I sat in the fancy hall, with other youth leaders.
I was definitely the odd one out there.
I didn’t feel like a leader, nor was I as accomplished as the many others in the room. Having been in the National Youth Council community for some time, there were many familiar faces in the room.
But I wasn’t there for them. I was there for Ho Kwon Ping. Since reading Aaron Low’s biography of him, followed by his Annual Reports, I was curious to find out how he had built a brand, especially since he had started off as a detainee.
Please bear in mind. None of this is endorsed by him. Nor have I run this by him, his office, nor the National Youth Council’s office.
It’s my own memory of events, so please don’t sue me, and my poor memory.
Would you regret what you did?
One of the first few questions were interesting.
Would you regret what you did, and do it differently again today?
Interestingly, KP, as he’s more familiarly known, talked about how he didn’t necessarily regret what he did earlier in his life.
He was detained, jailed, and by all accounts, un-hireable.
But he still wouldn’t do it any differently.
He just wasn’t in the habit of regretting his actions. He saw that his past mistakes made a big effort in shaping who he was today.
It struck me.
A while ago, I had been sacked from a position.
Immediately.
I saw it as a misunderstanding around the procedures, but they saw it as a misrepresentation and a gross misconduct.
They wanted me to leave that evening, at 5pm. I couldn’t even say bye to my clients or my colleagues. What was worse for me was how hurt I felt. Just two weeks ago, I had sponsored $5000 of my own books.
They didn’t take that into account in giving me an opportunity for recourse.
Fortunately, I asked for one more day to clear things up.
On my last day, after lunch with two colleagues, I walked away.
I deleted my entire work WhatsApp account, without saying bye to the rest of my colleagues on the shared WhatsApp groups we were in.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t be bothered. It was just too painful to bother. And I didn’t know how to do it well, without re-traumatising myself.
I just needed to walk away, fast.
As fast as possible.
Writing this now, there’s been quite a bit of distance between what happened then, and what’s happening now. But I still wouldn’t regret.
A partner recently told me I was too impulsive with my actions, not thinking much before what I did. It’s true. Part of the impulses there is also what leads me to achieve some phenomenal things. But in the wrong context, they can be seen in the wrong way.
The lesson here is not that regret is a bad thing.
But that beating yourself up for what you’ve done in the past, can be more harmful than helpful. Look at what’s happened, accept it, and move on. There’s no point crying over spilt milk.
But it was also spilling that milk that allowed me the chance to build a business.
Yet now, I was struggling. I didn’t know whether I was doing the right thing in hiring Indonesian designers to design and publish our books. As a Singaporean, I felt that I was not giving my countrymen a chance.
But I couldn’t afford the $4200 they were asking for as designers, nor did I think they were hungry enough to deserve the 3 times more than the designers in Jakarta.
Finding hungry talent in ASEAN
KP had an interesting view on my question when I asked it.
It’s not that there are hungrier talent in other countries. But it’s probably that in each country, there are hungry and not so hungry people.
The proportions are probably the same in different parts of the world.
You just need to find them.
It was a good perspective.
No point complaining about Singaporean talent that didn’t want to work that hard. Just find the ones that did want to work hard.
Not giving up on yourself
But perhaps the most important part for me was hearing KP’s story of prison.
Many would have given up at that point.
Why would you work hard, since you already had a ‘record?’ Some might say he was born with a silver spoon and had a rich family to support him.
But that takes away from the true grit he showed to keep fighting for a better life for himself, and his family.
Wherever you are in life, if you’re not in a position where you’re stepping on people’s toes, you’re probably playing it safe.
KP reminded me that if you want to get somewhere in life, you’re undoubtedly going to offend some people.
Not intentionally.
But it’s the nature of improving things. You will undoubtedly keep pushing against people who just want to have the status quo.
I would like to end with this quote I saw recently from Jeff Bezos, the Chairman of Amazon.
Striving for the status quo is easy
We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable.
We are all taught to “be yourself.”
What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness.
The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.
You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself ” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading.
Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon 2020 Annual Report
Indeed, it’s hard to be distinctive. And there is a huge price to pay for it.
The world tells us that if you be yourself, it will be okay.
It’s not.
That’s not even the main point. True distinctiveness creates new value.
Being different, just for the sake of being different, is no use.
It’s only when it creates new value that it matters.
Take it from me. For years, I thought that being different was great. I would offend people, be in their face, and ask uncomfortable questions, just for the sake of it. Nowhere was this more apparent than in a dialogue we had with a CEO when I was 15.
I asked,
money, money, money. That’s all you talk about.
What more should we be striving for, beyond money?
Now, now, that was distinct. But I’m not sure it created more value.
What changed over the next 15 years was learning when to be distinct, and when not to be.
I still make mistakes.
And you will too.
But when we are willing to reckon with the costs of the mistakes we make, and own them, then we can start to see real value being created.