Mr Ryan Soh, Chief Executive Officer of MoneyTree Singapore, emerges to be one opportunist in this business world. With zero fear for failures, Ryan grabs hold of any business opportunity that he thinks is viable. Therefore, he conceptualized MoneyTree in the hope to educate our young children the importance of money management and investment. MoneyTree Singapore aims to prepare kids and adults for a challenging financial future - where loans and credit cards are easily available, and being in debt for a good part of life is an accepted norm.
Interviewer’s Comments:
Allow me to quote a meaningful sentence from Ryan, “Ask yourself, ‘Do you feel that it is a right time to get into the market?” Believing in yourself and putting full faith in your idea are the 2 most important ingredients to success. Making the first step out to start a business is never easy. It must undergo several obstacles, which act as tests for the entrepreneurs. In order to succeed, one must have firm determination and great passion in their business. With his unique ways of adapting and positioning MoneyTree into the market, I am sure Ryan and his team will expand MoneyTree into the global arena successfully!
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Interview with Mr. Soh Kai Leong, Ryan
by Ms Chan Yu Jun Grace on 11-Jun-2010. Student can be reached at chan.grace22@gmail.com
Business Profile:
MoneyTree is established to provide Financial & Entrepreneurship skills and knowledge to youths aged 6 to 26, which would be required to build a career or business, as well as plan for their financial freedom. It has been created to fill the void left by the education system and school curriculum and to explore the opportunities available worldwide to further the dissemination and propagation of high-quality e-learning programmes utilising state of the art technology, and to groom the next generation of entrepreneurs.
1. What is the nature of your business?
MoneyTree positions itself as a specialized training provider, focusing on two aspects - financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Specifically for financial literacy, MoneyTree focuses on money management and investment. We offer 6 different levels of workshops that are mainly divided into Basic, Junior, Apprentice and Entrepreneur to our target group (i.e. kids and youths). Each level is catered for different age groups ranging from 6 to 26 years old. This is the part where we position ourselves in a niche market.
2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.)
MoneyTree is in fact my fourth business. All this time, I have been a serial entrepreneur. It is the never-say-die spirit in me that pushes me to establish MoneyTree. My two perspectives that drive me include being a serial entrepreneur and the fact that I managed my money in a hard way when I was young. No one taught me how to manage money and I had to go through the school of hard knocks. I saw this as an opportunity and took the much needed steps to move it along. I believe it is the internal attitude - self-achievement, which I look towards very much. I am always looking for new breakthroughs and the ability to overcome my personal limitations because we could be our own enemy. This is the ‘adventurous’ side of me.
My first business is my distribution business which I started 8 years ago. I was in this industry for 4 years before I switched to eCommerce for the subsequent 2 years. After that, I moved into IT which I am still running. This IT business focuses on programming based - content management system, customer relation system and others. MoneyTree is my 4th business. As a businessman, you always want your business to prosper so that it can move into the next stage of development. I guess as far as the entrepreneurial aspect goes, the most important thing is the ‘never-say-die’ attitude. As far as possible, we like our business to grow but we should also consider that there are many economic conditions as well as the management team that could hinder the development. The first two businesses basically faced a lot of competition. With the economic downturn, there was a need to switch. So I decided to put an end to an old ‘chapter’ and move on to a new one.
3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry?
Most people will have a mindset that you should go into the business that you specialize in or an area you have been trained for academically. However, I was looking for something that is unique and different from the academic standpoint. I am the kind of person who identifies a business opportunity. I do not limit my personal capacity and capability in optimizing the opportunity. I would rather grab the opportunity and see if there are any capabilities that I may be lacking and strive to improve and polish my skills in that aspect. It is important to instill this kind of mindset as many Singaporeans are taught to excel and not to fail in the present educational models. We somehow overlook the fact that we should remove the fear of failing. It is only through failures that one learns. So, this is the kind of mindset I acquired. As long as I see an opportunity, I would like to grab hold of it and see how far I can take it. I will not limit myself. It doesn’t mean that I can only go into the mechanical engineering related field just because I graduated with a Diploma in Mechanical engineering.
I see opportunity in basic financial literacy education because it is not being covered in the traditional academic model. I thought that this is a gap which I could fill in. As far as I’m concerned, any young adult after the completion of 15-20 years of school, have to face the first problem of managing finances. One would be asking himself/herself how he/she should spend the first cheque of $2500-$3000. This is a problem and no one actually taught us how to manage that. When I say managing, I am not referring to spending alone because we don’t need to know how to spend. The more challenging parts are how to save, how to invest, and how to plan for retirement. These concepts are not taught in the years of education we spent in school, hence, I see this as an opportunity. Furthermore, I was 1 of those young adults who had to learn to manage my money the hard way; therefore I see this as a business opportunity to teach Financial Literacy to the young generation.
4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc.
I have partners and we formed a management team in which each of us takes care of various aspects. We have been around for the past 3 years and in fact MoneyTree Singapore is a subsidiary of a parent company known as MoneyTree Asia Pacific Ltd (I am one of the co-founders) which is based in Hong Kong. Currently, we have 4 subsidiaries under MoneyTree Asia Pacific which are MoneyTree Malaysia, MoneyTree Singapore, MoneyTree Borneo and MoneyTree Indonesia. In terms of resources, each member look into different areas and focus on that particular area. My partners emphasize on the product development while I focus more on the Marketing and Branding. My partners are my business associates from my previous businesses and we decided to go into something potentially more lucrative. We share a common vision and I guess this is also the path of entrepreneurship where most founding members start off as friends. Finding a partner for a business should be skill-focused and not friendship-focused for me.
5. How can one minimize the possibility in identifying the wrong partners?
This is one area that we will cover in our programme. The reason why people become friends is because they share the same interest, likely to share the same strengths and weaknesses. As such, when you move into business, the same thing will happen. However, in business you should form a more holistic team rather than everyone having the same strengths and weaknesses. For example, we can’t possibly have a team of partners who are weak in looking for details because in that way we may end up relying on each other looking into that matter. For capital start-up, we managed to pull something up together to start this business. Overall, I believe that we should not let capital be one of the major hurdles. Entrepreneurs should always be looking for ways to solve it and Singapore is very pro-active in encouraging entrepreneurship where a lot of funding schemes are available for people to tap on for a start-up.
6. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business?
For MoneyTree, the major concern is that, some of them in our target group are far too young to be taught about money. And a key query which arose when we first started was why aren’t our programmes taught in school since we said it is so good. But of course, we managed to knock off this main concern and eventually received many good responses from parents. These are the challenges that we have to overcome because an entrepreneur should know how to juggle with difficulties and opportunities. Challenges are inevitable but it depends how strong you believe your business will work.
7. How to cope with children to absorb financial knowledge when their attention span is low?
One of the strengths of MoneyTree is the methodology that we adopt. We do understand that kids are kids and they have special needs. They have short attention span and may start to lose focus and not learn the essence when they are taught about the core theories. So to resolve this problem, we use a methodology that highlights learning through fun and interactive games. For instance, in our classes, the children get very excited when currency notes are given to them because they don’t normally see so much money in real life. Kids nowadays seldom see cash transaction because when they go shopping with their parents, most of their parents use cashless transactions. Gradually, they have a mindset that whenever they want something, they can just use a card and sign on a piece of paper to get what they want. To them, this is a normal sales transaction.
From their standpoint, with the amazing card, the item is probably free because no cash is needed or paid at the counter. Thus when the kids grow up, they would like many of these items which we call “credit cards”. All these ultimately lead to a child’s poor understanding of the value of money. So the moment we give them MoneyTree currency notes, they will become happy and start counting the notes. In addition, they are also given the opportunity to spend that amount of money in class. This puts them into doing budgeting indirectly. By using the money each owns, we send them a message that the objective is one has to earn as much money as possible and at the end of a session, there will be something (i.e. movie tickets, mp3, book vouchers) for them to walk away with by exchanging their MoneyTree notes.
With such a mission in mind, students become more focused. This is exactly what we want to inculcate in them. In order to earn more money, they will have to answer questions in class. Not only are we able to prevent the child from falling asleep in this way, they can definitely learn something better when all of them get involved in the lesson rather than listening passively to what the trainer has got to say as classes are always highly interactive. Another important key to take note in our MoneyTree programme is that the word ‘wrong’ is taken away. We are trying to move away from Asian traditional training environment whereby you pinpoint students for mistakes. By doing this, you discourage them to try again. Therefore what we do is that we will reward them if they are willing to retry, even though the reward would not be as much as those who got a perfect answer but it is a sense of encouragement.
This kind of methodology is moving towards what MOE is advocating “Teach Less, Learn More” which involves 40% content 60% activity and practice. Through this kind of interaction, we are also facilitating peer-learning as well. Financial literacy is not part of the school curriculum. I have a 12-yr-old kid reading investment books while another boy of same age who does not have such knowledge will be amazed or impressed by an answer by that child with prior knowledge when I raise a question about financial literacy. After knowing that your classmates know the answer, you are also motivated to learn more about financial literacy as well. Of course we have got a lot of other activities such as mini economy, where they hold jobs, receive salaries, pay taxes etc. In essence, we try to mimic the adult world but in a more fun and interactive way.
Throughout the years, we have received numerous positive testimonials from parents which I think is very important as it gives us additional confidence to advance further.
8. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? How did you overcome these challenges? Please share some specific examples of the action you took to overcome the challenges.
Thinking back when we started off initially, getting people to know you - your brand or product, was the first challenge we had to trounce. I managed to solve that using a few ways, such as doing regular press releases, getting media write-ups and so on. For any business, we are always looking at USP (Unique Selling Proposition). As for MoneyTree, we have a USP that is to cater financial literacy to the kids; this is our niche angle and we are moving towards it progressively. We are also getting in touch with media so that we have our write-ups published accordingly. We have been featured in various media such as ChannelNewsAsia, Wanbao, The Straits Times, MoneyWeek, radio and magazines over the past 3 years.
9. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it?
The road to success is always ‘under construction’. Entrepreneurs have to lay down every brick but the key point is whether it is a sunny or rainy day to carry out that task. So no matter what, the task is always tough. To answer your question, frankly speaking I can’t remember any of such days because I see every day as a challenge. As an entrepreneur, I believe nothing is routine; we are constantly looking for ways to sustain, expand, improve, and solve problems. In fact, there is no real worst day. But if you ask me deep down whether I have ever felt like giving up, I will answer yes, definitely. There is always an angel and a devil that control your mind. Some point in life, you will inescapably feel trapped and think that you could never do it. The devil will tell your mind that why not just go and find a stable job. The angel on the other hand will speak to you that some days in life, you see a great bright day and are energized to handle anything to strive for success. This is the inner conflict that you have to overcome. Your greatest enemy is yourself.
In my first 4 years in business, it was really a struggle and I almost wanted to give up. To get involved in another business was a very tough point as I had committed myself to 4 years of ups and downs, blood and sweat, one would definitely somehow feel disheartened when it closes down. That was one point when I felt like giving up. However a lesson I learnt was that I knew what are the mistakes that should be avoided in future. After that, I will prepare myself to move ahead again.
10. How were you being pulled back to feet when you fall?
I guessed it is very much a personal achievement aspect and feeling highly self-motivated - a Belief that I can make it for sure. We set objectives when we started out. Thus we are always relying on that to question ourselves what we have done which may be incorrect and how it can be done in a better way. We ensure that we are on the same track at all times.
11. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses?
Having a clear business plan is important. For instance, you need to clearly know your own Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Although this may sound very theoretical, I think at the end of the day, an entrepreneur will need to focus on how to market this important element. Having the best product with no one knowing it, may also make your business fail but if you have a simple product and everyone knows about it, you make money. It is a simple formula.
12. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you?
You simply know it when you look into your financial statement (jokingly). In fact, there is no ‘when’. You will know when it comes. For me, I already have the mindset that my business would work. That is the mindset that keeps me going. If your mindset is to ‘just try’, then you will just try and your business will try you as well. You won’t go far with this kind of mentality. Having a positive mindset, you will be successful. With clear aim knowing where you want to go, is the first step.
13. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? And why are they so important and meaningful to you?
I would not say recognized but at least there were several media approaches whereby reporters were interested to know about us. Like I mentioned, they are the ones who found us for interview. That is the moment I knew we have positioned ourselves in a right way where we are the leader in financial literacy and entrepreneurship training. I guess this is the part that gives me the sense of having one of the greatest achievements. It is not easy to become one of the leaders in certain industry. However, I think the more difficult part is about sustainability. It is easier to start off than to maintain.
14. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples.
Focusing on the niche market is important. Although there are competitors in the same field, we see it as a competition in strengthening ourselves in two perspectives. One is branding and marketing. A strong brand name is something that will be here to stay. On the other hand, we hope to constantly enhance our content and also to structure more value-added services for our clients.
15. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business?
MoneyTree is one of those (laughs). As an entrepreneur, especially being a trainer in education, you will see quite a lot of workable ideas. But I think many times it depends on the focus. And MoneyTree’s focus is to help the young generation to embark and achieve their dreams.
16. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion?
I think for the past 3 years, although our main core countries are Peninsula Malaysia and Singapore, we have penetrated into Borneo and Indonesia markets. Currently, there are already interested parties deciding to take our licensing or even franchise to other countries as well. So within the next 3 to 5 years, we will definitely position ourselves not only in Singapore but also the Asia Pacific Region. With that taking off, we are looking at a much bigger angle to broaden the scope of our programmes.
17. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
There are two meanings to it. If I’m here to share with a group of students, I will tell you that every one of them will be an entrepreneur. Back in the past, the word ‘entrepreneur’ is a taboo word especially to parents. Parents always hope their kids would study hard and get a good stable job in the future, and starting your own business is seldom encouraged.
Nevertheless, in this 21st century, everyone has to be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people; they are either those who run their own businesses or those who run other people’s businesses. As such with such positioning, no matter which role you are in, you ought to have that entrepreneurial mindset. Even if you are an employee, your employer expects you to know how to run the business. So the training aspects for entrepreneurship should not be confined. This training is thus not only for people who want to start their own business. For example, people working in MNCs, they may have their own department or division that requires them to manage a team of people. So this is as good as running your own company. Entrepreneurship to me, is a knowledge that everyone requires. And that’s the only way for people and economy to move forward.
18. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far?
Perseverance and the Never-Say-Die attitude. I’m always looking for solutions when problems occur. This is another thing about me; I do not put blame on other people or external factors. Time waits for no man so I do not allow myself room for the same mistakes to happen in the future. In addition, it is also about leadership quality. Also, not going in because you want to try but do it with burning passion and right attitude. A lot of people would ask when would be the right/best time. Actually this is up to individual. You are here to start a business, you are here to succeed; you are here to solve any obstacles that lie ahead. In my personal opinion, the definition of success is how you manage to pull yourself up whenever you are hit by failure. It is really about how I want my life to be;how I want to shape and motivate. There is no specific potion to make one hyper and go all the way but is really that is something that is internal.
19. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (e.g. Educational qualification, work experience, family influence, attitude, etc)
I guess as an entrepreneur all these mentioned factors should not be something that will affect your success. It should never be a case that I must get a certain educational qualification or some work experience before I start a business. I think everything is about correct timing. Ask yourself, “Do you feel that it is a right time to get into the market?” Nevertheless, all those factors are contributing factors but are never the determining factors. This ought to be the way we should look at starting a business because there is really no right time to start a business. If you think it is a right time, then it shall be the right time. If you say it is not time then it will be a wrong time because no one can decide which path one should be taking to be successful. There is no checklist to pass or excel. There are many aspects to look into for a start-up but ultimately, “do you think it is a right time?” If your answer is yes, believe in yourself.
20. In your opinion, what does it mean to have the ‘Spirit of Enterprise’?
Spirit of Enterprise is the idea of creating new things. An entrepreneur is basically an innovator; we really have to look into the area that is untouched and create that kind of supply to meet the demand. Being an innovator is the key aspect to all entrepreneurs - looking into areas people oversee and grabbing the opportunity.
21. Who or what motivates and inspires you?
There is no particular person. Both my parents were self-employed and I did help them out when I was young. As an entrepreneur, you always want to give the best for your family.
22. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation?
Life skills such as financial literacy and entrepreneurship are things we should all know since young and that is why we are in this business. These are important values that we should inculcate since young. Not just for my business’ sake, but because of the individual’s future plan in which one needs to know how to manage his/her own money.
23. Can you share some of the more significant events / incidents that affected or shaped your business philosophy and the way you conduct your business? I.e. SARS, new competition or shifts in market behaviour and trends, etc.
Like I mentioned earlier, the reason why I am in entrepreneurship/financial literacy is because I have learnt to manage my money the hard way. It is painful for young adults to go through that process. It is a simple thought that I do not wish the young generation to repeat the path that I took. That’s the kind of passion burning in me. I think entrepreneurship is still passion-driven although ultimately it results to money-oriented. Otherwise, they will not get into business. This equation comes together because passion is one thing and money-making is the other why people get involved. Your business model can’t work mainly because of passion. At the end of the day, you may be earning nothing to sustain your survival. So did the economic downturn affect me in any way of your business philosophy? I will not say affect but it actually encouraged a change in business strategy. When we first started, we were focusing purely on retail - getting parents to sign up. With the economic changes, we took the changes as a challenge and we decided to bring MoneyTree into the school market. I always uphold a philosophy, “Everything happens for a reason”. You just need to find a right reason to move into a right industry. That shift proved to be fruitful and it helped us to solve quite a lot of other obstacles. I guess that actually helped us to resolve another set of problems by bringing in new grounds of sales revenue.
24. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so?
There is no right time. Whether market is good or bad, people are earning money. So, why aren’t you the one? The economy itself proves to me as neither a good nor bad thing to start business; it is only again whether you see it as an opportunity. Just identify the right spot to get yourself prepared.
25. How much have your company grown since it started? In terms of revenue, number of customers, manpower and other areas that is applicable to your business.
If you are referring to territory expansion aspect, we have moved to Borneo, Indonesia. As for local establishment, we are now officially running our programs in schools. Then in Malaysia, we are working with banks and a lot of corporate partners. This kind of brand awareness has actually brought us up to the next level - we have successfully portrayed ourselves as a specialized provider for financial literacy and entrepreneurship. When we first started, we began with only holiday programmes. Then, we did changes to streamline programmes into more progressive trainings. This was done through hand-in-hand involvement between the Research & Development and Marketing departments. So if you are looking at how much we have grown since we started, of course there are more classes today as compared to what we had in the past when we only worked on the holiday programmes. Now we are working on a monthly basis especially ever since we entered the school market which provided us a full cohort of 200-400 students at one go.
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Big Business Plan Competition 09/10″ had the opportunity yesterday to improve their skills on executive summary writing before the submission date with the help of Michael Reyes, an established speaker for NUS Enterprise Singapore. The workshop was held at the iCentre, Anggerek Desa.
