Andrew Collins shares the Winning Formula Behind Mailman's Success

Hello and welcome to the Rich Robinson Show. I'm your host, Rich Robinson. Over the past 25 years, I've been an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and professor here in Asia. After nearly a quarter of a century in China, I'm now based here in Bali, Indonesia, the island of the gods. Asia is my home now. 60% of the world's population also lives here, but I would contend 80% of the world's dynamism and opportunity is right here in the region. On the show, you'll hear candid and fun conversations with some of my friends and colleagues, people I've met along my journey, entrepreneurs, operators, experts. It will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial agility that actually defines it. This first season, season 1 of The Rich Robinson Show, is titled At the Speed of China. Like, wait for it, at the speed of light. Things happen fast in China, and in this season 1, we're gonna take a deeper look at that. The rapid economic development over the past few decades, as well as the speed and cycles of innovation taking place all day, every day right now.

Let's go, Jio! I so you were saying like I'm unsurprised at these crazy-ass serendipitous. Meetings you have because you manifest that, you attract that. So you're in Singapore now, and you were telling me what?

Well, I find like even for the last say fourteen years I was in Shanghai, I didn't use LinkedIn at all. In Shanghai, you don't need to, right? Our office was very much designed as being a hub.

We were located downtown, like middle of the great cool office, the coolest office in China that I've ever been in.

But I just got so used to like everyone comes to me. I don't need to. reach out to me. Why would I reach out to anyone? You know, you would have been the same. You got to a certain point where the awareness maybe of you, or you'd at least developed a reputation that was at least credible and you haven't fucked it up yet, but you know, which you're only one day away from doing, but you at least had maintained that. I found when I moved to Singapore and especially like it was basically the COVID year that we moved like 2 months before COVID happened. I then had to go, oh shit, how do I? Because I don't reach out to people. I mean, I reach out, but like not on LinkedIn. Like I've just never really had to. There's always been people and I've not really done that yet. However, I have started. I'm a one-to-one guy. Like I'll ask you, I'll go, Rich, do you know a guy in San Fran who's in like voice technology? And you'll go, actually I don't, but I know a guy who would. And then I just move like that. But I've had some really bizarre Serendipitous meetups, just like at a cafe or a bookshop or a bar. And I'm one of those guys that will just go, hey, mate, I see you here every day. What do you do? And I'm not kidding you, I have so many lifelong friends and guys I've done business with, people I've employed, someone I've invested into that I've done that. Like so many.

I have as well. I do too, right? The universe is putting that out in front of us. You just got to go get it, right?

Yeah, it's so weird, isn't it? I was in a conference once with BP Stream. You know, those conferences, they sort of like these unconferences. So they invited a bunch of people. It was all paid for. And I went there along and I was participating in a, well, it wasn't that spontaneous, but there was a discussion group around innovation in agencies and is it worth it? Like, you know, are you an agency or an innovation company? Like decide who you are, where is the value? Anyway, there's a guy there I thought was really interesting. So after it, oh, we'd never met before. After it, I said to him, hey, I really like your thinking. Let's grab a beer and talk more on that. And Martin Sorrell was in the group as well. You know, so it's a really good quality group of people in there. William Balbini was also in there if he's listening to this. And the guy's name was Chi, actually, Chi Tran. Anyway, him and I ended up building a very lifelong friendship. I invested into a company he led. He's now like gone on to do great things together, but we've developed such a great friendship. And I have about a dozen of them, or, you know, who I think if I reach out to like my top 10 close friendships, 8 of them were met serendipitously, not through online. They're just like all over the world. And I missed that about COVID because you're not getting enough of that. Yeah, that's my medium. Like, that's my play. It's like running to you at a bar and go, hey man, let me buy you a drink. What are you up to? I see you a lot or whatever, you know? So I missed that through COVID, but having to in Singapore doing that a bit more now that, you know, they're obviously open here.

But I think that's one of your best qualities though, is you're so curious, right? You're like a continuous learner that you definitely are like this genuine curiosity. And I think that's one of the best qualities of entrepreneurs. When you're just curious about stuff.

I'm also learning. I'm not sure how you found this, but, you know, I've basically been a business builder for most of my life. Well, at least my adult life, right? And then having recently, well, at least done an exit and still involved in the company.

Yeah, we're going to dig into that. A nice exit. A very nice exit, my friend.

We can get all juicy on that. But I am now thinking, okay, like if you were to make an investment in other entrepreneurs, because I'm just a big fan of entrepreneurship, What are my principles or what are my values? And like, they need to be true to me, not just like what's trending or whatever. So I've started to meet a few other founding teams and learning. I'm starting to see my triggers or my trends. Like, why am I gravitating? And what have I learned from my China experience? I'm like, I'm staying away from that. And that's been quite fun. And I'm right in the middle of that exploration right now, defining it.

Yeah, that's wonderful. That's great. Excellent. Love it. Wow, man. You know, there's an episode from Jerry Seinfeld where he's like, I got enough friends. He's like, I don't need any new friends. Right. But like, I think the last time I physically saw you was in Beijing and you were with Kobe, right? In Beijing. Right. I saw you at the Village outside across from the InterCon. I was having dinner at the InterCon and then with Stephon Marbury, former like NBA guy. Right. And like, but Kobe was in the building too and met with you and you were doing some sort of kind of, kind of stuff that you were.

I think that was November, right? Was that November?

Right. November 19th, I think.

That day was a pretty special day for me because, I mean, I was in a very surreal situation and it actually didn't make a lot of sense, but I'd arranged a meetup for Kobe and Li Na, who is arguably one of the greatest icons of Chinese sport.

Yeah. So you have to give the people in podcast land who Li Na is.

Yeah. Well, Li Na, I think she's a 2-time Grand Slam winner, tennis. Female player, greatest Chinese female tennis player ever. She's actually a very funny human being, very charismatic, beautiful, highly marketable, like great representation. Yeah, phenomenal person. Kobe had never met her and we said, oh, do you want to meet Li Na while you're in Beijing?

How beautiful is it to do that, to put 2 people like that?

Yeah, I know. He's like, yeah, let's do it. I said, all right, we'll see if she can come over to the hotel. So You know, she comes over. So I get to the hotel first. Well, no, Kobe's in there, but he's in the building somewhere. Anyway, he's in the building and I go to the exec floor to meet Lena. I'll get there 15 minutes early, but she's already there sitting at just a table waiting with her manager Kathy. And so I go up. Oh, hey, hey Lena, how you doing? You know, I'm Andrew. Blah blah blah. Oh gosh, you mentioned him. And then I have a chat with her and she was like uber nervous to meet him. And I was like, oh, don't be nervous. I think he's actually a little nervous to meet you too. He's like. you know, huge fan of yours. And she was telling me how nervous she was. And I was like, oh, this is actually quite funny because there's absolutely no reason for you to be nervous. But she was so humble and so chuffed that he reached out, you know, we reached out on his behalf to meet up. And then, you know, he came up maybe 15 minutes later. And I'll show you a photo of this too. And maybe you share it on your pod or your site.

Thank you.

There's a photo of me Lina and Kobe having a conversation, and we decided to just like do an interview. So we did like a 20-minute interview, and I'm interviewing them and just having a chitchat. And the goal was just to create some content. We'd share it with the media or share it on his social in China to give them a bit of structure to the conversation. But they also had a private, well, just casual chat off camera, and they exchanged some gifts. But it was so— just tell how professional athletes Mutual respect. Yeah.

Yeah.

And they have their own mentality. Like, there were a lot of like nodding. Yeah, totally. Like on different things where you and I, you know, as athletic as we are, we relate to what they're connecting on. But that was a really beautiful moment. And that was in November, right before, you know, he tragically passed.

Great, great anecdote. Great story. That's wonderful. That's one of the—

yeah, that was my second last month in the country because I left the next month to move to Singapore, and I obviously haven't been back since.

Wow. And I'm sure, yeah, Lee now will never forget that either, right? So that's extraordinary. Wow. Anyway, Andrew Collins, my friend, thank you. I thought we'd do this little Joe Rogan style where he— you just kind of jump in kind of like mid-conversation stream and then just kind of just, you know, chit-chat. I've always enjoyed your energy and, you know, your stories, my friend. You are A true Chinapreneur.

Do you, Rich, let me test you. Do you remember the first time we met?

Oh, brutal. Was that when I emceed that event?

Yes. 2000, I think it was 2014 maybe, or 2013 in Singapore.

Yes.

I was on stage as a judge and like I had a bit of imposter syndrome as well going on that day, but—

Everybody does. You just sold a company for more than $60 million. You probably still have imposter syndrome, right?

Everybody does. But that was 8 years ago. And I remember thinking on stage, like, who the hell is this guy? Where did they get him from? Like, I want what he's drinking. 'Cause you were telling jokes that were going over half of the room's heads. I was picking up on them.

And I remember one thing from there, which was there was a woman who was selling or, you know, pitching her company that was doing fashion, right? So she was like, you know, and all the judges were guys 'cause it was still before they figured out like, yeah, maybe we've, you know, since, 50% of the world is female. We should really have 50%. And she's like, you know what? When your wife asks you, how does my butt look in these pants? And everybody was like looking around and I, and fortunately it was like, oh, time is up. And you could see all the guys like, oh, thank Christ. That's so great. We got to dodge that. But then I said, by the way, everybody, the answer to that question is amazing. It's always amazing.

Exactly. Yeah. I'm not sure how well that went down in conservative Singapore.

That's right. So that was something where even people, it didn't go over their heads. But they were still even a little bit like, oh, awkward.

But now the guy did we met this guy?

I think I got up there and they said because I met Willis Willis Wee, the founder of Tech in Asia, right? He came to TechCrunch in 2011 to Beijing. That was their first TechCrunch, and that was like such an extraordinary event because they brought in Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram. They brought in Steve Chan, the founder of YouTube, and you know they had all these other you know people from Silicon Valley. It was so great, and then that was like kind of the coming out in a way of like. Beeping, connecting to the rest of the world. I got to emcee that, which was really fun. And I also got to, you know, sing karaoke with those guys. When I was like, yeah, Instagram, that's like, you guys aren't even on Android yet, are you? And you're kind of a small company, right?

Never going to work.

Never going to work. And then he's like, hey, can you come and emcee our event? So I was emceeing Tech in Asia in Singapore and in Jakarta. And I remember Gojek was like a really tiny little company. They had a call center and they had motorcycles. And they were picking people up, right? And now of course it's this multi-billion dollar behemoth that merged with Wikipedia, right? And like things have changed so dramatically in the last 10 years. But yeah, I do indeed remember meeting you. And then we share that Entrepreneur Organization, EO connection as well too. And then lots of mutual friends. And I was always like, this guy knows how to like chew through barbed wire for breakfast.

You were a generation ahead of me, I think, in China, right? What year did you arrive?

Yeah, I got to Hong Kong in '96. And I spent four years there because I was like, I'm gonna be an internet guy in China. And then I got to China and it was like, we don't have any internet yet. And I was like, oh shit! There's more people online in Hong Kong than there were in all of the mainland in ninety-six. So so I spent four years there during the dot-com boom, and then I moved to ninety-nine, two thousand. I was back and forth. So yeah, so I was a little bit of different, but there's always you know. I remember meeting Dashan once, the Mark Roswell. You know, he was like the famous still is right? The guy who in the late eighties spoke. Chinese so well, and you know Big Mountain was his nickname. And I was like, "Man, you were there in like the late eighties." And he's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "What's the matter?" And he's like, "Oh, it would already been open for a decade. I thought I was too late." Right? So it's like, well, I guess so, right? It's like whenever you're there, you're always like, "Ah, well, I wish I was there in the nineties," or "I wish I was there before the Olympics." But you had taken over this company, and we're going to get into that a little. And I knew the founder of that company, and it's just amazing how you transformed it. But before we do that, let's go back into a little bit of your origin story, like your path to China. I'd love to hear about, like, even though I know the story, I want everybody else to hear how you ended up in the Middle Kingdom.

Well, it's probably similar to a lot of entrepreneurs how they find their way to China. I think what's unique about why I wanted to go to China is like I grew up in a market. First of all, I grew up in a small town, population was 25,000, and never thought of China. You know, the only time I ever thought of China was a Friday night when we wanted Chinese food. And little did I know they didn't sell that food in China. That was something. Anyway, that's like the world's hidden secret. No one knows. Anyway, I'll never get foreigners again to China and go, I want lemon chicken. You're like, don't tell them. Anyway, I moved to Melbourne to go to university when I was 18. So that was sort of the big move to a big city. And that was my first exposure to a, you know, more than 100 people in any one location. And I quickly realized that I felt like I thrived in a bigger environment, like when the opportunity was bigger and the challenge was greater. That was just sort of an innate thing which I discovered in Melbourne and then at university. I'd done study abroad. I did US for 1 year at Cal Poly California for 1 year in 2001, but I graduated in 2023.

2003, yeah. 2023, I'm like, wow.

I'm still studying. It's taking time. So I graduated in 2003 and I only really studied to get the experience of university life and then to expand my opportunities before I decided what I was going to start. But during that period, I did set up an import-export perfume business and I was selling perfume at Victoria Market and South Melbourne Market in Melbourne. And it was sort of a cash business. It was actually a great little business. I always had cash on me and I'd take girls out for a date and I'd always give them a bottle of like J'adore for a date and they're like, you didn't need to go and spend $70. I'm like, I spent $15. But it was a great one. But when I finished university, I won this entrepreneur award at the university and part of that was going to— it was a week trip in Shanghai and Singapore along with 50 other entrepreneurs from around the world. That trip was the first time I'd gone to China and Singapore, and we just had this amazing time with all these other people. It was a real sort of learning experience. It was 3 people that went from Australia, 2 from Melbourne, 1 from Sydney. The rest of them were from the US, Europe, Japan, other parts of Asia. Yeah, so that was my first taste of entrepreneurship at an international lens, like comparing myself with other peers, how I felt. And after being in Shanghai for 4 days, 3 or 4 days in Singapore, got back home and there was a realization. I was like, well, what am I doing here? Like, China is exploding. Although it had a relatively small, by the way, percentage of population on the internet. I think it was maybe 120 million online then in 2003. Someone will check that up. But that was still 4 times the population of the country I was living in.

Yeah.

You know, so it was less than 10% of the internet population. So that was the first realization. Like, if I just committed a lot more time to a greater market, The wins would be much greater. And secondly, I felt like I could compete with other peers at a different level. So following that, I then packed around the world for about 1 year by myself. I went US, Europe, Canada, and a lot of parts of Asia. On that trip, I read 2 pretty inspiring books. One was called Thick Face Black Heart. Do you know it? I don't know who gave it to me, but it was— geez, it was a ripper. And the second one was The World's Banker, which was The story of James Wolfensohn, who was an Australian guy who became the president of the World Bank. And he was also like a C-grade student, but great networker, great relationship builder, talked his way into Harvard from Sydney, got a scholarship, built an investment bank serving the world's billionaires, and then became the president of the World Bank, all because he was a great communicator. Well, not all, but like, it was, I reckon 70% of it was because he knew how to communicate and build relationships. That was very profound for me. So off the back of that, returning on that trip, I said, I'm going to go to China. I'm just going to find my way back there, but I needed to decide what I was going to do. And I had this fascination with media and more like power and influence that media can gravitate. So I thought, I want to get into the publishing industry, but I had no publishing experience and I'd never known China experience. So I called a friend who I knew used to work for a guy who ran a magazine in Melbourne one afternoon, got his number, called him up. I think it was like a Thursday or Friday. I said, are you free Sunday? I'll take you for a beer at the Port Melbourne Hotel. It's called The Pier. He says, yeah, sure. And I said, I just want to learn what it's like to run a publishing company. So we meet up, we have a beer. He was also a similar age to me, 24, 25. And by the end of our session, maybe 3 pints, we both agreed to do it together. We both agreed to go to China, find a company we could buy or joint venture with, and start a publishing business. Bear in mind, we knew nothing about China, you know.

Fortunately.

Yeah, so we then over the next 18 months did about 5 trips meeting different people, you know, get off the boat, meet people, that leads to another meeting, that leads to another one. By the 3rd trip, we'd met a company we were in deep talks to do a joint venture with to take over their publishing company. And our strategy was so sort of amateur, but we thought it was genius. We were going to take over their publishing company, rebrand it to our concept. So we had this concept we were going to pitch and we would then expand the distribution and I'd be doing sales and business, whatever it may be. We found, you know, a few suitors who were very eager to take our money at that point, but that was progressing quite well. On our 4th trip, we went there to really sign the joint venture agreement. So we went back there. We typically do a week. By that point, we were literally staying in the office of the joint venture partner. And Daniel says to me one afternoon, it was a hot, like, summer's day. He says, I'm going to go meet this guy named Kirk Jobs who runs a company called Mailman. I was like, what do you want to go? Mate, it's bloody hot outside. What do you want to go out there for? Because it was like, it was a good 15-20 minute drive from where we were in Shijiazhuang. And he goes, I'll just go. It's a friend of a friend actually, of someone who knew him. So as he's heading towards the elevator, I say, I'll join you. So we go there. Anyway, we discover Mailman, this very remote laneway. You probably have seen it way back in the day. in Qianzifang, Old Taikang Road. And we find our way there, stumble into this beautiful office, had North Korean propaganda art in the lobby and there was a side cart at the bottom there. I'll send you photos if you want to share it. And we met Kirk and then him and Kirk and I immediately hit it off. Like we had similar brashness and like willingness to try and be open and do things and sense of entrepreneurship. But he was also 12 years my senior. We were both monkeys. Both went to Swinburne, ironically enough. Oh, did you? Yeah. Anyway, we had so many common traits, but him and I hit it off and we just developed a friendship. Kirk was more than anything laughing at what we were doing and our aspirations. You know, he was that generation going, look at this young guy coming in here, who does he think he is? As if he's going to be able to build a magazine. So over the next few weeks, the relationship with the Chinese partner had stalled a little because we weren't rushing to sign and we were a little bit nervous. That coincided with the relationship with Kirk developing. We got wind that Kirk sort of hinted that he was looking potentially to leave China. His wife wanted to leave. Anyway, Daniel and I said to ourselves, why don't we just ask Kirk if we can buy his company? Although it wasn't a publishing business, we liked it. At least on the surface, it looked like a great brand. It had a reputation, albeit some damage done, but we at least felt like it was something that we could change and grow and evolve. And at least it got us into the the market. So Daniel and I put a proposal to Kirk to buy the company.

Just for the people listening, like, what was Mailman doing at the time? Why were they called Mailman?

Mailman was a postcard advertising channel. So it had postcards at restaurants and bars all over Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, about 5,000 restaurants and bars.

Yes. You go to a coffee shop and there'd be like a rack of postcards and some of them will be ads. Some of them will be pretty cool. I got a bunch on my desk and the artwork was great. The logo, the whole sensibility of it felt elevated and sophisticated.

And the business was able to operate that media channel because it was technically an information service. It wasn't a media channel and it was foreign owned. So it was sort of a small gray area that Kirk got around that.

I bought stuff on there too. Like you'd have, we had like Spider-Man because we did a game for Spider-Man and then you have the movie poster and you flip it over and then you could do the SMS code to download stuff. Right. So it was actually good for that. Right. It was before instant messaging really was, you know, very widespread. Right. So. Physical part, but meant a lot.

Kirk at the same time was running that business Guanxi SMS that he sold to Alvin Graylin, Alvin Wang in M-Info back then. So we then sort of established a relationship, we established a deal structure. The plan was for Daniel and I to go to China, spend a week in the mailman office now and just finish our due diligence and then wrap up the decision. But we had strong intent to just buy the business. I was very convinced it was going to be the path of least resistance in China. But at the end of that trip, we went back to Melbourne and Daniel and I meet up like a few days later to just to wrap things up. And Daniel says to me, I'm done. I'm not gonna go. He just says, the business stinks. No one's buying postcards. I was like, yeah, we already know that. But I was so bullish to go in. I was just willing to look past everything, but Daniel wasn't. And right or wrong, but he just said, look, I'm not gonna do it. China's too hard. I'm done. And I was like, wow, we just did 5 trips together. We spent so much time together. And basically every minute that I had was with him in China. So, you know, it took a few days to think about what I was going to do because I had to just process, shit, do I do it myself or do I just let it go? Because he was always there. And then I just woke up and thought, stuff it, I'll just do it myself. So long as I could frame the right commercial terms to support what I had on me to pay. So I called Kirk and said, Daniel's out, but I'm in. And I'll do it. So yeah, May 10th, 2007 was my first full-time day in China in the office and yeah, moved, bought the company and that's what started the journey. But I essentially ran a postcard media business for about 2 years or 2 to 3 years while trialing about 100 other, you know, initially over that time before started to take a digital direction and then ultimately into sports.

Well, fantastic story. I love it. To fuel all of those trips and to be able to buy the company, like, were you still running the perfume business?

No, when I got back from backpacking, I didn't have a lot of cash left, but I set up a small consulting business doing M&A consulting. And yeah, I called a few investment funds and said, look, I'm gonna help you to buy businesses in the category that you're investing into, which was childcare at the time— childcare, healthcare, swim centers. And I said, I'll do the informal DD, but if you buy anything that I propose, you pay me 5% of the deal value. And they said, sure. And so I did about 12 deals over 18 months before moving to China. And that gave me enough money to, you know, fund anything I needed to do.

Good for you that you really didn't have necessarily the qualifications for that, but you just stepped up and did it.

No formal training, but it was a little bit in the blood. My dad was a broker and my twin brother, identical twin brother, he was also working for a major childcare group. And I had a lot of awareness around the process and what to do.

Wow. That's an excellent sort of, you know, clue or hint to speak of your future.

Well, that also ties back into ultimately when I did the deal myself, while I was able to negotiate the terms with our buyer myself, and then I brought on a manager.

Fantastic. And tell us about some of those experiments during the 2-year period where you were still flogging rectangular pieces of paper.

Yeah. So Let's put it into a phase. I'd call that like the survival phase was between 2007 to 2010. And that's just like, do anything you can to survive because you've got enough cash for the next, you know, 4 hours. So you need to sell, you know, you need to sell. I'm managing selling Postcard, just trying to get some revenue in the door. And that's calling the media agencies or brands directly and going, hey, you know, I'm Andrew from Mailman. Most people aware of the company, you know, I'm gonna give you an update on our expansive distribution network and the opportunities you can do with postcards, lenticular stickers, fridge magnets, cutouts, coupons, you know, the list goes on. And while also knowing that wasn't going to be the future of the business, because at that point the explosion of LEDs outside, taxi media, elevator media was just everywhere. So all those companies were taking any dollars that were in the market. Then I was sort of exploring any other alternative. In parallel to that. And like partly just looking at what do we have and how do I leverage off that to start a new business? So we looked at expanding postcards through internet cafes. That was like a big thing with a new channel. So I spent months on that proposal. We started doing coupons on postcards, like clients would just sign like this no-risk solution. Like if anyone calls or texts to get a coupon, then we get paid. Wasn't overly successful. And then actually I remember one we did with Feeler.

Mm-hmm.

I was like, wrap, we got Fila on and it was like a $10 voucher. So I think I went and collected different postcards from around the city and spent a few hundred dollars myself at Fila to at least, I knew they'd at least have a couple of coupons through the door. Wasn't enough to get the renewal, but it was something. And then, you know, there was a period when it was like, okay, this was our only form of revenue. Let's maybe just even enhance the postcard rack itself. So we designed a new rack and then went going to factories and trying to get a new mold and learning about all that. That was interesting. Then rolling out a new rack through Shanghai. We never got to Beijing with the rack. That was entertaining working with all the factories. And you know, you go there and you give feedback on a product. They just sit there and go, okay, but they don't write anything down. And they come back the next day getting like 3 of the 10 things you wanted them to do. And you're like, just write it down. But by the end of 2010, digital really started to take shape. Webull was launched, I think it was like end of 2009. And there was Kaohsing around, Ren, who you'd be familiar with, and then a bunch of other smaller platforms. I had a client, American Airlines, who was buying postcards, small volume, probably a couple thousand dollars worth, and asked if they would support doing, serving a, help, like becoming a social media client, given that we'd never done it before. And so that was our first client in the space. And then that sort of really kicked off the interest in that. Area. But when they signed a year-long retainer to do social media marketing, I just thought we'd made it then. I just could not believe they signed a $150,000 check for a year-long retainer when the average billings per client then with us with Postcard was maybe $5,000, $4,000. So I at least thought, oh wow, I'm gonna move away from this monthly selling proposition. I'm gonna get onto retainer-based business. And that was a big realization.

So, you know, it's fascinating you say that, if I can interrupt. You know, I talked about how we did the karaoke session and I was talking to Kevin Systrom from Instagram and he talked about how his original company was called Burbn, B-R-B-N, and they were doing like Foursquare. You could check in and you could say, hey, I'm here, right? And it wasn't really working so well, but then he realized that people could post pictures and the people that posted pictures are the ones that were getting followed the most. But there were like, as I remember, a couple of people that like got most of the follows and they were both professional photographers. And he was in Mexico with his girlfriend on vacation and she's like, well, why don't you make everybody a professional photographer? And he's like, how do I do that? She's like, I don't know, do that software stuff. And then he made filters and then it went crazy. Right. And like the lesson there is he would've never figured that out if he wasn't in the game already doing it. So for you, you're like. Okay. I'm just gonna buy this business and I know the ship is sinking, but I'm just gonna experiment a whole bunch of things and then I will find the path just by iterating.

Right.

It's not 10,000 hours, it's 10,000 different experiments. And then you're like, whoa, single digit thousands to, you know, $150 grand for the year. Like, wow. Like, so then you get that taste.

That was my first digital client. Yeah.

And like that, you stayed in that travel niche, you know, almost all the way to the end. Right. Didn't you?

Travel was a very small part of our business. We started as a digital agency doing social media, like a social media agency. But between 2010, let's say between 2010 and 2015, I'd say it was the revival period. So we get through survival, we found something that we could build. So we at least had a pathway. We didn't know what the endpoint would be. I wouldn't say we were overly clear on our fundamentals, like what are we going to be known for? What are we going to say yes to? What are we going to say no to? What are we going to be our principles to be, you know, doing what we do? And then over that period of that, let's say 4 or 5 years, we would have worked on 20 different industries. Travel and sports became the dominant industries.

Ah yeah, I remember. So travel was, but sports was the biggest component part.

Yes. Yeah. Well, we also just decided that I think it was around 2014 that we were just more passionate in sports. We made a bet that sports was going to become a really important part of Chinese culture and the international rights holders like a Lakers or a Patriots or Manchester United, whoever it may be, would invest in the market because of the size of the market. So, that was the bet we made and at that point there was no digital agency in sports because the market wasn't big enough. You know, our first client in sports was the AFL football who were having an exhibition game in Shanghai in 2010. But our second client was Liverpool Football Club and the contract was roughly $500 a month for 3 years. So the money was not there, but we used them as a bit of a Sinatra effect to sell other, you know, like good for them, good for you type mentality. But by 2015, we, or '16, say, we were pretty clear sports was going to be our focal point. We'd done work with Hollywood and launched hundreds of celebrities out of Hollywood, lots of travel brands, lots of sports properties. But in 2016, that was when we're like, no, we're going to dominate sports. We're just going to own sports. That's going to be our niche. It's relatively small and we're just going to own that category and went all the way with that space. And I'd say that period was, say, a bit more about domination. So we went from survival to revival to domination. And domination only came when we were very clear about, you know, who we are as a company, what are our principles and what is our strategy philosophy. And do we have a winning pathway to category leadership? And is that category going to be big enough? So that was the bet we were hoping. And I think largely the bet paid off. But yeah, that's fantastic.

So that was about a 9-year journey, 9, 10-year journey to really do that.

Yeah, I'd say 9 years to discover who you are and what your role is going to be in the country. Because I think too, like, you may have an idea of what you want to do in China or anywhere really, but is the role linked to you? Like, are you the guy who can solve that problem? Is that like, I wouldn't go to China and I'm gonna solve the bus occupancy problem and get more people on buses cuz it's not my problem to solve. I've got no unique capabilities or knowledge and there's so many unknown unknowns. Why would I ever do it? Even though I had a great idea.

So it's, it's funny, I'm actually on the board of a company that does that with William Baubien called PandaBus, but I've been on the board for 7 years, but I have no business solving that problem, but the CEO sure does. And I can guide him. But you're right, you have to be aligned with what you can do. And sure, your ability— like, I never met Kobe, but I know Kobe loved you, right? So it's like other sports teams and celebrities, you know, like, it was absolutely aligned with who you are for sure.

Yeah. And that came with confidence as well, knowledge in market, and, you know, working with integrity and managing our brand as well, because your brand had to reflect their brand. You know, that's a big play. In sports, especially when you work with athletes, you know, they don't want to work with a schmuck and they want to work with someone that they trust. So we, you know, we had a no schmuck policy at the company. But yeah, it's about 9 years. And I think that's like when I'm asked today about like, if someone says to me, I'm thinking about going to China, I would be first reviewing, is it your problem to solve? Like, are you unique to that space? But then also ensuring that they have a very good runway. So allow that up to 10-year horizon for you to make sure that you're going to be able to make a difference. sure that's the ultimate path that you secure. And then it's really about dominance, isn't it?

Great advice. So for that dominance, for sure, you know, your dominance resulted in this, you know, just a world-class exit in the last few weeks. And we're going to dig into that. But was there a transition period there? Did you do anything with like scaling up or strategic planning or something to really like deliberately align the team around that shared— Probably around 2016 onward.

Yeah, we did a lot. We moved in, so that year was a profound year because we moved into a brand new office. We'd never spent money on an office before. Brand new office, invested a few hundred thousand dollars in the fit out. We raised about $20 million US from local investors, and that was a whole new experience. We also redid our brand, like tidied up our brand, polished every touchpoint that a customer might see of us, and then started hiring like a full-time brand person in our group. Group who we still have today, who just manages our external comms because the belief was like branding was particularly important in our industry. We had to reflect the customers. So let's really invest in that brand and focus. So that was a really big part. But then it was the messaging internally was all about us versus them, you know, David versus Goliath. We're up against the platforms, the Chinese agencies who are going to be more aggressive than us. But we always believe that with a strong brand and a strong foreign account leadership structure, we would be able to deliver high-quality servicing in the market. And that's what we did. And then we were able to build that out.

Because I think that's the one thing where it's a really strong moat is your ability to be able to like, hey, Kobe, you want to meet like the— or hey, you know, NFL or hey, NHL or hey, you know, AFL, whatever around the world, right? To be able to connect in a way that would be tough for a local Chinese agency to do, right?

Exactly. And as much as there may be another agency with comparable services on paper, but do you have as good a time over dinner?

They have to make a phone call. Who are they calling? They don't want to call the account exec there. They want to call the guy running the show, the woman running the show. And like, they're gonna—

I think integrity and honesty, like, non-negotiable. Like, You know, admit your mistakes whenever possible, go out front with the client. You know, any opportunity you can get to own any sort of failure, own it 100%, don't shy away from it. And that was an early lesson I had back in Australia, but took that into China and clients really appreciated that. So yeah, I guess, you know, some basic sort of business fundamentals, well, combined with being very clear about what is our role going to be in China with a category that was going to be big enough That was worth all the trouble. That was the sort of winning, I'd say, formula for us because between 2016 to, let's say, well, the exit, say 2021, you know, we grew by 5 times. With the money we raised, we were able to go and buy the leading agency doing what we do in Europe. So all of a sudden we became a global business where we were never before. We were just a China business. So that gave us an awesome footprint in Europe and then yeah. You know, before you know it, at the end of 2020, we've got over 70 international rights holders that we're serving all over the world, from Russia to Africa to Indonesia to China to France, for the biggest rights holders in the world. And it's all based on understanding who you are and what are you going to do, and is that of value to a large enough audience?

Fantastic. Wow. So you raised $20 million. How much of that money came from investors that were based in China?

All of it. Wow.

So that's rare because when people are raising money in China, I've found in my experience, hey, we'll take the meeting with the lawai, but, you know, the funds are set up so they have limited partners that invest in the general partners that, you know, may invest some but that really deploy the capital. And those LPs are generally like, well, you know, we're investing in you because you're going to invest in Chinese entrepreneurs in the Chinese market, right? So it's really tough for foreigners to tap into that, even if you have a good business, right? So for you to be able to close, and that's a significant close, like, tell us some of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs along that fundraising.

Yeah, I mean, I'd never raised money before prior to 2016, so that was a new experience in and of itself. Around that time was when President Xi made a position around sports and culture, and he wanted sports to be a big part of culture. So that triggered billions of RMB really into funds that were investing into infrastructure and any affiliated industry in sports to grow that category. So timing was key for us. We then had a few funds who were showing interest. They reached out to us and what we learned was we were one of the few companies that were at least profitable. Like I think in 2016 we did $3 million US profit that year. So that was a, you know, it was a good And that was the year we raised. And so everything sort of just worked in timing because—

Raise money when you don't really need money, right?

Tell me about it. And so that was the first thing. So we realized we had a few options. I had some experiences when we got a term sheet from an investor who then just didn't follow up after the term sheet, like just literally didn't follow up. Didn't do the call, didn't do DD. We're like, okay, we just signed a term sheet. You sort of do a micro celebration out for dinner with your colleagues. And then you hear nothing. That was just incredible professional behavior. It's not the first time I've seen that too. You know, I think Chinese too, like sometimes people can have an avoidance of confrontation or difficult conversations. So maybe they weren't comfortable with it, but they were just unwilling to just be direct and go, oh, I know we've signed a term sheet. We're actually moving on though because of this. But we weren't desperate in any way, but that made me a bit more like, you know, more wary about who we get involved in. So I was lucky. I met a broker from a fund who was in Beijing. He was in Shanghai and he got introduced to me through a friend. We quickly grabbed lunch down at Tianzifang, right near our office. And he said, hey, look, we're investing in sports properties. Can you tell me a bit about your business? Him and I hit it off. He said, look, can you come to Beijing and pitch to our partners at the group? He wasn't a partner. So I did. We went up to Beijing and I went in with my lawyer and we just met 3 of the partners in the fund. And on the spot, they offered to invest $3 million for, I think it was 15% of the business on the spot and said, we can approve it now. That was in about an hour conversation. And I was like, eh, it sounds interesting. I was like, the money could be interesting, but I wasn't desperate. So I said, I'll give us 10 minutes to think about it. I leave the room with our lawyer Kent and we come back and say, look, I think you may know Kent as well. He then decided, no, the terms weren't right. And, you know, we'll hold. We leave the meeting. The meeting was fine, but we leave the meeting and the guy who was the broker, he said, hey, look, you've got a great business here. I'm thinking about leaving the fund. He didn't say it straight away. Maybe a week later. Can I come on board as your banker? I've got other investors we can reach out to. And I said, sure. 4 weeks later, we signed a term sheet with WeCapital and WeSci, both 2 funds of Tencent being one of the main shareholders. And then we did raise You know, much greater valuation, more money in, and I was able to actually sell a number of my own personal stock as well and exit.

Take some money off the table. Yeah, talking about yes.

And I was nine years in, so they were comfortable with that, and the business was good. But yeah, that's what happened. And then we had some other interest from Yao Yao Capital. That's Yao Ming and his fund. But we weren't really raising, but we wanted them in, so we end up doing another deal with them. And the fund that we knocked back, they came in and. Took 2.5%, Yao took 2.5%, and then at the end of our fundraising, 2016, early 2017. But honestly, it was pretty pain-free, the fundraising part for me. From signing the term sheet to money in was about 6 to 8 weeks.

Wow.

Wow.

That's extraordinary. Yeah. Well, because you're profitable, you know, the Xi Jinping signaling, you know, the general, you know, sentiment of the market as well too. I think the pragmatism of Chinese people where they're like, I think this foreigner is gonna crack the international sports market in a way that no other local person really can do. Right. So it's like, this is a good bet. Right. It wasn't like you're like, hey, I'm gonna start another delivery app in China. They're like, yeah, no, you're not. Right.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like you really weren't necessarily competing with China in a way. Right. Like it was like this global sort of, you know.

The way our team was structured, first of all, we did have a team who'd been there a long time, like local and international. They're still there today. We've got an awesome team and we were very clear about where we were from a foreign position and a local position. Like it was very much local on local in terms of building business and it was foreign on foreign building global business. They understood that and they thought that was like a realistic strategy rather than say local Chinese guy, I'm going to go and sell to the Lakers or FIFA. So the narrative really fit well and the opportunity was big enough for them to go into.

Yeah, like once you get the Lakers, then you're going to execute like crazy because you're going to get the best people in China that are like, yeah, I want to go do that, right? So then all people get on the bus.

A lot of fans of the clients that were—

yeah, people like, there really was this passion. Like true passion, right? Like you better just love it in your bone marrow or else I'll find somebody else, right?

Yeah, we created quite a competitive culture in a fun way. Like we had a ping pong table where there was always ping pong battles going on. We did a lot of company events, American football, picnics in the park and all this sort of stuff, like a lot of outdoor stuff. So it was really like, if you like sports, come and work at our company because one of our early challenges that we saw was getting talent was Because sports was such a new category in China, a lot of the parents didn't want their kids working in sports because there was no legitimate— like, why would you work in sports? You know, go work in banking or finance or something. So that was— so we would often create materials to give to the employees to share with their parents to show you can do what you're doing.

Yeah, amazing. That's smart. I'd never heard of that before, but you're right that there really is this sort of like generational thought that you need to get, right? Because They've sunk everything into you in terms of resources and, you know, and you need to get that, you know, benighted sword on your shoulder to, okay, go forth and do that.

Yeah, for sure. We didn't want them to have conflict with their parents. So even every year I would write like an annual letter for the group, but then I would also write personal letters to key members of the team that were growing, but I would write it with the view that their parents would read it. Knowing that they would share at the end.

That's great. That's great. Yeah. Like there was a great vibe going into your office. Like it was really, there really was this, you know, palpable energy for sure. So this is all set against the backdrop of, you know, what you really wanted to be involved with, which was the media industry in China, which is really equals digital these days. Right. So, you know, this book that I'm writing at the speed of China, like at the speed of light. Like things were changing so rapidly, even though, you know, Weibo has been out for 12 years now. Yeah. I mean, there's so many other new platforms and so many other, you know, just changes and tweaks. Like take us through some of that evolution and, you know, adjusting and leveraging that.

Well, speed is a bit of a double-edged sword in my industry because if you're a client, I remember once we were working with Brand USA. Government of the USA, Brand America. This is in 2000 and probably 13 or 14. And you know, we launched their social platform, but over the weekend they got 500,000 followers all of a sudden. Like by 24 hours later, I was like, holy cow, we just hit our year targets here in 24 hours. What is happening here? And the platforms have such a way of either manipulating or, you know, engineering, you know, friendlies onto your account. And they're obviously happy to have the account on their platform, but the client is just like bewildered. They're like, wow. But it often sets unrealistic expectations. So when it doesn't happen, then you're always playing catch up and then coming up with a narrative to like why it didn't happen. So it really is a double-edged sword and we, we see this all the time. So like when you launched, I remember when we launched FIFA ahead of the Russia World Cup, we launched FIFA and the goal was to get like 10 million followers in 6 months. Like, You're not going to do that anywhere, not without spending millions and millions. Because we weren't spending millions of dollars on media, we weren't giving the platform a lot of money. Sports properties historically don't spend too much on media because they're a passion point for so many people. They've never really had to. But, you know, China became a lot more pay-to-play on the platforms. But, you know, we'd be there really negotiating with the platform. We're going to launch this rights holder in February. Let's start working on what can you give us, you know, what can be the promotional plan that you're going to support, but making sure that was ready. And all the news that was coming out to the West were just these incredible numbers about followers and fans in China. So we're always basically playing catch up to those numbers being presented.

Interesting. And share some other anecdotes about some fun or interesting things with some clients or, you know, organizations or people in the social media landscape.

Yeah, social media. Well, you know what, I think the challenge on a business like ours is unlike a Let's say a consumer good, like when you're promoting a product, they're getting a direct benefit when people buy that product. You know, like you buy Coke, okay, Coke can spend money because you're going to buy Coke and they get money. A lot of our clients, they don't really have a tangible product that they're selling. You know, they're growing audience to follow with the aspiration of making money through commercial opportunities, some media rights, but they have much larger, slow-moving, you know, commercial opportunities. So, our, you know, it's, there's a bit more opportunities coming through with digital content and partnerships that come through, but in China it's still fairly immature in terms of the dollar value on it. In 2016, Liverpool say to us, hey, we want to sell our Liverpool Football Club channel in China. And it's a 3-hour programming block that includes a replay of the game and about an hour of Liverpool-branded exclusively produced content in Armfield. And so we went to market to try and sell this and we get an opportunity with PPTV back then, Sudding, and they said they're going to buy the contract, they're going to buy the rights to the club channel. We're like, oh wow, just like that? But it was such a complicated— like, they look at when I buy the rights to something, you're very clear on what do those rights include. You know, it includes very restricted image rights, how to use it, when to use it. You know, how many times you can use it, all this sort of stuff. You know what it's like in China, like they're not necessarily reading the contract line for line, if at all.

Well, like we're gonna use this as our, you know, advertisements, right? We're gonna put our products in, you know, and they're like, well, no, it doesn't necessarily work that way, right? Like the broadest, the broadest view of it, right?

We end up coming to an agreement in terms of financial terms, but when we sent the contract over for them to review, they come back the next day and said, okay, we're ready to sign. No changes on the contract. And I'm like, well, the exposure for us was way, way higher for them because we were going to be liable from the club on if there was any breach because we were sort of arbitraging the agreement to ensure that all parties were happy. So I said to Pepa Tivela, I said, no, we're not signing today. I want you to come by the office with a lawyer and we're going to go through line by line on these key terms so you understand it because I want you to be on record. Because although the money was great, the risk ended up being greater them the money on there, for us, we'd be paid today, but I might be paying for it for the next decade. So they came over and then we literally made it into the 5th line and the lawyer just goes, oh, we have to stop. You need to give us some time to review this contract. I was like, yeah, you do. And so they go back and then the guy who we're doing the deal with, he says, I will do a 1-year deal, a 1-year partnership on this agreement. We're like, okay, this is great. The money was actually, it was a record number at the time. And I say to him, what about a 2-year deal? And he says, would you take the same money, like the same terms, just times 2? And he says, okay, we'll do a 2-year deal. Like no thought, no plan, no strategy. And I was like, hang on, this is just extraordinary. Well, I should have said it weeks ago, but they just ever said a 1-year term. And then so we end up coming to the term to do the contract, and Liverpool said, okay, we're going to fly over for the announcement of this Media partnership. I think it was maybe a month out when Liverpool committed to sending one of their legends, Robbie Fowler, to come to China for the press announcement. Their head of media was going to come as well. So a month goes by, but the contract's not done.

It's not done.

The Chinese partner keeps saying, yeah, it's fine, it's all good, we'll get the contract soon. They're just not prioritising the contract, but in their heads, yeah, it's done. And I'm like, yeah, I know, but we need a contract. The club needs a contract in order to get on the plane for the press announcement. So they fly over and then maybe 2 days before the press event, still no contract. But they're now in China and now the pressure is now on us to get a contract and we're potentially going to lose the client. It's a total shit show. And then my bigger concern is payment. I'm like, it's a 2-year commitment. Like, they're unlikely to pay after the first year if we don't get up upfront for the 2 years. That was just my belief. I was 10 years in China at that point. You and I have been around the block in China. I want the 2-year payment upfront. Show me the money! And then so I say to the club, but Liverpool are a little bit more flexible because they're probably not aware of that level of, you know, commitment upfront in the West. But so not only do we need the contract within 2 days, we need the payment because Liverpool's not going to get on stage without at least first year paid. So we've got basically 48 hours to get a contract and payment.

Wow.

All the media announcements being planned for at a hotel, press announcements, everything's being done. I get the contract morning of the press announcement, get the contract, no payment. And so now I'm— and Liverpool are like furious. They're like, we're not getting on stage. Robbie's not getting on stage to announce his partnership without something paid, like some consideration made for the contract. I literally just had to beg them. I was on 3-way calls in Liverpool and Shanghai and US and just saying, look, you just have to trust me here. We won't move forward without payment, but we've got to make the press announcement today because they're so big on the optics of this, you know. So chief of media gets on stage to sign a document on stage. He's first time meeting everyone. He's on stage. I'm on stage with him. Robbie Fowler's there. They've got the head of Peabody TV there. All the cameras are going off. announcement, club channel, club partnership with PeopleTV. He gets a Chinese document in front of him for signing and they ask him to sign and he looks at me and goes, do I sign? I was like, just sign the fucking thing. Just sign it and let me get the hell out of here. And then so we sign it and then he's just shaking. He goes, I've never signed something I don't know what it is. It's like the golden rule of business. And I go, you just have to trust me here. It was meaningless. It was just for signing. Sure enough, I think 2 days later they're back on the plane. We get paid 2 years upfront money in the bank.

Done.

Yeah. Record deal 2016 on a European contract. Still never broken today.

Was that after you had raised money or before?

Right before.

So that contributed to your banner year of $3 million in profit. That's crazy. Yeah, but good on you for like, man, that was like a tough week of like Being the cartilage in between that crunch.

Yeah. I don't think we could have done it if it was within the first 5 years. I wouldn't have had the tenacity and awareness and vigilance around payment and some of the optics around that and enough to push back to the client. And you, you—

Yeah. Smart enough where you were like, okay, you really wanna do this. Now I'm gonna ask you to come to the office and take you line by line. to almost talk you out of it. Because if I'm gonna, if, you know, jump ship, you might as well get a jump now.

Right.

And there is like a certain maturity and like, you know, wizened entrepreneur around that. Right. Which is like, I'm gonna fire you now before it really hurts me later.

Right. Totally. And if it was during a period of business where you're in that survival mode, you're just doing anything to get by. You make so many dumb decisions. So it was important that we were very clear about who we were and why we were there at that point as a business. And that definitely helped. Like, there's a philosophy, don't do business with a hungry man because he's not gonna make the right decisions. Yeah.

Indeed. Well said. Wow. Great story. Excellent story. Would love to hear, you know, other anecdotes if they come to mind. So these last 5 years, like, what's been something that really kind of surprised you in a way over these last 5 years and something that's been like really challenging and, and Taking the business?

Well, I think so. We did have a great period, like for the last 5 years of the business, but it almost went to shit. Like it really did. We had a trifecta of like catastrophic events. I mean, if you look at the timeline, we'd agreed to sell the business in 2019 and then we weren't due to close early 2020. There was a small virus that started to permeate around the world. Early 2020, we hadn't closed yet. And there was then also the death of one of our major clients. And there was also a magical tweet by Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets towards the end of— that was about October 2019. That was in the middle of our due diligence. Now, that tweet was by far the most significant. It was like an earthquake through the sports industry because—

That was like, not on your watch. so to speak, because that was on Twitter outside of China, right? Like you had nothing to do with that, like inside that.

We were working with the NBA. Yeah, we're working with the NBA and we had, we actually had a relationship with Daryl Morey as well. I think one of our team actually reached out and said, you should take that down. But what it did to the industry was, first of all, a lot of the NBA content got pulled from CCTV. There was a lot of other sports rights holders around the world were very nervous about investing into China because if you could lose all your investment your business over a tweet which was done by an employee or an athlete, was it all worth it? Like, would you make an investment decision with that exposure? That was very shocking to us. Like, that was the most nerve-wracking period of my 14 years in Shanghai, easily, actually. We were waking up with calls from internet police and they wanted to investigate other companies working in the industry. Like, they're looking at the industry going, where are the other weak points of sports? Where else could this happen? And they also wanted to send a very strong message that, you know, you're here to build your property and grow the game, but don't, you know, stay out of our politics.

Stay out of our business. Yeah. Shā jī gē hòu kǎn, right? Kill the chickens to scare the monkeys, right? Like, and just, you know, and that's happened a lot since then in edtech and other players too, right? So, wow. Definitely tough, man. Yeah.

So there was a period there where I was waking up every day Waiting for the call from out from the buyer, who was Endeavor, to say the deal's off. Like sorry, we're a bit nervous because it was during due diligence during that period. And then you know it was just a super stressful time. And for me, I was sort of committing to move to Singapore, and we had an office here. We expand the business outside of China by that point by a few years. So our business was much bigger. But China was still the mothership. That was the HQ. That was the anchor. That was the jewel of our crown. And Could it all go down from a tweet? Like to think, wow, everything we've built, is it really that vulnerable? You think you've got a stable business and then some mofo makes a tweet about Hong Kong, you know?

Oh, it's interesting. So people have asked me a lot about that as well too. And I said, okay, I'll tell you this. Like every summer we go back to Canada and we stay at my mother-in-law's cottage, right? And she's in Canada. I'm American, right? I can say whatever I want. I can say whatever I want. In that cottage, and there's a lot of times that I'm like, I am just kind of oh, but I keep my mouth shut because I want to come back to the cottage, right? And I want my wife to be having. I'm a guest there, right? And you know, yes, I could say whatever I want. Sure, of course. There's no question, right? But I go to the bathroom and then come out and be like, "Hey, who wants to roast some marshmallows?" Right? And then everything's fine, right? So we're all guests, and for better or worse, that's just the sure Jiang's a male bomba. That's the way it is.

Yeah. And I've also got my wife's Chinese, my family's Chinese. Like, I very much respect those differences. You know, you really grow to appreciate that. And, you know, Chinese, such incredible people. Like any country, they have the winners and the losers. But yeah, so if you're not living there, and it's easy for, say, the people living abroad to have a certain lens based on what they're reading, and then they, you know, but our position is always just stay out of it. Like, it's not your position unless Like, my position would be to an athlete too, unless you are deeply passionate and knowledgeable about the space you want to make a comment in relation to China, and you're mindful of the risks and you're aware of all that, don't make it.

Yeah.

Like, just don't make it. Like, it's not your position. So, that's a difficult act, isn't it, in our industry? But I think, yeah, I think for the most part it's okay. But yeah, that the Maury tweet was certainly the most— sent the most shockwaves through the whole industry. And fortunately for us, the industry did recover. It's still sort of still working through those things. And there has been other things, not just that Maury tweet. There's been half a dozen other, you know, images with Dalai Lama or, you know, other positions. So, you know, it's weathered it all, but I don't think that's gonna go away. I think that's just like cost of business. That's just like, I was asked like when we were going through our deal period, like, you know, how do you manage the risk or what do you think about the relationship status with, say, US and China or whatever it might be. And I was like, frankly speaking, there's always been tension every day. So I don't know, is it good? No, it's never good, but it exists just the way it is. Like, I think that's just the way it evolved.

You have to engage. Like, I truly believe that. And that's the purpose of this, you know, book and podcast is that like, you know, is China an adversary in some ways, like, you know, militarily or, you know, ideologically? Oh, okay, sure. Right. But it's also a competitor and also a cooperation partner. It's all 3. Right? And you just can't, you just can't think of like Russia in the '80s with America and you're like, nope, we'll just block that. It's only adversary. It's like, no, it's much, much more than that. And you have to engage. And one of the best ways to engage— people love the thing. One thing they love the most is sports.

Yeah.

Like Chinese people, just especially NBA, right? There's like, even though soccer is the most played sport, basketball is, you know, I think the most watched, I think, right? Like people are hugely passionate, right?

Yeah. So you think you're in a really safe zone, right? With sport, think of all these regulated industries in China. Sports, yeah, it's so powerful as an industry and it does have a lot of egos in the industry as well. So, but yeah, you know, we fortunately we managed it okay and then got through 2020. You know, the deal actually did fall over. Early 2020. Yes, I mean that they walked. You know, we were both mindful that the world was changing and wasn't settled yet to make such a transaction in China. But fortunately for us and hopefully for them that, you know, we reconnected towards the second half of last year. They said, let's do the deal if you're, you know, after the world.

Can you talk a little bit, you know, whatever you can publicly about the deal, like how it came about and, you know, who the acquirer was and like what was the intention?

The business who bought us was Endeavor. They also own UFC and WME, IMG Management Group, and a bunch of other businesses. They're a leader. They're a publicly listed company in sports and entertainment, a culture really. And they approached us through their China entity early 2019. And, you know, coffee with CEO of China at the time. And then he said, look, would you be interested in selling the business? It was just like that. We had a coffee at the IAPM Mall downtown and I said, yeah, let's look at something, I knew they were always going to be a potential acquirer. And then we probably spent 6 months working on due diligence and the deal, but it was always a positive relationship. I think people in sports are pretty good as well, although they're sharks. Like, I don't know, most people love what they're doing in the industry, and we all had a really common sense of like opportunity in China. But yeah, when 2020 hit, for them it was particularly hard because of the nature of their business. A lot of it was offline experience-led. But they really turned the business around. They also went public from the time that they signed a term sheet with us and then we closed. Like, they went public on the NASDAQ through that period. Early this year, they went public. A lot of moving pieces. Yes, a lot of moving pieces. So that created a whole new level of reporting and structure and integration that we're still going through. But it was a pretty fluid sense of like, we can do a lot together. Like, we were a digital piece for their group. they didn't have. You know, they weren't really touching anything digital in China at the time. They were doing digital across their business, but not in a meaningful way and not with as many rights holders that we had on our books. And Asia also represents still a very small percentage of revenue for the group. So huge upside in this region for the group. So it was a pretty, pretty solid match. Yeah, we only just closed in July 1st, so it's pretty fresh.

Very fresh and well deserved, my friend. And then now your role Moving forward, you're based in the Lion City. I love the Lion City, and I ain't lying. Tell me about what your remit is now. What are your goals?

Well, right now we're still as a group integrating across their businesses. One sixty over ninety is their global marketing agency. So integrating with them and IMG across the group in terms of our team moving into their office. So our team here moving into their office here in Singapore. Our team in China are staying where they are. They're a Block away from the Endeavor offices, and our London team—they're still working through offices. But as a group, we're all basically working through administrative, legal, and accounting integration, and working on what's going to be the new value proposition. For me personally, my role's changed a lot. You know, a lot of my key guys have new reports in their home markets. So really just focused on making sure it's a really smooth transition, looking at what the bigger opportunities is with Endeavor, and I'm going to be sticking. sticking around for the next couple of years to support the group moving forward. You know, just try and make myself useful whenever I can.

Beautiful. And you also have been doing some outside studying as well too, right?

Yeah. I'm in my final year of Harvard doing OPM, Owners Presence Management there. It's a 3-year diploma. So it's been pushed back a year because we're unable to get there.

Tell us a little bit about OPM. It's a pretty terrific program.

Yeah. Do you know it? Do you— are you familiar with the program?

I am. Yeah. It's got an amazing reputation. Yeah.

Yeah, it's an unbelievable party and group. Like, it really is. And when I say party, I mean an unbelievable cocktail party of ideas. It's 150 people in my cohort. Everyone has to run a company to be a member. You've got to have a pretty sizable business to join. I mean, there's several billionaires with private planes flying for the class. Yeah, people from all over the world, probably 25% of people from Brazil, another 30% from Europe, 50% from the US. North America and maybe 15% from Asia, a few from China. I was a China entrepreneur when I started, but yeah, incredible. It's 3 weeks on campus. You live attending lectures all day and working in different things and dinners every night.

What a great mafia, I bet. Wow. And yeah, it kind of goes back to how we started this podcast about your curiosity, right? Nobody, I don't think anybody in those 150 needs to go back to school or get any credentials, right? It's all about You know, curiosity and connection, right?

Yeah, and even like Harvard offered us the option of just doing it online, you know, with a reduced fee, but I don't think anyone accepted that. We're all there to, you know, spend time with each other. We're not in a rush to finish because we're not chasing a certificate, but really the camaraderie, the friendship, the business opportunities that come out of being around that cohort is astronomical. I mean, the group chats when you're in a group chat when people like sharing, I want to buy this oil company. Does anyone want to take 5%? Or I'm looking to buy this football club in Europe. Does anyone want to take 10%? You know, they're pretty entertaining conversations.

Amazing. Wow. Excellent. And what do you think is going to be next for you once the world gets back to abnormal? Going to stick around in Singapore? Going to stay in like digital sports?

I'll play the long game here in Singapore as well. You know, big believer in Asia. I'll be here for at least the next decade. The mistake I made when I first moved to China was not buying a apartment and borrowing any money I could from anybody to do it. But also just like going in there with a time limit on success, thinking, okay, I'll be here 4 years and I think I'll turn this business around. You know, I mean, it wasn't until year 9 I figured out what we were going to do, right? So coming here a lot more level-headed, a lot more realistic, play the long game, spend the next couple of years working, you know, with Endeavor and exploring what might be the next opportunity, learning, participating, supporting entrepreneurship while also building out more What will be my new thesis for what I do as a business builder next, what industry I get into. It may not be in sports or entertainment. I'm open to anything, but I'm really just working through what gets me excited and what will be the decision-making parameters.

That's beautiful. Any sort of like, you know, I know you have a bunch, but any sort of like hints or clues? So preface that by saying, you know, I met a guy, his name is Craig Vachon, and he was a serendipitous meeting, and I've stayed at his beautiful It's called The Barn in Cape Cod. He brought in these artisanal builders. It's 100% made out of wood, no metal at all. And, you know, he's an amazing guy and his sort of thesis broadly is learning and laughing.

Right.

And I've kind of co-opted that, right? So, you know, just being intensely curious, like doing stuff where you're learning, like my little girl learned how to walk, where you're cracking your head on the coffee table and you're skinning your knee and you're looking kind of foolish. And then laughing, meaning like just working with people that you just really want to be with, right? And I think there's a lot of, you know, and I've really gotten involved in the blockchain and gaming space recently, and it's something that ticks a lot of boxes for me, especially around learning and laughing, the people I'm working with and what I'm doing. But like, what are some of the things that you're, you think you're gonna throw into that crockpot of your thesis?

Definitely. I agree with your point around, I think you absolutely need a deep curiosity as an entrepreneur. I tend to default to, if I'm doing something new, I just was, I would go a little bit deep on it even though I could just say like, I'll get the lawyer to do something. I'll tend to just read the contract anyway cuz I just wanna know. Or, you know, I've been doing some private banking recently and understanding what's the investment structures there. So instead of just letting them tell me what to do, like at least learn enough. I do a lot of crypto trading. I've invested in crypto funds, like managed funds, but also read the prospectus and just to a point where I, I at least understand it. It because it's always sort of paid dividends. So that's really important. I'm still working through those things. I really love the crypto space as well, or the blockchain category. I love technology. I'd say that's number one. So whatever I do, it'll be technology driven. I love, and I absolutely want to stick to doing things that I am native to. So I love getting people together. I love motivating teams. I love seeing people build great relationships and friendships. And being a part of that, you know. So it'll be something that includes these sort of two to three key ingredients: is it something that I can be deeply connected and passionate about? That has a great runway and a great opportunity that if you get it right has an enormous global marketplace. But I'm still working through what the main category will be. But I know it'll include with a lot of engagement with people in the real world and technology. But yeah, open in those other areas. Whereas crypto is a rabbit hole that you just don't stop. But yeah, enjoying the other peripheral categories around that as well.

Yeah, I think the whole on-chain, you know, on-disc to online, 10x, online to on-chain, another 10x. There's so many things. Yeah, I also read this thing by Prof G, Scott Galloway, if you've— and he looked at all these companies that did really well and he's like, there's a common thread, which is they're international technology. They have IP, they have a niche. And they have recurring revenue. So it's like those sort of like 5 things. That's a very broad, you know, across industries and types of companies. But I really like, I've been thinking a lot about that, about how you can get all those.

Yeah. One thing I don't want to do is I don't want to do anything just because it's a great opportunity, you know? So I'm mindful of that. Like I'm only going to work with great people I like. I'm not going to, definitely not going to be in there just for the money. It's got to be something I really love and enjoy. And I'm not going to do it just because it's a good opportunity. And I'm very conscious of that. So just sticking that, like I said before, like you, like everyone has their own persona and their own identity. And the clearer you can get about what that is and where that can be applied to, the better. You're not all like, not everyone's a crypto guy. Just don't just get in there because you think it's interesting, you know. So I will learn enough and do enough in a category because I think it might be financially beneficial, but I won't build a business in it. And so my business as a builder or even as an investor into a startup, unless I feel like I can relate to the category or I'm interested in seeing that category win, I'm not going to touch it.

That's great. That's great. Yeah. And I think, you know, you talked a little bit about principles earlier. You know, Ray Dalio has invested a lot into this personality test, principlesyou.com. And I start my 7th year teaching at Peking University. You know, MBA tomorrow. And I make all my students, you know, do something. I made them do StrengthsFinders before, but I think I'm going to make them do this. And I had my sons do this and, you know, people that I work with. And it's really powerful to really understand yourself and that identity.

Yeah.

Like, understand what your identity is, to like start from there, like truly who you are, what your strengths are, what you're best suited to do, and then align that with the opportunity instead of the other way around. Right.

Yeah. Warren Buffett says everyone needs to understand what is their area of competence and focus in there. And so, you know, as a 41-year-old, I should be at least clear about my competence levels and what I'm innately good at and really double down on those areas that can create value.

And I think you do know that, but I think that's also part of your curiosity and also maybe the self-work. And, you know, I think entrepreneurship is a big process of like self-work. Where you get to know who you are, like whether you like it or not, right? Because without a safety net, riding bareback, I think that's why entrepreneurship can really be this sort of, you know, enlightening exercise. As if it can also make you the worst version of yourself, right? But I think there's a lot of people, even my age, wrong side of 50, who still kind of don't even know who they are in a way, right? I have a buddy who's like, I'm a lawyer. I never wanted to be a lawyer. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. My parents are dead and I don't even know what else I can do now. Right? Like, I'm just like, wow, man, he's not suited to be a lawyer.

There's a whole coaching opportunity just around helping people understand that. I was out for dinner last week and someone said at dinner, what's the number one thing or regret you wish you did during the journey in China? And I hadn't really processed that question or came to a point that I was absolutely clear on, but I did come to a conclusion. I don't necessarily regret any one single decision that was that catastrophic. There were certain— obviously made hundreds of mistakes, but I think like it took me longer than I should have to get clear about who I was and what I was going to do and at least get it down to like Ray Dalio style. What are the fundamentals that you're going to have or the belief system you're going to have or the values that you will have to run the business? Even it doesn't matter what you do. So I was too much shooting by the hip and just going in so confident when I had no reason to be confident. And like, who was I on stage at that Startup Asia judging? Anyway, and you know, this— I wish I had got there sooner at least because I may be still in the same category, but I don't know, I just would have made decision-making easier.

It worked out amazingly well for you and you still have many more adventures ahead of you. But that's terrific. That's like great advice, right? And like, it's knowable And it's something that you can do through sort of with all these tools and other work is to really find that out. And sometimes people don't even want to know, maybe in a way, right?

They haven't asked themselves yet. They haven't thought about, like, if you made a startup to invest into and you just said, okay, what are the fundamentals that you're going to run this business with? Just give me 4 or 5. Try it. They're not coming back to you with, okay, boom, then already that's a red flag. Now you can either come in when they've figured that out or you can come in now and then guide them and that's where you create the value and they've got to be guidable, of course. So I think that for me too, I think if you had asked me in 2010 or '11 or '12 even, I would have still been yeehaw like a cowboy in China just shooting anywhere, anything that moves, you know.

Oh man. But yeah, but you know what, my friend, you hit the goddamn bullseye and I'm proud to know you. Like it's really the default setting is As a foreigner in China, it's maybe like an organ or limb transplant. Like it wants to reject. Like there's so much opportunity there, but it's so tough. It's like, oh, I have 3 times more opportunity, but you have like 10x the risk multiplier as well too, right? So to be able to go in and really, you know, crack it the way you did, like, you know. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, I'm getting the praise here, but I have to say, like, it really has been a team effort. There's a bunch of my crew. 9, 10 years. So yeah, as a collective, I'm very proud of seeing many of them realizing a great financial win as well for them.

Terrific. Love it. Excellent. Hey, it's been an hour and a half and I really appreciate you taking the time. Rip-roaring conversation as always, you know, in memoriam of Kobe, who I always hugely respected. And yeah, all the best to you on your, you know, next adventures.

Thanks, Rich. And I can't wait to see you jump in another ice bath on Facebook.

That's part of my self-work as well too. While in Ubud, do as Ubuders do. So, oh good.

Thanks, man. That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rich Robinson Show, Season 1, At the Speed of China. Visit therichrobinson.com. /show to smash that subscribe button. Please also go to iTunes or whatever platform of choice, rate and comment. And until next time, thank you very much. Zaijian. Cheers, y'all.