After spending over two decades in the military, Colin Goh left the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) to become an entrepreneur in 2014. While he was making a comfortable living and enjoyed his time in the service, he reflects that the real reason he left was that he wasn’t “experiencing happiness”.
He initially joined his wife’s existing education platform business Learns Supermart. The platform allowed tuition centres, tutors, educators and development centres to list their services for parents in Singapore.
Embracing Regular Disruption
In its seven years, Learns Supermart has already had to pivot its business model several times. In 2015, a flood of new competitors into the space “wiped us out” explained Colin.
Learns Supermart had to value-add by offering social media and digital marketing strategy for its clients. The moved proved to be a hit, with business taking off. Not long later, many boutique social media agencies began springing up, eating into their niche. This was when “we again had to do something different by incorporating video marketing in our overall strategy in 2016”.
Once again, clients were receptive to the new service. Moreover, it’s client base had also significantly grown, it was no longer serving only the education sector, but also real estate, financial advisory, car dealerships, F&B and others. With this, the business changed its name to Learns Marketing to reflect the new business.
Today, Colin is once again seeing competition heat up in the video marketing space. But he is not phased, saying that he just needs to be “differenter” from their competition.
Why Be Different, When You Can Be “Differenter”?
Colin’s Learns Marketing had to pivot at least twice within the span of a few years – as trends shifted much more quickly in the digital space. He quickly realised that pivoting would be a regular affair for his business. This was also when he coined the team’s motto “Why be different, when you can be differenter”.
He applied this way of thinking throughout the business. For example, he doesn’t use the term employees, and instead calls everyone team members. Today, there are 13 team members, including Colin and his wife, Jessica, in Learns Marketing.
While work-from-home is gaining recognition in the post-COVID-19 world, Learns Marketing was built to be a fully work-from-home outfit since 2017. This was a result Colin’s 3-hour daily drive, to-and-fro, between his home in the east and Mindef Building in the West for 20 years. Another rising #NewNormal trend, employing remote overseas employees, was also integrated into Learns Marketing from day 1 – in 2017.
We met up with Colin for this edition of 5 Questions With… to find out more about how Colin has built his business to be “differenter” from his competition.
Dinesh Dayani: Many people typically think that regulars in Mindef can be very rigid and uncreative. How did you find yourself becoming a content strategist in the video production space?
Colin Goh: Largely true. Perhaps this is why I was a misfit.
But, since young, I was quite a creative person. I remember my mom giving me a camera back then. We were using film still, so I had to be really careful about each picture I took, with the angles, lighting and everything. My mom also enrolled me into art from a young age – which I enjoyed.
So, the creative juices were there all along. Even though I wasn’t able to use it during my time in the military.
Dinesh: 2020 was a very challenging year for many businesses. How was your business affected, and how did you overcome this?
Colin: 2020 struck us really, really hard.
As majority of our clients are on retainer, even if one client terminates his contract, it is a big loss for us. From February to April, we lost over 50% of our clients just like that. During the Circuit Breaker months, from April to June, work was literally halted, and we had zero income.
Then, we had six team members, including my wife and me. We had to use our business cash reserves and even dip into personal savings to keep Learns Marketing afloat.
We had to put our videographer’s pay on hold because there was no work or cash flow. For our editing team, we had no work for them either so I couldn’t pay them. But we came up with ad-hoc production projects to continue paying them a smaller amount.
Of course, back then we didn’t know we would see a relatively quick recovery, so we were very careful with finances. I also asked my clients not to stop our retainer arrangements, and for those that didn’t drop us despite the tough times for all, we are now in a position to repay this support. Today, we have offered to double their retainer deliverables at no extra cost.
Word also spread because of this, and in July 2020, just one month after the Circuit Breaker ended, we had our best ever revenue in a month as a business. Because of the business improvement, we have also been onboarding more team members.
Dinesh: During your entrepreneurship journey, what are/were some of your biggest learning points?
Colin: I can share 3 big ones for me.
1. How different entrepreneurship is from employment
I have never had to worry about losing my job in the military. For me, it was very difficult to change my mindset after 20 years in the army. Now, there are no safety nets. If I don’t work hard, I don’t get income. Even if I worked hard, I may not get income.
2. Never stop learning
Even when I thought I knew a lot already, I have always found that there was more to learn. Even from disciplines outside of my field and even the simplest entrepreneurship skills, something as basic as talking to people – to network and build connections – was difficult for me
3. People management
Managing an 11-member team is already a big challenge for me. When I was in the military, I was an officer in command of people. They had to listen to me. In the real world, employees don’t necessarily need to listen to their employers.
We also have millennials working with us, team members who are offshore and who I’ve never met in person, team members with family and relationship problems. How do I manage them differently?
Dinesh: Being a business owner, you actually find yourself working many more hours. However, life also continues outside of your business – what are some other things that you are passionate about in your free time?
Colin: I’m driven by purpose a lot. Earlier I spoke about not finding happiness in my previous career, I eventually found that giving back makes me happier. Today, our family actively tries to give back regularly. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, my family actually went to Cambodia and built a school there. We are really proud of this.
Beyond this, in my free time, I am also very passionate about cars. Unfortunately, it is one of the most costly passions to have in Singapore. I love to “zheng” cars and take long road trips, but that’s not really possible now. Furthermore, with my work schedule, I hardly get to drive my car anymore.
Today, I also love speaking to and meeting people. Whether they’re clients, new contacts, or people that I can serve or help.
I also enjoy family time. While I am physically with my family a lot (while working from home), there’s not a lot of quality time. Whenever I can, we try to take meals together as a family.
Dinesh: Having succeeded for more than 6 years in a field you entered with 0 experience. What is the one advice you have for entrepreneurs aspiring to enter a field they don’t know a lot about?
If it is just about the money, do something else. It’s very difficult to become competent in an entirely new field and then be good enough to make a lot of money from it.
If it fuels a purpose, then my advice to them is that you need to be agile. You don’t need to be ahead of everyone, you just need to be ahead of most. A small team also allows you to change fast – I can pivot the business in one month if need be. That’s something bigger companies may face challenges doing.
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