread Project, a charity initiative started by Big Grey Things which sees unsold bread collected from bakeries around the island and delivered to orphanages. The Bread Project has its roots in Food From The Heart, a similar project that was founded by Dave Lau of ROOF Real Estate Group, with which Jack was a volunteer from 2011 to 2013.
(To be continued...)
Comment