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The Thursday Interview - Mark Chew - The Habitual Optimist

Mark is the man who introduced us to the Optimist's Creed. And he truly is one of the of the most optimistic people we know. From his coaching sessions to his posts on Facebook, there is always the message of optimism and looking on the bright side of life.

Being the lead coach at Giant Learning Technologies, Mark focusses on developing methods that help participants to their courses absorb the most amount of information and make the relevant changes in their lives. He is relatable and most importantly he makes it really simple to follow his train of thought.

We wanted to talk to him and find out what it takes to become a trainer and a good one at that. Mostly we wanted the Tribe to know what qualities are needed to truly reach out and touch people's lives. Also Mark is a trainer with a business-centric approach. That means he chooses to build a coaching brand instead of centering the business around himself. That in itself is attractive as it means that Giants Learning can continue by itself.

Let's hear how he did it.

Interview with Mark Chew, Founder and Principal Strategist, Giants Learning Technologies

Hi Mark, Thank you for agreeing to this interview. It is meant to provide inspiration to younger Entrepreneurs and Investors

Let’s Begin

1. Have you always wanted to be a Coach?

I only know that I loved to talk to people from a young age! Honestly, it was never so specific, although on hindsight, I’ve been involved in many coaching roles.

2. Please describe the journey you made towards a Coach?

One thing that I must qualify is that the coaching process could only be done, only if you had been through real experience, and not just theoretical lessons. When I sat down to plan for my first book, ‘Discover Your Leadership Style’, I realized that I have garnered more than 10,000 hours of first hand coaching, mentoring, and even mentee sessions, through my 2 decades of exposure to leadership, teamwork and management positions.

It probably started during school days when I helped my water polo coach to mentor and to coach the younger players. I had already accumulated some experience in the sport, and it was natural to give back!

One of the more memorable occasions was when I took the initiative to lead a team of senior players back to primary school in 2001-2002 to attract people to join the then Toa Payoh Branch water polo team. We shared with the primary 6s, what it was like to play water polo, and the guys who joined us, stayed in this sport all the way till now!

As a regular officer in the military then, I also saw myself as a coach. This was because we had to bring the best out in our soldiers. We had to reach out to them personally, and to constantly find out how to motivate them.

3. How and Where did begin your journey towards running a business and why did you settle on Giants Learning Technologies?

My first job after I left the military was to be both in business development as well as a HR Consultant in a small MNC that started in Singapore. It was a really great experience as I had many multi-national colleagues who were really good in what they did. Imagine that I spent 10 years in the military honing leadership skills? These new colleagues spent more than 10-15 years in the airport industry honing their branding, marketing, and retail skills!

Anyway, the boss was considered a high-flier in the industry, and he had this entrepreneurial streak in him. In less than a year, he set up more than 3 viable business streams in Singapore, while still in his employee role in India! This must have rubbed off on me, because I thought to myself, that if he can do it, why not me?

Work on Giants Learning Technologies really started when he tasked me to consider what I could do to further contribute to his consultancy service. He asked me, “Mark, if you could start a business under me, which areas would you want to excel and shine in?” I immediately told him that a Coaching Academy to coach and train airport employees in a myriad of skills would really work. I then spent close to 3 months developing this business plan, and I even had to do the financials because the finance officer back then was quite unreliable. But I learned from other colleagues how to fine-tune this.

Throughout this time, I was also tasked to come up with several other business plans, and I got really hooked by this process.

Alas! But it was not meant to be because there was a legal situation that compelled the boss to lay low for several months, and the other managing partner prematurely abandoned the project.

Other things also compelled me to hasten my decision to start my own company. My salary was routinely delayed from May to July.

I sensed something was amiss, and I decided to look through all the business plans that I developed. My adaptability skills that I honed from my sports and the military, told me to make this project my own. If opportunity does not knock, I will build my own door. I then decided to change the specific target market of the airport industry, to general public, and more importantly to 3 areas, Personal mastery, Health mastery, and Wealth Mastery.

On 13th July 2011, Giants Learning Technologies was incorporated, and our first ‘Live Free Session’ was a full day workshop from 9am to 9pm! Our first core skill is to be a provider of personal and professional development to people.

In early August, the management told me that they were facing severe cash flow problems, and they may close down, and had to seek our understanding. In other words I was being asked to leave!

For most people, they may feel lost. But I had already started a company, and my book was already published back in Dec 2010. My reply was, “So when can I leave?” Honestly, I was not worried when I asked them that because I had robust contingency plans that were already in-place!

But when I was driving back home that day, I told myself, “ Come on Mark, no more safety parachute in place, you’re on your own!”

And Giants Learning Technologies had to start running on her own.

4. What is your main role in Giants Learning Technologies?

As the principal strategist, I lead the main coaching sessions with respect to the leadership and teambuilding workshops. I also double as the business developer and salesman to find the clients as well as better tools to build my company’s capabilities.

I stumbled upon the idea of being a talent manager for Infopreneurs when my brother and I realized that we could help this people by collaborating with them. They could then focus on their content, while we help them in other areas.

5. Did you learn operations and business skills from someone or are you self-taught?

I would say it was about 40% self taught, 40% from capable business partners and 20% from other mentors. After all, our name, Giants Learning Technologies, really comes about from standing on the shoulders of giants. If we were not teachable ourselves, how could we tell our participants and graduates to do the same?

6. Which are your favorite parts of running the business, or business in general?

I segment the business into 3Ts. These 3 Ts are the levers into the business

a. Enhancing on Tried and Tested Strategies – This is a reminder that all our Infopreneurs whom we talent scouted for must have consistent and robust systems and strategies in place. Eg: in wealth creation, they must have been doing this for 3 years and more. We will then be able to build and enhance their content by making it catchy, simple to understand, as well as to add in essential components

b. Increasing Traffic Generation – Since the basis of our industry is really in having more numbers of satisfied graduates, there must be a good conversion statistic to take place. For this, we needed the ‘n’ to increase first. Therefore our marketing methods involved searching possible ways to increase the numbers of people attending the free workshops. When more people attend the free workshops, which provide valuable inputs and insights to what they want to know, we also build trust and rapport. Therefore we spend a considerable amount of time building our brand in the most cost-effective manner. We try not to use mainstream marketing such as newspapers and the like because it is hard to measure the results from such traditional forms of marketing.

c. Maintaining Trust Building – We understood that most companies in this business treated their graduates and people as cash cows. We wanted a more long-lasting relationship. We wanted to treat them with gifts, and pamper them. This has been one of the toughest because it meant that we had to allocate capital, or a welfare fund towards this ‘T’. But in the long run, this will help us in the stickiness of our graduates towards us.

Controlling these 3 levers will help us improve our business model better.

7. How did you go about building your team (if you did), what qualities did you look for in your team members?

I look out for 3 things.

a. Role: These are specific roles that a person is attuned to so that he or she can perform the specific modes of service to the needs of a team. Therefore we needed to know who can perform in which role.

b. Coherence: They must be positively coherent or express positive behaviours, and flexibility in decision-making. They also needed to have leadership qualities, and be really pro-active.

c. Teamability: It’s how well they work in a team, and show constructive teaming behavior.

Therefore they have to go through a Teamability™ experience, which is an assessment tool that I use for my clients as well. This experience is a measured test that allows all of us to know how we all fit into the team. Once we know our roles, we will be able to achieve so much more! This in turn increases work productivity!

8. Which aspect of the business would you say you contribute the most to and which aspects do your team members handle?

There is an equal sharing of tasks at hand. After all, if I don’t get my hands ‘dirty’ on the groundwork, and even vision forming ideas, I would never be able to tell them to level up.

9. Describe the journey to Giants Learning moving into the areas it is in (leadership, finance)?

The real journey started in mid 2010 as a blog, http://in.theageofgiants.net/. We were inspired to share our experience via a blog that reached out to people with regard to health, wealth and personal mastery. This was because we believed in having a full wheel of life that rolls smoothly in our lives.

Our first workshop ‘The Live Free Workshop’ was created to share with people how they could live free. We have since adapted this by focusing only 2 areas, namely Personal Mastery and Wealth Mastery. One major reason is because we did not want to ‘fight’ on too many fronts at the start state. So I would lead the Personal Mastery division, while my brother, Matthew, leads the Wealth Mastery Division. With our respective expertise in the right segment, the numbers of our workshops increased over time.

10. I understand you wrote a book, How did you decide to and how has that served you?

I wrote ‘Discover Your Leadership Style’ back in 2010 because I wanted to share my leadership experience with others. The aim was to tell people that everyone could be a leader. But they first have to understand that leaders are essentially people who were offered choices, as well as to make decisions.

Being an author has opened the path to many experiences, as I was humbled by the fact that I invited back to my alma mater to share my insights. I also became a guest-of-honour for a sports meet!

11. What does your book focus on?

‘Discover Your Leadership Style’ compels you to well . . . discover your leadership style! Once you know what your leadership style is, you can start to develop yourself further. If after reading the book, and you realize that you have lots to learn, then it is also a good start because self-actualization is the first step to a better you. This book was aimed towards, students, business owners, managers, and people who want to develop themselves.

12. Where is your vision for Giants Learning Technologies?

In 5 Years time, Giants Learning Technologies will become a platform and community for people to realize their full potential. People will start to ‘live free’, with the skills they learn from here, the moment they graduate from our workshops.

Giants Learning Technologies will also become the platform whereby responsible and true infopreneurs come to us so that they can work together with us to grow and expand their out reach to more people.

13. 3 people who inspire you and why?

Glenda, my wife and soul mate. She may not have gone through my journey of setting up her own company, however she takes real pride in what she does, and strives to improve the capabilities of her accounting and auditing business.

Recently she merged and acquired another accounting and auditing company, and she was really pressured by a lot of decisions. And still, she was able to integrate this busy schedule to align this to spend time with our two little girls. She is really amazing!

14. Top 3 low points in your journey thus far and what kept you going?

I have been fortunate to meet business partners who have taught me who to be, and most importantly what NOT to be. This is all part and parcel of a business journey, and you would find these out yourself. What kept me going was the firm belief in my teammates, as well as the products and services that we have.

15. Top 3 high points in your journey so far?

When Terence Tan, director of First Traders Network first introduced Choo Koon Lip, founder of Forex Asia Academy, to my brother, Matthew, and I, back in Dec 2011 at the Liat Towers Starbucks, all 4 of us knew in our guts that we were into something big! By sharing Terence and Koon Lip’s expertise over the past year, we have reached out to many graduates, and we will continue to do so over the next years ahead of us!

Koon Lip and Giants Learning Technologies also helped to nurture another company called E-Alchemists, which is a one-stop online marketing solution company. These guys asked us how they could improve their market outreach, and I shared the possibilities of using the stage to help them. I then introduced another of my intern, and good ex-colleague Tong Loong, to enhance their skills. The time taken to nurture them has been very fruitful as they have since been conducting weekend website creation workshops since mid Sept till now. It has ALWAYS been packed to the maximum! This collaboration showed that once someone joins into our platform network, they are ‘ready to go’!

16. What advice would you give local trainers?

Get your hands ‘dirty’. If you truly believe in what you share and teach, don’t just speak it. Make sure that you walk the talk as well in your life.

Always find time to nurture others, and you must teach them so that they will surpass you one day. This is true mentoring.

17. What advice would you give bosses?

Start a good talent management program to develop your staff. Once you sincerely give them enough skills to build up their confidence, you will have built a cohesive team that truly works alongside you.

Develop good succession planning strategies so that your team will always be one step ahead of others in crises. If your house is sorted in order, you have nothing to fear.

18. Money / people / persuasive leader / brilliant idea, while all 4 are important, which do you think makes a company succeed?

People. I realized that people are the cementing force in any organization. If they are aligned to the company’s goals and vision because they have strong support from the company, you have gained their loyalty and trust. I call this building a ‘strong human infrastructure’, and this ‘infrastructure’ will become more robust and sustainable than other incentives, which includes pay raise.

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So coaching takes experience, interaction and even the ability to be coached. From what Mark says, it seems the best quality that a coach can have is that of being about to be taught as he continues to touch the lives of those he meets.

Mark is an experienced coach and we are very glad to have 2 of his programs on Twofold.

Check them out here.

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