Turn Pain into Passion

When Facebook first entered the Southeast Asian market ... very new ... a friend and I set up a business to support companies doing Facebook advertising.

I remember I was often invited to speak at events with 200 to 300 people - I had never spoken before in public with that big audience. Back at school, there were only twenty or thirty people in an event that I attended and I was more comfortable with that.

The number 200, 300 made me full of trepidation ... I told the organizers, "But I have never spoken in public like that ..." But then I also knew that if I didn’t go for it, I would lose the business opportunity.

My friend Johan said, “You have to go up and speak. I am prepared already, working in the background. You have to speak on behalf of the company - you are the face of the company".

So I accepted.

I remember the first time, everything went well, I was very happy.

But it was just an illusion, in fact I was happy but the organizers weren't happy - "You made too many mistakes while giving the presentation," the organizers told me after my presentation. They felt disappointed.

I walked back to my hotel room that day, I kept thinking – “why didn’t I practice this skill before, when I was a child. I practiced all skills like playing guitar or swimming – I don’t use these in real work but skills I need in the real work - speaking – I didn’t practice”.

After that self-talk, I didn’t do anything at the time. But then, I continued to go to other events – I got the same results, the organizers were not happy...

Then I decided to master my speaking skills, I went to speaking clubs like Toastmasters (and yes, that was where Johan and I met).

I asked myself – “How many people like me are out there – not practicing public speaking when we were kids?” Then we struggled when we grew up.

That was when I decided to start my company to help people with public speaking. It was a new thing where the market in Malaysia was not ready yet – around 5 years ago.