Wai Hong Fong | Accidental Entrepreneur, Gamer, Chieftain @ StoreHub

Run a Fleet, Not a Chatbot

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Last week Claude Code quietly shipped cross-session messaging (v2.1.224, on by default). Every session, meaning one open conversation in one terminal tab with its own working memory, can now see the other sessions on the same machine by name and send them messages.

Three things make this bigger than it sounds. Sessions find each other by name and talk asynchronously: no setup, no copy-pasting context between tabs. Only a short summary travels between them, never the full memory, which keeps it cheap; and a peer session cannot approve or escalate anything, which keeps it safe. And all the context trapped in idle tabs becomes reachable. I had 46 idle sessions open. Overnight, they went from 46 separate amnesiacs to an addressable team.

One weekend, one laptop

The morning it landed, at 10:20, I messaged 3 of my 46 idle sessions. Two minutes later: a full status picture, zero tabs opened, and 2 to-dos quietly waiting on me that I would never have found.

The best reply came from a session I messaged by mistake. "Not mine," it said, then found whose work it was and fixed an error in my tracker, unprompted. They behaved like colleagues, not databases.

By 11:35 one lead session was running 5 deck builds in parallel; by 9pm it had verified every deck with file hashes and click-tests, closed the program, and released its crew. Over the weekend, 19 sessions closed 110 pieces of work on this laptop. I mostly just talked to 3 of them.

Work flows down, assigned by message. Only verdicts flow up: verified, or blocked. My whole attention stops at three leads.

Isn't this just subagents?

No, and the difference is the whole point. Subagents are spawned blank, live inside one conversation, and vanish when the task ends. Sessions already hold their own accumulated context, run under their own permissions, and are still there tomorrow, addressable by anyone.

Subagents are temps you hire for an afternoon. This is your standing team learning to talk.

Three ways to try it tonight

The inverse standup. Ask every session: "what are you quietly waiting on ME for?" The to-dos you didn't know you had. Mine surfaced two.

The self-briefing handoff. Open a fresh session and say: "get the handoff from the session that's been running this." The old session briefs the new one directly. I never copy-paste context between chats again.

The fleet renamer. "Rename every live session to what it's actually working on." Your window list becomes an org chart.

One habit keeps all of this cheap: check on a session by reading its log, which is free. A message wakes the session's entire memory, so speak only to hand over work, make a call, or escalate. Never message all 46 to ask how it's going.

The shift

The unit of AI work stops being "my conversation" and becomes "my team of sessions." Prompting was the skill of 2024; orchestration is the skill now.

Run a fleet, not a chatbot.

Stop Planning For University

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere in your house there's a plan. The fund, the tuition schedule, the shortlist of universities your kid might reach if the grades hold. Before you spend another year on it, let me tell you what it felt like to be the kid inside one.

In 1999 I was 13, on an ASEAN scholarship in Singapore. But I kept coming in last or second last in class. As a scholar, that was the ultimate taboo.

Astray

As far as I remember, here's what I actually studied in secondary school: StarCraft, Counter-Strike, Diablo, MTG, chess, robots, and computers themselves. It might sound like a lot of fun, but it wasn't just play. It was strategy, resource management, losing and iterating under pressure. It was the hardest thinking I did that decade, and none of it counted in the eyes of the system.

The school report cards were bad enough that I once forged my mother's signature on one semester. I had no future in crime: I can't draw to save my life, and the signature came out looking like a kid's best guess at his mother's handwriting. It worked anyway. Nobody was looking closely at either of us. I still remember picking up that report card years later and laughing about it.

The funny thing is, the forgery was mostly unnecessary. My parents let me go astray. That sentence took me 30 years to recognize as the luckiest one in my life. They saw the report cards. They didn't love them. But my mother was a programmer, and whatever she felt about my grades, she never declared war on my obsessions. The games stayed. The computers stayed.

The school saw it differently. The hostel charged SGD$5 an hour for computer time (1999 money), so I hacked the cash-card system to freeze the billing clock and taught my whole floor to do it. We played StarCraft for hours, free. The IT administrator kept patching it, and I kept cracking it, until he gave up and reported me to the matron, who threatened to report me to the Ministry of Education and cancel my scholarship. In the school's ledger, the most educational thing I did that year was a close shave with expulsion.

The one class that got through

One class reached me anyway. Literature. We studied To Kill a Mockingbird, and somewhere in it I picked up the line I still carry: put yourself in someone else's shoes and walk around in them. Atticus said skin, not shoes, but this is how it wore into me. I wrote my literature essays like they mattered, because to me they did. It was the one subject where the question was never what the model answer was. It was what you saw.

Then the O-levels came. 4 essays, 25 marks each. I walked out of that exam feeling so good, but I had numbered my answers wrongly, and the machine killed a whole essay for it. 52 out of 100. C6. The one subject I loved, the one teacher I was genuinely sad to disappoint, my best work. Graded like a parking ticket.

Hold that scene for a second. The love of learning was standing right in front of the machine, and the machine couldn't see it. It was never built to.

That's the system, everywhere I look in this region. Rote from the first year to the last. Model answers memorized, past-year papers drilled, tuition stacked on top of school like a second shift, rankings on the wall, and every childhood question slowly replaced by the only one that pays: will this be in the exam?

That question is the sound of curiosity dying.

I did try to study. The memorising was just a bigger struggle for me than for my friends, and my friends and my wife will tell you I'm probably neurodivergent. The machine is tuned for one kind of brain and discards every other kind as junk. Not because teachers are villains. Because the machine is built to maximize exactly one output, exam performance, and it'll happily pay for it by killing the love of learning.

The trade just became fatal

For 100 years that trade was just sad. In the age of AI it's fatal.

Not long ago a friend told me, half proud, that the tuition for her kid had started. Age 5. The race starts early, everyone does it, it would be irresponsible not to. I laughed, and then I said it straight: you're training your kid in skills the world has already stopped paying for.

Look at what exams measure: recall, compliance, speed to the single right answer. Now look at what AI just made free: recall, compliance, speed to the single right answer. Why would you spend a childhood training a human to do what a machine is already 10 times better at? The kid who wins the whole race, straight As into the good university, graduates into an economy that automated the model answers. And then stands there, waiting for instructions that never come.

I run a company, so I'll say this part plainly. I hire people, and these days I also hire AI. I'm never again hiring a person for the things the AI does better. I'm hiring for exactly the things it can't do. That's where the whole job market is going, for everyone's kid.

In the age of AI, a child who does not love learning is not under-prepared. They are redundant.

What's left is the one thing the exam never measured: whether you keep learning when nobody is grading you. I've turned 40 this year, and I'm still going obsessively deep: coffee extraction, new games, and running my whole working life through an org of AI agents that didn't exist 18 months ago. Nobody assigned any of it. That appetite is the whole qualification now. School didn't give it to me. I got it from everything school graded as failure.

The smaller, harder plan

So here's what I say now at that dinner table, out loud. Stop planning for university. Not because university is worthless, but because the plan is. The plan optimizes your kid for the machine, the machine optimizes them for exams, and the exams are training them for the one job AI already took.

The plan worth making is smaller and harder. Foundations, fine: kids should read, count, and know how the world works. Past that, breadth beats drilling, wandering across domains beats mastering a syllabus, and an obsession is an asset, not a symptom. Watch what your kid can't stop doing, and guard it like it's the college fund. Mine was games and computers, and it was worth more than the scholarship it nearly cost me.

My parents never had a plan. They had nerve. They let a failing scholarship kid keep his obsessions, and every good thing in my life came out of exactly the hours the report card refused to count. The failing was the education.

ASEAN scholarship: a Singapore government scholarship that places students from neighboring countries in Singapore secondary schools; losing it generally means going home. O-levels: the national exams at 16; grades run A1 (best) to F9, and a C6 sits at roughly 50-54 marks. The Atticus Finch line as written: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960.

WordPress Is Dead

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1999, GeoCities sorted the web into neighborhoods, and it filed me under Area51, the district for science fiction. I used my plot of science-fiction real estate to publish an About Me page. It had a guestbook nobody signed, a hit counter I inflated myself, and an Under Construction GIF that told the truth: it was never finished. I built it by hand, tag by tag, in raw HTML. I was ridiculously proud of it.

That page is long gone. But stay with me for the next thirty years of website migrations, because the story ends somewhere I did not expect: exactly where it started.

The long way home

First I was a reader. The blogspot era washed over me and I never owned one; I just lurked in other people's comment sections. I got a Tumblr because everyone alive at the time got a Tumblr, and I cannot tell you a single thing I posted on it. I tried Medium and gave up within weeks. Platforms I visited. Never homes.

In 2010 I did the serious thing: my own domain, self-hosted WordPress, a proper blog. A database, an admin panel, themes, plugins. Everything I have written since lives at that domain, and that part never changed. Everything underneath it did.

WordPress was a real home. Real homes demand tending. The tending had a rhythm: log in, find the orange banner, update the plugins before one of them became the hole somebody crawls in through. Update the theme. Update WordPress itself. Then update the plugins the update broke. None of this was writing. All of it was mandatory.

Around 2019 I moved to Ghost, the minimalist blogging platform built on Node.js, which at the time was the cool new kid. Lighter, cleaner, nothing but writing. It was better. It was also a server in a data center that I paid twenty-odd dollars a month to babysit: version upgrades, SSL renewals, a database backup I never once tested. The tending had not gone away. It had moved.

Five platforms, one motive. Every migration I ever made was chasing the same thing: less time tending the website, more time writing on it. No platform ever delivered. Each one just relocated the chores.

The webmaster comes back

This month I moved the site one more time, and the destination was familiar. waihongfong.com is now a folder of files in a git repository. Posts are plain text. The pages are static HTML, built and pushed to the edge of the internet. The hosting bill is zero dollars. Publishing looks like this:

$ git push
$ npm run deploy
  ✓ share cards generated (54 posts)
  ✓ built in 1.2s
  ✓ deployed to waihongfong.com

On paper that is the same setup as 1999: hand me a folder of HTML files and put them on the internet. The difference is that in 1999 the folder was tended by a teenager with a book about HTML, and in 2026 it is tended by an AI.

I did not replace WordPress with a better product. I replaced it with a colleague.

The colleague is Claude Code, Anthropic's AI agent that lives in the terminal. It is the webmaster now. When I publish, it generates the share card, builds the site, deploys it, then loads the live page and checks the layout at phone width before telling me we are done. When a link breaks, I do not search for a plugin; I type "the link on the homepage is broken" and it is fixed and deployed before I finish my coffee. When I migrated sixteen years of posts off Ghost, the colleague did the migration, found the dead images, and kept a log of the seven it could not save.

Here is the part I find funny. In 1999, every page on the internet had a line at the bottom: "email the webmaster." Webmaster was a real job, and then the CMS era killed the title and we all laughed at the word. But the job never left. I was doing it unpaid at midnight every time WordPress showed me the orange banner. The job did not disappear until this year, when it finally got automated. The webmaster is back. It just is not human.

Own your words

There is a darker thread running through those thirty years.

GeoCities closed in October 2009 and deleted roughly 38 million pages, mine included. The first things most of my generation ever built on the internet are simply gone. Tumblr went the other way: Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for it in 2013, and six years later it was sold for about $3 million to Automattic, the company behind WordPress. The must-have platform of its decade lost 99.7 percent of its value, and the dying bought the dead.

My fifty-four posts crossed four platforms and arrived intact. Not because any platform protected them, but because I owned them the whole way: my domain, my files, my export the moment things got weird. Now that ownership is literal. The repository is the website. A platform is a landlord. A folder of files is a freehold.

If you built one of those hand-rolled GeoCities pages, your instinct back then was correct, and the industry spent twenty-five years talking you out of it. And if your writing currently lives on someone else's platform, the move home is no longer a lost weekend of exports and regret: hand the migration to an AI agent and it is an afternoon. The bookkeeping is delegable now. The ownership is not.

This essay went live with one git push. The colleague generated the card, checked the layout, and confirmed the page resolves. Nobody updated a plugin.

WordPress is not dead because something better came along. It is dead because its job is.

GeoCities: acquired by Yahoo in 1999 for $3.57 billion in stock; shut down October 2009, deleting roughly 38 million pages. Tumblr: acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion (2013), sold to Automattic for about $3 million (2019). Ghost: open-source blogging platform (2013), founded by a former WordPress UI lead. Claude Code: Anthropic's AI coding agent, operated from the terminal. This site's stack, for whoever asked: Astro + Markdown in a git repository, deployed to Cloudflare Workers, $0/month.

I Was a Bad Philosophy Student

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I was the geeky kid who was obviously supposed to study computer science. I didn't. I studied History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) instead, and for most of the two decades since, I quietly filed that decision under "mistakes I got away with." I went on to co-found a software company. I wrote a third of the original product myself. The degree, I assumed, was decoration.

Then The Economist published this chart.

US graduates surveyed six months after graduation, 2022–24. Each circle is a field of study, sized by number of graduates. Adapted from The Economist, “Is AI putting graduates out of work?” (May 2026); “Forget Python, study Plato” is the original chart’s headline. Data: Anthropic; National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Look at where computer science sits: among the most exposed to AI, with the share of new graduates in full-time work down roughly nine points in two years. Now find philosophy: top left, above the zero line. The majors least exposed to AI barely moved. The most exposed fell off a cliff on average (not every bubble: accounting sits at high exposure and is fine), and The Economist's time series dates the drop to after ChatGPT's launch. Yes, 2022-24 was also the rate-hike hiring crunch, but the crunch hit everyone; the slope against AI exposure is the part the rate cycle can't explain.

My first reaction was a laugh. My second was more uncomfortable, because the chart is not really saying "humanities won." It is saying something more precise: the vocational skill got commoditized and the meta-skill didn't. Writing Python was always the automatable layer. Reasoning about why you'd build the thing, what counts as true, and where a system's assumptions break: all of that lives one layer up from the code. That is the layer AI is pushing everyone into. And that, almost embarrassingly, is what History and Philosophy of Science drills.

First, a confession

I was not a good student. I skated the essays. I did not leave university with Popper and Kuhn lovingly annotated on my shelf. If the value of my degree had been the grades or the content, I would have graduated with nothing.

The value was the mode of thinking, and the strange thing about modes of thinking is that they seep in even when you're coasting. Sit in enough seminars where the only question that matters is "how do you know that's true?" and the question installs itself. It waited twenty years for its moment.

Everyone treats "how do I become a strong AI player" as a tooling question. Which model, which prompt, which agent framework. It is not a tooling question. It is an epistemics question.

Epistemics just means the study of how you know what's true. AI produces infinite fluent plausibility. It will hand you a confident answer on anything, beautifully structured, entirely wrong some meaningful fraction of the time. The scarce skill of this decade is not generating output. Generation is now free. The scarce skill is telling confident-sounding from correct, at speed and at scale. There is an entire academic discipline about exactly that problem, and it has been sitting in the course catalogue the whole time, mislabeled as useless.

Popper, twenty years late

I run StoreHub AI-first. My actual day is spent directing fleets of AI agents: they draft, build, analyze, and review, and my job is to decide what to trust. Somewhere along the way I noticed that the operating system I'd built for this was not engineering doctrine. It was falsificationism with a command line.

Karl Popper, the philosopher of how science catches its own errors, had one core move: a claim is only as strong as the test that could break it. In my setup, that stopped being seminar material and became literal, executable text. Every piece of work an agent claims is "done" must ship with its proof in the same turn: the test that passed, the render that was checked, the number reconciled against a second source. No proof, not done.

When agents report findings, I spawn other agents whose only job is to refute them; a finding survives by resisting refutation, not by sounding right. When I change the instruction files that govern how my agents behave, I don't ship the change because the new wording reads better. I run the old rules and the new rules against the same tasks and keep whichever one actually behaves better. A rule earns its place by surviving attempts to kill it.

None of that came from a software textbook. It is a philosophy of science exam answer, wearing a terminal.

Thomas Kuhn, the historian of how science changes its mind, supplied the other half. His account of paradigm shifts is a four-beat story: an anomaly shows up, the incumbents explain it away, the anomalies pile up, and then the whole framework flips at once. Afterwards, everyone pretends they saw it coming. If you want a description of how established companies are responding to AI right now, that is it, beat for beat. Most people are still doing what Kuhn called normal science: working harder inside the old paradigm. The operators winning right now are the ones treating the anomaly as the signal.

What you can actually train

The honest version of my story is not "I chose wisely at 20." I didn't. I chose awkwardly, coasted, felt dumb about it, and got the benefit anyway because thirteen years of running a company forced the rigor in. You don't need the degree, and you certainly don't need to be good at it. The muscles are trainable directly, and here is what changed: they used to cost willpower, which is why almost nobody kept them up. Now you can delegate the bookkeeping to the machine and keep only the judgment. Three moves:

Move 1 · Popper

Ask every AI answer for its falsifier

Don't run the checks yourself. Make the AI name what would prove its own answer wrong, then go run that check before reporting back. An answer that can't state its falsifier is plausibility, not knowledge. Wire it into the workflow as a standing rule, so "done" always arrives holding its proof and you never have to remember to ask.

Move 2 · Calibration

Have the AI keep your decision journal

Not a notebook. Since your real calls increasingly happen in conversation with AI anyway, instruct it to log each one as it happens: the claim, your prediction, the one thing that would prove you wrong, a review date. Then have it score the record monthly and surface where your confidence ran ahead of your hit rate. The journal keeps itself; you just read the scorecard. It is the seminar question pointed at your own track record.

Move 3 · Kuhn

Steelman the option you're rejecting

Before committing to a decision, spawn an agent whose only job is to argue for the path you're about to decline, as hard as it can. This used to be an exercise in self-discipline; now it costs one prompt and two minutes. It forces you to look at the evidence your current paradigm is quietly explaining away, which makes it the cheapest disruption radar available.

The bad student's consolation

If you're watching AI eat the skill you spent years mastering, the chart above reads as a threat. I'd offer a different reading. The layer that got automated was always the automatable layer. What's left over is the part that was always the actual job: deciding what's true, noticing when the framework is breaking, and knowing where your model of the world stops working. Those muscles don't care what your degree says. They care whether you train them.

The 20-year-old who felt dumb didn't waste the degree. He just hadn't installed the rigor yet. Twenty years later, with real decisions to practice on and machines generating plausibility by the ton, the excuse is gone.

So the question isn't whether you studied Plato. It's whether you can tell confident from correct.

Chart adapted from The Economist, "Is AI putting graduates out of work?" (May 2026); "Forget Python, study Plato" is the original chart's headline. Fields most exposed to AI saw full-time employment among recent US graduates fall 6.6 percentage points from 2022 to 2024, against 1.5 points for the least exposed. HPS: History and Philosophy of Science, the academic field studying how scientific knowledge is made, tested, and overturned (Popper on falsification, Kuhn on paradigm shifts).

Four Years in the Trenches: Why I'm Writing Again

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. It's been quiet here. Like, really quiet. My last post was sometime back in the whirlwind of 2020 – back when 'pivot' became everyone's least favorite word and we were all figuring things out on the fly.

So, where have I been for the last four years?

Short answer: in the trenches. Building. Mostly StoreHub.

Turns out, scaling a tech company across Southeast Asia, especially navigating a global pandemic (remember launching Beep Delivery in basically 48 hours? Yeah, that was wild), doesn't leave much headspace for crafting blog posts. My focus was squarely on execution – keeping the lights on, supporting our team, and helping our 17,000+ merchants survive and adapt. Because, like I keep saying, ideas are cheap; it's the relentless grind of making things work that truly matters.

But lately, I've felt the itch to share again. The founder journey is... a lot. It's messy. It’s full of unexpected wins, brutal lessons, moments of clarity, and days where you question everything. Reflecting on that, and seeing the state of tech and business in SEA today, feels important.

So, what can you expect from this rebooted space?

Honestly, it’s still going to be about the same core things that drive me, the stuff that genuinely keeps me up at night or gets me fired up:

The messy reality of building and scaling a startup in Southeast Asia. No sugar-coating.
Fighting bad tech and building tools that actually solve real pain for the small guys.
Building company culture brick by brick, deliberately. (Still learning here!)
Lessons learned from the daily grind, the failures, and maybe even the occasional insight gleaned from a late-night gaming session.

I recently dug up a backup of all my old writings. It was… interesting. Some ideas surprisingly hold up, others make me cringe slightly. Maybe I'll revisit some of those old threads here eventually, see how things look with fresh eyes and a few more scars.

Anyway, consider the dust officially blown off the keyboard. I'm aiming to share thoughts, reflections, and hard-won lessons more regularly again. Not promising a rigid schedule, but the intent is there.

Hope you'll stick around. Feel free to drop a comment below – what's on your mind? What problems are you trying to solve right now?

Let's get back to building.

Anti Fragile - Local Edition

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In these tough times, I hear a lot of people talking about grit and resilience. That it's important to hang in there and tough it out.

But I think it takes more than toughness to thrive in crisis.

It takes being Anti-fragile.

To explain this concept, imagine a glass bottle falling on the floor. It breaks. It's fragile.

A piece of rock falls on the same floor. It doesn't break. Is it anti-fragile?

No.

The opposite of fragile - breaking easily, is not that you don't break when force is applied, but that you get better when pressured.

Nassim Taleb describes this concept in a great book(Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder) which I think is particularly important in these times. "Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better"

Perhaps a more local example will help us understand this concept.

A piece of roti-canai dough is pounded on over and over and over again. With each knead, and pound the dough gets better and better. Finally it's flipped and stretched out, over and over again as thinly as possible until you're left with the lightest, tastiest dish that's a favourite amongst Malaysians.

Roti Canai is a local example of anti-fragile.

So the next time you feel the pain of the pounding or stretching process, consider how these could affect you the way it affects Roti Canai - making you better and better with every single flip/stretch. Don't just be a rock. Be like Roti Canai.

Our one short life

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"I love you guys"

An unexpected message shot across my phone screen from a close friend. What sparked the random expression of a deep emotion, I wondered.

"A close relative just got cancer. Brain. Stage 4"

My heart sank.

Feelings of injustice and sadness overwhelmed me. What else can you feel, when a 45 year old is handed a card like this.

2020 has been a year of many such reminders.

Kobe, 41. Chadwick, 43.

Some would make a case for living unabashedly and with no regrets - the YOLO movement.

Others would remind us of the importance of thoughtful, measured planning.

Is there a way to walk the tightrope of life holding both of these in perfect balance?

Would we find ourselves content living our one short life without an episode 2 lingering at the end of the white light?

Perhaps we've gotten our spirituality wrong.

Perhaps our beliefs were never meant to give us all the answers.

Perhaps they were always meant to simply help us walk each step confidently and with abandon, even as we wrestle with these impossible questions in our one short life.

Sharpie

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When most of us talk about permanent markers, we rarely describe them as such. We simply call them Sharpies.

There comes a point where your brand is synonymous with the action/group of things it represents.

Google
Bubblewrap
Jetski
Tupperware
Post its
Rollerblade
Yoyo

All these brands started out as company names that became so popular in mainstream culture that they ended up being the very definition of the act/product they represent.

But they didn't get there without any effort.

I've used many other permanent markers before. But they are far inferior to the Sharpie.

They are not as reliable.
They dry out too fast.
They don't feel as comfortable in the hands.
They're too thick or too thin.
They're just not as excellent as Sharpie..

What are you doing to become more reliable, comfortable, excellent today?

The misunderstood story of the Hare vs Tortoise

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We all know the classic story.

Hare vs Tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race.

But that's not what really happens here.

The emphasis on slowness and steadiness camouflages the true lesson within: focus.

I love how this video shows the hare getting distracted by the spotlight and its surroundings while the tortoise zeroes in on its goal.

How often do we find ourselves distracted in our pursuits only to find that the one who wins simply didn't give up on that one thing.

It's not about how fast or slow or steady or unsteady.

It's really about a relentless pursuit of one thing that gets us across the finish line.

Knowing your season

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Competitive gamers know that winning a game requires us to understand the seasons and match our actions accordingly.

In most games, it's as simple as the early, mid and late phases.

Each of these phases would require a different playbook - a set of rules and principles which help you build an advantage over your opponents.

By applying the right mindset and executing according to the season, you eventually build enough of an advantage to drive forward a victory.

In business, or life, this same principle works.

But one big difference is that it's much harder to tell the season outside of the simpler confines of a game. There's no timer. No hero levelling system. No bounties and towers and objectives to reference.

But the signs are there. When we see the leaves turn yellow. When the wind starts to feel that slight bit colder. When the sun sets that little bit earlier.

It's probably why listening is one of our most valuable skills. Or simply our ability to observe and process little details in our surroundings. But for those of us that master even portions of this, we find success comes somewhat predictably in those portions of life.

Winning and patience

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We often believe that winning
Requires us to take immediate action
And a follow up with many steps
We think by doing more
The needle moves faster and further
Until we hit the mark

But perhaps sometimes
Winning is simply waiting
For when the shot's been taken
And all we need is a little patience

Why believing matters

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We dream bigger
We act bolder
We work harder
We get out of bed easier
We speak with more conviction
We can't help but share with everyone
We are more patient

For the most important things in life, believing really matters.

Because what we believe is what we'll be living.

2020 - it's not easy, but could it be the best?

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

2020 hasn't been easy
We've been challenged to our limits
Some of us have thrived
While others have tilted
But this is a needful season
The air is getting cleaner
The forests less ravaged
Silly ideas for startups thrown away
The return to fundamentals of driving value
Tech adoption by the boomers - who are now evangelists
We stay home - and have more time to reflect
And these moments are what make us better
As human beings and as caretakers of our planet
2020, it hasn't been easy, but could this be our best year yet?

Best ... ever

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The most glorious of days
Often linger around the corner
In the most unexpected ways
You might just discover
A happy happy day
The best steak ever

A wagyu 6+ at RM120 that happens to be the best steak ever? Love it when I discover these rare finds.

What has been your most unexpected best ... ever recently?

Getting Good is NOT an Accident

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A close friend and colleague(Greg) recently wrote about learning, and how most of us think that the act of consuming content makes us better each day(full post here - def check it out, it's great).

TLDR; it doesn't.

I've been a gamer all my life. And have competed in all kinds of tournaments. And one thing's clear, we don't get good from just playing. We get good from all the time spent watching our replays, analysing our games, getting coached. And the best competitors just do it more diligently than everyone else who simply plays mindlessly.

I've never been that good at chess, but I grew up around some really strong national players in Singapore during secondary school. So I got really excited when I discovered a cool feature on chess.com recently(few days ago). There is a sophisticated system that provides a detailed post-game analysis on every move - with an ELO/ranking that exceeds grandmasters. It tells you which of your or your opponent's moves are 'best', 'okay' or plain 'bad'. By analysing every game, and every opening, and committing to not repeating the same mistake in the same situation the next time it occurs, the improvements happened really quickly. It's like the perfect coach that never tires, never falters and gives world-class advice every single time.

Now how do I do this for everything else in life?

Popular wisdom is overrated

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Follow your passion rarely lasts.
Never give up doesn’t apply to everything.
You can be anything you want as long as you believe/work hard enough is simply false.

The truth is
Passion is a great starter, but success is what keeps us going.
There are some things we should give up, fast. Dysfunctional relationships, Negative people, Insecurities.
Our genetics, geography, family affluence are greater predictors of where we end up - not everyone can become a Roger Federer or Lebron James just because we want to.

Too confronting?
Truth is a much stronger foundation to build meaningful lives on.

Choosing

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Our best choices
In dire circumstances
Don’t come from absolute strength
But rather a willingness to walk
In spite of the absolute certainty
Of the pain of failure
Because of the joy and hope of success

Updated Top 20 tools to hack and grow a SaaS business - 500 Growth Series

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday's 500 Growth Series was really fun. I shared on the Top 20 Tools to Hack and Grow a SaaS business. You can find the full video recording here:

https://www.facebook.com/500durians/videos/1200933713355377/

Some of you guys have requested for me to share the slides so I’ve put them up on slideshare here.

If you have other questions, feel free to connect with me on twitter or reach me on linkedin

Top 20 tools I use to hack and grow a B2B saas business from Wai Hong Fong

In case you want the actual links here they are:

Pipedrive – pipedrive.com
Hubspot - https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/crm
Hubspot Sales Pro - https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales
Zapier – zapier.com
Slack – slack.com
Talkhub - talkhub.io
Bessemer Whitepaper – 30 Q&A for saas revenue leaders
Bessemer Whitepaper – 10 laws of cloud computing
Inbound Sales ebook - Inbound Sales Book – Growth Tool
Intercom – Intercom.io
Klipfolio - klipfolio
Chargebee – chargebee.com
Braintree – braintreepayments.com
Intuit QuickBooks Online – http://www.intuit.com.my
Workable – workable.com
Typeform – typeform.com
KinHR – kinhr.com
1Passwd – https://agilebits.com/onepassword

Three things I’m reminded of today

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT

There are no problems. Every problem is an opportunity. There are only Probletunities.

5 long Breathes will calm your body which calms your brain.

Startup life is a roller coaster. You may feel incredibly down at 6pm. And feel on top of the world at 8pm.

The Entrepreneurs are plenty but the Teachers are few

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

After living over 16 years of my life away from Malaysia, I finally returned home in 2013.

While it seemed like this was a natural progression considering the market focus(SEA) of my second startup(Storehub), I knew that there was a deeper purpose behind this move. Although it was not clear what this was at the time, there were a bunch of ideas I’ve been toying with for a few years now. Community development, encouraging entrepreneurship, solving real problems and adding real value.

What I didn’t realise however, was that I had stepped into an environment where entrepreneurship was everywhere. Because it was difficult to grow rich, or even make a decent living from chasing a career as a professional, many Malaysians turned towards building their own businesses. Whether it was as simple as a single cafe, or as ambitious as a large chain of coconut ice cream stores, there was a desire in many Malaysians for the chance to break out and build something big.

Of course, we at Storehub believe the same. We believe that the work we do daily form the foundations that allow us to serve a bigger vision: 100,000 SMEs around the region whose businesses are made awesome because of us.

Yet, this journey has been full of the difficulties and complexities of such an endeavour. How I wish there was someone to guide me as we navigated through all the challenges of scaling and hiring and raising money and other startup mountains as we journey towards our goal. The number of days where I feel inadequate far outnumber the days where we know exactly what to expect and what to do. Everyday is a learning experience, but most days I feel like the frustrated learner more than the enthusiastic beginner.

And so I seek.

For those willing to speak wisdom into my constant searching. For clarity and meaning and understanding. But there are few who could. And even fewer who would spare the time.

This was when it occurred to me.

That if I, a second time entrepreneur, is struggling this much to make my startup work, wouldn’t it be equally if not more difficult for my fellow entrepreneurs? Most of whom are doing it for the first time?

The reality is, the entrepreneurs are plenty, but the teachers are few. Not because there aren’t many qualified to do so, but rather that there aren’t enough willing to do so. And in the wave of new startups popping up everywhere, the kind of mentors we need that have the kind of experience worth sharing, those are even scarcer.

Perhaps this is why I’m always lending myself towards helping out whenever I can. Speaking into the journeys of those entrepreneurs who I can see myself adding value to. Taking up offers to share my learnings and stories in talks and conferences. But truth be told, we can do so much more.

Perhaps it’s as simple as dedicating my Saturday afternoons to entrepreneur coffees. To listen and understand and share and encourage those that believe that they may benefit from a conversation with me.

Perhaps it’s a small thing. But perhaps it’s a good enough start. And perhaps if enough of us do it with enough of us, it’ll create a big enough ripple to stir up our hearts and lift each other up towards the great heights we all have set for ourselves.

Perhaps what it’ll really take for some of us to build great businesses that have real, tangible and meaningful impact on our communities is for all of us to believe in one another.

My deep hope is that we all learn to believe in one another. And that as these seeds are planted, some will get the chance to grow into trees of shade and rest and refuge for the community at large. Let us not wait for the teachers to come. Let us first start with being teachers ourselves.

P.s. If you are reading this and feel that you relate and might benefit from a Saturday afternoon coffee, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. I’d love to connect.

The storm before the calm

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

In my experience

We are most tested just before we achieve some major milestone

And sometimes our worst enemies hide inside us

In our thoughts and our doubts and our dreams

But when we take them down we grow strong.

And develop what it takes to hold success with gratitude and humility

Top 20 tools I use to hack and grow a B2B SaaS business

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I recently did a talk at the Magic Academy 2015 conference (http://academy.mymagic.my/ma2015/schedule/2/). Some of you guys have requested for me to share the slides so I’ve put them up on slideshare here.

If you have other questions, feel free to connect with me on twitter or reach me on linkedin

Top 20 tools I use to hack and grow a B2B saas business from Wai Hong Fong

In case you want the actual links here they are:

MOZ – moz.com
Usertesting.com – Usertesting.com
Crazyegg.com – Crazyegg.com
Google Remarketing
Bessemer Whitepaper – 30 Q&A for saas revenue leaders
Bessemer Whitepaper – 10 laws of cloud computing
Inbound Sales Book – Growth Tool
Freshdesk – Freshdesk.com
Intercom – Intercom.io
Pipedrive – pipedrive.com
Chargebee – chargebee.com
Braintree – braintreepayments.com
Slack – slack.com
Intuit QuickBooks Online – http://www.intuit.com.my
Workable – workable.com
Typeform – typeform.com
Zapier – zapier.com
KinHR – kinhr.com
1Passwd – https://agilebits.com/onepassword
Sidekick – http://www.getsidekick.com/

Humility

Tue, 08 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Humility is the ultimate networking tool.

Still so true today. Even as we celebrate the small wins, we remember those unassuming, unexpected people that we took the time to respect and get to know, without agenda and prejudice.

And how they led us to others who did indeed help us.

Honour every person you meet with your full self. You never really know who they know.

Solve your SAAS Recurring Billing / Subscription woes in Malaysia with this solution

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMT

At StoreHub, we’re constantly looking for ways to automate the way we do things.

When we first started out, we knew an area that will pose a major issue is managing subscription billing.

There were some solutions out there that did ‘recurring billing’ like ipay88 and paypal but the problem with those is that these are services focused on the payment side of the equation and do not help you to manage the actual subscription of the customer. For most SAAS businesses, this wouldn’t be sufficient as there are too many complexities and situations which these solutions won’t solve.

Imagine using excel trying to keep track of who has subscribed, when they subscribed, whether they’ve paid or not.

Or collecting cheques on a monthly basis from the customer.

That would have been a living nightmare.

Bank transfers was not an option as well. There was no way I was going to try to match every single transaction in my bank statement to a customer especially when I know how people NEVER specify the reference correctly. They always put your company name instead of theirs…..

Here are some of the issues:

Dunning – When the credit card fails because of insufficient credit, expired expiry date, banks being annoying. We wanted a system that would automatically send the customer emails and retry up to X amount of times before automatically suspending their service.
Prorata/Upgrades/Downgrades/Free trials – If someone’s on a small plan and upgrades to a medium plan halfway during the billing period, we needed to be able to automatically calculate how much credit they have left and deduct that from their new total.
Storing credit card numbers – Doing this ourselves will be a nightmare, and maintaining that PCI DSS compliant environment. The liability is just too big.
Anyways, enough ranting about the problems.

You guys are here for the solution right?

As you may know, there are plenty of recurring billing/subscription billing management solutions out there. Recurly, Chargify, Spreedly, Chargebee. But the common problem amongst all of them is that they don’t integrate with ANY local payment gateways. Yes, we did talk to iPay88 about this but as usual, talk remained talk and no solution was ever even considered.

So we ended up setting up an Australian bank account, connected to Braintree which integrates with Chargebee.

We love Chargebee. Like Really.

The only problem with this solution is that we lost 7% of our revenue on the forex every time we transferred the money back to Malaysia.

Then one fine day two months ago, Braintree announced their availability in Malaysia, facilitated by their local partner First Data MS.

The beautiful part of it all? They integrate with Chargebee.

So there you have it folks. Finally, a solution for all us SAAS Startups in Malaysia.

Disclaimer: The chargebee links above have a referral code in them. If you found this information useful, I’d appreciate you signing up to chargebee via the link above. Otherwise, I’m happy to have shared anyways. All the best folks!

UPDATE 23/12/2015: I’ve just been told that Chargebee are offering a BOOTSTRAPPER plan that lets SaaS startups process up to $10k of invoices for free! So why wait, get started for free with Chargebee and then pay only when they make money.

StoreHub a finalist at the BizSmart Academy Challenge

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Hey guys. We’ve got some exciting news. StoreHub got accepted as one of the top 20 finalists at the Alliance Bank Bizsmart academy challenge. There were 485 applicants and so we feel very lucky indeed to be amongst the finalists that got chosen.

Check out our link here at BizSmart – StoreHub.

On Sin, Repentance, Forgiveness and Salvation

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Over dinner last night, a friend and I had a spirited conversation about a whole range of issues that we as Christians today engage with. We both agreed that there is a lot of fixation on ‘sin’ in church culture and that it tends to lead to a culture of condemnation. Nonetheless, he asked me to clarify my understanding of sin and how it sits in my theological framework.

Here’s my attempt at a response:

Sin is missing the mark. It is not fulfilling the full potential God envisions for us. It is us pooping our pants as toddlers. It is us falling down in our learning to walk.

Should we obsess over our falling down or our poopings?

No.

Because we either grow out of it, or we learn to walk better. I believe that God is less fixated on our falling down than He is on our walking. I believe He is about the words of encouragement, the “That’s alright. Get up. Come on now. Let’s keep walking” than naming and blaming and shaming our falling.

His forgiveness, is in Him giving us this encouragement. In not choosing to focus on our falling short, but on the full potential of what is to come.

Of course, if we choose to remain in our sin, to not get up when we fall, to essentially not ‘repent’, then we can never experience the full forgiveness of what God wants to give to us.

We fall short/sin on a daily basis. There is so little of our lives that is truly Spirit-led. So much of our lives are lived out of our flesh, our selfish instincts. Every so often, we bear some semblance of the very image by which we were created in; when we love, when we care for one another, when we create, when we pause to appreciate beauty. But more often than not, we resemble mere animals.

Salvation is Jesus saving us from our state of devolution. What started out as image bearers of the Creator has spiraled into cycles of death, animal instincts, evil. Jesus showed us what a human being bearing the full image of God looks like, lives like, talks like, eats like, loves like. And He promises a New Life to all that choose to follow His life. A life after life after death(no typo here). A resurrection.

We are not saved from a fiery place called ‘hell’ that we go to when we die. We are saved from our own degeneration. But salvation is received only if we choose to reject this degeneration by our own will. Many will prefer to live out of their selfish desires, many will refuse the Spirit’s urging towards life that bears the Creator’s image. But when the Creator comes back to clean up His house, those that no longer bear his image, will be cast out of the house.

Our salvation, is not just about my ‘rship with God’, it is about us as a humanity, coming back to what it means to be truly human again, bearing the image of the Creator.

Being Truly Human

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Today, I got a message from an entrepreneur wrestling in their journey and sharing some of the struggles they’ve had to deal with.

In the midst of the rant, there’s the popular disclaimer that we commonly hear of “I’m only Human. (therefore)I’m weak.”

And while most of us will typically attribute our ‘humanity’ to weakness, I would dare say that the biblical story points to a very different view. One that talks of a Creator that made Humans in God’s image. And of a Man who came to show us what being truly human is, in the person of Jesus. The kind of walking and talking and living that was full of grace and love and life.

Being Human was never meant to be an excuse for our shortcomings.

Being Truly Human is about fully bearing the Image of God.

My EG Make the Pitch

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Aloha. As I’m getting more understanding of the ecosystem here in Malaysia, I’m starting to see a few opportunities here and there.

For one, I just signed up for an account on MyEG’s make the pitch. Seems like it’s an interesting programme giving startups a nationwide platform for their ideas. The sign up process is a little rough on the edges, but here’s our profile for Storehub’s MyEG Pitch.

Let me know if you’ve had any experience with this!

Healthworks – Towards a healthier Malaysia

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve now had a few months to get to know the startup scene in Malaysia. It’s really been an eye opening experience and in the midst of it all, I’ve also had the chance to help make a health related startup come to life.

Healthworks is on a mission to make Malaysians healthier by becoming Malaysia’s leading health community. Their approach is multi-fold: education through expert advice and interesting health-related articles, eCommerce with health-related products, and building a thriving, bustling community of health enthusiasts.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this startup take off. Will post updates as we go along.

Microfinancing – 8 Countries I’ve lended to via Kiva

Sat, 23 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Cambodia
Colombia
Kenya
Kosovo
Peru
Philippines
Senegal
Tajikistan

The countries I’ve made Microfinancing Loans to via Kiva.

I truly believe microfinancing is one of the channels to address the issue of poverty(teach a man to fish), and to believe in people who have dared to dream that they can break away from the chains they were born with.

Microfinancing makes money available when it counts.

So join the revolution today.

p.s. My goal is to eventually have $1M USD sitting in Kiva that continues to sustain more new loans through repayments. I’m now only at $700 lol.

Trusting in the things I can’t control

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT

when the world has fallen out from under me
I’ll be found in you, still standing
When the sky rolls up and the mountains fall on their knees
when time and space are through
I’ll be found in you

– Brooke Fraser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4KiGN1j1No)

Sometimes I feel this. The world falling out from under me. Whether its ‘good’ things or ‘bad’ events that accumulates, you can’t escape that sensation and that knowing that sometimes there’s just so much outside of your control.

We’re constantly bombarded with the message that to remain in control is the successful life. I can’t help but wonder if true success is not so much as to be in control, or seek to attain it, but in learning to embrace the things we don’t and can’t control.

To trust in the things we can’t control. To embrace the uncertainties and the only thing inevitable in life: change itself.

So today, I commit to a life of trusting, of being found in You, the Creator of whom I have no way of ever controlling. For this is the Way that leads to Life. Abundant. Full. Overflowing.

New skin New season

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT

So I’ve just updated my blog to a new skin. And also will make it a point to post more regularly.

Haven’t really Made it a priority but people have asked if I write. So this will be my avenue of expression.

Looking forward to a new season 🙂

Google Malaysia hacked

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Just doing my usual routine only to find that google malaysia accessed at www.google.com.my has been hacked by some Pakistani hackers.

The group seems to call themselves team madleets. This is definitely the first time I’ve seen a google page hacked. I suspect a DNS attack but have to wait and see for googles response. Malaysia boleh! Even our google can get hacked 🙁

DesignCrowd Logo Design experience Review for Onesaviour.com

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

So as some of you guys may know, I recently launched onesaviour.com which is simply the front I use when people come to me looking for consulting work.

I bought a simple wordpress theme and implemented it fairly quickly.

Of course, I needed a new logo designed for the site.

I had a friend who started work at DesignCrowd lately, so I decided to try it out instead of the other design sites I’ve heard about.

Overall, I paid $277.59 for the project and got over 40+ designs after only 4 days. By this time, I had found one which I really liked so I didn’t actually wait for the end of the 10 days I had allocated. Probably could have gotten more designs that way. But, very much like the way I do my shopping, if I like it, I’m sold. There and then.

So here’s what the new logo looks like.

I thought the whole process was well guided by a really good UI that the designcrowd guys have put together. The checkout process was seamless, the design process was well guided. I also signed up for the social media promotion feature, which was pretty neat. For a small fee they’d tweet your project out via their twitter account.

All in all, a very pleasant experience so I would highly recommend them to anyone wanting to do some logo designs at Designcrowd.

My Hope – A Vision – Our Mission

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I have hope in a world where there’s enough grace for all our shortcomings.
Where love is our default posture towards each other.
Where cancer & sickness don’t exist and healthy relationships flourish.
Where journey is celebrated because our hows are more important than our ends.
Where work is meaningful and life is time shared with those we care.
Where our blessings are received only to be readily shared with those around us.
Where trust is the currency of our engagement.

Of such a world I hope to see, but more than that, I aim to be a part of making it come to reality.

#ourmission #redemption

10 Killer tools for eCommerce Success

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Some people have requested that I posted up the 10 tools I’ve been sharing at the Online Retailer Roadshow.

Thank you to those who took the time to encourage me and hopefully these tools will help you towards greater success in your own eCommerce journeys.

So here it is:

SEOMOZ – One of the best SEO tools + highly reputable Blogs out there

Opensiteexplorer – Replacement for yahoo site explorer and great for gauging a domain’s strength/competitiveness of a market

Usertesting – For $39, get a 15 min video of someone completing a few tasks on your site. Great usability testing tool.

Crazyegg – Track mouseclicks, scrolling and extended mouse hovers to assess design elements & usability

Kampyle – Collect feedback from your customers and use them to your advantage.

Google Website Optimizer – Do A/B or split tests of changes you make on site to ensure what you’re changing is actually helping and not hurting

7 ) Google Remarketing – ‘Stalk’ your visitors around the web to gain brand recognition and conversions with good ROI

8 ) Mailchimp – One of the best email marketing platforms out there.

9 ) Google Analytics & Google Alerts – Analytics is a must have if you don’t already have it, and google alerts keep you up to date with new appearances in the search index of specific keywords you choose

10 ) Terapeak – eBay data that will help you zoom in on products you should be selling and understand market potential

Five SEO trends to lookout for in 2012

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In reflecting on the year 2011, I’ve also looked at what to expect in the year 2012. Here are some of my thoughts around what’s happening in SEO this year. Love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to post comments.

Social media will be an even bigger factor in Google’s algorithm

Social media influence on ranking positions today reminds us of Google’s efforts in dealing with link and content data 10 years ago. Today, Google is 100 times better at interpreting the link graph. By the end of this year, Google will be 20 times better at interpreting the social graph as well.

The search results page will continue to feature less organic rankings and more paid

Pressure on Google to keep growing its revenue and profits would mean even more cannibalisation of space on the search engine results page. More and more sections will be paid. We first saw this in Google ads, then Google shopping. We’ll see product reviews, sign up forms and anything else Google can start charging for.

Paid search will become more important in supporting SEO efforts

Hiding keyword data in the name of privacy is only the first step. Google is encouraging SEOs who only focus on organic rankings to also get their PPC game on. Google’s goal is to create a search environment that encourages continual spending on PPC to attain valuable data in order to do good SEO.

Spammy SEO practices will get targeted even harder

The number of major rollouts in the search algorithm (ie. Panda) targeting spammy practices in 2011 is astounding. Rest assured, this will continue to increase in frequency and severity in 2012 as Google gets smarter and accumulates more data than they’ve ever had before. Article spinning, artificial links and spammy tactics like creating “content” pages on the fly using onsite search data will see even more decline in value.

SEO will become even more competitive than ever

As more and more companies get online, spending on SEO marketing will increase. The barriers to entry will become even higher. Smart SEOs will find a way to scale their efforts efficiently and weak SEOs may not be able to deliver satisfying results with poor practices anymore.

This is a reblog from the Startupsmart Website where I’m a regular contributor. As I felt that you guys might find this really useful, I’ve reposted it here.

The Age Melbourne Magazine Top 100 Most Influential Creative Inspirational People – 2011

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Couple of weeks ago, I unexpectedly received a phone call saying that I was selected to be on The Age Melbourne Magazine’s Top 100.

According to Fairfax,
“Now into its fifth year, the Top 100 celebrates the cities’ most influential people. From actors to activists, scientists to sports stars and chefs to CEOs, the Top 100 will have changed Sydney and Melbourne in some way in 2011 — whether it’s by making a difference in their field, setting a trend or contributing above and beyond what is expected of them.”

I am truly honoured to be on the list, which also celebrates names such as Cadel Evans, David Manne and Ruslan Kogan. What was awesome too was seeing friends like Chantelle Baxter and other social entrepreneurs fill up the spots, putting faces to the voice of an entire generation of young people dedicated to making this world a better place.

While I still puzzle as to how I have been chosen, I think the key thought that crosses my mind is the feeling of grace. The undeserved, unearned sense of being given a gift. OZhut, which started 3 years ago, and celebrates nearly 10 times growth from our 1st to 3rd year is a mixture of hard work, opportunity and grace – that of those people that have given of themselves to make it what it is today.

I am a very lucky person, living in a very lucky country. I shall not take any of that for granted as we strive to make the entire world(starting with our own Marvellous Melbourne) a better place for our global family.

The Age Melb Magazine – Top100 2011:

Page 60 – Number 55(grace) – ME!

p.s. And yes, I did play 18 hours of Ragnarok Online a day, failed 3 Uni subjects in 3rd year 1st semester 2006. Lessons learnt in that one too. Another post another day perhaps?

Superman Saves the Day in Melbourne – Bucks Night Out

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

So we had a pretty epic day on Saturday.

We were all out celebrating a friend’s final week before enrolling into the school of marriage.

Surfing in the morning and horseriding in the afternoon.

Of course, to complete the ritual, we needed to do something crazy in the evening/night right?

So we dressed up our dear friend Heng Khuen Cheok, as none other than SUPERMAN!

of course, as the night progressed, our superman had obtained 4 kisses from different random girls on the street including wonderwoman herself!

As we were walking back to our cars to call it a night, we saw a car hit a red light and knocked a man on swanston street. Our Superman, who also happens to be an emergency doctor by day, runs off to help out.

While there, he was told to piss off by the other bystander who happened to be a paramedic, thinking this was some drunk dude dressed in a superman costume trying to make it a joke.

Of course, the best part was when the police arrived and you ended up with the epic photo below of superman saving the day:

So how the heck is this post even on this blog?

Well, first of all, I’m proud of being a part of this epic event 🙂 Truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Secondly, business is in many ways very much like this. Being in the right place in the right time with the right people and dressed up in the right superman suit 🙂

M2e eBay Magento Integration – Token Expiration Issue

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

For anyone experiencing issues with M2E’s Magento & Ebay integration, you need to replace a file which contains the token that M2E uses to connect to eBay’s API.

The error that I am referring to is :

Synchronize eBay items transactions/orders ... Fail DateTime::__construct(): Failed to parse time string (Auth token is hard expired.) at position 0 (A): The timezone could not be found in the database

The file in question is
/app/code/local/Ess/M2e/Model/M2eConnector.php

As the changes required are privy only to M2E customers, it’s important that you contact them directly here.

*Note: This post was edited as part of a request from the developers at M2E. Also, the solution above is from M2E and should have been sent to your email address. If you haven’t received it, it’s best to get in touch with them as well.

5 Networking Lessons from a complete Networking Noob

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I struggle with ‘networking’, full stop.

It’s an unnatural thing for me, and hopefully some people will empathise with me. But in my experience, there have been many wonderful moments where I simply get opportunities to meet truly amazing people. Some of these people are thought leaders in their industries and what not. Some of them have led me on to other more interesting people.

Here’s what I’ve learnt through these:

Just be genuine. There’s nothing to be gained from going out there and trying to ‘meet’ people so that you can ‘use’ them someday down the track. The best relationships are with people whom you simply connect with, and are able to be genuinely find their life story interesting.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. It’s common for people to ‘steal’ each other in the middle of conversations during a ‘networking event’. It’s OKAY. Just move on and treat it as an opportunity to talk to someone else, and to meet other people that you otherwise wouldn’t meet if you had been comfortable talking to just the few. And when you don’t understand something, or don’t ‘get’ a joke, don’t be afraid to ask at the expense of looking silly. The only stupid questions are the ones that never got asked.

Be present. The best thing you can do for someone when you’re with them is to be there. Like actually just be present to the moment. You can’t hide this. Our body language, which does 80% of the talking, is dictated mostly by things we are not even aware of, like whether we are being present to someone or not.

Be generous. I believe in an attitude and a lifestyle of abundance. There is more than enough resources, information and money out there in this world for everyone. There’s no need to want to just hoard more and more. There is a certain joy that comes out from being able to share and believe in people through the sharing of words, good food and funny stories.

Have fun! There’s nothing like good laughter, genuine smiles and a merry heart that does wonders for building genuine friendships. It’s like they say, if you can’t play together, you can’t work together. So yeah, play, tell jokes, share your most embarrassing moments and simply have a good time together!

OZKitchenware – Our most exciting endeavour yet!

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone!

It’s been really eerily quiet here over the last couple of months as we wade through challenge after challenge in the business. I apologize for the lack of updates and will commit to posting more regularly! I think part of it is trying not to get too caught up with being perfectionistic on what to write about.

So…. After months of preparation, and 2 weeks of intense work…

we’ve done it.

it. is. finished. (or has it really just begun?)

let me give you a hint. it has something to do with kitchenware 🙂

Introducing OZKitchenware.com.au – Australia’s Favourite Kitchenware store into our Family of stores!

Featuring a full range of product from your favourite brands like Scanpan, Cuisinart, Global Knives and more(with MORE to come!), we’re really excited to continue to serve our customers, community, friends and family in this new area. More than half the team are passionate foodies and we love to cook AND eat 😛

As part of the launch, we’ll be announcing a very special Friends and Family Sale soon! I have a few friends already saying they might look at something for an upcoming wedding they were attending or birthday. So if you’re interested come back again in 2 days. Will hope to have the details by then.

Leaders: Remember to Ask then Listen

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been a while since I blogged now, but I think I’d try to get into the habit of regularly posting again.

I’d try to journal the things I’m learning on this journey on this blog as I go along.

Watched a video today on leadership – http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1719

“It is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those that are most adaptive to change” – Charles Darwin

In talking about leadership, Carly Fiorina highlights capability, collaboration and character as the keys to good leadership. I think it’s interesting in talking about capability that she draws upon 2 skills which are not typically the ones we would have picked:

The capability to ask questions and listen to the answer.

The capability to take risks, innovate and embrace new ideas.

I think in our journey, we’ve definitely embraced new ideas, taking risks and innovating heaps. We’ve changed our business model a few times, from the good ole ebay only days to the ebay/website days to the multiple niche stores that we have today. We were one of the first users of Magento in Australia as early as November 2008. Here’s proof.

However, I feel that there is a lack in me personally in my ability to ask enough or the right questions and to listen to the answers. But in reflection, there is so much value in that especially when the company grows and when it becomes less and less about the founders than it is about the rest of the team. This is definitely a skill I would like to hone 🙂 Remember, ask then listen.

Following the No Follow rule

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Linkbuilding – The rel=“nofollow” tag

So this week we will be examining another key component of the link: the rel=“nofollow” tag. This tag was originally introduced in 2005 by Google by way of helping webmasters combat spammers.

So how does it work? Basically, you add this tag to the end of the link structure as follows {a href=“http://www.startupsmart.com.au” rel=“nofollow”}. What this does is it tells Google that the link above shouldn’t be given any credit / linkjuice even though its on your website.

In the past, webmasters would use this tag to do what is called page-rank sculpting, where they will attempt to no-follow links to pages that they do not want to rank in an attempt to improve the linkjuice given to the other pages. However, Google has since confirmed that any link on a page will still be attributed linkjuice but links with nofollow will have theirs dissipate making this practice somewhat obsolete.

So where does this leave us? Firstly, you’d want to make sure as much as possible that links you build to your site don’t have the rel=“nofollow” tag attached to them. Where possible, try to contact the webmaster with the actual code(including anchor text) of the link you are asking for.

Finally, any pages on your website which you do not want to rank for a particular reason should be nofollowed i.e. privacy information, terms and conditions etc. You’d want only the good stuff to be showing up in the search engines. Do take note however, that no-following a link does not guarantee its exclusion from the Google index especially if another website links to it.

This article was first pubished in Startupsmart – Following the No-Follow Rule

How to write Title Tags for Search Engines and Humans

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Search engines determine a website’s relevance to a search query according to on-page (internal factors) and off-site (external factors) signals.

Today we will look at title tags, which are arguably one of the most important on-page factors to work on. They can potentially affect rankings with immediate effect.

When writing title tags, you must ensure that all relevant keywords to the page that you are describing are contained in the title tag. You can find relevant keywords to the subject matter of the page by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

It’s optimum practice to use no more than two or three keywords or one or two key phrases (two or three words per phrase) in a title tag. For more competitive keywords, it’s also better to put them closer to the front (left-hand side).

In writing your title tags, you need to bear the user in mind. As titles will show up in the search results, the number of people clicking through to your website will be determined by how relevant and human-readable these titles are. Poor title tags which are less appealing to the user’s search intent may lose clicks to listings that are lower in rankings.

When possible, title tags should be formed with a good flow and connection between the keywords, like in a sentence. If this is not possible, such as in cases where keywords/key phrases are very long, you just need to ensure that the title tag appears in a meaningful and aesthetically appealing way in the search results.

Title tags in search results will also be truncated after they exceed 70 characters, so it is best practice to ensure all important bits or the entire title tag is within 70 characters. It is also good practice to include your company/website name at the front or at the back of the title tag on all pages as a branding exercise and to help the user associate the page to the brand.

Example of a keyword stuffed title tag: “telescopes – binoculars – OzScopes Australian shop”

A better, human readable, search engine friendly, title tag for the above would be: “Telescopes & Binoculars by the Australian Telescope Experts | OZScopes”

This article was first published as part of an SEO for startups column in Startupsmart.com.au – an affiliate of Smartcompany.com.au. You can find the original article entitled – Why is SEO Important? there.

Why is SEO Important to Startup Businesses?

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

So you’ve got your website set up or are thinking of launching it and you’ve heard of this thing called search engine optimisation (SEO).

You’re wondering what exactly it is and how relevant it is to your business. You know traffic is important and that more and more people are taking their search for information online. But all you have to do is build your website and people will come, right? Well, not quite.

What is SEO?

SEO is the active process of optimising a website in order to increase traffic directed to the site from search engines by improving on-site and off-site components.

Understanding SEO means familiarising yourself with the many unique elements that a search engine takes into consideration in deciding how sites should rank in its database.

Why is SEO important?

Search engines are where people are finding everything.

More than two billion searches are performed on Google worldwide every day. The majority of web traffic is driven by major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! In Australia, Google dominates an estimated 94% of all search traffic. If the search engines can’t find your site or if your content cannot be put into their databases (commonly known as the index), you are losing out on customers who are actually looking for services and products that you may have.

This becomes increasingly important as more and more people take their quest for information online. To ‘Google something’ has become a synonym to finding stuff on the internet in today’s culture and language.

It’s all about relevance.

Traditional marketing talks in terms of ‘push and pull’ marketing such as expensive billboards, newspaper ads, radio and television. These channels are usually untargeted and hit-and-miss, making it hard to measure the true effectiveness of the campaign. Search marketing allows businesses to target only users that are actually looking for your services and products. When someone performs a search query on Google, which are the words that users type into the search box, the purpose of the search engine is to return the most relevant search results towards the intent of the user’s search. SEO positions you in front of those people who are looking specifically for a product or service that you have.

Measurable, Targeted and Relevant to the user = High ROI

Traffic that comes from highly relevant search terms have shown to provide companies with strong leads, and subsequently revenue like no other marketing avenue. A smart investment in SEO, whether through time or money, is known to produce an extraordinary return on investment compared to traditional marketing channels. This is because almost every metric can be tested and refined. Traffic data and market size can be easily evaluated to ensure that you are only investing in SEO for the terms that actually have a large enough market of potential customers to pursue.

If you’re not doing it, you can bet your competitors are!

Businesses are beginning to realise how important it is to devote resources towards SEO. While you are wondering whether it’s worth the time or money, your competitors are already playing the game and learning the tricks of the trade. Due to the way Google determines a page’s authority and importance, if you have SEO tightly integrated into your business strategy earlier on, you are going to have a clear advantage over your late blooming competitors.

50% of all our own traffic comes through SEO

OZHut’s own investment in SEO is a major player in the growth we’ve seen in the last two years of our business. Today, more than 50% of our traffic comes through the results that SEO has generated in the organic search channel of the major search engines. Would we be able to justify the amount of time and money spent to drive this much traffic? Yes, yes and another resounding yes. Of all our marketing channels, SEO has singlehandedly outperformed all other streams in terms of ROI.

Okay, I get it. So what must we do?

The trend that we see with Google’s latest changes is that Micro Businesses and Startups are being given more opportunities to position themselves well. The challenges faced by larger corporations is the silo-ing of its many divisions and functions from the ‘SEO team’. With smaller companies, the ability to tightly integrate SEO in all areas of customer service, marketing and sales, even logistics, means that startups can put up a good fight in the online world of search. In subsequent articles, we’ll be going further in-depth into more technical aspects of SEO and hopefully empower you to carry out some solid SEO yourself, or at least learn to be more informed and wise in choosing SEO firms to partner with.

Google Live Twitter Feed Observations

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I just got home and decided to google my name. I know what you’re thinking but I tell myself its for SEO purposes!

This is what I found: A live twitter feed from my twitter account on the SERPS for the search term ‘wai hong fong‘.

My immediate reaction was OMGOSH, I’m important enough for google to consider adding a twitter feed of me to the SERP. I quickly went and googled my favourite people at SEOmoz like Rand Fishkin, Danny Dover and Gillian Muessig and nothing there! So I thought, well I just tweeted recently like couple of hours ago, so maybe google only puts it there when there’s a recent tweet. So I googled some of the other people I know who have had recent tweets but nothing still!

Alright, so I decided I should try a little experiment with the system, on whether we can spam the SERPs by creating a whole bunch of dummy accounts? Or in this case, 1 dummy account 😛 I used two accounts, my @waihonger account and @ozwristwatches.

@waihonger had 1065 tweets, been around for about 1 year or so, 73 followings, 153 followers and 10 listed.

@ozwristwatches had 0 tweets prior to the experiment, 0 following and 3 followers which were prolly just spam bots.

They both made tweets at the same time with the words ‘Wai Hong Fong’ in them, and they both appeared in the ‘latest results page’.

However, only the tweets from the @waihonger account appeared in the SERP as a real time twitter post!

So I decided to try another experiment and try to rank for something more trendy. For that, I decided on ‘north korea attack‘ and ‘north korea shells‘. Again both accounts would post with those key phrases in the tweets.

Same thing happened! @waihonger’s tweet got indexed and appeared on the SERPs, while @ozwristwatches’ tweet got indexed but DIDN’t appear on SERPs!

Some pictures of the experiments here

The mini experiment seems to indicate that Google does apply a certain form of checking / filtering / ranking towards a twitter account.

Some ideas of what may be taken into consideration(very similar to SEO ranking factors in my opinion):

– Ratio of Following / Followers (@waihonger 73 / 153 VS @ozwristwatches 0 / 3). I’d imagine accounts with 10000 following / 50 followers will not score well.
– Age of account (sounds like domain age)
– Engagement between other users (how many other ppl have @ the account)
– Quality of users following you. I have @brentdpayne, @dannydover and @seomoz following me! Those must count for something.
– Number of tweets? (@waihonger 1065 tweets VS ozwristwatches 0 tweets) – a bit dubious on this one.

What do you guys think? Any SEO / digital marketer know of any other tests that have been done on Google live tweet feeds? Keen to know!

Everything is good for something

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As a result of the conversation with T today, I realised that a lot of the stresses I’ve been holding in tension in this season of my life, do not justify the amount of attention that I have given them. Let me explain.

The typical Gen Y part of me carries a burden for the injustices of this world and a need to want to be part of the change. As such, my most recent thoughts revolve around the quest for goodness, and the seeds of grace, truth and hope that have yet to be sown in the communities we live in.

How do these fit in within the framework of the work that we do here at OZHut? How do we as a business living amidst our community, serve our people and our nation in a manner that outworks all these ambitions that our entire Generation longs for. Social Justice, Environmental Sustainability and Community Development roughly summarize the main issues that we crave to see addressed by our leaders and those in power.

So the natural thing to do is to look at what’s in your hands right? To count your blessings, and the things that you have been given stewardship over. And as much as possible, allow these passions to outwork themselves through the things you have ownership of. I think the challenge for me has been to identify as clearly as possible the questions of: What is OZHut good for? What are our limitations as a business? What are the spin offs that occur as a result of us being present that DO represent goodness, bring about positive change and cultivate healthy communities?

I think for a good number of months, I was asking the wrong questions. I found myself caught in this cycle of wrestling out the inabilities of the company to solve all the problems and issues that my heart resonate with. The tensions between holding out hope for true positive change in the world in multiple areas and the role that the company can/will play in all of that. As noble as it may sound, these were merely distracting thoughts that were not helping me at all. In fact, they were the ones that discouraged and despaired me consistently.

The truth that finally set me free is realising that the right question to ask is a simple one : What is this vehicle called OZHut good for? I strongly believe in the principle that everything on this earth, from stone to leaf, SME to large corporation, street sweeper to President, every darn thing, is good for something. In that light, it is imperative that I also ask this same question of OZhut to determine its fundamental limitations as a vehicle, but also its potential to carry and share some of the goodness that I believe we are all called to sow in our personal lives, the lives of those around us, and the communities we live in. As this vehicle drives through our neighbourhoods, my hope is that we’d be able to see with utmost clarity our mission, and to celebrate what goodness we are called to bring about, and to forgive our limitations. Besides, all we really need is enough passionate and fully alive people all over the world doing what they believe is their little good and the world will indeed be a Good-er place 🙂

BYM 2010 – Be Salty and Lighty

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

So I had the privilege of being a part of the 100 selected for the Brightest Young Minds 2010(BYM 2010) Summit held at Sydney earlier this month.

Folks have asked me, so how has the week been for you? In a short answer, I simply replied:

“It’s been one of the most inspiring weeks of my life”.

So how has it been inspiring?

Amazing Speakers
With a line up of speakers including Hugh Evans(Global Poverty Project), Steven Persson(CEO – Big Issue), Prof Ian Harper(Economist), Peter Williams(Deloitte Digital), Charlie Regan(CEO – Nerdsonsite) and many others, there was an abundance of wisdom and inspiration to draw from.

Fellow Delegates
Each of the nearly 100 handpicked delegates that attended are amongst some of the brightest, funnest, most passionate people I’ve met. Socially aware, responsible and wanting to go the extra mile to do something about it, the buzz in the atmosphere was electric. Project work was fun, engaging, fiery at times, but that only made it more fun!

Brilliant Sponsors / Supporting Corporates
We had the opportunity to consult sponsors such as the ATO and Tourism Australia, which to me felt like a very empowering experience. We spent heaps of time at the Google offices in Sydney too. Very Cool. They had like a whole shelf of lollies and really funky deco i.e. a whole living forest for a reception.

I came with many questions about what it means to be socially responsible, what it means to be a businessperson that cares about the earth. I came away with some answers, but even more questions. I now know how important it is to build profitable enterprises but with purpose(social, environmental and global impact). But I walked away with even more questions of HOW?

My TakeHomeMessage from this conference is simple. Be Salty and Lighty. Being salty and being bright light in this tasteless and dark earth is really about taking a good hard look at who we are, finding our place in the grand scheme of the challenges and problems that face our humanity and giving it all we’ve got in the influence and affluence we’ve been given by grace – undeserved, unearned, almost just pure ‘luck’.

As Hugh Evans so aptly put it, “Sleeping on that cockroach infested house built over a waste dump that Sunnyboy lived in, I realised that the only thing that was different between me and him is that I was born in Australia and he was born here.”(paraphrased as I can’t remember everything exactly)

Valleys – What do they accomplish?

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Warning: This post is a rant of the mind, without form or purpose, and best read with a pinch of salt.

There are certain times in our lives where we feel we are caught in a valley.

It’s usually characterized by the inability to see beyond the hill in front of us, simply because of the constantly elevating terrain that blocks our vision.

In many ways, this is where I feel I’m at with my life at the moment. At work, things are moving so fast, but at the same time, the ability to see past the next 3 years is a struggle. In my life, having made some significant choices and working through some difficult seasons, I’m now at a place where I feel everything I know about myself has been pulled apart.

I’ll try to explain this part.

Typically, we draw our sense of identities from the things we do, our work, our education, our accomplishments, what sports we play, how much money we have in our bank account, the people we know etc. But what happens when all these things start to crumble, when education completes itself, our accomplishments fade to black, we grow older and are not able to compete at the same level as we were able before(not to mention younger people taking over). Gradually but surely, it’s very likely that we’ll all come to a place where we come face to face with what I’d call a Valley. A place where our ability to attach a sense of identity or worth to a particular ‘thing’ is lost, and all we are left with is our unsure, insecure little self, that is then forced to choose, where to next?

But it is here, in this place, that we find ourselves most able and most graced with the opportunity to work out our character. That innermost place which is usually covered and shaded by layers upon layers of the images and facets that we wear, our Dr so and so, CEO so and so, Pastor So and so. All now finally stripped bare, the chance to make choices from this place of incredible weakness is a very important one that we should embrace.

So how do we take hold of a season like this?

We do so I think, by laying before us, the choices that life presents to us, and having considered with as much wisdom and clarity we have, we choose. We put our trust in the choice that we believe is the best for us, and we stick to it. Possibly, in the area of relationships, the choice to hold on, to enter into a season of singleness, or to start afresh. Or in the area of work, the choice to sell out, to hire someone else to take your place, or to stay and nurture and see it grow.

And out of our unsure, insecure selves, we nudge ahead, and we take a step forward, with a certain kind of trust that’s only found in weakness, in Valleys. I use “our” or “us” a lot in this post, when I really meant “me” more often than not. It’s really a season of finding clarity. A vision for my own life is what I really seek. As such, I will be nudging my weak self in this Valley a little bit further in this season. And I’ll trust that whatever I choose, it will be Good.

The embrace of a Season

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Every now and then, we enter into a season of our life where certain memories, or feelings, or thoughts cause us to almost resent the very breathe that we draw, the very life that is the gift of the creator becomes a curse. It feels like this is the current season for me. The senseless reruns. The momentary swings between happy and sad. The broken images, fading in fading out, like a slideshow gone wrong, infected by the virus of being double minded about whether to keep the memory or to forget it. I’ve wished for it to go away many times. But somehow it stays. Someone once told me that everything is good for something. Oh really… I’d think to myself often, what the heck is this good for.

Yet I know for certain, that truth is truth no matter how little of it is relevant to our situations. Gravity will cause us to fall whether or not we’re on the ground or 10,000 feet up in the air, getting ready to jump off a plane. Could there really be something more?
Then there was that conversation with T. He suggested that this season and with it the ability to feel, and hurt and cry, is temporal. It will not last. But while it does, it’s worthwhile cherishing it, immersing in it. Letting it write poetry, songs, and prose. Because one day, these thoughts and memories will not evoke the same emotions anymore. And we might just miss feeling these feelings. So let it be.

Does anyone resonate with me?

My Secret Weapon – Teachability

Mon, 31 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I was recently asked by a close friend, “What is it that you do that gives you the edge in business?”. As I paused momentarily to ponder the question, the answer jumped out at me with certainty. “I think it’s the fact that I’m teachable”.

In the world that I navigate, I am always having to face up to challenges in relating to people. Whether it’s trying to get a new supplier on board and convincing them that we were interested in a long-term business relationship and not just here to make a quick buck. Or having to deal with the occasional difficult customers that our team may struggle to connect with. Or trying to lead the office team and to keep their eyes continually focussed on the vision. I find that I feel mostly inadequate for a lot of what I do. And I feel like this almost daily.

I think being young and relatively inexperienced is the prime reason for this. And many would think that that is a disadvantage I possess, that I’d have to make many mistakes before I am ‘experienced’ enough to effectively guide a business.

On the contrary, I have a firm suspicion that the lens of this inadequate, inexperienced and young businessperson by which I have come to view myself has helped to cultivate a sense of teachability. It’s allowed me to realise very early on that I do not have a lot of what it takes to grow a business. This has resulted in seeking advice right from day one. I remember knocking on doors of people such as Lisa Suttora, who runs a very successful online business coaching group at whatdoisell.com. Or Nathan Huppatz, who’s a highly sought after consultant in Melbourne who’s got an amazing gift at teaching and helping people understand concepts and systems. I remember coffees with my friend Tim Goh, who has a well of wisdom well beyond his years, which he generously draws from to share with me some of my most treasured life lessons.

This characteristic I find in myself, of being teachable, has allowed me to continually assess a lot of the preconceived notions of how I think things should be / can be. I don’t have any work experience to refer to when having to decide if something would be better one way or another. As a result, I’m very fond of seeking other people’s thoughts on even the simplest of things. The guys I work with, for example, will constantly put up with me picking on their brains and asking their opinions, but knowing that I value their knowledge deeply(i hope so!).

It may be true, that I am young and inexperienced. But I think if I was just a couple of years older, I’d have built up too much knowledge of what is good and what is evil to the point where I lose my edge. It will be too easy to drive the business based on what I think is good experience or to steer it away from what I think are bad choices. Experience then becomes a double edged sword. We can all testify that every opinion and every idea is good for something. It is very rare that one person’s experience will cover enough depth of any one subject matter. Let alone for one person to understand the full range of complexities in running a business.

As for me, I am thankful. Thankful for those that have been willing and generous enough to share their experiences, their journeys and their stories with me, that I may be a student of the richness I see in the lives of those who have chosen to do so. May I continue to be that for the rest of my own journey for many many years to come. So let it be.

Life’s a journey. It’s better doing it together.

Sat, 08 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

So this is the very first post of this blog. It may stay it may not.

The most important question behind any endeavour is the WHY question. It is what gives meaning to the project. It is what gives purpose to life.

So WHY did I start this blog?

One thing I’ve learnt on this journey of entrepreneurship is that life is a journey, and it’s much much better doing it together. There has not been a single significant event on this journey that does not have relationships at its core. As such, I hope this blog can be a space where I share that journey with you, my blog readers. And that together, I hope you can learn something, as much as I hope to learn something from you.

In a nutshell, this is one of my expressions of a mantra I am learning to value deeply : Life is a journey. It’s better doing it together.