25 years of running businesses in Asia...my business stories with Scott Stockdale. Part 2

So in this, the second part of the interview with Scott Stockdale of the Entrepreneurs' Comparty, I share about moving to Singapore in 1995 as a 27-year-old, starting EastWest Public Relations, managing cash flow, managing clients, and how I learned Mandarin using the radio. So tune in for this one. It's just another 20 minutes, and I hope that you find it interesting, a little bit of slice of life. And hopefully maybe one or two tips and pointers that would be of value to you if you're running a company.

And what made you want to go back? Was it just the experience you had when you were out there on the business trip?

So basically in '94, I went to a trade show in Singapore and was just struck by the dynamism of Southeast Asia really. And so it was a result of going to Singapore, I found that no one was doing technology public relations in Asia. And so I thought, well, why don't I do that? Why don't I just set up a company doing it? So sold the house in Manchester and took the suitcases and set up in Singapore.

So many questions in that. So I guess the first thing, you can kind of answer them however you like, but I'm just going to throw these questions at you. So what, or were there any doubts when you decided to take that leap? So that's kind of the first question. And I guess the second question to follow that is Were you planning on being kind of a quote-unquote solopreneur or doing it on your own, or did you always plan to kind of grow a team and tackle these challenges together?

The answer is that for the sort of doubt, a lot of people said, well, you don't know anyone in Singapore, you've never lived in Singapore, you've never run an agency. I had only worked for companies before, I'd never been an entrepreneur before. You know, frankly, if you think of all the reasons that you're going to fail, you've got them all. But I think, well, what I felt at the time was that I could always go back, you know, and that I knew when I left Manchester, I already had bought a house at the age of 23. In those days, you could afford to do that because housing was so inexpensive. My first house cost me £60,000. So, you know, to give you an idea of the difference in cost. So I left England feeling that Singapore is full of opportunity and worst case, worst case, I would be able to come back to England and have taken a couple of years out and lived in Asia. But having said that, I did sell everything and took the proceeds to Singapore to start the business because I really didn't think of failing because I think that leaves a shadow of doubt in your mind. What I did do, and I think it's worth mentioning, is, you know, who is it talks about Alexander the Great or something about burn the boats, you know. And actually, I didn't burn the boats because I think that's a little bit— creates a level of risk you don't need. So I left some capital in the UK. So I left some money in the UK from selling the house on the grounds that If you take all of your money with you, actually what happens if you've got it there in your bank account, you spend it. And it's very easy when you're running a company to spend all the money quite quickly. So I left myself with a very tight budget when I got to Singapore. So I lived with 2 other guys, one from Scotland and one from South Africa, worked out of a tiny office. So I kept the budget really, really small. So if anyone's going to do this and go somewhere else and so on. I really, really recommend leaving 10 to 20% of your assets back at base so that if things don't go quite as planned, you can either call on them because it's going well enough, you need some extra funds, or you've got a parachute to get out. There really isn't any risk, any reason to take 100% risk. Not necessary. In terms of solopreneur, I'd never run an agency. I worked for an agency in my first job outside university and it went bankrupt after 6 months of me joining. Not when I joined.

Yeah.

At least I don't think so. But in 1990, you'll be, you know, maybe some of your listeners will remember this, but there were pretty bad economic times in the UK. This is the period of 3 million unemployed and sort of Thatcher's, you know, post-miners' strike and so on. So I hadn't got the ambition to hire people. I just really, I'd really got the ambition to get to Singapore and start. But I really wasn't mature enough to think about the shape of the business or frankly even whether I'd find business there.

Hmm.

What I really figured was if I get there with some funds and some ambition. And what I'd done though in advance was I had been out there on a business trip In January of '95 and found an office. So there was a publisher I knew. So I wrote to him and said, can I borrow, rent 50 square feet from you? So I think it's about 200 Singapore dollars, £100 a month at today's money. And it gave me a postal address of Telok Ayer Street, 181A Telok Ayer Street. And with that address, I then wrote to everybody I knew from Siemens and Harman, all these companies. I wrote to them saying, I'm going to Asia to start a PR business. If you need help, this is my address. This is my company address. So I did that 3 months before I went. In those days, you had to send letters, right? So in those days, it'd take a week to 10 days for them to get a letter, to read it, write something, and send one back, right? So you needed to have about a month's lead time. So when I arrived in Singapore, I had about 25 letters from people saying congratulations, and including a couple of companies that had bought AMS Neve equipment said, we've got all this equipment now, we need to do the marketing for our studios. So within a couple of months, I had clients in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur. And that was unexpected, to be honest. But So I didn't have ambition. I didn't know what the company would look like, but I did start to try and identify who would be my customers in advance.

I like that. There's so many great things in what you've just been saying I want to kind of underscore. I think the first thing about leaving some capital at home when you're looking to start a business abroad, very smart. And I think the other things you've been talking about, actually having, I guess, equivalent of some leads going out there. So, you know, having these letters which you can then potentially build some business once you're out there. Very, very smart as well.

People often start the business and they completely underestimate how long it's going to take for business to come in. It's no one's fault, but you have issues of you— when you write to people, they may not be ready for your service, right? The assumption that when you tell people, they go, oh, that's just what I need right now and I'll pay you right now because you meet all all my criteria. But when they read your letter or email, whatever, they're going, well, you've only been in business for a week and I don't need what— but I might build that into my budget for 6 months' time, right? But what you do have are costs from day one. You have an office, you have broadband, you have tax, you have whatever, right? So anything you can do to bring forward the sales pipeline in advance of acquiring costs, the better, right? So if you're going to start a business and you're working for someone else, obviously without leveraging and taking advantage of where you're working now, but on the weekends or at night, for example, start working 3 to 6 months in advance on the business development side. Because then when you do leave the company, you're not going, I'm in business now. You're ideally leaving and your first client, if that could be, you give months notice when you've got the first client. It's not in the MBA books. I've never seen that in the MBA books, to be honest. But any entrepreneur will tell you it takes longer to get sales than you're expecting. But the cost, so if you can drag your schedule forward and just kind of with the anticipation of getting started until you've got potential leads. What it does, Scott, is it saves your capital. You know, you start a business in the P&L, but cash flow is the big killer when you start. So when I started the business in Singapore, after 30 days, I had $25,000 worth of billings. Fantastic, right? But I also had $18,000 of costs. Now the thing is, because when you're new, no one gives you credit. And when you're new, no client will pay you in advance.

Yeah.

Actually, what I've got is I've paid out $18,000 to get printing and production done to print houses in Singapore, right? Client says, I love your design, can you do it? And I go, okay. So, but the printer says, Jim, it's great, but you need to pay me in advance because I've never met you. You just started, right? You have no credibility.

Yeah.

So actually, at the end of 3— at the end of a month, I had $30 in my bank account. So actually, on paper, I had a net profit of $7,000, which is more, by the way, than I'd ever earned working for someone else in the UK in that length of time. But I was nearly out of business because I overtraded. So I mentioned earlier on about leaving a little bit of capital in advance. Back home, right? So I was able to call on some of that. But also what I then did was I went to all of my suppliers that I'd paid prepaid, and I said, look, I've prepaid you because I want to show good faith. So I want to pay you in advance. I don't want you to think that I'm just going to come and run. So then what I did was I took my contracts with my clients and showed them In effect that I had the money coming in. Because you know what they do? They say, Jim, that's great, you owe me the last 10%, but I won't release the goods until you pay the last amount. But the client won't pay the money until they've seen the goods.

It's a constant battle, isn't it?

My solution was I went and I showed them the letter of my invoice to my client. So again, these are things that are not in the MBA, but the things could kill a business. I had some good friends who started a business in Malaysia and they got a very big client, a very big telecommunications company in KL, contracted them to do all their marketing literature. And 6 months later, they're out of business because the Malaysians didn't pay them in time. And the printers refused to deliver the product until the money was in front of them. And the Malaysians wouldn't pay them without seeing the product. Game over. Their business was gone, including their life savings. Because they tried to pay for the print, they could never get enough. So these are small tactics which can save your life if you're running a business. And I just kind of learned them, I kind of learned them the hard way. And so it's like I'm delighted that I can share with some of, you know, with your listeners, maybe for someone that'll help them.

Yeah, 100%. Even if it helps just one person further down the line, that's worth sharing, isn't it? 100%. With the services that you were delivering at that time, were they for Asian publications or were they for companies in Asia wanting to get into British publications, or was it a mixture of the two?

So I had foreign companies getting into Asian media, and then I had some foreign companies like Loxley, public companies, the Thai Telephone company that had seen the work I was doing for one of their subsidiaries, which was being run by a foreigner in Bangkok. And so they said, "You know, ah, chee wai la wai yut oh. Can you help us?" Very sweet, the Thais. So I had this mix, really, Scott, of of some Westerners coming into Asia. I had one client called Quantel that I worked with for twelve years, and basically they had a UK office in a. Hong Kong office, and I ran their regional public relations. And I also worked for, um, Benariang, which launched what is now— what was called, um, what became Astro, which is the largest telecommunication satellite broadcaster owned by Ananda Krishnan out of Malaysia. So I did all their recruitment, did the branding, brochures. So it kind of grew, really. It was great fun.

It sounds it, and I could ask you a billion more questions, but I'm very conscious of our time, so I want to kind of move on to some of the other things that I said we'd get into. So in terms of PR, and I'm thinking kind of specifics in terms of people listening, what sort of things they could be doing for their own PR. Now I believe you've got a 5-step methodology, is that right?

My love and my passion is, you know, to help entrepreneurs, fellow fellow business owners. So I've developed a program called SPEAK PR, which is for Storify, Personalize, Engage, Amplify, and To Know. And they can find it at eastwestpr.com. It's also on our podcast, as you know, on SPEAK PR Podcast, and also on YouTube. Basically, this is a 5-stage methodology that business owners can use to unlock the value in their own businesses without needing an agency. And it starts with storification, which is all about how to build a narrative around them, around themselves and around their business, how to personalize that for 3 different audience groups, which are the internal, the partners, and the external or otherwise customers. Engagement, which is around creating engaging content and how you can do that through infographics, text, video, and so on. The third is about amplification, and in amplification, a big part of that narrative is about automation. And so I explain about how one can deliver information across multiple channels without a big team using automation tools. And then the third part is what we call know, and what I've done is I've developed what I call the Active Communications Index, and this is a productivity metric. So what happens is that many companies are concerned about, or many marketers are just sort of concerned about, how many page views, how many clicks, how many engagements, but the problem is we can't control that because it's— that really is up to whatever people think about our content. What we can control as business owners is what goes into the activity, so I've created this Active Communications Index because I'd like for business owners to be able to say to whoever it is doing their public relations, how many press releases a week, what's the frequency of that, and what's the channel that we're sending, or how many channels. So the ACI, as I call it, is a function of content, frequency, and channels.

Well, that would be great for listeners to find out more about. So yes, I will provide a link to that in the show notes. You are most welcome. And for for people looking to maybe get into PR? Would there be like one, I know this is very, it's a very kind of blunt question for a very all-encompassing holistic thing, but if there was one tip you could give to someone looking to maybe get started in PR, you know, let's just picture a scene where someone's got a business, haven't marketed it really, they don't know how to get into a publication or they're wanting to get some more exposure for their brands, but they don't know how to do that.

Yeah.

Would there be one tip, I guess, if you had to pick out of all of them that you'd be able to give people?

I think if anyone's looking to get more exposure for their PR, the best thing they can do is think about their story. What makes their own company and their own brand unique? Because really, one has to start there. A bit like my jumping out of the plane and you said that's a good hook, right?

Yeah.

So it's so competitive out there for pretty much everything that what people are buying, and especially if you're buying from an entrepreneur, is you're buying their reason for doing what they're doing. If you can, there are tools. There's a chap called Park Howell, for example, who has a brand bewitchery, a book, which I just interviewed him and he's podcasts are out on, on my Speak PR. There are quite a few, but it basically starts with this idea of a vision, a problem, and a solution. Okay?

Hmm.

I wanted to do this, but there was this problem, therefore I started this business. So for any entrepreneur or business owner, start with your story, because if you get that right, the exposure will follow. Because a bit like me saying, I'm jumping out of a plane because I want to go to Australia but I can't afford to, therefore I'm raising the money by challenging myself. The media were interested in that as a, as a story. So if you just ring the media and say, I've got a problem which is I need to raise money, can you cover me? It's not a very interesting story. Lots of people have got that. So the best piece of advice is to dig deep. Often for most entrepreneurs, it's the burning passion like you've got with Entrepreneurs Can Party. Why are you doing this and what is your passion? Because it'll be the passion, as we've seen, whether it's Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, any of these great entrepreneurs and social leaders, Mandela or any great social leader, it's because they've had a cause. And if you get the cause right and can articulate that, then the rest will follow. You need to still do work, by the way. It's not that you're sitting in the room on your own going, I've got a great story. You have to do the work, but if you don't do that work upstream, you'll find you won't get the coverage later on.

Great tip, I like it a lot. And that is pretty much a wrap, Jim, so thank you so much for taking the time to party today.

And apologies for doing it in slightly unconventional surroundings from a Somerset field. Luckily the rain has stopped, although you might have heard No, not at all.

It's been a delight. I've got one final question for you before we jump off, and it's a question I like to ask all my guests. So I'll picture the scene. Imagine we're driving down an American highway and we see a big billboard to the side, kind of relevant for PR, I guess. And you could write anything on that billboard, whether it's a story, piece of advice, a quip, whatever you want it to be. What do you think you'd write on that billboard for thousands of people to see? And if so, why?

I think what I would write on there is I'd say life is for living. Live yours. And the reason I'd say that is because there are lots of people that are living their lives and will give advice as to how you can live yours. But you, you really only have one life to lead. And as long as you do it with integrity and honesty and care, I'm personally a believer that we only grow through what we attempt. And if you don't attempt anything, then it's impossible to grow.

Very empowering. I like it. Nice way to end the show. Like I say, thank you so much for taking the time to party today. speakpr.com, we will put that in the show notes. And if there's any other social profiles, any other places you'd like to direct listeners towards, what would they be?

And so that ended the interview with Scott Stockdale of the Entrepreneurs' Comparty. So thank you to Scott for his interest and his patience and his amazing editing, because I know I rambled on rather a lot. Hope that there have been some points of interest for you too there, a little bit of something different to the normal fare. But what is going to be consistent is that I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that life gives you the kind of rewards and adventure that I've been blessed to have enjoyed. Thank you for listening to this episode of Speak PL.