4. Are you still on about continuing this business or do you want to start other businesses?

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Silvester Parker
5 years ago
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1 1. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur? When I was in my early 20s, I sat myself a goal to be running my own business by 30 years old. I was late, I started at years late. In my 20s, I was always looking for opportunities to do business. Why? I guess it s because when I was in 19 years old, I started a café with the help of my dad. It was supposed to be just for fun, but after that it kinda give me the spark to start my own business as I would have control of my own destiny. But of course after national service and all that I went to work, I would say that the point where I really decided I needed to do my own business would be after having my own children. The financial burden of being a dad, having to send your school to school made me realized that if I continued the path of becoming a paid salary worker, I will never achieve the dreams I want to achieve. I will never get the point of owning nice houses, big cars, sending your child to wherever they want to study. I think that s where the pressure came to start my own business. 2. How do you balance your time when you start a business? Especially when you care so much about your children and family. Running your own business I would say is 10x harder than working for people. The good thing is you are in control of your own time and deadlines. Meaning to say if your child is having his football match, you can put everything on hold and go to watch it. Whereas if you re working for somebody, you can t. But in terms of being more busy, it also makes you realize that you can be more efficient. Previously when I was working for other companies, you ll think you accomplish a lot in a day. But after starting your own business, you ll realize you can accomplish more by being more organized and more flexible with my timing, less sleep of course. But one of the reasons why I do my own business is so that I can have more time with my children. 3. What is your reason for doing business in this education industry? I was very reluctant in doing the education industry. My wife is a teacher, this is the reason why im doing the education industry. She teaches mandarin in a very unique way, that nobody elses in Singapore does. I saw the opportunity about 10 years ago when I first saw her teaching. I realized she teaches so differently, if only this was more readily available to the masses, it will be big in Singapore especially because the way mandarin is taught in Singapore is very different from what she was doing. However being in the education industry would mean I would have to work my wife. At that point we weren t ready and we weren t very sure about working together. At the same time, I was exploring other business ventures which was more to my interest; f&b and trade. Eventually after exploring the different ideas, it still points to this is the best idea to do. Like I said, I started researching in my early 20s, so more than 10 years of exploring different ideas. We have to face reality that this is the best idea, it makes the most sense, we don t have to rely on outside expertise as we have the right combination of skill sets. She on the teaching side, while me on the business management side. 4. Are you still on about continuing this business or do you want to start other businesses? When I started this, I saw this as a launching pad for myself and my company to grow into many other businesses and industries. I am not rich, I do not come from a rich family, so although I may have a lot of business ideas, I do not have the capital to do all of that. So one of the reasons why we do education is because it s cheaper than other industries to get into. Education industry usually relies on your intellectual power. The start up is cheaper than f&b. However, like I told you my interest was in f&b and in trade. So when I did this, I saw it as a launching pad for us to multiply our

2 capital, like an investment, let it grow, have more money, so I can branch out to do other businesses like f&b. 5. How long did you take to put together all the resources you need to start the business? Eg. Hiring, rental. I would say about a year or a year and a half. The story of how we started is abit different from how other people started. We were very set on getting this location Pasir Ris for our first branch. At that time, my wife was also not very sure on doing this. As for me, before I made a bid for this unit, I was very determined I need to start my own business right now. So when we bidded for this unit, it took the landlord a very long time to get back to us and to release the unit to us. It took them almost one year. From the point of making a bid for it, that was the start of getting this business started. That s when I really took it seriously, started researching and writing a business plan. But when I submitted the business plan to the landlord, like I said, it took them almost a year to get back. So during that one year, a lot of things changed. My career progressed. I was promoted, I was sent to Hong Kong. So I would say there was this lull in the business, we put it aside and moved on. But when we got the news that we own the bid and that we re going to get the keys in a month s time, that s when we started again, that we needed to do this. So I would say about a year s time of preparation 6. What motivated you to do business? You mentioned you started a café business with your dad, was it your dad who inspired you? Definitely not my dad. I came from a very humble beginning. My mom was a cleaner before she died. My dad was and still is a taxi driver. Growing up was very difficult, because my mom was also ill. My motivation came from growing up poor. Of course at that time you don t quite feel it, as I was still a child. I really felt it when my mom passed away when I was 19 and my dad moved out of the house. I lived alone for 5 years after my mom passed away. That was the most difficult time for me financially. I was in polytechnic and I was not earning any money. Right after that I went to NS. At that time the allowance was only $ a month. I was living off that amount. To the point where I couldn t afford to pay my electricity bills and electricity got cut off. For 3 months I lived in darkness. I had a girlfriend then and we would survive on a loaf of bread on the last week of the month. So I guess at that time going through that kind of poverty, I probably had not felt it yet, It only started when I started working, I met my wife, then I realized I needed to be somebody. I cannot be this average joke. Probably because I wanted to impress my wife too haha. When I met her, she had a lot of suitors. Famous CEOs, tycoons who were trying to go after her when I was trying to go after her. At that time, it left me a very huge inferiority complex. Why would she want to choose me when she can have all this successful people? So when I married her I gave this pressure to myself: I need to be somebody. I guess this was my motivation up till today. Living through poverty, and wanting to provide for my children and give my best to my wife and family. 7. Why is your company called EduGrove? When we were going to start this education business, of course, one of the first thing is to come up with a name. i FELT THAT it was very important to find a name that says a little of what you re doing and also has a value add factor in the name itself meaning it s a little bit creative instead of just a random name. It needs to sell your company a little bit. After thinking for a bit, I came up with EduGrove. Edu of course being related to Education. Grove because being parents ourselves, we felt that education should not just be academic. It should be nurturing and enabling children to become somebody one day. Although we were just doing mandarin, we felt that it shouldn t just be mandarin lessons or tuition. It should be a place where we groom children to be somebody in terms of character values, etiquette. I felt the word Grove,

3 it means a plantation, a farm, where you grow fruits or trees. It s like a metaphor where children comes in as seeds and you grow them to be big strong steady trees, full of colours. And it s also because we like the mangrove beside our centers here. When my wife was teaching, she would always bring the students to the mangrove as part of their excursion, to expose them to the nature and animals. We really felt that since we are going to be beside a mangrove, the word Grove kinds of link together. 8. The way Singapore students learn is by memorizing, so how do you get the parents to accept the new way of teaching? Very good question. When we first started this, most of our customers were very skeptical. When we decided on Pasir Ris, one of the factors we considered was that Pasir ris would have a demographics of middle to upper class, more affluent. We also realized we were in the heartlands also. But I did not expect there were so many parents that would be so skeptical about this methods. Because when my wife was doing this, she was doing in the town area and people are more receptive there as they are probably more educated. So when we first started in pasir ris, a lot of parents were wondering, How can students play when they learn? But we strongly believe in teaching in these methods. We believe that learning mandarin through this methods were a lot more effective. So I thought the best way for parents to experience it is to sit in to the class. Experience it first hand. I was very confident of our product. So during the first year, I actually gave out free trials. We encouraged parents to sit in the class, we wanted the parents to see first hand how the students were engaged and how effective this way of learning is. The first year was very effective as customers that were looking out for a centre, they were very impressed and they signed up immediately. However we stopped the free trials because our teachers put in a lot of effort in preparation of each class. So each time we have a trial attendee coming, the lessons are altered a little bit to accommodate the new child attending. But because it s free trial, there were a high number of customers who were not interested to sign up, they were just interested in something free. It came to a point where we realized the number of freeloaders was actually high, and it affected the quality of our product because we were always altering our lesson plan. So eventually we felt we needed to come up with a plan to filter out all these people who were not really serious. So we impose a very minimal $20 fee for a child. The $20 is so minimal that people who were serious about sending their child to a centre will not mind paying $20 for a trial class because a normal class is $35 and above. It is not a deterrent to them, but a deterrent to those who are just trying out something free. So we did it after about a year. 9. What is your company s culture? In our classes, we want fun to be in every element of learning. That s the most important part of the edugrove brand- fun. We can t sell fun when we ourselves do not have fun. So our company culture is very fun, very relax, very open and transparent. No borders as in any staff in any position has the ability to grow to anyone in the company. For example you may come in as a part time front desk and you may be inspired to become a teacher, and if you have the potential and ability to be that, you can. You are only limited by your own effort. 10. What plans do you have for EduGrove in the next 5 years? We intend to grow to have more than 5 centres in Singapore. We are also looking to starting up kindergartens and pre-schools.

4 11. What are the challenges you faced while doing this business? Like the worst one. My biggest challenge is actually working with my wife. We are very different, in terms of personality. I guess in every business partners, there are issues where they don t see eye to eye. But when your business partner is your wife, then it makes things a little bit difficult. There are times when I want to take the company to a certain direction or make a certain decision, but my wife would not agree to it. So those are the most difficult times. Because if your business partner isn t someone you are married to, I would say conversations would be done very differently, in a formal business way. But because it s your spouse, it may get into a very personal level instead of a business level. It was very hard for us for the first couple of years for us to find even ground. Even though we are very different, we actually complement each other a lot. I am a risk taker, while she is not. Sometimes it s good to listen to her opinion as well, as I can weigh in from the other point of view and make a decision from there. The other challenge is also hiring. Currently our business is not growing as fast as we would like it is because of human resource. We would like to maintain the quality of our product and lessons that includes the service we provide at the front desk, the quality of the lessons. For us right now, it s very difficult to find quality staffs and teachers. Because when we bring in the teachers, we actually spend a year training the teachers. I would say most business won t spend so much time teaching the teachers. The teachers come in and they can get return of investments immediately. We believe in delivering quality lessons the edugrove way. So every teachers has to be trained. So that s the biggest challenge right now, finding teachers that are already carrying the edugrove values already, then we supply them the skills, that would take a year. 12. May I know specifically what are the EduGrove Values that you uphold? For the teachers definitely you need to have a genuine love for children. You need to be comfortable with them. You need to be able to have fun and be like a child during lesson, yet at the same time, maintain authority of the class. It s a very fine line. Also, the teachers we look for need to have native level mandarin ability and at the same time speak fluent English. So that s something very hard to find too. They need to be confident enough to be themselves, be like a child so that they can connect with the child. Be up to date and modern, all at the same time. There s a lot of factors, that s why it takes so long for us to find the right person. 13. Do you have any interesting stories about your customers when your business first started? When we first started, we didn t hire any staff and I was the only staff in the centre. It was hard because I obviously was a non-chinese. Running a chinese centre with a non-chinese representing it was the most difficult time. I was trying to get customers to come in to enquire and register. I faced a lot of very difficult customers, especially the dads. They would ask, you are not chinese what, why are you selling chinese. Another instance, there was a lady who was so obviously interested, she was reading our brochure and was about to come in. She pulled the door handle. I stood up, and when looked at me, she turned away. She did that 3 times and I decided not to stand up. So she quietly stuck her head in and asked, Are you chinese? I replied in chinese saying I am to make her comfortable and she was like, Wah heng ah.. I thought you were indian.

5 13. What do you think is the most important skill set we need to have as a business person? I would say patience. Patience to wait for the right moments and not jump into something without fully exploring all the other facets of the idea. When you are researching for ideas, every idea would look good at the start. When you jump into it too soon, you might not have enough research to find out what are the pitfalls. When you find something great, look at it over and over again to make sure it is a sound idea. Then, wait for the right moment, for the right location. All these require patience. When you have something hot, you know that if you do this, you will be reaping its reward. But if you are too impatient to wait for the right location, especially for F&B, retail. You choose a place which is too far off from your ideal location, everything would go wrong just because you couldn t wait a little while. 14. Do you have any advices for young people who wish to start their business? I would say keep your eyes open at all times, there s a lot of opportunities out there to do so many things. If your eyes are open, you can get a lot of ideas on what to do. Experience is also very important, go out and work if you need to, to get experience. When you are working for somebody, learn everything, not just the immediate thing that you are doing. Because all this skills is needed when you start your own business. When you run your own business, you suddenly become the finance person, the HR person, the marketing person; every aspects of the business you have to know.

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